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Radical Ideas for Radical Change
January 17, 2014
In This Issue
Full Employment
Southern Battles Spread
A Day Laborer's Life
Oakland Mayor's Race
LA Teachers Vison
Obama vs War Party
TTP Stalled
Meaning of Benghazi
Book: Little Hope in Mideast
Film: 'Band of Sisters'



Jackson Rising:  
New Economies Conference


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Journal of the Black Left Unity Network



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Tina at AFL-CIO


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.
Blog of the Week...


Radical Jesus:
A Graphic History of Faith


By Paul Buhle
Herald Press

Check out what CCDS has been doing...


Keep On Keepin' On

Why Socialists Run in Elections, Strategy and Tactics Slide Slow, Class and Privilege, the Green New Deal ...and other Short Posts on Tumblr by Carl Davidson

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 20 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

 
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



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



By Harry Targ



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'

  • 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...

More States
Are Becoming
Battlegrounds

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 oppose war on Iran, defend voter rights, plan for 2014 races now, oppose austerity, support the 'Moral Mondays' in North Carolina, the Congressional Progressive Caucus' 'Back to Work Budget'! 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...
Progressives Shaking Up the South: Moral Monday Georgia and Truthful Tuesday South Carolina


CCDS's Jim Skillman (right) with many others in Atlanta

By Anna Simonton

Alternet.org
 
Jan 15, 2014 - This past Monday on a dreary afternoon, more than 500 people gathered in front of the Golden Dome, Georgia's state capitol building in downtown Atlanta. As they huddled under umbrellas, clutching signs, a booming voice assured them that while the rain may have dampened the turnout, their presence would not go unnoticed.

"All over North Carolina today, we have Georgia on our minds," Rev. William Barber intoned from a podium at the capitol steps. Rev. Barber heads the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, and on Monday, was an emissary from the state that captivated the nation during its last legislative session.

Last summer, thousands of North Carolinians descended on the capitol in Raleigh week after week, to protest a long list of regressive measures enacted by the Republican-controlled government. More than 900 people were arrested for peacefully occupying the legislative building over the course of what became known as the Moral Monday movement.

Now that movement is spreading. January 13 marked the beginning of the Georgia General Assembly's legislative session and the first day of Moral Monday Georgia. To ring it in, Barber joined members of the Moral Monday Georgia coalition in calling for "a new Southern strategy."

The Moral Monday Georgia coalition is comprised of more than 50 labor groups, social justice organizations and churches. They are up against a two-thirds Republican majority in both the State House and Senate, which have a significant Tea Party influence. As recently as last August, the coalition was no more than an idea discussed by housing rights activists as they resisted the wrongful eviction of a Desert Storm veteran in Atlanta [3].

"We're starting from scratch," acknowledges Tim Franzen, an organizer with both the American Friends Service Committee and Occupy Our Homes Atlanta. In contrast, North Carolina's Moral Monday spawned from eight years of coalition-building.

Franzen says that the members of Moral Monday Georgia are planning at a pace that makes sense, given the project's relative infancy. He isn't certain there will be rallies at the capitol every Monday of this session, like there were in Raleigh. So far, the group has planned three weeks into the future.

The goal is to bring people together to impact state policies on a range of issues, and to grow into a statewide movement in connection with similar movements in other Southern states.

In an interview, Franzen explained the southern focus by quoting W.E.B. DuBois' famous statement, "As the South goes, so goes the nation." Franzen says that many of the problems plaguing the nation are at their worst in the South. The South must set the precedent for social and economic change in order for the rest of the country to follow suit.

The Moral Monday movement focuses on state budget and policies because, he says, "that is a lot of what the corporations have decided to do over the last 30 years." Franzen cites model legislation developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council as an example of how corporations and right-wing extremists have spread ultra-conservative policies nationwide by focusing on state-level politics. The Moral Monday vision is to flip the script on ALEC and other right-wing heavyweights by becoming a stronger force on the same turf.

Each Moral Monday Georgia rally will focus on a specific issue. This first inaugural gathering centered on Medicaid expansion. Georgia is one of 21 states that have opted out of expanding Medicaid under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act. The decision, made by Republican Governor Nathan Deal, denies health coverage to over 600,000 Georgians who would qualify. His reason? The federal government only foots the bill in full for three years. After that, federal funding would be gradually reduced to cover 90 percent of the cost....(Click title for more)


The Story of Fidel Antonio


By David Bacon
East Bay Express

Jan 15, 2014 - Day laborers are pretty much taken for granted, as they wave at cars passing the sidewalk where they look for work near Home Depot or the local lumberyard. What road brought them to their street corners, far from their families in Mexico and Central America? What do they do if they don't get hired - where do they live and how do they eat? Fidel Antonio makes a living, barely, from jobs gained on the sidewalk near Truitt & White in Berkeley. He lives in Oakland's Fruitvale, and every day takes a bus to this street corner hiring hall. He told his story to me in Spanish and the following is my translation of it.

In the state of Morelos, my family was very poor, living just from one day to the next. My father had no land of his own, so landowners would rent him land. But he was a very hard man, and would fight with them, so then we'd have to move. Later he had asthma, which kept him from working at all.

Sometimes we didn't have enough to eat. My mother tells me that she would make a soup with two eggs and some vegetables, and make it stretch so it would feed the whole family. She'd have to borrow tortillas from the neighbors to eat with it. Or if there wasn't enough corn for the tortillas, she would combine corn with sorghum to make them. That would satisfy our hunger, and maybe we'd have some left over for the following day.

In many little towns, especially up in the mountains, people still live this way. They don't have enough money even to buy beans - just enough for tortillas to eat with salt.

We had no money to buy beef or pork. Ironically, today I consider it a sin to eat meat, but at that time I was ignorant. When my mom would say that someone had given us a present of meat, we'd be really happy.

There were six of us kids and we all had to help so we would have enough to eat. I would often go and cut wood, and then bring it to a tortilleria or a bakery in the nearest town. I'd bring home 15 or 20 pesos. My sisters would go door to door among the neighbors, offering to wash their clothes or grind their corn to make masa. My older brothers looked for work in the fields. At the end of the week they'd come home with whatever they'd earned, and maybe a little fruit or vegetables as well.

I just went to primary school, and even that was a sacrifice. As we got older, little by little we all left for the city to go out on our own. We wanted a new way to live. I was thirteen when I left to go to town to learn a trade. By then my father and mother had separated.

In the nearest town I'd chop wood, wash cars - whatever honorable work I could find. I went to Salina Cruz, a nearby port city, where I loaded and unloaded ships. There were lots of young people like me - living on the streets, looking for work by the day or week. It was like being a day laborer here. I began to eat better and would even go to restaurants.

In those days I didn't lead a very spiritual life. I didn't have much discipline. I met women with a lot of experience, who'd had adventures before I came along. But these relationships didn't last. I was young and poor, and that's not what they were looking for.

Finally I got together with a woman for ten years, and we had three children.  A lot of companies from the US and Korea were building factories where I lived, especially for clothing. They had a lot of jobs for women on the sewing machines. I understood hydraulics and industrial mechanics, so I got work, too, but the pay was very low.

When I was still living with the children's mother, and working in the factory, we ate pretty well. We had meat twice a week, beef once a month, and salads, as well as beans, rice, pasta, and vegetables. She made corn tortillas at home. I told her, I don't care what I eat myself, but I want the children to eat well, so they'll grow the way they're supposed to.

I was 32 when I came to the US the first time, in 1998. The violence and crime in Mexico was getting worse, and work was getting harder to find. My brothers said getting there might be hard, but it would be worth it because I'd earn more. A better future, right?...(Click title for more)
Dan Siegel at the press conference. Photo: David Id

By Jonathan Nack
IndyBay.org

Jan 15, 2014 - OAKLAND - A split in the support base of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan emerged out into the open on Thursday, January 9, when Dan Siegel announced he will run against his former ally in the mayoral election this coming November. Siegel had been a strong ally political ally of Mayor Quan for decades before he had a very public falling out with Quan during the height of police repression of Occupy Oakland in 2011.

Siegel was Mayor Quan's Legal Advisor, but publicly announced his resignation over the unleashing of police repression, brutality, and mass arrests to end Occupy Oakland's encampment in front of City Hall. At the time, Siegel said that rather than authorizing the police attack on Occupy Oakland, the Mayor should have instructed the Oakland Police to protect and defend the protester's right to peacefully assemble and protest.

The significance of the split between Siegel and Quan was underscored by the choice of venue for Siegel's kickoff press conference, which was at the corner of Broadway and 14th Street, a corner of what the Siegel's campaign referred to as "Oscar Grant Plaza" (the name given it by Occupy Oakland activists) and not its official name of Frank Ogawa Plaza. Many a protest rally has been held at, and march has begun from, this location.

The presence of many key progressives that formerly backed Mayor Quan among the more than one hundred supporters gathered for Siegel's press conference further underscored the split off of a significant portion of Mayor Quan's previous support base.

Walter Riley, a noted civil rights attorney and activist, who is a widely respected figure in Oakland's progressive/left and Black communities, was the MC of the press conference. His presence as Co-Chair of Siegel's campaign, along with Anne Weills, who is also a highly respected activist and attorney as well as being married to Siegel, constitute the core of a formidable political brain trust and campaign leadership.

A social justice agenda echoed throughout the comments by speakers. "Working families are sick and tired of a mayor who can't make a decision," said Olga Miranda, President of Service Employees International Union, Local 87. "Our children, our families, and our housing are all on hold right now. Do you know how frustrating that is," asked Miranda. ...(Click title for more)


By Samatha Winslow

Labor Notes via Alternet.org

Jan 13, 2014 - For Los Angeles teacher Alex Caputo-Pearl, if there was ever an example of how his union needed to change direction, it was November's "Rally for a Raise."

While he agrees raises for teachers are critical, the single demand rang hollow in light of two years without a contract, teachers still reeling from years of layoffs, hours and hours of standardized tests, and myriad school reconstitutions and charter takeovers.

"We've got to put out our own vision for quality schools," said Caputo-Pearl, who's running for president in the local's February election.

A rally focused solely on raises is not likely to inspire parents and community to join in support, according to Caputo-Pearl. Worse, it could play into the argument made by foes of public education, who claim that union teachers care only about their next paycheck and not the best interest of students.

The Union Power slate Caputo-Pearl heads, which is critical of President Warren Fletcher's go-it-alone vision for the rally, was there with its own message, "It's time for a raise and a whole lot more": fully staff schools and classrooms, and think about what else students need.

Teachers waved signs saying, "A raise would be great but I'll settle for a nurse and a librarian" and "Kids need librarians, counselors and nurses, not iPads."

"If we are fighting for good schools, schools that the community will celebrate," said Rodney Lusain, a Union Power candidate for board of directors, "then the salary, the working conditions, the student-teacher ratios will come with it."

Union Power includes current officers, members of the Progressive Educators for Action (PEAC) group, and other activists.

L.A. is the second-largest school district in the country after New York City, and United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), with 35,000 members, is the second-largest teachers local.

The district has destabilized its own schools. Since the recession it has been laying off teachers, bringing in charters, and reorganizing with a vengeance. L.A. now has more students enrolled in charter schools than any other city.

The district also recently sank $1 billion into a deal (with Apple and education software company Pearson) to give iPads to every student [3]. The plan has had a bumpy rollout and mixed support.

Leading by Example

The Union Power slate brings together teacher leaders who already have experience teaming up with parents.

"What we are trying to do this year is more comprehensive than we ever have done before," said Rebecca Solomon, one of 25 on the slate. Nine candidates are running for president, but Union Power is the only slate running for all spots.

They have a beef with Fletcher's approach to the expired contract, which has been to bargain and sign off on contract issues piece by piece. Most recently the union agreed to a new teacher evaluation system. "That has utterly failed," Caputo-Pearl said. "Small-room negotiations don't help you in terms of building power on the ground."

Solomon and Caputo-Pearl were among the founders of PEAC, which now backs Union Power. That group formed in the 1990s, after No Child Left Behind increased the emphasis on tests and on punishing "failing" schools. Members worked with parents to fight against closings and for better schools....(Click title for more)
Chris Hayes: Why Do Some Dems Want Iran War?
More War: Why Democrats May Sabotage Obama's Iran Nuclear Deal
Why Some Dems May Bust Up Obama Iran  Deal

Fast Track Free Trade Bill Stalled
by Progressive Dems and Allies



Note by CCDS's Randy Shannon: Kudos to the AFL-CIO, MoveOn.org, Progressive Democrats of America, Citizens Trade Campaign, and Public Citizen. The wave of public opposition that has built in a few months has smashed the neoliberal free trade hegemony in the government. A good number of Democrats are just not interested in touching Fast Track or the TPP because The People are all over their asses and in their faces. PDA's monthly educate Congress district letter drops and Capitol Hill lobbying cleared a direct path that others built upon.


Also members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus coordinated their public and other activities with the progressive organizations mutually reinforcing the pressure on wavering Democrats.

So Fast Track, which must be passed before the US Trade Representative can complete the TPP treaty, is stalled. Not defeated, but stalled. It could pass the Senate, but would then be defeated in the House, so Sen. Reid shelved it. They'll keep it on the shelf and hope that some crisis will distract The People and the neoliberals can get it through. Or maybe over time the popular momentum will die down and they can twist a few Democratic arms in the House.

But for now, we see that the grandiose plans of global capital for domination of nations and superprofits, will not be realized through this trade agreement. The people can win victories even while in a defensive position versus global capital.


By Michael McAuliff

Huffington Post

WASHINGTON -- The fast track trade bill introduced in the Senate last week will go nowhere anytime soon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee and President Barack Obama's pick to be his next ambassador to China, offered the legislation last week, surprising many of his colleagues.

Baucus' bill, which would reauthorize 2002's Trade Promotional Authority, would essentially give the White House the power to present Congress with trade agreements that lawmakers could not amend. The fast track bill would ease the way for the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal that opponents contend would undermine labor, environmental and other protections.

But if those opponents were worried the fast-track measure might advance, Reid was emphatic in saying it would not -- at least for now.

Asked if he told Baucus that Reid would make time on the floor of the U.S. Senate to debate the measure, Reid said "No," four times.

"There's a lot of controversy on that, and I'm going to see how that plays out with my caucus and the Senate.," Reid told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Indeed, many Democrats are so unhappy with the current draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, they are willing to kill it even though it is a key element of Obama's ambitious pivot toward Asia. ...(Click title for more)

Connecting the 2016 Race to the
Wisdom of Libya 'Regime Change'


By Amy Davidson
The New Yorker

The Senate Intelligence Committee report on what happened in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, is, in many ways, a catalogue of what can happen when one decides to act as though a situation is what one wishes it to be, not what it is. Benghazi, the report sensibly points out, was a dangerous place, and a lot of people knew it. But it was also supposed to be an enchanted place, the birthplace of a rebellion America had generously fostered and the home of scrappy militias who were grateful to us. We had, supposedly, already arrived at the happily-ever-after part of the Libyan tale. Maybe that's why the Obama Administration, in particular the State Department-led by Hillary Clinton-didn't consider all the ways the plot could turn, or that the epilogue might involve the attacks on an American diplomatic installation and a C.I.A. annex. According to the report,

    the Committee believes the State Department should have recognized the need to increase security to a level commensurate with the threat, or suspend operations in Benghazi. However, operations continued with minimal improvements in security and personnel protections.

The majority members of the committee-the Democrats-concluded that the attacks "were likely preventable."

Some of the decisions to turn down or not request more security were made in Benghazi, and some were made in Washington; this was more than a single misjudgment. Reading the report, one gets the sense that saying yes would have meant a shift not only in resources but toward a pessimism that the Administration was not prepared for. (Republican senators, in their comments, quote a State Department official who was told by another in Washington that approving one request "would be embarrassing and give Libya more security agents than in Yemen and Pakistan.") Who would protect the mission, then? The locals, who were on our side-or whose side we had been on in the war to remove Muammar Qaddafi from power:

    Although U.S. Government security forces are always preferred, the C.I.A. and State determined that local militias would provide the so-called "least bad option" in post-revolutionary Libya. The former Chief of Base stated: "There was no alternative. You know, there really is no functioning government there. And the militia groups that both we, and the State Department, depended on were in fact kind of the de facto government there in Benghazi."

David Kirkpatrick, in a long story for the Times, describes how various members of those militias might have been found in amiable conversations with diplomats before the attacks and then complicit in it the night it happened. Our friendships in Benghazi remain dangerous for all sides. The report noted that, according to testimony by the former F.B.I. director Robert Mueller before another committee, "as many as 15 individuals supporting the investigation or otherwise helpful to the United States have been killed in Benghazi since the attacks, underscoring the lawless and chaotic circumstances in eastern Libya. It is unclear whether their killings were related to the Benghazi investigation."

This does not mean that all the delusions fall to one side. The Democratic senators went on to say that "the Majority also believes, however, that the Benghazi attacks have been the subject of misinformed speculation and accusations long after the basic facts of the attacks have been determined," and that is hard to dispute. Benghazi has become a magic word, thrown out whenever Republicans are angry or defensive; in the case of Bridgegate, it was somehow invoked in defense of Chris Christie. ...(Click title for more)
Shattered Hopes:
Obama's Failure to Broker
Israeli-Palestinian Peace
By Josh Ruebner
Verso, 2013

By Rod Such
The Electronic Intifada

Jan 6,  2014 - People who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 did so for many reasons, but his position on the occupation of Palestine was not high among them.

For those within the US Palestine solidarity community, there was perhaps a glimmer of hope in a man who openly acknowledged Palestinian suffering and counted Palestinian-Americans as friends or colleagues.

Josh Ruebner's book Shattered Hopes: Obama's Failure to Broker Israeli-Palestinian Peace (Verso, 2013) goes a long way toward explaining why those nascent hopes were dashed. At the same time, however, it locates new sources of hope in shifting US public opinion and emerging cracks in the consensus policies of the national security establishment, both of which provide openings for the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid.

Ruebner is the national advocacy director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation where his work is known for meticulous and diligent research. He brings those same skills to this book.

Ruebner acknowledges that much remains to be learned before a full accounting can be made of the Obama administration's policies and practices toward Palestine during its first term. In addition to news reports, Ruebner relies on the cache of US State Department documents released by Wikileaks as well as the Palestine Papers revealed by Al Jazeera. The latter were meeting minutes, maps, and memoranda of the Palestinian Authority's negotiating team from its "peace process" meetings with Israeli officials.
Reason to hope?

Was there reason to hope that Obama might be different from his predecessors and the US government might finally play the role of honest broker in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations?

As an Illinois state senator, Obama "developed strong working relations with a politically empowered Palestinian-American constituency in his Hyde Park-based district," Ruebner writes.

He had friendly relations with the Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi, who was also on the faculty of the University of Chicago at the time Obama taught constitutional law there. And he impressed Ali Abunimah, the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, as " 'progressive, intelligent, and charismatic'." Yet in his first run for Congress in 2000, Ruebner notes, "it became evident ... that Obama was more than willing to dismiss the knowledge and advice he received from his Palestinian-American and liberal Jewish-American friends if it stood in the way of advancing his career," instead crafting "policy positions to endear himself to pro-Israel political action committees."...(Click title for more)
Film Review: 'Band of Sisters'

Band of Sisters trailer

Mary Fishman's admiring, workmanlike documentary chronicles the activism of many American nuns over the past 50 years.

By Dennis Harvey
Variety

Jan 13, 2014 - The path of social and political activism undertaken by many American nuns over the past 50 years is the subject of "Band of Sisters."

Mary Fishman's admiring docu is more a general survey than a detailed history or portrait of individual personalities and causes, and as a result, it holds interest without achieving any real narrative arc, offering inspirational content in a merely workmanlike package. Still, this underserved subject has an audience, and the pic has successfully played scattered short theatrical dates around the country since its festival debut a year and a half ago. It opens at New York's Cinema Village on Jan. 17; more theatrical dates, plus educational and broadcast sales, should follow.


Sisters at Fort Benning 'School of the Americas'

The Vatican II meetings between the pope and the world's bishops in 1962-65 resulted in a sweeping modernization of church policy that had perhaps its most striking, immediate impact on nuns. After centuries in which their role was to be cloistered in full head-to-toe habit, kept pure by complete removal from the world, sisters were encouraged to engage with that world - which they did, and then some.

"Being a Catholic then was very exciting," one sister recalls now. The turbulent '60s causes of civil rights marches, Vietnam war protests and women's liberation did not go unnoticed, with many nuns becoming involved as a natural extension of their commitments toward helping the poor and marginalized. They moved into ghettos to improve housing, education and health care; began lobbying legislators to address systemic injustices; and founded their own industrious organizations like Network ("a national social justice lobby") and LCWR (Leadership Conference of Women Religious) to advance those and other goals.

Focusing primarily on veteran leaders of that first Vatican II generation, the pic shows them now extending their efforts to environmental protection, prison outreach, protesting the separation of immigrant families via deportation, and arguing with the Church's remaining limitations on women's roles (notably exclusion from ordination). The 1980 murder of Catholic sisters in El Salvador awakened a sense of righteous outrage by some at the U.S. government's involvement in human-rights violations abroad. There's even discussion here of relaxing the conflict between creationist doctrine and evolutionary science, with one sister stating belief in the latter needn't violate the essential "sacredness of the natural world."

Such envelope-pushing stances were sure to invite backlash, and indeed the Vatican eventually ordered some punitive investigations into U.S. nuns' activities, looking for signs that they had violated their vows. Completed in 2012, with its original footage going back as far as 2008, "Band of Sisters" doesn't comment on whatever counterbalancing effect the arrival of Pope Francis (in March 2013) and his widely noted liberal views have had.

While the subjects are certainly personable enough, there's not much insight into how the everyday lives of nuns have changed - beyond, obviously, their current use of greatly modified habits or ordinary street clothes. A limp segment during the closing credits points out the pic's prior lack of humor by providing a particularly weak stab at some. Assembly is competent if uninspired.

Running time: 98 MIN.

Production

(Documentary) A Band of Sisters release and production. Produced by Mary Fishman. Co-producers, Pat Fishman, Gina Wilkinson.
Crew

Directed by Mary Fishman. Camera (color/B&W, HD), Ines Sommer, Bill Glader; editor, Bernadine Colish; music, Miriam Cutler; sound, Benjamin Steger; re-recording mixer, Drew Weir.
With

Nancy Sylvester, Pat Murphy, Joann Persch, Miriam Therese MacGillis, Carol Coston, Margaret Brennan, Theresa Kane, Yolanda Tarango, Kathleen Desautels.

Start 2014 With a Red Resolution...
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