|
Quick Links...
CCDS Discussion |
 The new annual edition of our journal of discussion and analysis is now out. More than 130 pages, it includes 20 articles on organizing, racism and the right. Cost is $10 plus shipping. Or get one by becoming a sustainer. Click the title to buy it directly.
|
New Issue of Mobilizer
Check out what CCDS has been doing...
|
Blog of the Week:  Cleveland is making a turnaround
|
Edited by Carl Davidson Revolutionary Youth the the New Working Class: The Praxis Papers, the Port Authority Statement, the RYM Documents and other Lost Writings of SDS
Changemaker, 273pp, $22.50
For the full contents, click the link and view 'Preview' under the cover graphic.
|
|
By Randy Shannon, CCDS
"Everyone has the right to work, to free of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."
- United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948
I. Introduction
The "Great Recession" that began in 2007 has caused the greatest percent of job losses since the Great Depression of 1929. This crisis is the end of an era of unrestrained 'neo-liberal' capitalism that became public policy during the Reagan administration. The crisis marks a new level of instability with the growth of a global financial elite that targeted US workers and our trade unions after World War II.
|
|
Order Our
Full Employment Booklets
 |
...In a new and updated 2nd Edition
Capitalism may well collapse under its own excesses, but what would one propose to replace it? Margaret Thatcher's mantra was TINA...There Is No Alternative. David Schweickart's vision of "Economic Democracy" proposes a serious alternative. Even more fundamentally, it opens the door to thinking about alternatives. His may or may not turn out to be the definitive "successor system," but he is a leader in breaking out of the box. |
We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the American Century
By Rod Bush, NYU Press, 1999
|
 A Memoir of the 1960s
by Paul KrehbielAutumn Leaf Press, $25.64 | | Shades of Justice Video: Bringing Down a President, Ending a War |
|
Carl Davidson's Latest Book:
New Paths to Socialism
Essays on Mondragon, Marx, Gramsci and the Green and Solidarity Economies |
Solidarity Economy:What It's All About
Edited by Jenna Allard, Carl Davidson and Julie Matthaei
Buy it here...
|
Voices from the Underground Press of the 1960s, Part 2- Foreword by Susan Brownmiller
- Preface by Ken Wachsberger
$37.50 + $6 shipping
|
|
Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement
By Don Hamerquist
|
|
|
|
An Invitation to CCDSers and Friends...
 Democracy Surge from the Grassroots
We're the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism...Do you have friends who should see this? Pass it on...Do you have a blog of your own? Others you love to read every day? Well, this is a place where you can share access to them with the rest of your comrades. Just pick your greatest hits for the week and send them to us at carld717@gmail.com!
Most of all, it's urgent that you defend voter rights, plan for 2014 races now, oppose austerity, support the Congressional Progressive Caucus' 'Back to Work Budget' and end the wars! We're doing more than ever, and have big plans. So pay your dues, make a donation and become a sustainer. Do it Now! Check the link at the bottom...
|
Mississippi Yearning: Nissan Union
Drive a Fusion of Labor and Human Rights
Danny Glover brings greetings from South African Workers to Nissan workers in Canton, MS.
By Roger Bybee
DoBetterNissan.org
May 20, 2013 - "It's a blessing from God," heralded a quote prominently displayed amidst the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion Ledger's lavish coverage when Nissan opened its ultra-modern assembly plant just outside the small town of Canton, 27 miles west of Jackson. The plant initially symbolized new hope for lifting many Mississippians out of the widespread misery that has long plagued the perennially poorest U.S. state, whose inequality has been increasing faster than anywhere else in the nation over the last decade.
Regular jobs at Nissan now pay about $22 an hour-close enough to the UAW standard of about $28 an hour to be a deterrent against unionization, according to the designs of Nissan strategists. At this pay level, Nissan's big paychecks were originally perceived as stunningly high in the area near Canton, where the city's current poverty rate is 31.7 percent, more than double the national rate of 14.3 percent. The new plant was hailed as well worth the impoverished state's subsidy of $387 million, as conservatively estimated by the Mississippi Development Authority.
But a decade after the Canton plant opened, the sheen has worn off for many workers at the plant that employs about 4,500 workers, 80 percent of whom are African-American. Nissan has generated widespread disenchantment among the workforce at Canton.
The worker discontent has taken the form of a unique organizing drive for representation by the United Auto Workers, based on the notion that labor rights are human rights. This central theme-closely related to the teachings of civil rights giant Martin Luther King-resonates deeply among Nissan workers and a fast-growing group of supporters including clergy, elected officials, and students in Mississippi and across the South. The notion of just treatment for the Nissan workers in Canton-which means allowing them the same right to unionize as Nissan workers in Japan, Brazil, South Africa, and elsewhere-has activated an extraordinary level of support from unionists outside the U.S.
The Mississippi organizing drive has the potential to reinvigorate the U.S. labor movement at a time of widespread defeatism caused by events like the passage of anti-worker legislation in Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan. Much of its progress can be explained by its reliance on the moral intertwining of labor rights and human rights which deeply connected with Mississippians-especially African Americans-and exerts a worldwide moral appeal....(Click title for more)
|
|
 | | In Civil Rights Victory, Virginia Restores Voting Rights |
By Amy Goodman And Juan Gonzalez
Democracy Now!
In a major victory for voting rights, Virginia's Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell has announced he will automatically restore voting rights for people with nonviolent felony convictions. His decision will eliminate the two-year waiting period and petition process that currently disenfranchises thousands of nonviolent felons who have completed their sentences and satisfied all the conditions of their punishments. According to the Sentencing Project, 350,000 Virginians who have completed their sentences remained disenfranchised in 2010. We speak to Benjamin Jealous, president and CEO of NAACP, which has been on the forefront of the campaign to restore voting rights to former felons. The news comes as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to issue a major ruling that could decide the future of the Voting Rights Act.
Transcript
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In a major victory for voting rights, Virginia's Republican Governor Bob McDonnell has announced he will automatically restore voting rights for people with nonviolent felony convictions. His decision will eliminate the two-year waiting period and petition process that currently disenfranchises thousands of nonviolent felons who have completed their sentences and satisfied all the conditions of their punishment.
According to the Sentencing Project, 350,000 Virginians who have completed their sentences remained disenfranchised in 2010. Under the new plan, the governor's office will notify nonviolent felons in a letter that their rights have been restored, once the office has verified that he or she has served all time and paid all debts owed.
On Thursday, McDonnell explained his decision on MSNBC's Morning Joe.
GOV. BOB McDONNELL: We are a nation of second chances. We believe in redemption and restoration. And our recidivism rate in Virginia is down to 23 percent. But part of what we've been able to do is have a aggressive prisoner re-entry system, but also to get people fully reintegrated into society. And so, what I announced yesterday, Joe and Mika, was, once somebody has done their probation or parole or incarceration and they paid all their fines and costs and don't have any pending charges, we're going to automatically restore their voting rights and their civil and constitutional rights, get them fully reintegrated in society to be a law-abiding citizen, because that will decrease the chances they commit new crimes.
AMY GOODMAN: Currently, Virginia is one of only four states that do not automatically restore voting rights to felons once they've served their time. Even under the new process, Virginia Governor McDonnell says he can only legally restore rights on an individual basis. This means the governor's office will send a letter to each former nonviolent felon it can find, telling them their rights are restored. Attempts to amend the Constitution to make the process automatic have proved unsuccessful for more than 30 years.
Ex-offenders reacted to Governor McDonnell's announcement on CBS affiliate WDBJ in Roanoke, Virginia.
DARRELL GOODEN: I can be a part of society.
JOHN KUNZ: I've forgiven myself. The other people involved in my situation have forgiven me. But it's just-it was like a dark cloud over my head, because now this-this finally feels like society forgiving me, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we're joined now by Ben Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP. His organization has been on the forefront of the campaign to restore voting rights to former felons.
Ben Jealous, welcome back to Democracy Now!
BENJAMIN JEALOUS: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: It's great to have you with us. So you have a conservative Republican governor-
BENJAMIN JEALOUS: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: -McDonnell, who-explain exactly what he has to do.
BENJAMIN JEALOUS: He has-well, what he did was simply sign an order saying that for each person who has fulfilled these requirements, which has to be a nonviolent crime, and you have to have served all your time, paid your fines, served probation-all that's done-your rights will be restored that day. And so, they have over 100,000 people in the database, but it only goes back to 1995. And so, for people whose crimes were before then, those folks are going to have to come in and ask, you know. But for the 100,000-plus that go back to 1995, they will get a note saying, "Your voting rights have been restored."...(Click title for more)
|
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Black Commentator via ZNet
June 10, 2013 - While it is positive that the USA and Russia have been discussing a peaceful resolution to the Syrian civil war, the reality is that this conflict may grow and spread. Although the US media speaks about this conflict in religious terms, i.e., Sunni vs. Shia, such a description is far too simplistic and does not help us better understand what has been unfolding.
The Syrian civil war started in the context of the so-called Arab Spring. There was a peaceful pro-democracy rising that had little to do with what sect within Islam someone found one's self. It was a rising against a despotic, quasi-monarchy [the regime of President Bashar al-Assad] that made frequent use of progressive-and even anti-imperialist-rhetoric while it was suppressing its citizenry. The social base for the leadership clique of President Assad was among the Alawites, a Muslim sect related to the Shiites, but it would be incorrect to see the Syrian regime as anything approaching an Alawite theocracy.
The Syrian regime, founded by Bashar's father, Hafez al-Assad, was not very different from many of the nationalist-military regimes that took power in the Arab World in the 1950s and 1960s. They were generally anti-imperialist in orientation and aligned themselves with the then Soviet Union. These regimes tended not to be democratic internally and were intolerant of dissent. They were not religious in any particular way, though in the case of Syria, the long-standing persecution of the Alawites ended with the assumption of power by Assad.
The Assad regime-both father and now the son-suffered from the same crisis that Egyptian theorist Samir Amin has referenced regarding many efforts in the global South. These nationalist-populist projects worked to transform and modernize their respective countries, but only so far. Though aligned with the Soviet Union, and in some cases China, they were not committed to a thorough transformation of their respective states, and certainly not a democratization. One could also see this in Qaddafi's Libya, for instance. The rhetoric of these regimes, however, frequently confused outsiders, leading many progressives in the global North to assume that regimes, such as Assad's, were on the side of progressive change whereas they were increasingly repressive.
With the collapse of the USSR, Syria found itself in an ever more complicated situation. It retained an alliance with Russia, through which they were supplied advanced weaponry. They had also constructed an alliance with theocratic Iran against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980s, the latter having been a bitter rival of Syria for leadership of the Arab World.
Much as with Saddam Hussein's regime, ideology drained away from the Assad despotism as time went on, leaving only a regime seeking to retrain power. It is this regime that was confronted by a pro-democracy movement in the context of the Arab Spring.
It is quite possible that Assad could have come to some sort of compromise with the pro-democracy movement. The Syrians, having witnessed the Lebanese civil war, had no particular interest in a turn toward armed struggle. Instead, much like Qaddafi, Assad assumed that he could squash the protest movement, and he attempted to do so quite violently.
Try as they might, the pro-democracy movement, which was never under the leadership of any one organization, found it difficult to retain a commitment to non-violence. This was especially the case once a new factor entered the picture: Saudi Arabia and Qatar. As part of an effort by ultra-conservative Sunni theocracies to both crush a secular nationalist regime plus thwart the alliance between Syria and Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar began to supply militaristic elements within the anti-Assad coalition. As Assad upped the ante through repression, the military option became increasingly acceptable to elements within the anti-Assad coalition. In time various European countries entered the picture, supporting the anti-Assad coalition and calling for the introduction of military assistance. The USA was, formally at least, slow to enter the picture, though elements, largely in the Republican Party, have been encouraging direct US military intervention (at a minimum through a no-fly zone). Ironically, the other force to enter the picture against Assad have been the Sunni jihadists, some of which are associated with Al Qaeda.
On the other side of the equation, Assad, increasingly isolated at home, turned outward for support, including to Iran, Russia, and more recently, the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon (the Shiite movement known for its successful war against Israeli invaders in 2006). Reports have circulated that both Assad and the anti-Assad forces have used chemical weapons. Israel, nervous about instability on its northern borders, has launched at least one attack against facilities under the control of Assad allegedly due to the suggestion that weaponry was being transferred to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Which way is up?
The Obama administration has expressed an increasing amount of pro-interventionist sentiment. This has included recognizing the anti-Assad forces as the legitimate leaders of Syria, followed by alleged non-lethal assistance to the anti-Assad forces. Republican Senator John McCain, no surprise, has insisted that the USA should do more, though no one is currently suggesting the deploying of US troops, apparently having learned some lessons from the Iraq debacle. In either case, the USA is certainly not an honest broker in the conflict and is working covertly to oust the Assad regime. At the same time, they and Russia are discussing the possibilities of some sort of peace agreement, though Russia continues to arm Assad.
Syria, then, has become something like Spain in its 1936-39 civil war, i.e., a country that is not only carrying out a domestic struggle but has become a focal point for a much larger conflict. The USA should have learned from its experiences in Iraq, and later Libya, that fishing in troubled waters can bring with it very profound consequences. ...(Click title for more)
|
NYC Forum: The Future of the Left
--A Conversation on Socialist Unity
 | Main Presentations at NYC Meeting
|
Presented by the Left Labor Project: With Mark Solomon of the CCDS leading off based on his widely circulated and discussed article in Portside and respondents from Jacobin Magazine, Democratic Socialists of America, CPUSA, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization.
|
By Robert Reich
robertreich,org
June 8, 2013 - Conservative Republicans in our nation's capital have managed to accomplish something they only dreamed of when Tea Partiers streamed into Congress at the start of 2011: They've basically shut Congress down. Their refusal to compromise is working just as they hoped: No jobs agenda. No budget. No grand bargain on the deficit. No background checks on guns. Nothing on climate change. No tax reform. No hike in the minimum wage. Nothing so far on immigration reform.
It's as if an entire branch of the federal government - the branch that's supposed to deal directly with the nation's problems, not just execute the law or interpret the law but make the law - has gone out of business, leaving behind only a so-called "sequester" that's cutting deeper and deeper into education, infrastructure, programs for the nation's poor, and national defense.
The window of opportunity for the President to get anything done is closing rapidly. Even in less partisan times, new initiatives rarely occur after the first year of a second term, when a president inexorably slides toward lame duck status.
But the nation's work doesn't stop even if Washington does. By default, more and more of it is shifting to the states, which are far less gridlocked than Washington. Last November's elections resulted in one-party control of both the legislatures and governor's offices in all but 13 states - the most single-party dominance in decades.
This means many blue states are moving further left, while red states are heading rightward. In effect, America is splitting apart without going through all the trouble of a civil war.
Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, for example, now controls both legislative chambers and the governor's office for the first time in more than two decades. The legislative session that ended a few weeks ago resulted in a hike in the top income tax rate to 9.85%, an increased cigarette tax, and the elimination of several corporate tax loopholes. The added revenues will be used to expand early-childhood education, freeze tuitions at state universities, fund jobs and economic development, and reduce the state budget deficit. Along the way, Minnesota also legalized same-sex marriage and expanded the power of trade unions to organize.
California and Maryland passed similar tax hikes on top earners last year. The governor of Colorado has just signed legislation boosting taxes by $925 million for early-childhood education and K-12 (the tax hike will go into effect only if residents agree, in a vote is likely in November).
On the other hand, the biggest controversy in Kansas is between Governor Sam Brownback, who wants to shift taxes away from the wealthy and onto the middle class and poor by repealing the state's income tax and substituting an increase in the sales tax, and Kansas legislators who want to cut the sales tax as well, thereby reducing the state's already paltry spending for basic services. Kansas recently cut its budget for higher education by almost 5 percent.
Other rightward-moving states are heading in the same direction. North Carolina millionaires are on the verge of saving $12,500 a year, on average, from a pending income-tax cut even as sales taxes are raised on the electricity and services that lower-income depend residents depend on. Missouri's transportation budget is half what it was five years ago, but lawmakers refuse to raise taxes to pay for improvements.
The states are splitting as dramatically on social issues. Gay marriages are now recognized in twelve states and the District of Columbia. Colorado and Washington state permit the sale of marijuana, even for non-medical uses. California is expanding a pilot program to allow nurse practitioners to perform abortions.
Meanwhile, other states are enacting laws restricting access to abortions so tightly as to arguably violate the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. In Alabama, the mandated waiting period for an abortion is longer than it is for buying a gun.
Speaking of which, gun laws are moving in opposite directions as well. Connecticut, California, and New York are making it harder to buy guns. Yet if you want to use a gun to kill someone who's, say, spray-painting a highway underpass at night, you might want to go to Texas, where it's legal to shoot someone who's committing a "public nuisance" under the cover of dark. Or you might want to live in Kansas, which recently enacted a law allowing anyone to carry a concealed firearm onto a college campus.
The states are diverging sharply on almost every issue you can imagine. If you're an undocumented young person, you're eligible for in-state tuition at public universities in fourteen states (including Texas). But you might want to avoid driving in Arizona, where state police are allowed to investigate the immigration status of anyone they suspect is here illegally. And if you're poor and lack health insurance you might want to avoid a state like Wisconsin that's refusing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, even though the federal government will be picking up almost the entire tab.
Federalism is as old as the Republic, but not since the real Civil War have we witnessed such a clear divide between the states on central issues affecting Americans.
Some might say this is a good thing. It allows more of us to live under governments and laws we approve of. And it permits experimentation: Better to learn that a policy doesn't work at the state level, where it's affected only a fraction of the population, than after it's harmed the entire nation. As the jurist Louis Brandies once said, our states are "laboratories of democracy."
But the trend raises three troubling issues....(Click title for more)
|
 By Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone
June 6, 2013 - Well, the Bradley Manning trial has begun, and for the most part, the government couldn't have scripted the headlines any better.
In the now-defunct Starz series Boss, there's a reporter character named "Sam Miller" played by actor Troy Garity who complains about lazy reporters who just blindly eat whatever storylines are fed to them by people in power. He called those sorts of stories Chumpbait. If the story is too easy, if you're doing a piece on a sensitive topic and factoids are not only reaching you freely, but publishing them is somehow not meeting much opposition from people up on high, then you're probably eating Chumpbait.
There's an obvious Chumpbait angle in the Bradley Manning story, and most of the mainstream press reports went with it. You can usually tell if you're running a Chumpbait piece if you find yourself writing the same article as 10,000 other hacks.
The Trials of Bradley Manning
The CNN headline read as follows: "Hero or Traitor? Bradley Manning's Trial to Start Monday." NBC went with "Contrasting Portraits of Bradley Manning as Court-Martial Opens." Time magazine's Denver Nicks took this original approach in their "think" piece on Manning, "Bradley Manning and our Real Secrecy Problem":
Is he a traitor or a hero? This is the question surrounding Bradley Manning, the army private currently being court-martialed at Fort Meade for aiding the enemy by wrongfully causing defense information to published on the Internet.
The Nicks thesis turned out to be one chosen by a lot of editorialists at the Manning trial, who have decided that the "real story" in the Manning case is what this incident shows....(Click title for more)
|
One Day in December:
Celia Sanchez and the Cuban Revolution
 By Nancy Stout with a foreword by Alice Walker
"I love this book. Biographer Nancy Stout is to be congratulated for her insightful, mature and sometimes droll exploration of a profoundly liberated, adventuresome and driven personality." -Alice Walker
One Day in December
457 pages,
March 2013
Price: $28.95
By Monthly Review
Celia Sánchez is the missing actor of the Cuban Revolution. Although not as well known in the English-speaking world as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, Sánchez played a pivotal role in launching the revolution and administering the revolutionary state. She joined the clandestine 26th of July Movement and went on to choose the landing site of the Granma and fight with the rebels in the Sierra Maestra. She collected the documents that would form the official archives of the revolution, and, after its victory, launched numerous projects that enriched the lives of many Cubans, from parks to literacy programs to helping develop the Cohiba cigar brand. All the while, she maintained a close relationship with Fidel Castro that lasted until her death in 1980.
The product of ten years of original research, this biography draws on interviews with Sánchez's friends, family, and comrades in the rebel army, along with countless letters and documents. Biographer Nancy Stout was initially barred from the official archives, but, in a remarkable twist, was granted access by Fidel Castro himself, impressed as he was with Stout's project and aware that Sánchez deserved a worthy biography. This is the extraordinary story of an extraordinary woman who exemplified the very best values of the Cuban Revolution: selfless dedication to the people, courage in the face of grave danger, and the desire to transform society.
I love this book. Biographer Nancy Stout is to be congratulated for her insightful, mature and sometimes droll exploration of a profoundly liberated, adventuresome and driven personality. I love the life of Celia Sánchez, a life that was singular, sui generis, and true to its time of revolution and change in Cuban society, but also archetypal in its impact and relevance to all times of social struggle and revolt, including this one.
-Alice Walker, author, The Color Purple; winner, Pulitzer Prize & National Book Award
Nancy Stout's One Day in December, in addition to being a penetrating and startling biography, is a new generation's view into a world previous generations have been locked out of with words like: "dictator," "communist," "anti-American," and "communist sympathizer/traitor." As we move into an era of multiculturalism, an era which continues to upset old racial paradigms, and an era of interconnectivity and globalism from which there is no turning back, Nancy Stout's One Day in December takes on the importance of the work of Arundhati Roy or Noam Chomsky in its insistence on looking at facts rather than self serving capitalist and neocolonialist myth. And One Day in December is also a damn good read about a passionate, sensuous, and brilliant woman!
-Sapphire, author of Push and The Kid
Engrossing, endearing, and eloquent, this sympathetic and superbly crafted portrait of the 'True Flower of the Revolution' unfolds in magnificent detail. Nancy Stout leaves us breathless in admiration for this fearless revolutionary-a brilliant organizer, recruiter, and Fidel Castro's most precious aide. So intimate is Stout's well-informed tour de force that the description of Sánchez's death brings the reader to tears, inspired by a deep sense of love and loss.
-Christopher P. Baker, author, Mi Moto Fidel: Motorcycling Through Castro's Cuba, the Moon Cuba Handbook, and Cuba Classics: A Celebration of Vintage American Automobiles
Nancy Stout has accomplished a genuine tour de force with One Day in December. In this riveting and eloquent portrait, Celia Sánchez finally emerges as a major star in Cuba's revolutionary drama: a political animal, a management consultant, a historian, and of course, a confidante to Fidel Castro. Thrust into the arena of clandestine politics in the 1950s, Celia spent the next two decades of her life helping to institutionalize the Cuban revolution. Her legacy, especially for women and girls' education and health, and as the chief archivist of the insurgency, comes alive in Stout's exhaustively researched biography.
-Julia Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow and Director, Latin America Studies and Global Brazil Initiative, Council on Foreign Relations
This excellent book tells us about Celia Sánchez, an early leader of the Cuban Revolution and a fascinating character. From Oriente province, she helped organize the 26th of July forces there and plan Fidel's landing in January of 1956. She soon joined him in the mountains and became not only a leader of the Revolution but his 'closest companion.' That they were intimate seems clear but it was a sui generis relationship. As Nancy Stout suggests, 'he was free to come and go.' And he certainly had relationships with other women. As Stout movingly describes her, Celia was totally devoted to Fidel and to the Cuban Revolution. And she loved and was loved by the Cuban people. I was in Havana at the time of her death in January of 1980 and well remember the deep sadness it occasioned.
-Wayne S. Smith, senior fellow and director of the Cuba Project, Center for International Policy; former head, U.S. Interests Section in Havana
In this impressive biography Stout utilizes interviews, Cuban archives (to which she was granted special access by Castro himself), letters, and other documents to provide an accurate portrait of Sanchez, who ran the planning organization of the revolution after the death of Pais in 1957... Stout's biography tells her story as well as offering insights into other revolutionaries and their contributions... Highly recommended for readers and scholars of Cuban history.
-Library Journal (starred review)
|
 | | Twenty Feet From Stardom - Music Documentary HD |
By Ernest Hardy
Village Voice
Directed by Morgan Neville in fan-boy mode (that's high praise), Twenty Feet from Stardom is an exquisitely rendered look at the dialectics of celebrity and artistry, luck and hard work, its conversation laced with smart observations about race and gender.
At heart, it's a praise-song for the many black women whose backing oohs and aahs have done the heavy lifting of turning good songs into classics and rock stars into icons. In its goals of tracking the birth and evolution of the background singer, and rescuing the women (primarily but not exclusively black) and men (a much smaller number whose ranks include the late Luther Vandross) from the sidelines, Neville's camera takes in a staggering amount-old performance footage and photos; original interviews with everyone from Darlene Love and Merry Clayton to Sting and Bruce Springsteen.
Neville understands that one way pop stars function is as our proxies. Through them we get to imagine ourselves as talented, beautiful, sexy, powerful, and infallible. Even their failures are glossed with a patina of glam we common folk are denied when our lives crumble. In focusing on the backing singer, Neville complicates our notions of success, failure, and heroism.
Perhaps a tad too long, Stardom is a rousing and at times heartbreaking cinematic experience. It does what the most powerful films and music have always done, which is to spark contemplation of our own lives and choices, and our place in the world, while also stoking compassion and empathy for lives far removed from our own. ...(Click title for more)
|
|
Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
 The struggle for our nation's future has intensified. The rainbow coalition and multi-class alignment that coalesced around the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama defeated the far- right appeal to racism, misogyny, homophobia and rejection of science.
This reflects the growing strength and cohesion of the multiracial labor movement and its allies within a larger progressive majority. Yet the 1% retains power and strives to manage economic crises in a way that sticks working people with the bill.
Unemployment, hunger and homelessness increase, union membership declines, and too many impoverished, crisis-shocked communities, especially in the South, remain captive to messages of hate. A rational response to the existential crisis of humanity-accelerating climate change-is blocked by capitalism's irrational profit drive. The 99% can solve these problems on the basis of our common humanity.
Pressures of war, austerity and climate danger demand new levels of unity and struggle. New forms of labor activism lead beyond traditional trade union organizing toward a broader working class movement. The uprisings from Wisconsin to Occupy to Wal-Mart, and from Trayvon Martin to the UndocuBus, represent an emerging democracy movement. Based in the working class, linked with the community, and following the path boldly taken by the civil rights movement, today's movements can win new demands.
Through years of experience, the Left has learned that building lasting unity among allies involves tactful, constructive and unrelenting struggle. Our work can replace neo-liberal influences with class, political, cultural and moral solidarity and democracy. CCDS focuses on the intersection of class, race and gender as fundamental to both an objective social analysis and an effective political agenda. The Left is indispensable to weaving the threads of struggle into a mass formation independent of the 1%.
Polls reveal a growing plurality of youth that prefer socialism to capitalism. With determination, we socialists proceed toward our common future. In pre-convention discussion, we will examine the economy, the environment, civil society, the commons and the state within the context of the class struggle. Now CCDS calls upon its members and allies to convene in Pittsburgh in July, 2013 to assess our experience and to plan for the future.
Access the Main Pre-Convention Discussion Documents at http://ccds-discussion.org
|
|
Become a CCDS member today!
 The
time is long past for 'Lone Rangers'. Being a socialist by your self is
no fun and doesn't help much. Join CCDS today--$36 regular, $48
household and $18 youth.
Better yet, beome a sustainer at $20 per month,
and we'll send you a copy of Jack O'Dell's new book, 'Climbing Jacobs
Ladder,' drawing on the lessons of the movement in the South in the
1950s and 1960s.
Solidarity, Carl Davidson, CCDS |
|
|
