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June 21, 2013
In This Issue
Full Employment
Mideast War Danger
Afghan Funds Restricted
Pay Theft
Bob Moses on History
China Pivot
Turkey's Insurgency
Angela of Freedom
Superman Reviewed
CCDS Convention
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Left Forum 2013: Michael
Moore on Humor and Politics
Michael Moore and John Fugelsang on Humor :
"The Majority of Americans Believe What We Believe"

Dirty Wars: Must See Film
DIRTY WARS - Official Theatrical Trailer
Official Theatrical Trailer

New 'Online University of the Left' Now at 3200+ Friends. 26,000 Visitors and reaching 100,000+ More...Check It Out and Be Amazed!


Check out the various departments, study guides and archives for doing the work of revolutionary education
Quick Links...
CCDS Discussion
If you like CCDSLinks, dig in and lend a hand!
Tina at AFL-CIO
 CCDS Statement on Korea 
 

US Must Talk, Not Threaten North Korea
 


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:
 

 

ROAR Magazine  is an online journal of the radical imagination that seeks to amplify the voice of our generation amid the clamorous cacophony of a rapidly changing world.

ROARaims to bring you some of the world's most inspiring news, stories, analysis, ideas, actions, books, poems, tunes, photos, videos and doodles from the front-lines of the Real Democracy Movement. 


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.
'They're Bankrupting Us!': And Twenty Other Myths about Unions
Tina at AFL-CIO

New Book by Bill Fletcher, Jr. 

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

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Tina at AFL-CIO

...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 Krehbiel


Autumn Leaf Press, $25.64

Shades of Justice:  Bringing Down a President and Ending a War
Shades of Justice Video: Bringing Down a President, Ending a War

Antonio Gramsci: Life of a Revolutionary



By Giuseppe Fiori
Verso, 30 pages
Gay, Straight and the Reason Why



The Science of Sexual Orientation


By Simon LeVay
Oxford University Press
$27.95



New Book: Diary of a Heartland Radical

By Harry Targ

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

Tina at AFL-CIO

Edited by Jenna Allard, Carl Davidson and Julie Matthaei

 Buy it here...
Study! Teach! Organize!
Tina at AFL-CIO

Introducing the 'Frankfurt School'

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...
 
War Danger
at Home,
Insurgency
Abroad  

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 [email protected]!

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...
Mideast War Danger: Fool Us Once, Shame on You, Fool Us Twice...



Susan Rice at the UN: Deja Vu All Over Again?


By Carl Bloice
Beaver County Peace Links via BlackCommentator.com

June 20, 2013 - Susan Rice and Colin Powell have more than one thing in common, but if things continue to move as they are now, the most historically significant one may be that they both went to the United Nations with "evidence" that got our country involved in a military conflict in a volatile part of the world,  resulting in massive death and destruction - all for no good reason.

On February 5, 2003, then-Secretary of State General Colin Powell told the United Nations Security Council that Iraq possessed dangerous weapons of mass destruction and the country's then ruler, Saddam Hussein, was hoodwinking U.N. inspectors by hiding them. It was, as Democracy Now! said last week, "a defining moment "in the Bush administration's push to invade Iraq.

On February 6, 2003, Rice, then a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told NPR Powell "has proved that Iraq has these weapons and is hiding them, and I don't think many informed people doubted that."

What we know now is that what the then highest-ranking African American official in the Bush Administration said was not true. I recall the day NBA great Charles Barkley was asked what was the question of the day and answered "Where are the weapons of mass destruction?"

Turned out there were none.

It was what the New York Times last week termed, "the fiasco of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq"

In the end it didn't matter much. It was the U.S. public and much of the international community that had been hoodwinked. The U.S. invaded Iraq, overthrew Hussein and set in motion a decade-long war that resulted on 0ver 4,440 U.S. troops deaths, over 32,000 seriously. Over 235 are reported to have taken their own lives while deployed. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians lost their lives and 1.6. million were displaced from their homes. All at the cost of over $I trillion.

Last week, Powell's former aide, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who prepared the U.N. speech, told Democracy Now!, "I don't believe the hype about that presentation having been the ultimate presentation... that led us to war with Iraq...George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and others had decided to go to war with Iraq long before Colin Powell gave that presentation."

"Frankly, we were all wrong," said Wilkerson. "Was the intelligence politicized in addition to being wrong at its roots? Absolutely." ...(Click title for more)

Results of House National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Amendments


From Peace Action

Peace Action was one of the few organizations to oppose the invasion of Afghanistan and we have been working ever since to end America's longest war.

Last week, the House of Representatives took a big step in bringing all troops home.  While considering the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the House passed an amendment that stated in part:

    [requires] the President to complete the accelerated transition of combat operations from U.S. Armed Forces to the Government of Afghanistan no later than by the end of 2013; the accelerated transition of military and security operations by the end of 2014, including the redeployment of U.S. troops; and to pursue robust negotiations to address Afghanistan's and the region's security and stability.

Offered by long-time allies Representatives Walter Jones, R-North Carolina; Barbara Lee, D-California, and John Garamendi, D-California, the amendment passed overwhelming, 305-121 (you can see how your Rep. voted here).  Only nine democrats voted against and a majority of Republicans supported this very clear message to the administration to end the war.

Your calls, emails and protests over the years have quickly swayed public opinion and pressured the administration and lawmakers to bring this war to a close.

Our work opposing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have made the U.S. Government much more weary of putting boots on the ground.  Take Libya and the current situation in Syria as examples.

Additionally, other amendments to the NDAA we supported passed such as language making clear that there is no authorization for a war with Iran.

Unfortunately house Republican leaders did not allow amendments that might of cut wasteful weapons systems like nuclear weapons.  There were a number of amendments that Peace Action took a stance on. You may see the outcomes below....(Click title for more)


Fast food workers and their supporters demonstrate outside of a Wendy's restaurant in New York City during a Nov. 29, 2012, walk-out. Labor organizers have staged similar walkouts in six cities thus far. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

By Seth Freed Wessler
Color Lines

June 19 2013 - Olivia Roffle has worked at Papa John's Pizza in St. Louis, Mo., for three years and she hates it. "It's just not an enjoyable place to work," she says. The 23 year old, who is enrolled in classes to become a social worker, doesn't make enough to pay rent at her own place so she alternates nights at her mother's, uncle's and sister's homes. That was a lousy situation, and then it got worse when her car broke and she didn't have the money to fix it. So she ends up taking two busses and a train to make it to her shifts. But here's the thing: Roffle does work enough hours to afford to fix her car. That's to say, if she were paid for all the hours she works, she'd have a ride. She's not, she says, because her employer thieves her wages.

If that sounds dramatic, it should. Roffle is one of hundreds of fast food workers in six U.S. cities who in recent months have gone on strike to demand higher wages-$15 an hour, more than twice what she makes now- and the right to unionize. But as much as she and other workers want a living wage, they also want to get paid a legal wage.

"Its kind of like understood, it's a thing there, it's an unspoken thing," Roffle told me about illegal employment practices that shirk workers of wages to which they're legally and contractually entitled. Roffle is among those now trying to organizer fast food workers in Missouri. "There would be a ton of people making overtime if we got paid for all the hours we work, but we don't."

The U.S. Department of Labor found a couple years ago that 40 percent of fast food outposts in the country fail to consistently pay their employees a minimum wage or overtime. And a recent study from New York City found that 84 percent of fast food workers complained that their employers regularly force them to work off the books, work overtime without overtime pay or pony up for their own gas for deliveries. In the case of fast food, the whole structure of franchising is set up to throw workers like Roffle under the bus while insulating corporations like Papa John's from the messy exigencies of their labor.

Ways to Steal Your Wages

Here's how Papa John's gets away with taking Roffle's pay. She says she's regularly expected to start her shift before she clocks in, or stay late to clean after she's already clocked out. She talked me through a recent week, recalling the hours she started and stopped and then which hours she actually worked. All together, she says in an average week she works two to four hours without pay. And so Roffle, who makes $7.35 an hour, loses out on nearly $90 a month. In a year, that's more than $1,000, which she says would've been more than enough to get her car fixed.

"The thing is, you know that you should be paid," Roffle said, "but to show that you want to keep your job, that you are a good worker, that you are a team player, you do it."

Across the state, Wilma Brown, a former Kansas City Burger King worker in her mid-30's, tells a similar tale....(Click title for more)
Bob Moses: 'Slavery By Another Name' in the Three Periods of the Constitution in Our History

Robert Moses - 29th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial Convocation
29th Annual MLK Memorial Convocation.
Start at 48 Minute Mark


By Jack A. Smith

The Rag Blog

June 20, 2013 - There is an obvious connection between the first summit conference attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Barrack Obama in California June 7-8 and Obama's major speech two weeks earlier redefining the future of America's 12-year military role in the Middle East.

In effect, Obama has transferred the brunt of U.S. foreign/military policy away from the Middle East and the war on terrorism and toward Asia to better manipulate the conditions of China's inevitable return to big power status. The process Washington began two years ago to contain China's influence -- the "pivot" to Asia, now termed the "Asia Pacific rebalancing strategy" -- can now be accelerated.

I have located no mention of this connection in the Chinese press, but it undoubtedly added to President Xi's concern about the "rebalancing" just before his talks with Obama. The only mention in the U.S. mass media I know of was a single paragraph in a March 25 New York Times article about Obama's comments:

    Left unsaid in Mr. Obama's speech was one of the biggest motivations for his new focus: a desire to extricate the United States from the Middle East so that it can focus on the faster-growing region of Asia.

The switch makes practical sense. It has evidently occurred to the Oval Office that a monomaniacal obsession with a small, scattered enemy possessing primitive weapons undermines America's imperial interests. The main geopolitical prize for the U.S. government obviously is in East and South Asia, not the Middle East, which has transfixed Washington's attention since September 11, 2001, at a huge cost in prestige and treasure -- probably $5 trillion or more when it's finally paid off in several decades.

Clarifying this new foreign/military policy thrust is the main reason President Obama delivered his important speech May 23 redefining America's wars, drones, and Guantanamo. His main message was that "we must define our effort not as a boundless 'global war on terror,' but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America."

"Rebalancing" to Asia does not signify the Obama Administration has the slightest intention to ignore the Middle East. It means these small so-called terror wars are no longer Washington's first international priority. The U.S. will continue the fighting, but with much smaller numbers of special forces, drones and other cheaper means of domination, not with large armies of occupation and trillions in treasure....(Click title for more)

By Molly McGrath

AFL-CIO Now

June 17, 2013 - Over the past few weeks, Turkey has been rocked by unrest. The protests were sparked by peaceful resistance to the destruction of Istanbul's Gezi Park in Taksim Square, the only green public place in central Istanbul, which was going to be turned into a shopping mall and historical recreation of Ottoman Artillery Barracks.

A harsh response from the state, characterized by extreme police brutality, has ensued in response to what have become the largest demonstrations the country has seen for decades. Protests have now spread to 77 cities in Turkey.

For years, tensions have been growing between women and gay rights groups, environmentalists, secularists-including trade unions-and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdog(an and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), which controls the government.
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Engin Sedat Kaya, a labor activist in Turkey's textile sector, said:

These protests represent a great accumulation of anger against the government's increasingly repressive policies-bans on abortion, on alcohol and anti-democratic policies against trade unions and workers. It is even a reaction to the extremely arrogant tone in Prime Minister Tayyip Erdog(an's speeches.

For 20 days, demonstrators have faced excessive beatings with police batons and rifle handles, excessive use of tear and pepper gas, water cannons shooting water laced with chemicals, flash bombs, rubber bullets and allegedly real bullets. So far, five have died and 7,000 have been injured.

On Sunday, a funeral was held for Ethem Sar?s�l�k, a working-class labor and political activist and an Alevi-a religious minority in Turkey-who was killed last week by a police bullet that was recorded on video. Police attacked his funeral attendees with water cannons. Sar?s�l�k's case has been deliberately suppressed from media coverage and his family was not allowed into his autopsy.

The extreme reaction by police to the initial protest in May has sparked a mass movement in civil society against authoritarianism and for democracy. The labor movement has played a prominent role in this movement in recent days by mobilizing its members to action to preserve the rights of citizens in an evolving Turkey.

Today, the Confederation of Public Workers' Unions (KESK) and the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions (DISK), along with three professional organizations of architects, engineers, doctors and dentists, have announced a one-day work stoppage to demand an end to police violence. In Istanbul today, police did not allow DISK's march to take place into Taksim Square.

The Council of Global Unions, which brings together 11 global union federations and represents hundreds of millions of workers worldwide, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Erdog(an that cited both the current violence and the bloodshed of this year's May Day celebrations in Istanbul and said, "The global union movement is concerned that your government has turned violent repression into a regular practice....Such brutality is unacceptable."

The Istanbul Gezi Park protests have been coordinated by a broad coalition called "Taksim Solidarity," which is composed of 117 different constituent groups, including trade unions.

This prominent stand has not gone without retaliation. Prime Minister Erdog(an told hundreds of thousands of supporters at a government-organized rally outside Istanbul on Sunday that the protesters were manipulated by "terrorists." Erdog(an also has criticized foreign media and has vowed to "identify one by one those who have terrorized the streets."

The president of the Turkish Medical Association reported that five doctors and three nurses had gone missing on Saturday after treating injured protesters. Amnesty International has launched a campaign against incommunicado detention of protesters. Lawyers were detained en masse last week when they tried to stop the first massive police attack on Taksim Square.

Despite promises from the Turkish government to respect a court decision that stopped the construction of the shopping mall in Gezi Park, police invaded the Taksim Square and Gezi Park en masse. Subsequently, extreme violence has consumed the streets of Istanbul and other cities across the country. Military police, or "jandarma," have joined the civilian police in the attacks.

The DISK and KESK union confederations have played a major role in the demonstrations that have captured the world's attention this May and June. Already, KESK held a one-day strike on June 5, criticizing the government's "terrorist response" to peaceful protests. DISK also struck, and DISK organizers have been at the center of the Gezi Park protests.

For decades, these two union confederations have supported respect for fundamental human and labor rights in Turkey. KESK, in particular, has been a leading voice for equality and respect for Kurdish rights in Turkey. As a result, it has experienced constant government raids in recent years. Both the leadership and rank-and-file members have been and continue to be detained under false charges of promoting "terrorist propaganda."

That is why this protest movement is such an important struggle for Turkey's labor unions. It is not just Gezi Park that is at stake, but also the ability of Turkish civil society to thrive free of government intimidation. Indeed, according to many veterans of the Turkish labor movement, workers' rights in Turkey stand to rise or fall with the fortunes of the Taksim Square protesters.

"Turkey's trade unionists stand in solidarity with the protesters in Taksim Square, because we have stood-down these authoritarian practices, tear gas and rubber bullets so many times ourselves in the past," said Eylem Yildizer, a 10-year veteran of both the labor and political movements in Turkey. "This is a turning point for young people active from the beginning of these protests. We will not stand silent and be victims of these government attacks. These protests give new meaning to the way we form a nation. It is only the beginning of what we can achieve. We want freedom for everyone."

The AFL-CIO supports these Turkish labor federations' call for immediate end to the brutal police crackdown in Turkey. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka sent a letter to Prime Minister Erdog(an supporting the demands of the unions.  ...(Click title for more)
Radical Freedom: New Book by Angela Davis

The Meaning of Freedom
& Other Difficult Dialogues
Author: Angela Y. Davis
Publisher: City Lights
Pages: 201
Price: $15.95 (paperback)


By SHELLEY WALIA
Frontline, India

"Unless the powerful are capable of learning to respect the dignity of their victims... impassable barriers will remain, and the world will be doomed to violence, cruelty and bitter suffering." --Noam Chomsky

THERE is a long journey from transcendent truth to relative truths. On the one end is the notion of knowledge as power; on the other is the notion of knowledge as a liberating experience, a means of presenting numerous interpretations without the significance of the established "truth" ever restraining individual freedom.

Helene Cixous, the French theoretician, is of the view that "there has to be some 'other'-no master without a slave, no economic-political power without exploitation, no dominant class without cattle under the yoke, no 'Frenchmen' without wogs, no Nazis without Jews, no property without exclusion". This Hegelian dialectic works in almost all areas of power and knowledge and in patriarchal structures apparent in the working of master narratives as seen even in the recent Oscar-winning film Argo, which reinforces the "othering" of Iran. The rise of fascism is underpinned by irrationality becoming part of reason and nudging it towards an involvement with tyranny and domination. But the long journey from Jehovah to Jesus, from the Old Testament to the New, from tyranny to human rights is a journey that counsels all, as stated in the Book of Isaiah, to "seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow". More than a religious statement, it becomes a political axiom aspiring to liberation from tyranny and to non-violence and community and social justice.

Angela Davis, the radical political thinker who lectures extensively on social and political issues, brings out her philosophy of freedom and justice in the 12 speeches, delivered between 1994 and 2009, that have been compiled in her book The Meaning of Freedom and Other Difficult Dialogues. Her ideas on freedom are contrary to the notion of individualism wherein a person can do what he wishes without any restraint and as long as it is lawful. Such a negative form of freedom that allows the defence of property even with the use of weapons is too narrow a concept for Angela Davis. For her, freedom is more "expansive and radical". To her, freedom from violence, sexual freedom, social justice, abolition of all kinds of bondage and incarceration, and freedom of movement are far more significant features than the mere selfish strivings of an individual, a philosophy of Thomas Hobbes she vociferously disagrees with.

Born into apartheid social system in Birmingham, Alabama, Angela Davis, like other dissident voices of her times such as Martin Luther King Jr, Howard Zinn, Edward Said and Noam Chomsky, unremittingly indicts the forces of American imperialism, neoliberal capitalism, heterosexist patriarchy and racist intolerance spanning contemporary American history. Her activism in the 1960s and her joining hands with the Black Panther Party led to her incarceration for over 18 months when both the then President Richard Nixon and the then Governor of California Ronald Reagan took measures to ensure that she never returned to her teaching assignment in the University of California. Her crime was her ideological affiliations with the communist party.

But her chief focus has been a scathing critique of the institution of prisons and the racist bias in the processes of punishment and incarceration within the United States. The majority of the people sent to prison every year are blacks and browns. Their incarceration leads to their segregation from society and, according to Angela Davis, further intensifies the criminal behaviour rampant in society. Interestingly, speaking about the victory of George W. Bush in 2000, she says in her lecture on "Race, Power and Prisons since 9/11": "We cannot forget that before 9/11, anti-prison activists had pointed out that a large-scale disenfranchisement of prisoners and former prisoners enabled Bush's rise to power. Had a small fraction of the 400,000 black men who were barred from voting in the contested state of Florida (because they were either felons or former felons) been able to vote, Bush would not have even emerged as a serious contender."

The speeches are remarkable for their spontaneous sincerity and ideological force, which are intended more to educate a sceptical audience than just to convince. They reveal the passions and perils of a life that is in search of a more politically charged and ethically consistent world view. The book on the whole comes across as a courageous effort to look at multiple perspectives of the idea of freedom, which is intrinsic to any civil society that believes in the notions of justice and equality. ...(Click title for more)


In Man of Steel, Superman returns to his Popular Front roots.


By Connor Kilpatrick
Jacobin

June 19, 2013 - There's a special place in hell for those who say nice things about Zack Snyder's films. Slavoj Zizek doomed himself to such a fate with his review of 300, which positioned Snyder's supposedly racist, 'roided-out homoerotics as a celebration of revolutionary discipline. I never saw 300, but I admired Zizek's willingness to troll like that.

So when I tell you that I not only appreciated, but loved Snyder's Man of Steel, believe me, I can smell the flames singing the skin off my feet. But I'm sorry to say, this is the big dumb Wagnerian movie I've been waiting for. It's Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen on a quarter of a billion dollars.

So far, I'm seeing a lot of "been there, done that" reviews for Man of Steel. Are you kidding me? Every comic book movie is "been there, done that." The format was played out fifteen years ago! Because let's face it: it's a pretty lame genre. These movies suck. Zombie-apocalypse films have a better signal-to-noise ratio.

Man of Steel Official Trailer #3 (2013) - Russell Crowe, Henry Cavill Movie HD
Man of Steel Official Trailer #3 (2013) - Russell Crowe, Henry Cavill Movie HD
I guess we can start the clock at Tim Burton's 1989 Batman, which is all but unwatchable today (seriously: just try it). What are the classics? Anyone? We're offered only two variations in the genre, each one equally dull: gritty 'realism' and bright, poppy camp. Only Ang Lee's Hulk stands out with its extra helpings of grizzled Nolte and nuked-out Monument Valley vistas. But everybody hated it. Oh well.

Without a doubt, Man of Steel is the only one of these I've wanted to freeze-frame and gawk at. Check out the Kryptonian production design: the wiry headdresses, the floating liquid-metal sonogram pod, the helmets made out of electric ribbed condoms, the way their lasers crash into bodies in big cavities of blue fire, the underwater communal embryonic sac (apparently Goyer and Snyder are up on their Shulamith Firestone). All that's missing is some of H.R. Giger's creepy phalluses and hidden vulvatics and we're at Dune levels of weirdness.

In fact, Eisenstein and Lynch's Dune are films I kept thinking about all throughout Man of Steel. The Kryptonian council at the beginning is just as alien, sinister and cooly regal as the Tsarist court of Ivan the Terrible. Even Superman's fever dream of extinction has him sinking into a pile of skulls like a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit. These are things you won't see in Raimi's Spider-Man flicks let alone the wildly overrated Iron Man movies. I enjoyed it all like I enjoyed Gangs of New York: it's so damn interesting looking I don't really care about anything else. Luckily, unlike Gangs of New York, most of the rest actually works. ...(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