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 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.
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New Issue of Mobilizer
Check out what CCDS has been doing...
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Blog of the Week:  What's Love Got to Do with the Apocalypse? We Asked This Group of Young Leaders
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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.
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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.
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Order Our
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...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
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 A Memoir of the 1960s
by Paul KrehbielAutumn Leaf Press, $25.64 | | Shades of Justice Video: Bringing Down a President, Ending a War |
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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...
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Voices from the Underground Press of the 1960s, Part 2- Foreword by Susan Brownmiller
- Preface by Ken Wachsberger
$37.50 + $6 shipping
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Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement
By Don Hamerquist
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An Invitation to CCDSers and Friends...
 The Right on a Rampage...
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...
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Two Hours After Supreme Court Guts The Voting Rights Act, Texas AG Suppresses Minority Voters
By Aviva Shen Beaver County Blue via ThinkProgress
June 25, 2013 - Just two hours after the Supreme Court reasoned that discrimination is not rampant enough in Southern states to warrant restrictions under the Voting Rights Act, Texas is already advancing a voter ID law and a redistricting map blocked last year for discriminating against black and Latino residents. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a statement declaring that both measures may go into effect immediately, now that there is no law stopping them from discriminating against minorities.
In 2012, the Justice Department blocked these measures under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Federal courts agreed that both the strict voter ID law and the redistricting map would disproportionately target the state's fast-growing minority communities. Still, Texas filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court over the Voting Rights Act case complaining that the DOJ had used "abusive and heavy-handed tactics" to thwart the state's attempts at voter suppression.
In the case of the new electoral map, a panel of federal judges found that "substantial surgery" was done to predominantly black districts, cutting off representatives' offices from their strongest fundraising bases. Meanwhile, white Congress members' districts were either preserved or "redrawn to include particular country clubs and, in one case, the school belonging to the incumbent's grandchildren." The new map was also drawn in secret by white Republican representatives, without notifying their black and Latino peers. After the court blocked the map, the legislature approved small changes to appease Democratic lawmakers last week. Now that they are free to use the old maps, however, Gov. Rick Perry (R) could simply veto the new plan and use the more discriminatory maps.
The strict photo ID requirement blocked by the DOJ and a federal court would require Texans to show one of a very narrow list of acceptable photo IDs. Expired gun licenses from other states are considered valid, but Social Security cards and student IDs are not. If voters do not have an ID - as many minorities, seniors, and poor people do not - they must travel at their own expense, produce their birth certificate, and in many cases pay a fee to get an ID.
Thanks to the Supreme Court, the DOJ no longer has any power to block these laws, even with the backing of federal judges who found blatant discrimination. Under the remaining sections of the Voting Rights Act, individuals may sue to kill these measures, but only after they have gone into effect and disenfranchised countless Texans of color.
According to the 2010 Census, non-Hispanic whites have become a minority in Texas, down from 52.4 percent to 45.3 percent of the population. Latinos have accounted for 65 percent of the state's population growth over the past decade. Projections show that the eligible voter pool will shift to roughly 44 percent white voters and 37 percent Hispanic voters by 2025. Faced with this demographic reality, conservatives have alternated between changing their messaging to appeal to Latino voters, who overwhelmingly supported Democrats in 2012, and making it harder for them to vote.
It is only a matter of time before other states with voter ID laws and other election law changes blocked by the DOJ last year follow Texas' example. Besides Texas, the attorney generals of Alabama, Arizona, South Dakota, and South Carolina argued that the Voting Rights Act was getting in the way of their ability to enact discriminatory laws.
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By Tom Hayden
Progressive America Rising
With the fiftieth anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington approaching, is the time at hand for mass protest and civil disobedience against the Republican/Tea Party's war against voting rights and immigrant rights?
That's among the immediate questions as the Roberts Court has dropped its hammer on the 1965 Voting Rights Act while a dubious "immigration reform" bill passed the Senate on its likely way to an even worse fate in the Tea Party-controlled House. Together with the Court's Citizens United decisions protecting secret money in campaigns, Republicans are doing everything possible to cement a grip on power as a numerical white minority bloc. Successful Republican efforts to gerrymander House seats to gain ground in the Electoral College, combined with the rising tide of anti-abortion restrictions in southern states, reinforce the drift towards a new civil war - one fought by political means with recurring episodes of mass violence. The Court's narrowing of affirmative action also guarantees a widening of the racial divide in education and economic opportunity.
The Court's composition reveals its underlying partisan character, with the decisive tilt occurring after the 2000 election between Al Gore, Ralph Nader and George Bush, in which the Court usurped the verdict of a majority of voters, thus becoming a de facto branch of the Republican apparatus. The Republican bloc now includes: Roberts [Bush, 2005], Alito [Bush, 2006], Scalia [Reagan, 1986], Kennedy [Reagan, 1988], and Thomas [Bush, sr., 1991]. The Democratic bloc includes Ginsberg [Clinton, 1993], Stephen Breyer [Clinton, 1994], Sonia Sotomayer [Obama, 2009], and Elena Kagan [Obama, 2010]. The Republican tilt is likely to continue indefinitely, with Obama only able to appointment replacements to retiring liberals. The tilt will become a lock if a Republican president is elected in 2016.
Lost in both the partisan spin and rhetorical legalisms is that the scale of political power is being tipped far to the right in spite of progressive majorities which elected and re-elected President Obama.
In the voting rights decision, the Court has prevented aggressive action by the Justice Department to deter egregious methods of suppressing voter turnout among communities of color. University surveys show that most whites in the southern states, with the addition of Pennsylvania, are more prejudiced than the national average [Annenberg survey, 2008 data]. The most lost or settled voting rights cases have occurred in the South. {NY Times, June 23]. It is true that both blatant and more subtle cases of voter suppression occur outside the states covered by the Voting Rights Act, but that is an argument for expanding the Sec. 5 protections, not weakening them. ...(Click title for more)
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By Heidi Shierholz
Economic Policy Institute
June 11, 2013 - The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed job openings falling by 118,000 in April to 3.8 million. Job openings have improved very little over the last year and remain very depressed. In 2007, there were 4.5 million job openings each month, so April's level of 3.8 million is more than 16 percent below its prerecession level.
The job openings data are extremely useful for diagnosing what's behind our sustained high unemployment. In today's economy, unemployed workers far outnumber job openings in every sector, as shown in Figure A. This demonstrates that the main problem in the labor market is a broad-based lack of demand for workers-and not, as is often claimed, available workers lacking the skills needed for the sectors with job openings.
In particular, there have recently been stories (for example, here) of worker shortages in construction. While there may be some construction firms in some places that cannot find the workers they need, the data show that this is in no way a prevalent phenomenon-unemployed construction workers outnumber job openings in construction by nearly 12-to-1. In construction as well as in every major industry, it is work that our labor market lacks, not the right workers.
Hires increased in April by almost 200,000 to 4.4 million, but this was just a partial reversal of a drop in March. Hires are no higher than they were last spring and remain nearly 15 percent below their average 2007 level.
Layoffs held roughly steady in April (-33,000). Layoffs are not currently the primary concern in the labor market, having been at prerecession levels since early 2011 (at around 1.7 million layoffs per month). However, given the lack of hiring, the consequences for workers of being laid off are far worse now than before the recession began; workers are far less likely to find a new job within a reasonable timeframe, particularly one that pays as much as the job they lost.
Voluntary quits increased by 152,000 in April. More voluntary quits generally signals good news in the labor market, since it means workers are seeing stronger outside job opportunities. However, April's increase was just a partial reversal of a drop in March. Voluntary quits are still very depressed, at 22 percent below their 2007 level.
In April, the number of job seekers, which fell by 83,000 from March, stood at 11.7 million (unemployment data are from the Current Population Survey and can be found here). However, given the drop in job openings, the "job-seekers ratio"-the ratio of unemployed workers to job openings- increased in April to 3.1-to-1 from a revised 3.0-to-1 in March....(Click title for more)
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By Amy Davidson
The New Yorker
How does one defend marriage? A model might be Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion in United States v. Edith Windsor, joined by four other Justices, which struck down much of the Defense of Marriage Act. That law, he argued, protected neither marriage nor the married. It denied to same-sex spouses federal benefits and the responsibilities of marriage-which, he wrote, were bound not only with questions of money and security but of dignity (a word he used many times), pride, and honor. "DOMA writes inequality into the entire United States Code"; it "demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects," and "it humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples."
Kennedy had made his worries about the well-being of the children of gay and lesbian couples clear in the oral arguments, and so it is no surprise to see them mentioned in his opinion. But it is striking-and part of the reason why anyone looking for a tribute to traditional marriage can find it in the demolition of DOMA-that he goes beyond practical concerns about the denial of health insurance or other benefits (though he emphasizes them, too). To say that it is humiliating for a child to know that his or her parents cannot marry is different from saying that there is any shame in having parents who simply are not married. There isn't. What Kennedy is invoking are the societal possibilities of marriage, part of the reason that the government has an interest in it at all:
The law in question makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.
Edith Windsor is a lesbian widow in her eighties. She and her late wife, Thea Spyer, had no children, but if one sees marriage as part of a loving shelter we build for family members at vulnerable stages of their lives-young and old, in sickness and in health-theirs was exemplary. Windsor cared for Spyer over the decades it took multiple sclerosis to kill her. For most of that time they were not married; they "longed to marry," as Kennedy put it, and finally did so, in a ceremony in Ottawa that New York recognized, and that, thanks to the ruling Wednesday, the federal government now does, too.
DOMA, in contrast, "divests" couples who have been duly married under state law of responsibilities that, Kennedy writes, they "would be honored to accept were DOMA not in force." And not only these couples: our common honor is implicated when, as he notes, "it prohibits them from being buried together in veterans' cemeteries"; under DOMA, too, "government-integrity rules do not apply to same-sex spouses"-he mentioned the husband or wife of a Senator. (One moving aspect of the majority opinion is that it assumes the ubiquity of gays and lesbians at every level of public life.)
That is marriage. And while New York, by recognizing and authorizing same-sex marriages, "sought to give further protection and dignity to that bond," DOMA was "designed to injure the same class the State seeks to protect." It was unconstitutional not just because states wrote marriage laws but as a violation of equal protection under the Fifth Amendment. (This reasoning means that Windsor will likely have wider implications; Richard Socarides explains.)
Edith Windsor had standing to bring this case because she paid $363,053 in estate taxes that she wouldn't have owed but for DOMA. Even though a lower court had ruled in her favor, and President Obama had given up defending the law-something for which, as Ariel Levy describes, Windsor thanked him when he called to congratulate her after the decision-the government still hadn't given the money back. (My first reaction to the decision was to hope that she now gets it in the form of one of those oversized checks they give lottery winners.) And the Administration had told Congress that it could fight the appeal in its place. Because someone would have to pay, both sides had standing. This was crucial: a lack of standing was why a second marriage-equality case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, was dismissed by the Court, rather than becoming, as many had hoped, a vehicle for a decision on a constitutional right to marriage.
It is telling that none of the three dissents mention Spyer-not Chief Justice John Roberts's tense procedural sketch, nor Alito's lazy notes on how back in the day heterosexuality and child-rearing and marriage were inseparable, nor Scalia's rant.
That last is not even intellectually satisfying as a rant. Scalia spends the first few pages complaining about activist judges overruling Congress-an affectation, in a week when he signed on to an opinion throwing out a good part of the Voting Rights Act, that is just boring. He puts so many words into italics for emphasis that one stops feeling berated and begins wondering if they could be strung together as a prose poem. (Maybe: "Which opposite-sex any malice the 'purpose.'") The majority opinion, Scalia writes, is "perplexing," "jaw-dropping," "rootless and shifting," "confusing," and "legalistic argle-bargle"-he just doesn't get it, except that he thinks that it means gay people will ask for more things.
But what Scalia has really come to defend in his dissent is not marriage but people who don't approve of same-sex marriage. Despite the legislative record that Kennedy cites-and the atmosphere that anyone at the time remembers-Scalia is offended by the suggestion that DOMA might have reflected any prejudice. Roberts is, too, writing in his dissent, "I would not tar the political branches with the brush of bigotry," particularly not given DOMA's "banal" name. But Scalia goes all out, and along the way exposes the Court conservatives' grumpiness about attempts at racial justice, as well: "Bear in mind that the object of this condemnation is not the legislature of some once-Confederate Southern state (familiar objects of the Court's scorn[...]), but our respected coordinate branches." To say that disparagement of gay relationships played a role in DOMA is, for Scalia, tantamount to saying "that only those with hateful hearts could have voted 'aye' on this Act." This was "quite untrue," and "to hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution." There is more lèse-majesté, and more italics.
Both sides are talking about honor and dignity. For Scalia and Roberts, though, that means little more than that questioning the good will of the respectable, or perhaps of the privileged, is a grave insult. For Kennedy, and the four liberals who joined him, it means that the Court saw the honor of a widow who came before it-and, perhaps incidentally, her love.
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By David Roberts
SolidarityEconomy.net via Grist
Solar power and other distributed renewable energy technologies could lay waste to U.S. power utilities and burn the utility business model, which has remained virtually unchanged for a century, to the ground.
That is not wild-eyed hippie talk. It is the assessment of the utilities themselves.
Back in January, the Edison Electric Institute - the (typically stodgy and backward-looking) trade group of U.S. investor-owned utilities - released a report [PDF] that, as far as I can tell, went almost entirely without notice in the press. That's a shame. It is one of the most prescient and brutally frank things I've ever read about the power sector. It is a rare thing to hear an industry tell the tale of its own incipient obsolescence.
I've been thinking about how to convey to you, normal people with healthy social lives and no time to ponder the byzantine nature of the power industry, just what a big deal the coming changes are. They are nothing short of revolutionary ... but rather difficult to explain without jargon.
So, just a bit of background. You probably know that electricity is provided by utilities. Some utilities both generate electricity at power plants and provide it to customers over power lines. They are "regulated monopolies," which means they have sole responsibility for providing power in their service areas. Some utilities have gone through deregulation; in that case, power generation is split off into its own business, while the utility's job is to purchase power on competitive markets and provide it to customers over the grid it manages.
This complexity makes it difficult to generalize about utilities ... or to discuss them without putting people to sleep. But the main thing to know is that the utility business model relies on selling power. That's how they make their money. Here's how it works: A utility makes a case to a public utility commission (PUC), saying "we will need to satisfy this level of demand from consumers, which means we'll need to generate (or purchase) this much power, which means we'll need to charge these rates." If the PUC finds the case persuasive, it approves the rates and guarantees the utility a reasonable return on its investments in power and grid upkeep.
Thrilling, I know. The thing to remember is that it is in a utility's financial interest to generate (or buy) and deliver as much power as possible. The higher the demand, the higher the investments, the higher the utility shareholder profits. In short, all things being equal, utilities want to sell more power. (All things are occasionally not equal, but we'll leave those complications aside for now.)
Now, into this cozy business model enters cheap distributed solar PV, which eats away at it like acid....(Click title for more)
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Book Review: Outspoken Rabbi Urges American Jews to 'Look Oppression in the Face'
 By Rod Such The Electronic Intifada
June 21, 2013 - If Adam Shatz was still collecting material for his valuable work Prophets Outcast: A Century of Dissident Jewish Writing about Zionism and Israel (2004), he would probably want to consider including an excerpt from the recently published Wrestling in the Daylight: A Rabbi's Path to Palestinian Solidarity by Brant Rosen. Many of the contributors selected in Shatz's work were Jews who opposed political Zionism from its inception, with some offering an alternative vision of cultural Zionism in which Jews and Arabs would share a common homeland under a neutral state guaranteeing equal rights for all.
Unlike these writers, Rosen initially embraced a "liberal" form of political Zionism but then embarked on a political journey that led him to question and ultimately break with it, the turning point coming with Operation Cast Lead, Israel's murderous assault on the people of Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.
Rosen is the rabbi of the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation of Evanston, Illinois, the co-founder with Rabbi Brian Walt of the Jewish Fast for Gaza, and the co-chairman of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council. The bulk of this book is drawn from Rosen's Shalom Rav blog (Hebrew for "abundant peace"), dating from entries written between December 2008 and December 2010 and including the comments which readers left on the blog site.
"Nothing complicated"
It's fascinating to watch Rosen's continuing journey even in these writings, as the entries from late 2008 often take the tone of someone who is still questioning Zionism; while those from 2009 and beyond convey remarkable clarity.
On his blog, Rosen engages largely with a religious US Jewish readership, and as a result, much of the questioning tone appears to be meant to encourage dialogue without bludgeoning defenders of Zionism over the head.
Still, he pulls no punches. Writing a year after Operation Cast Lead, Rosen states, "at the end of the day, there is nothing complicated about persecution ... oppression is oppression."
Unlike liberal Zionists, Rosen unequivocally condemns the Nakba, the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. "By any other name," he writes, "this would be called 'ethnic cleansing,' and I have no trouble saying so." ...(Click title for more)
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 | | Traveling Wilburys - Not Alone Any More - Lyrics |
By Jen Chaney
Washington Post
June 19, 2013 - Nearly 25 years have passed since Roy Orbison last prowled the Earth in one of his signature jet-black ensembles, with those trademark sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose. The rock pioneer responsible for the lascivious growl of "Oh, Pretty Woman," the swoony high notes of "Crying" and a personal style best described as geek-noir chic died of a heart attack in 1988, which means he's now been gone for almost as much time as he spent recording albums. Given his catalogue of classics and the long list of significant artists he influenced - from Bono to Bruce Springsteen to Bob Dylan - he's hardly been forgotten. But in a music landscape where trends change as fast as our Spotify playlists can shuffle, reminders of the lasting timelessness of his work are welcome.
 The latest reminder comes in the form of "Rhapsody in Black," a book that falls somewhere between biography and music criticism. Musician, professor and author John Kruth covers the high points and crushing lows in Orbison's life and career, while often pausing to take deep, analytical dives into his subject's discography. The result is an uneven work that relates its share of interesting anecdotes but, to devoted Orbison fans, may be a rehash of stories they already know by heart. Relying on his own interviews with musicians, producers and other Orbison colleagues in addition to material culled from previous books and articles, Kruth pieces together the events that turned a talented West Texas kid with an astonishing vocal range into rockabilly's premier balladeer, the man behind that saucy "Mercy" in the massive hit "Oh, Pretty Woman," and a genuine rock star capable of headlining concerts with the Beatles as his supporting act.
In one of the book's more enjoyable chapters, Kruth notes that on the first night of a 1963 U.K. tour with the Fab Four, Beatles fans "unexpectedly went balmy over Roy, prompting John Lennon and Paul McCartney to physically (but good-naturedly) drag the so-called "Big O" offstage to prevent him from launching into yet another encore. According to the book, the crooner enjoyed a less pleasant relationship with the Stones. On a turbulent flight during their Australian tour in '65, Mick Jagger allegedly mentioned the names of several famous musicians who had recently died in plane crashes, then dared God to "knock us out of the sky." That prompted Orbison to later tell the wiry frontman, "You'll never ride in an airplane with me again. . . . Don't speak to me." ...(Click title for more)
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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
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Become a CCDS member today!
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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
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Solidarity, Carl Davidson, CCDS |
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