Socialism and the Emerging Progressive Majority: Report on the 6th CCDS Convention

Photo: Helmut Scholz of Die Linke, Germany; Chris Matlhako of the Communist Party of South Africa, and Angela Davis of CCDS.

It's Our Time to Move!

Socialism and the Emerging Progressive Majority

Are Key Topics at Symposium and 6th CCDS Convention

By Carl Davidson

What are the best ways to unite the progressive majority in our country around a depression-busting platform for peace, democracy, and justice? How do we do it in ways that both clarifies the vision and strengthens the components of socialism for the 21st century?

These were among the key questions 255 activists wrestled with for four days at a public Symposium followed by the 6th National Convention of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) at San Francisco's Whitcomb Hotel July 23-26. Judging from the enthusiasm and solidarity expressed during the many plenary sessions and workshops under the banner of "Building the Progressive Majority and a Socialist Future," participants found a few solid answers and a fired-up fresh start on a new round of organizing in the period ahead.

Symposium: 'Capitalism in Crisis: Socialism for the 21st Century'

A day long symposium around the theme "Capitalism in Crisis: Socialism for the 21st Century," sponsored by the Committees of Correspondence Education Fund opened the 4 days of programs on July 23rd.

Gus Newport, former mayor of Berkeley, CA opened the panel on "Building the Progressive Majority in the Age of Obama" by introducing Jack O'Dell's Democracy Charter. The Democracy Charter was the result of a decade-long project spearheaded by O'Dell, an advisor to both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. It is modeled on both the 1955 Declaration of the Bandung Conference against colonialism and the Freedom Charter proclaimed by the anti-apartheid forces in South Africa the same year. It outlines thirteen points for a "Second Reconstruction" in the U.S. of far-reaching and all-sided democratic reform - politically, socially, economically, and culturally.

"At the very heart of the unfolding struggle for democracy today," says the Democracy Charter, "are the issues of race, class, and gender in relation to power and decision-making. This has been a fundamental reality since the birth of this Republic." At its founding, the U.S. has "rested upon four pillars" - the genocide of Native Americans and the seizure of their lands, the enslavement of Africans and "affirmative action" for slave owners, the military seizure and annexation of one-third of Mexico, and "the exploitation of a wage-labor of the working class among the new immigrant population. "The position of women is self-evident" within all these pillars, "especially since they were denied the formal democratic right to vote until 1919."

The panel featured responses to the "Democracy Charter" by Bill Fletcher, Jr., editor of Black Commentator, Michael Eisenscher of US Labor Against the War, Jacqueline Cabasso from Western States Legal Foundation, Frank del Campo from the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and Steve Williams of People Organized to Win Employment Rights. Bill Fletcher, Jr. cast the Charter as a political and social guide for mass struggle.

"If we just look at these 13 points as a laundry list that needs additions or sharper definitions," he declared, "we're missing a key feature. What Jack O'Dell has done here is deliver a polemic against postmodernism, the whole trendy effort to deny the importance of strategic aims, to consign our efforts to private and disconnected stories. He reaffirms the rootedness of our unity and our common goals, here and internationally."

One recurring theme throughout the four days was "left unity." This was evident in the lineup of speakers for the Symposium roundtable conversation on "Building the Left and the Progressive Majority." In addition to CCDS leader Mildred Williamson, the panel included Judith LeBlanc of the Communist Party USA, Joe Schwartz of Democratic Socialists of America, Michael Rubin of Solidarity, Jamala Rogers of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and Linda Burnham. The panelists discussed the importance of building the left within the current upsurge, working for left unity in struggle against the right, and the tactical issues that arise in uniting the progressive majority. The enthusiastic response to CCDS' invitation to this panel was an indicator of the seriousness of the question of left unity among these groups.

The Symposium ended with "Building Socialism in the 21st Century - An International Evening." The session opened with South African freedom songs by the popular choir Vukani Mawethu. Angela Davis moderated by stressing the importance of international solidarity in winning her own freedom in the U.S. Eric Mar, recently elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, welcomed everyone and presented a resolution from the Board of Supervisors in tribute to the work of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

The presentations from the international guests gave a picture of both the successes and problems of their various struggles, placing the conference deliberations in a wider, global context. Both Chris Matlhako from the South African Communist Party and Marcos Garcia from the Venezuelan Embassy in DC gave a picture of protracted battles against neo-liberalism and their efforts to build and maintain unity on the left in their countries.

Helmut Scholz, a leader of Die Linke (The Left Party) of Germany, described the unity efforts between groups in East and West Germany that brought together its forerunner, the Party of Democratic Socialism, made up of the former East German Communists, and groupings of Left Social Democrats from the West. Their common task now, he explained, was making sure the burden of the capitalist crisis was not placed on the working class. Jackeline Rivera, an FMLN deputy to the legislature of El Salvador, was warmly received. She revealed how, in their recent electoral victory, the FMLN saw two left groups break away, and the national unity efforts that followed.

"This was really an amazing discussion," said one CCDSer. "I never expected them to go into these internal matters so frankly. But it really is necessary for reaching both a clearer picture and a higher level of unity." Appropriately, the evening included a reading of solidarity messages to CCDS from Cuba and Vietnam, and a rousing singing of "The Internationale."

"Wow, what a night!" declared East Bay activist Felicia Gustin. "An international forum on building socialism in the 21st century - moderated by Angela, with all these international guests ... talk about food for thought!"

Convention: 'Building a Progressive Majority and a Socialist Future'

Three days of workshops, discussions, debates and decision-making by CCDS members followed the Symposium. The convention was a critical step forward for the CCDS in a number of ways. It needed to adopt a new basic statement of its "Goals and Principles" to replace an original statement written when the group was founded in 1994. It especially needed to take its bearings in the new political situation following the election of Barack Obama - most of its members worked for Obama's election in one way or another, but a significant minority also worked for third party candidates.

It also needed to select a new leadership, since the four current co-chairs were retiring or stepping down. Finally, it needed to expand the participation in the organization of the younger generation on the left. Similar to many left groups with roots going back to the 1930s, CCDS has a wealth of experienced leaders reaching back 50 years, but lacks adequate membership among radicals who came into politics in the last two decades.

As the delegates and participants assembled in the well-maintained century-old grandeur of the Hotel Whitcomb, CCDS's strengths became evident. In addition to the Bay Area and Los Angeles, delegations arrived from the coal regions and river towns of Kentucky, from the rustbelt mill towns of Western PA and Ohio, from the heartland of central Indiana, Chicago and Detroit, from the Carolinas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Virginia in the Deep South, as well as New York City, and New England. Many are leaders in the African American community and most of the major trade unions. Women were on a par with men, and it was clear that CCDS was an organization with deep roots in the working class and many of the key social movements of today. A few fresher, younger faces, attending a gathering like this for the first time, offered a toe-hold for future connections and growth.

The Goals and Principles Document

The overall theme and key topic of the 6th Convention was assessing the 2008 election and building the progressive majority in the new Obama period. The importance of the interconnection of race, class, and gender within the wider class and democratic struggles has been a key feature of CCDS since it held its first gathering in 1992 in Berkeley, CA. CCDS was the organizational expression of a growing democratic socialist trend that broke from the CPUSA and drew people from other left organizations into its ranks as well.

"Obama's election and the movement around it," states the new CCDS core document, "underscored the inseparable connection of issues and constituencies in the progressive majority rooted in race, class, and gender. The backbone of that majority is the combined force of the working class, communities of color, women, and youth. Articulation of the needs and demands of those constituencies in the first place is essential to advancing and consolidating the progressive majority."

The next morning the delegates got down to brass tacks. They had a nearly twenty page declaration of the CCDS "goals and principles," to discuss, debate and approve. The draft document, posted and debated on the web for the preceding six months, had been through three revisions, and already reflected many compromises and clarifications.

Mark Solomon, an outgoing co-chair from the Boston area stressed how its core idea, the strategy and tactics of developing and unifying an emerging progressive majority, both inside and outside the electoral arena, had come to life in the course of the Obama campaign and the movements around it. While neo-liberalism had taken blows by both the outcome of the election and the financial crisis, they were far from defeated, especially in view of the rise of rightwing populism.

CCDS is still part of the ongoing alliance of pro-Obama forces at the grassroots; now we have the further task of maintaining unity against the far right in both the 2010 and 2012 elections. At the same time, Solomon explained, we had our own independent views to advance. The deep crisis of capitalism was not going to be solved in any fundamental way by the neo-Keynesians on Team Obama, even as we supported some of their initiatives, such as green jobs.

"Obviously, this brings us to the question of socialism and our socialist tasks," Solomon concluded. "This is where we think our best future lies, but for that section of the document, I'm going to turn the discussion over to Carl Davidson."

"We have two sets of tasks," I started off, "our mass democratic tasks and our socialist tasks. They are interconnected, but they are not the same. At the same time, we have to advance both of them well for both to thrive."

I elaborated by describing the problem of "last paragraph socialism," i.e. the practice of writing an article or giving a speech about one or another outrage or abuse of capitalism, and then tacking on a sentence or two at the end, proclaiming that we needed socialism. Our socialist tasks required more serious intellectual work to rescue socialism from its crisis in the last century and bring it into the present as a renewed force. This meant engaging the most advanced fighters in a process of revolutionary education and study groups, to intimately connect this work with a practice learned from working class struggle. It also meant think tanks to develop serious policy proposals on a range of structural reforms that could both engage the crisis and serve as bridges pointing to a socialist future. Finally, these tasks were not for us alone, but required collaboration with other socialist and left organizations.

The discussion was lively, with a range of amendments being offered, most of which were accepted as friendly. One exchange was around the matter of CCDS as a 'pluralist' organization, which was in its 1994 founding document, but initially missing in this one. CCDS has always been a group with a variety of trends, with no effort to impose any "democratic centralism of the old type." The new document wanted to limit the diversity to those trends within socialism and with a Marxist perspective. After some back-and-forth, "pluralism" was accepted, but within the new framework.

CCDS's attitude toward organizing a new third party, which was also more prominent in the founding statement, was debated. CCDS has a long-standing "inside/outside" policy on electoral work, which has only been defined in a general way. For a large majority of the organization, this meant working to get Obama elected in various ways. Some worked within the Democratic Party organization and others worked for Obama in independent organizations. A number of CCDSers were opposed to any Democrat and worked for Cynthia McKinney in the Green Party or the Peace and Freedom Party in California. Still others worked for the Working Families Party in New York where, because of its more progressive election laws, they could vote for Obama on the WFP ticket. Since Peace and Freedom and the Greens often have ballot status in California, third party activity is more prevalent on the West Coast.

Judging from the positive reports from the delegates' experiences with the election, as well as the documents and resolutions passed, it's clear most of the organization will be engaged in the Obama alliance, although from an independent and critical position. For those members deeply connected with the labor movement and the movements of oppressed minority communities, most will work on strengthening the left-progressive pole within the Democratic Party at the base. This will heighten the struggle against the "Blue Dog" Democrats and others collaborating with the unreconstructed GOP neoliberals. Strategically, this position is consistent with preparing the conditions for supplanting the Democrats with a popular and working-class alternative, although not always viewed as such by third party proponents. But it's also clear that the prospects for such a breakaway and wider alliance are not imminent.

"We have our platform and Obama has his," said one delegate, summing up. "They overlap, but they're not the same. We support him where he's right and we oppose and pressure him where he's wrong--and we certainly defend him against the racist assaults from the far right."

Other suggested changes dealt with strengthening arguments on climate change, adding a section on immigrants rights, clarifying the nature of civil and human rights generally, and questioning aspects of the nature of markets under socialism.

The orientation on socialism in the document will distinguish CCDS in a number of ways. First, it places the organization within the wider trend of "21st Century" socialism arising in Latin America, Europe and elsewhere. Second it places winning the battle for democracy at the center of the transition to socialism and socialist construction, especially equality for women and among nationalities. Third, it affirms a pragmatic orientation toward both markets and planning in the 'mixed economy' characteristic of a
transitional society. Fourth, it insists that 'Eco-Socialism' and the transition to a green energy economy is by far the best approach for any socialism in the coming period of climate change. Finally, it sticks to the organization's long standing tradition of socialist internationalism.

One new section deals with the importance of the "solidarity economy," such as worker and community cooperatives. These were discussed both as important structural reforms under the existing order, as well as features of a new socialism. This point serves to distinguish the CCDS as an ally of the worldwide solidarity economy movement, and a wave of new worker and green cooperatives in the U.S.

Panels and Workshops

The "Building the Progressive Majority: Race, Class and Gender" plenary discussion began a series of panel and workshop discussions. The plenary panel consisted of reports highlighting work of CCDS activists in the South, in the Heartland "rustbelt states," on the West Coast and New England and the East Coast. Randy Shannon's report on Western Pennsylvania and the dire conditions in the wake of de-industrialization was particularly moving. He described independent political work with groups like Progressive Democrats of America in raising the consciousness and unity of the working class and Black community, and then in turn ally with forces like the Progressive Caucus in the Congress to defeat the right and advance progressive planks in Obama's economic package. He stressed the importance of ending the wars and health care reform, especially HR 676 "Medicare for All."

Zachary Robinson and Shafeah M'Balia reported on work in the South, and the special role played by democratic forces opposed to the right wing. They highlighted a multi-racial, grass roots people's charter movement initiated by the NAACP in North Carolina that parallels the "Democracy Charter" and mobilized thousands to march on the capital in Raleigh earlier this year.

Paul Shannon of the American Friends Service Committee reported on the Boston Majority Agenda Project, a coalition effort to develop a call and action program for the progressive majority in Boston.

Karl Kramer discussed the immigrant rights movement and its interconnection to the battle against racism and for workers rights in the Bay Area. The question of undocumented workers' impact on the labor and social movements was the most discussed issue following this panel.

The most active participation in the convention by those attending was in two rounds of workshops, Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. The topics of the first round included the peace movement and the economy, labor, socialist education, climate change, and youth organizing. The second round included international solidarity, culture, the Southern struggle, elections, economic and social justice, and human rights.

One of the more significant was the labor workshop. It pulled together more than 45 activists working in and around many of the major unions in the country. Four veteran activists in the labor movement: Bill Fletcher, the former Education Director of the AFL-CIO; David Bacon, labor and immigrant rights journalist; Maria Guillen, SEIU; and Frank Hammer, former UAW local union president from the Detroit area spoke.

A key issue addressed by the workshop was the struggle of US workers against global neo-liberal policies of capital. Hammer said that "in a world of globalization we are all foreign workers." Key issues in the struggle against neo-liberalism highlighted by the workshop are the right to organize and defend against union busting, union democracy, the plight of undocumented workers, and the need for broad forms of struggle by workers such as working people's assemblies, unemployed councils, and municipal movements.

There was also discussion of the influence of neo-liberalism on union leadership. Referring to this problem, David Bacon stated that "we cannot defend ourselves if our only goal is to be at the table." Bill Fletcher called on the left to develop an approach to educating rank and file workers. He said the current policy of attempting to reform neo-liberalism is insufficient. Maria Guillen also raised the question of the fight for union democracy and posed the question "Where is the union leadership problem coming from?"
Another dynamic workshop dealt with youth and student organizing. Nestor Castillo, a Bay Area solidarity activist chaired, while Pete Sherman of Young Workers United, Camille Williamson of Chicago's Southwest Youth Collaborative, and Keith Joseph of the New Brunswick NJ Democrats for Change made presentations.

"It's time to get beyond a protest mode and start posing the question of power," said Joseph. His group in New Jersey, mainly activists fresh from the Obama campaign, had run 50 candidates challenging all the Democratic Party positions in the area, and to the shock of the entrenched old guard, won 23 of them. All the youth stressed the importance of the new multimedia forms of communication and tools for organizing.

Tough problems were posed in the workshop on the peace movement and the economy. Moderated by Marian Gordon, the presenters were Michael Eisenscher, Mort Frank of CCDS in Philadelphia and Judith LeBlanc of United for Peace and Justice. Eisenscher paid special attention to the need for labor solidarity between US workers and Iraqi trade unions, while LeBlanc emphasized connecting anti-war campaigns with the economic crisis. Mort Frank did an in-depth analysis of the best ways to propose cuts in the defense budget, stressing the most deadly weapons actually being used.

The workshop on socialist education took up how best to organize a national network of socialist study groups, especially the need to find popular teaching materials for reaching younger audiences. One project proposed was to organize, together with other left groups, a track of socialist panels and workshops at the US Social Forum in Detroit next summer, where more than 10,000 young people are expected.

The most contentious workshop was on the CCDS approach to elections. Jonathan Nack and myself as co-chairs, urged the participants to focus on how their practical work in elections in 2008, whether for Obama or a third party, served to build a progressive majority, rather than the traditional clash on this topic. But people wanted to clash over the old arguments anyway.

"The task of socialists in any election," said Jim Smith of California's Peace and Freedom Party, "is to contend with the bourgeoisie for power, to pose the question of socialism and carry out education around it, no matter what the prospects for winning." By supporting Democrats of any sort, he continued, people would only make matters worse. With that gauntlet thrown, the debate was engaged.

"I defy anyone here," declared Al Fishman of Detroit, "to argue that it makes no difference or is not important that John Conyers is our Congressman from Michigan." He had no takers. Western Pennsylvania activists argued for taking up building Progressive Democrats of America as an independent formation in the orbit of the Democrats that could wage struggle with both the GOP right and the "Blue Dog" Democrats collaborating with the right. At the close of the session, however, everyone united on the need for election law reforms that would be more favorable to a true multiparty system.

A pivotal workshop of the convention was the session on "Developing a Democracy Charter for the South." A large assembly of activists from seven Southern states reported on grass roots work supporting labor efforts to organize, the people's charter and assembly movements, and work around immigrants. The workshop held an in-depth discussion with Janie Campbell, President of the Charleston, SC sanitation workers union, who spoke on behalf of the sanitation workers organizing around issues of health and safety and equal treatment of city employees. The sanitation workers have been protesting harsh working conditions and an unsafe working environment.

The workshop authored a resolution supporting the Charleston sanitation workers and a resolution drawing attention to the special role of the South as a base for reactionary militarism and anti-union policies. The workshop recessed and reconvened early on Sunday morning to develop a concrete plan of work to support the Charleston workers.

Special Events

Friday evening featured a special "Welcome Reception and Tribute to Charlene Mitchell." The Tribute to Charlene Mitchell drew participants from wider circles than the convention itself, due to her decades of work in a variety of movements as well as founding CCDS. Recently disabled by a stroke, from which she is steadily recovering, she followed the entire convention closely, her smile beaming encouragement to each speaker.

The event was chaired by CCDS Chicago leader Mildred Williamson and was sponsored by the Kendra Alexander Foundation, represented by Eric Quesada. Angela Davis, Hon. Claudia Morcom, Giuliana Milanese, and Carl Bloice recalled in loving and glowing terms how Charlene had mentored them and encouraged them through various battles, personal and political.

"If it hadn't been for Charlene opening my eyes to many things and encouraging me," said Mildred Williamson, "I wouldn't be here today, nor would I have been able to achieve many of the other things in my life." Carl Bloice, in addition to personal stories, told about the wide respect Mitchell has among communists and progressives the world over. "I have a picture on my wall at home," said Bloice. "It's of a hall full of Bulgarian communists, all smiling, and right in the middle is one Black woman, Charlene."

John Case, a radio journalist from West Virginia, said "Charlene Mitchell was the first African-American woman to run for President of the Unites States, which she did in 1968 on the ticket of the Communist Party of the US. She also played an historic role in the worldwide defense of Angela Davis in 1970. Charlene has mentored many people over her long life, this writer included. It was a joy to participate in the tribute to her. Viva Charlene!"

Celebrants at this event also enjoyed a photo compilation of memorable events in Charlene's long career and a moving cultural performance by the Billie Holiday Collective. Jim Campbell and Mark Solomon presented Charlene a memento from CCDS.

Internationalism was also the theme at an early Saturday morning breakfast with the international guests, who shared more informal comments and answered questions. Helmut Scholz of Die Linke was joined by French Communist Party leader Daniel Cirera in stressing the importance of the working class response to the economic crisis in Europe.

"Most of all," said Cirera, "we must remember that this is a political crisis. To be sure, its economic impact is severe, but I don't think the capitalists are without a way out. The question is who will pay for it, where will the burden be placed, and that is a matter of political will and mass struggle." Given the fact of globalization, all agreed the left and the working class had to find ways of acting in concert globally as well.

Saturday was the evening of solidarity with Vietnam. It featured highlights of the recent CCDS sponsored tour of Vietnam and the ongoing crisis of Agent Orange. While full of enthusiasm, it had a more painful dimension. Earlier in the day, a powerful documentary film by Clay Claiborne, "Vietnam: American Holocaust" brought all the bitter horrors and memories of those years back to the surface. Claiborne was part of a CCDS Study Tour to Vietnam last year, and after presenting the film to the Vietnamese, they ran it on nationwide television.

Co-chaired by Vietnam veteran Paul Cox and Judge Claudia Morcom, the evening had a practical purpose: to launch a campaign for the US to make reparations to Vietnam for the ongoing impact of the mass poisoning of the population with Agent Orange. Morcom was one of seven international judges on the International People's Tribunal of Conscience in Support of the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange."

The veterans and their families and friends who spoke from the floor were choked with emotion as they offered accounts not only of what they had seen that happened to the Vietnamese, but also to the veterans who were poisoned, and birth defects on their children as well. CCDS joined the campaign by acclamation.

New Leadership and Veteran Advisors

The closing task of the convention was choosing a new leadership. Charlene Mitchell, Mark Solomon, and James Campbell, were veteran fighters shaped by the struggles of the generation of the 1940s and 1950s. They, with Leslie Cagan, the longtime leader of United for Peace and Justice, had decided it was time to step down. It is hoped that each will participate as members of the CCDS Advisory Board.

The outgoing chairs nominated Pat Fry, a labor activist from New York; Carl Bloice, a writer and former labor activist from San Francisco, Renee Carter, a physician from Virginia, and Carl Davidson, a writer and antiwar activist from Western PA. Taken together, their early years represent a number of important fronts in the battles of the 1960s and 1970s, and up to the present. It was a step in the right direction, even if a small one, of a more inter-generational leadership.

The convention also had the task of electing 15 members of a new National Coordinating Committee, the CCDS interim governing body. Fifteen additional NCC members are elected by direct mail ballot after the convention, a measure designed to give voice to members who cannot attend the convention and to help insure multi-racial and geographic diversity.

In the end, four new co-chairs were elected, unopposed, although they still had to meet a "50 percent plus one" hurdle in the balloting.

The fifteen new NCC members are Ted Reich, New York; Anne Mitchell, New York; Duncan McFarland, Boston; Mildred Williamson, Chicago; Steve Willett, Oakland; Karl Kramer, San Francisco; Marian Gordon, Los Angeles; Jae Scharlin, Berkeley; Juanita Rodriguez, Portland; Marilyn Albert, Cleveland; Harry Targ, Indiana; Janet Tucker, Lexington; Ira Grupper, Louisville; Zack Robinson, North Carolina; Erica Carter, South Carolina.

All in all, the convention was satisfied and united around the new leadership team that reflected the race and gender diversity of the working class. Most of all, it was upbeat, energized and hopeful that it had a new lease on life and the political unity and resources to move ahead.

"I'm very hopeful," declared outgoing co-chair James Campbell, an African American and veteran organizer living in South Carolina going back to the 1930s. "We have a very good and timely political orientation. We have some very experienced and capable leaders on a number of fronts. And most of all, we have these new younger people coming forward, especially in the South. We're in a position for major growth, especially in view of the terrible situations posed by the crisis. It's time to move!"

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[Carl Davidson is co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and also a veteran activist of the antiwar movements and the solidarity economy movement. He is a writer and author and editor of several books on these movements available at http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker . Clay Claiborne's documentary film mentioned here, "Vietnam: American Holocaust," narrated by Martin Sheen, is available at http://VietnamAmericanHolocaust.com . Finally, MP3 Audio Files on CD of all the main Symposium speeches, and the presentations and discussions of the main Convention document are available from Joseph Woodard Multimedia at http://woodard.freemanbusiness.com The text of the CCDS convention documents and the pre-convention discussion are at http://ccds-discussion.org. Finally, all socialist-minded people not in a socialist group are urged to invite speakers,
and/or join the CCDS by going to its main website, http://cc-ds.org , where donations can also be made. Or email me directly at carld717@gmail.com with any queries or comments. If you like this article, please make use of the PayPal button at http://carldavidson.blogspot.com]

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Green Jobs and Class Struggle:

Why the Blue-Green Alliance
Matters to the Socialist Left

[Prepared as a Memo for the Working Class Studies Association Conference, June 6-8 2009, at the University of Pittsburgh.]

By Carl Davidson
SolidarityEconomy.net


1. One of the more important progressive measures launched in the first 100 days of the Obama administration is the Green Jobs Initiative within the broader Economic Recovery Act. There is substantial money allocated to it, and the appointee brought on to shepherd its development, Van Jones, is one of the few Obama appointees clearly from the left. Green Jobs is also a product of the Blue-Green Alliance, a joint effort by labor unions and environmental groups, which have funded advocacy for the program for years.

2. There are two aspects to Green Jobs, the immediate and the structural. The immediate has to do with bringing living-wage employment with a future to those who need it most, the unemployed and under-employed youth of the inner city. The structural has to do with Green Jobs being part of a larger effort to shift the country's energy system from one based on burning carbon and uranium to one based on sustainable renewables-solar, wind, wave, hydro and geothermal. All these require major upgrading of the country's infrastructure and a retooling of its manufacturing for more advanced products and production. Both aspects require a new Green industrial policy, alongside an erosion of the country's traditional military-industrial policy and more recent neoliberal market fundamentalism.

3. The neoliberal diehards in the House and Senate GOP, together with the rightwing populism stirred up by the Fox-Limbaugh-Hannity media reactionaries, are preparing an all-out attack of Green Jobs on several fronts. First, they attack the whole concept that there is any urgency to anything Green. In their view, global warming and climate change is simply a leftwing hoax used as a cover to attack the free market and promote government planning, leading to socialism. Second, they attack it as affirmative action for people of color, supposedly masking moral failure and public schools as the real reason for the problems of the inner city. Third, they are preparing a red-baiting campaign against Van Jones in particular, as part of a wider effort to red-bait Obama and deny the legitimacy of his election.

4. Green Jobs will require more than White House and Congressional Democrat support in order to survive this resistance and counter-attack. Getting a program adopted by Congress is only the first step on a long road to its deployment. Community and youth organizations, environmental group and the trade unions are facing the task of launching a social movement to see to it that Green Jobs is not gutted, delayed or otherwise sabotaged.

5. Green Jobs can be undermined indirectly as well. The program ultimately has to be deployed locally, and pass through state, county and city governments and their hangers-on. Left to their own inclinations, funds for Green Jobs may be diverted to parks or highway projects that shore up existing government worker payrolls with little new employment of those most in need. Alternately, new construction can be turned over to firms importing non-union labor, or using labor at minimum wage rather than living wage standards. Only local coalitions mobilized with some clout at the base can prevent this, and the ball is in the court of the left to organize them.

6. Green Jobs is a natural for the left to build coalitions of diversity in working-class and low-income communities. Start with organizations close to those who need green jobs most-inner city youth service agencies, neighborhood churches and their youth groups, sports groups-then approach others needed to make a collaborative work, such as trade union apprenticeship programs, community college trade skills teachers, local home building or remodeling companies looking for new projects. With this assembled, find the local political incumbents, especially at the state level, ready to go to bat for your project. Connect with Green For All, Van Jones' group, if its in a major city near you, for advice.

7. The left has its own approach to bring to the Green Jobs table, apart from being a catalytic organizer. Green Jobs can be implemented in a 'low road' way, by giving funds to contractors who hire youth at minimum wage, who in turn winterize a few public buildings, bypass the unions and dump the youth when it's over. Obviously, this is to be avoided. But there's a high road, solidarity economy approach that builds a stakeholder collaborative of businesses, unions, credit unions and school, with a strategic view of a lasting green construction worker cooperative as an outcome, together with higher-tech career paths through community college partnership with high-tech green firms. The solidarity economy, in turn, serves as a way to educate concretely about the prospects for a socialist future.

8. Green Jobs is a product of a long and complex series of working-class and youth struggles. One part reaches back to the global justice battles in the streets of Seattle more than a decade ago. The unions joined this to battle NAFTA, and the youth came out of green and global justice concerns. Both found themselves on the same sides of the barricades battling police in the streets-'Teamsters and Turtles Forever!' was a spontaneous slogan. Some in the Steelworkers Union and the Sierra Club took it further, and in a paradigm shift, began to see each other as natural allies rather than natural adversaries. The tons of steel and 19,000 machined parts in every wind turbine had to be manufactured and assembled somewhere, after all. This was formally put together and funded as the Blue-Green Alliance. The other component came from the anger of inner city youth facing jails and police harassment and brutality. Demanding jobs for youth was not new and often ignored, but when Van Jones in Oakland put out 'Green Jobs, Not Jails' to put kids to work insulating buildings and installing solar panels, he suddenly had people listening in a new way. There is more to the story, but this is the heart of it, an organic development from class struggle, labor-community alliances and youth insurgency. There will be more battles, but with this energy to build on, the prospects are very bright.


[Carl Davidson is webmaster for SolidarityEconomy.net, a national committee member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and a coordinating committee member of the US Solidarity Economy Network. Together with Jerry Harris, he is author of 'Cyber-Radicalism: A New Left for a Global Age, available at http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker If you like this article, use the PayPal button to give support. Email him at carld717@gmail.com ]
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100 Days: Obama's Mixed Report Card

Photo: Rightwing poster vs Obama

Obama’s First 100 Days:
The Situation and
Tasks of the Left

By Carl Davidson
SolidarityEconomy.Net

Asking for a Report Card on Obama’s first 100 days is easy enough—as long as your don’t take it too seriously.

First figure out the vantage point from which you want to grade him. Women’s Rights and Green Jobs people will measure him differently than, say, the peace movement. Then measure him with a combination of his campaign promises and how he contrasts with McCain or Bush.

This approach will easily give him a C+ or even a B, but it doesn’t tell us much other than it was a good idea to vote for him. But this is not what matters most.For the left, the wars matter most, and on these he gets a D-. He’s just barely better than Bush in Iraq, and doing worse in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If he doesn’t seize one of his caveats and reverse course, this will destroy his presidency.

On the financial crisis, he gets a C-. First, because he’s got something going that can help, such as green jobs and high speed rail, while still clinging to what makes matters worse, such as bailing out ‘nonbank banks’ and backing anti-single-payer health care scams.

On his appointments, I’m somewhat satisfied because he did what I thought he would: realign the ruling class into an anti-NeoCon bloc. Dick Cheney’s attacks and a House GOP in 100 percent opposition is the evidence of that. We got Solis and Van Jones, while all the rest is the center and center-right of the power elites.

This gets to my main point. The most important question is not what Obama’s done in 100 days, but what are we doing, ‘we’ meaning the American left. In an important way, Obama’s picks accurately reflect the relation of political forces in the country. If we, the socialists, had gotten more, it wouldn’t be because we had the clout to deserve it, especially since more than half of the socialist groups flat out opposed him.

We are not going to get anything at the top that we haven’t already won and consolidated at the base. Obama has given us a new ball game, but the ball is in our court. We have to build the serious organizations, both socialist groups and much wider coalitions and popular fronts, which can make both him and the Congress do what needs to be done. Whining and carping doesn’t help one bit. Right now, what we need is a lot of organizers bent on uniting the left and progressive forces, winning over the middle, and isolating and defeating our neoliberal and rightwing populist adversaries.
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21st Century Socialism: What It Is, Why We Need It

Eleven Talking Points
On 21st Century Socialism

By Carl Davidson

SolidarityEconomy.net

May 1, 2009

The current discussion around socialism in left and progressive circles in the U.S. needs to be placed in a more substantive arena. This is an effort to do so. I take note in advance of the criticism that the following eleven working hypotheses are rather dry and formal. But in light of the faux ‘socialisms’ bandied about in the headlines and sound bytes of the mass media in the wake of the financial crisis, especially the absurd claim in the media of rightwing populism that the Obama administration is Marxist and socialist, I felt something a little more rigorous might be helpful. Obviously, criticism and commentary is invited.

1. Socialism’s fundamental building blocks are already present in US society. The means of production, for the most part, are fully developed and in fact are stagnating under the political domination of finance capital. The US labor force, again for the most part, is highly skilled at all levels of production, management, marketing, and finance. The kernels of socialist organization are also scattered across the landscape in cooperatives, socially organized human services, and centralized and widespread mass means of many-to-many communication and supply/demand data management. Many earlier attempts at socialism did not have these advantages.

2. Socialism is first of all a democratic political system where the interests and organizations of the working class and its allies have attained and hold the preponderance of political power, and thus play the critical leading role in society. It is still a class society, but one in a protracted transition, over hundreds of years, to a future classless society where exploiting class privileges are abolished and classes and class distinctions generally wither away, both nationally and globally. So socialism will have classes for some time, including some capitalists, because it will be a mixed economy, with both public and private ownership, even as the balance shifts over time. Family farmers and small proprietors will both exist and flourish alongside cooperatives. Innovative 'high road' entrepreneurial privately-held firms will compete with publically-own firms, and encouraged to create new wealth within an environmentally regulated and progressively taxed system. Past efforts to build socialism have suffered from aggravated conflict between and among popular classes and lack of emphasis on building wide unity among the people.

3. Socialism at the base is a transitional economic system anchored in the social mode of production brought into being by capitalist development over several centuries. Its economic system is necessarily mixed, and makes use of markets, especially in goods and services, which are regulated, especially regarding the environment. But capital markets and wage-labor markets can be sharply restricted and even abolished in due time. Markets are a function of scarcity, and all economies of any scale in a time of scarcity have them, even if they are disguised as 'black' or 'tiered' markets. In addition to regulated markets, socialism will also feature planning, especially on the macro level of infrastructure development, in investment of public assets and funds, and other arenas where markets have failed. Planning will especially be required to face the challenges of uneven development and harsh inequalities on a global scale, as well as the challenge of moving from a carbon and uranium based energy system to one based on renewable green energy sources. The socialisms of the last century fell or stagnated due to failure to develop the proper interplay between plans and markets.

4. Socialism will be anchored in public and worker ownership of the main productive forces and natural resources. This can be achieved by various means: a) buying out major failing corporations at penny stock status, then leasing them back to the unions and having the workers in each firm—one worker, one vote—run them, b) workers directly taking ownership and control over failed and abandoned factories, c) eminent domain seizures of resources and factories, with compensation, otherwise required for the public good, and d) public funding for startups of worker-owned cooperative businesses. Socialism will also require public ownership of most finance capital institutions, including bringing the Federal Reserve under the Treasury Department and federal ownership. Lease payments from publically owned firms will go into a public investment fund, which will in turn lend money to community and worker owned banks and credit unions. A stock market will still exist for remaining publically traded firms and investments abroad, but will be strictly controlled. A stock transfer tax will be implemented. Gambling in derivatives will be outlawed. Fair trade agreements with other countries will be on a bilateral basis for mutual benefit.

5. Socialism will require democracy in the workplace of public firms and encourage it in all places of work. Workers have the right to independent unions to protect their social and daily interests, in addition to their rights as worker-owners in the governance of their firms. In addition to direct democracy at the plant level, the organizations of the working class also participate in the wider public planning process and thus democratically shape the direction of ongoing development on the macro level as well. Under socialism the government will also serve as the employer-of-last-resort. Minimum living-wage jobs will be provided for all who want to work. Socialism is committed to genuine full employment. Every citizen will have a genuine right to work.

6. Socialism will largely be gained by the working class and it allies winning the battle for democracy in politics and civil society at large, especially taking down the structures and backward laws of class, gender and racial privilege. Women have equal rights with men, and minority nationalities have equal rights with the majority. It also defends equal rights and self-determination among all nations across the globe; no nation can itself be fully free when it oppresses another. Socialism will encourage public citizenship and mass participation at every level, with open information systems, public education and transparency in its procedures. It will need a true multiparty system, with fusion voting, proportional representation and instant runoff. Given the size and diversity of our country, it is highly unlikely that any single party could adequately represent all popular interests; working class and progressive organizations will need to form common fronts. All trends are guaranteed the right to speak, organize, petition and stand for election. With public financing as an option, socialism can restrict the role of wealth in elections, moving away from a system, in effect, of “one dollar, one vote” and toward a system more reflective of “one person, one vote.” These are the structural measures that can allow the majority of the people, especially the working class and its allies, to secure the political leadership of government and instruments of the state by democratic means, unless these are sabotaged by reaction. Some socialisms of the past used only limited formal democracy or simply used administrative means to implement goals, with the failure of both the goals and the overall projects. Americans are not likely to be interested in systems with elections where only one party runs and no one can lose.

7. Socialism will be a state power, specifically a democratic political order with a representative government. But the government and state components of the current order, corrupted with the thousand threads connecting it to old ruling class, will have to be broken up and replaced with new ones that are transparent, honest and serve the majority of the people. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights can still be the initial basic organizing principle for a socialist government and state. The democratic rights it has gained over the years will be protected and enhanced. Government will also be needed to organize and finance the social development benefitting the people and the environment already mentioned; but the state power behind the law will be required to compel the honest use of resources and to protect people from criminal elements, individual and organized. Forces who try to overturn and reverse the new socialist government illegally and in violation of the Constitution will not be able to do so; they will be broken up and brought to justice. Our society will need a state power for some time to come, even as its form changes. Still, government power has limits; under socialism sovereignty resides in the people themselves, and the powers of any government are necessarily restricted and subordinate to the universal and natural rights of all humankind. Attempts to ignore or reject these principles have severely harmed socialist governments and movements in the past.

8. Socialism will be a society in harmony with the natural environment, understanding that all economies are subsets of the eco-system and ignore it at their peril. In its economics, there are no such things as “externalities” to be pushed off downstream or to future generations. The nature of pending planetary disasters necessitates a high level of planning. We need to redesign communities, promote healthier foods, and rebuild sustainable agriculture—all on a global scale with high design, but on a human scale with mass participation of communities in diverse localities. Socialism will treasure and preserve the diversity of nature’s bounty and end the practice of genetic modification to control the human food supply. We need growth, but intelligent growth in quality and wider knowledge with a lighter environmental footprint. A socialism that simply reproduces the wasteful expansion of an earlier capitalism creates more problems than it solves.

9. Socialism values equality, and will be a society of far greater equality of opportunity, and far less economic inequality. In addition to equal rights before the law, all citizens and residents will have equitable access to a “universal toolbox” of paid-up free public education for all who want to learn, for as far as they want and are able to go; universal public pre-school care; a minimum income, as a social wage, for all who create value, whether in a workplace or otherwise; our notions of socially useful work, activity that creates value, has to be expanded beyond market definitions. Parents raising children, students learning skills, elders educating and passing traditions to younger generations--all these create value that society can in turn reward. Universal single-payer health care with retirement benefits at the level of a living wage is critical to start. Since everyone has access to employment, the existing welfare system can be abolished; individuals will be free to choose the career path and level of income targets they desire, or not. There are no handouts for those able to work, but there are also no irrational barriers to achievement.

10. Socialism is a society where religion can be freely practiced, or not, and no religion is given any special advantages over any other. Religious freedom remains a fundamental tenant of socialism, but naturally neither its practitioners nor anyone else can deny anyone the benefits and protection of civil and criminal law, especially to women and children.

11. Socialism will require an institution of armed forces. Their mission will be to defend the people and secure their interests against any enemies and help in times of natural disasters. It will not be their task to expand markets abroad and defend the property abroad of the exploiting classes. Soldiers will be allowed to organize and petition for the redress of grievances. Armed forces also include local police, under community control, as well as a greatly reduced prison system, based on the principle of restorative justice, and mainly for the protection of society from individuals inflicted with violent pathologies and criminal practices. Non-violent conflict resolution and community-based rehabilitation will be encouraged, but the need for some coercive means will remain for some time.



[Carl Davidson is webmaster for SolidarityEconomy.net, a national committee member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and a coordinating committee member of the US Solidarity Economy Network. Together with Jerry Harris, he is author of 'Cyber-Radicalism: A New Left for a Global Age, available at http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker If you like this article, go to 'Keep On Keepin' On at http://carldavidson.blogspot.com and make use of the PayPal button. Email him at carld717@gmail.com ]

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Left Forum 2009 - High Energy, Colorful Mosaic

Left 'Turning Points':
Exploring New Ideas,
Seeking Common Ground

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

New York City's annual 'Left Forum' this year was a solid success. Under the theme "Turning Points, it drew more than 2000 participants to Pace University April 17-19, to take part in some 200 panels featuring around 600 speakers.

For something on this scale, I won't even pretend to give a comprehensive overview. No one person can. Instead, in what follows, you'll get my personal diary-like account as I wove my way through the crowds, met up with old and new friends, and faced a dizzying array of choices every time a new round of panels were set to start.

Pace University was an oddly appropriate place for the forum, located next to City Hall in New York City's financial district. The artifacts of the two major crises shaping our last decade were in your face. Wall Street, den of the derivative speculators, was a few blocks away; and you could tour 'Ground Zero,' the site of the destroyed WTC Twin Towers, with less than a 10 minute walk. Pace had a memorial plaque on its grounds for its own faculty, staff and students that perished on 9/11.

I arrived a few hours before the opening plenary. The New York City Labor Left Project, a grouping of socialist and communist trade unionists from several left organizations, set up a small early-bird session with Bill Fletcher, Jr, former AFL-CIO Education Director, co-author of "Solidarity Divided: The Crisis of Organized Labor,' and a founder of Progressives for Obama. About 25 people showed up, from half-a-dozen unions.
This was important. Most events like the Left Forum over the years, this one included, have been a "gathering of the tribes" of the left intelligentsia, serving as both common ground for every trend to talk with each other, and a trade fair of sorts, where left groups and publishers display their wares. Labor activists usually are notable by their absence, so this panel, even though small, was a step forward.

Fletcher hit hard on the need for an organized left in the union movement. He used some example from the early 1930s to explain that he didn't mean just the more militant and left-leaning staffers, but a socialist and communist left that brought a wider political perspective and array of tactics than what was likely to emerge within the trade unions themselves. "People often talk about the great achievements of the 1930s,' he said, "but they often fail to mention and take into account, even among themselves, the political forces that helped bring them about, political forces that were later pushed out." A lively discussion followed, covering everything from the current 'Civil Wars' in labor, to the failure to mobilize adequately around the economic crisis.

The Fletcher talk ran late, so by the time we made it to the auditorium for the opening plenary, it was completely packed, not even standing room. Luckily, the forum organizers had an extra side hall with a giant screen and speakers. That room quickly filled, too.

The first speech was the best, in my book. Richard Wolf, from the Economics Dept at the New School for Social Research, laid out a lucid and high-level Marxist explanation of the current crisis, but spanning 150 years of capitalist development in the U.S. His most important point: the U.S. working class was able to maintain its living standard over the past 30 years only by adding women to the work force, working longer hours, and going deep into debt. By the same token, U.S. capital survived on the speculative bubbles rooted in that debt. Now the wreckage is in front of us, and it's way past time to put socialism on the table.

While Wolf was clear and forceful, Adolph Reed, political science at the University of Pennsylvania, who followed him, was opaque and hesitant. He seemed to argue that because the left lacked institutional strength in the labor movement, and because that strength was not in the cards anytime soon, just about anything anyone did was going to be co-opted by neoliberalism, especially by what he termed 'the fetishism of electoral politics.' In a time of hope, he offered "politically correct" gloom and pessimism.

Arlie Hochschild, sociology from UC Berkeley, stressed that the left needed to get over it 'mistrust of government, which she suggested was borrowed from Ronald Reagan. It was groundwork to convince people to work for social-democratic state-centric solutions, but it didn't go over too well with this crowd. Katjia Kipping from Die Linke, the Left Party in Germany, did better. Faced with 'class warfare from the top down,' she outlined her party's stand in parliament of refusing to have the working class pay for the crisis, to bloc its further development with "anti-cyclical reforms," and to tie them all together with a more strategic campaign for worker control and ownership of the economy.

Walden Bello from the Philippines was the final speaker, but unfortunately, I had to miss him. I had a more important engagement with my young grandson and two daughters, who live in New York City, at a nearby restaurant. First things first!

Saturday promised to be jam-packed, and I was on two panels myself. I arrived earlier than usual because City Hall Park in across the street from Pace, and my grandson, along with all the other Little Leaguers, with their new team uniforms, were preparing for an early-morning season-opening parade. I couldn't miss this, so I had my morning coffee in the park, meeting other proud parents and grandparents.

But Pace was open by 9am, and batches of people wrestled with boxes and carts filled with books, getting their displays up on time. I studied the program, and picked 'The Trend of Chinese Marxism in the 21st Century." Where else would I have the opportunity to listen to three Chinese philosophy professors from Fudan University, having travelled half way around the globe to get here? Since the presenters weren't comfortable with their English skills, the presentations were read to us by a young Chinese woman. The key point: because China was now a transitional society with a socialist market economy, and problems arising from capitalist modernization, it needed some 'Western Marxism" to battle backward trends and keep it on the socialist path. The discussion was difficult, with translation back and forth, but still very lively.

I had to quickly get to the next panel, since I was on it, and there was only about five minutes between sessions. "Building a Progressive Majority and Advancing a Vision of Socialism" was the title, and it was pulled together by my group, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and chaired by Pat Fry, an SEIU staffer. I led off by presenting Van Jones's program for Green Jobs for inner city youth, but framing it as a larger structural reform project that could, if done right, unite a progressive majority and help get us out of the current crisis. At the same time, we had to unite a militant minority around socialist tasks, so I offered the solidarity economy movement and its projects as practical examples of cooperative forms that could, within the capitalist present, point to a socialist future.

Carl Bloice from Black Commentator followed, with a warning that the problems of inter-imperialist rivalry still existed in a multipolar world, as did the problem of militarism and the need for disarmament as a path to greater global equity. He also stressed the need for popular resistance to Obama's Afghan-Pakistan escalation. Renee Carter, a physician from Virginia and CCDS NCC member, described some to the practical organizational work in the South, including a recent conference in Charleston, SC. "It showed people are very hungry for socialist ideas and groups like ours."

Mark Solomon, CCDS Co-Chair, presented a very practical organizational model for organizing the progressive majority, based on the Majority Alliance Project in Boston, which was pulling together dozens of existing organizations "to work wholistically" on a range of project where progressive majorities exist-such as ending the wars and green jobs. At the same time, they worked to take issues with large minority support, such as Palestine self-determination or gay marriage, and develop new ways of thinking to get them to become majorities. Critical to both sets of work was building wider alliances with the labor, youth and community forces that emerged as activists in the Obama campaign.

Our session filled the room with about 40 or more people, most of whom knew little about us. They learned more in the discussion, which covered a lot of bases, from rightwing populism to community base-building, and we got everyone's email address. Other groups did likewise throughout the conference, revealing one of the stronger points of the Left Forum: providing a venue for organization building.

Lunchtime was for networking. While my fellow panelists took off with some folks from the French Communist Party, I decided to spend some time with a young and very sharp organizer from New Jersey, doing some significant organizing with the Obama volunteer bases in the inner city.

Next up was a panel dubiously titled "Obama and the Politics of Hype," pulled together by Lauren Langman, an old friend and sociology professor at Loyola in Chicago. I didn't no what to expect, and Langman got double-booked, so he made a quick speech and left, turning over the chair to Tom Ponniah of Harvard. It was in a large room, and many people, mainly young, kept pouring in until we had about 100. Besides me, Laura Flanders of Grit TV made up the remaining panel.

Flanders was very good, outlining the strengths and weakness of both Obama and the left, with an emphasis on new media, of which she is a rising star. I took the view that the real "politics of hype" around Obama came from conservative talk radio and rightwing populism. My examples were very concrete, arising from the campaign work we did in Beaver County, Western PA, exposing the hype of the right on a daily tit-for-tat basis. Some of the participants would have none of it, however, and wanted to lash out against Obama for almost everything. One even accused him of declaring racism was over, and that he was the key enabler of Black oppression.

I couldn't let that stand, and fired back that she needed to read Obama's Philadelphia speech, and that Obama, his family and his base were under racist fire from the far right, and part of our task was to defend him and expose them on those matters, even as we opposed him on the wars. Several members of the Revolutionary Communist Party went ballistic over that, and the battle was on. I think Flanders and I, together with the chair, did a fairly good job. But the polemics served as a microcosm for an overall division at the forum, which I'd make an educated guess as divided with one-third being critical supporters of Obama, one third see him as the main enemy, and the rest in between somewhere, still making up their minds.

After all that excitement, my next pick was a little more subdued. Titled "The Challenge of Rightwing Populism in Northern Core Capitalist Countries," it was presented by two academics from York University in Canada. One was German, Ingar Solty; the other Canadian, Sam Putjina. Solty gave an overview of the various "National Front" parties in the European countries, while Putjina unfolded a sociological study tracking the rise of rightwing populism with the decline of trade union membership. He made a pretty good case, but the dozen or so people in the room saw the matter as more complex, a had an interesting discussion, pulling in matters of identity and religion.

My panel picks had all served as preparation for the big evening session. "The Obama Campaign and Presidency: Lessons for the Left" was the theme, and it featured Stanley Aronowitz, CUNY; Frances Fox Piven, CUNY; Barbara Epstein, UC Santa Cruz; and Gihan Perera, Right to the City Alliance; with Bill Fletcher as moderator.

Fletcher ran the panel in an interesting way. Rather than have them each deliver a speech, he decide to "interview" them, as if it were a news show. They were to answer, and also comment on each other's answers. He started by asking them if they though there was "a movement" around the Obama election, or whether it was just a slightly more jazzed-up mass campaign. All four of the academics hedged their bets on that one, and gave convoluted answers. (My opinion was that there was definitely a mass movement, several in fact, and some of the movement is still around). The community organizer, Perera, said he didn't know how they were using terms, but he called it "an electoral riot," meaning a mass insurgency from below.

This set some of the dynamic-the academics making points rather removed from grassroots struggles, even when lucid, as was Frances Scott Piven. Then Perera, as counterpoint, making substantive comments anchored in mass struggle. At one point, Fletcher asked whether they had voted or worked for Obama. All had done so, with the exception of Aronowitz.

Once questions and comments were opened to the floor, things got a little livelier. The RCP, clearly noticeable in their uniformed red-on-black T-Shirts, launched the calls for "revolution," pretty much denouncing the panel and challenged Fletcher to a debate to boot. He firmly said "No," and kept charge of the session. At one point, after some outbursts, he announced that the hallway was available to anyone who wanted to debate the RCP, but this discussion would continue.

Pro-Obama and anti-Obama is something of an oversimplification. Those opposed to Obama mainly stressed issues, and saw Afghanistan and foreign policy as decisive, together with the fact that he was for capitalism, and working with former neoliberals to rescue Wall Street. Anything positive in Obama's efforts was just blowing smoke.

Those who had voted for Obama mainly stressed organizing opportunities, new allies at the base, and the opening of political space for more protracted efforts. They supported Obama's measures that were right, and opposed those that weren't. In that sense, the debate was never really engaged. People talked past each other.

One feature of the Left Forum is the '"after parties." There were several; I was invited to one held by the Socialist Party, and another at the Brecht Forum. It had been a long day, so I settled for a late dinner with the organizers of the "Politics of Hype" panel at a nearby bar.

Sunday is usually a light, wrap up day at weekend conferences. I was surprised the next morning to see the place packed once again.

To start the morning off, I picked "In Praise of Socialist Planning" to attend. It featured a good friend, David Schweickart, author of "After Capitalism" and a leading theorist of Marxism and worker-controlled market socialism. The other speakers were Bertell Ollman, an expert on Marxism from New York University and a decidedly anti-market socialist, and Raymond Lotta, from the RCP and self-described as a Maoist political economist. The session was chaired by Anwar Shaikh from the New School.

Schweickart led off with a condensed outline of his theories, and how they related to both classical Marxism and today's conditions. He favored planning, but not of the old anti-market, centralized Five-Year-Plan type. He was for macro planning where markets failed, but favored moving the decisions downward. He mainly argued for public control of social investment funds, and deploying these locally as a form of democratic planning. Ollman was a little more abstract, describing the creative potential unleashed by revolution. Interestingly, he conceded Schweickart was right about Marx and the market, and that classes and the market would be around for a post-revolutionary period. He simply asserted that this would only last about two years! Ray Lotta basically asserted the primacy of revolutionary politics at every step of the way, and declared there was no need for 'technical economic blueprints." In that sense, everything was a plan determined by the constant mobilization of the masses, who consciousness could trump economic backwardness-a classic "voluntarist" deviation from Marxism, and one Mao was prone to at various times as well.

I moved on to another smaller session, about a dozen people, where the topic was "The Green New Deal." It had an interesting lineup: Victor Wallis from the theoretical journal, Socialism and Democracy; Mario Candeais, from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation; and Freider Otto Wolf, from the Free University in Berlin, and one of the original German Greens. Wallis gave a succinct explanation of the old FDR New Deal, and described the character so far of the current one. It was positive, but whether it, or anything, would resolve the crisis was still open. I was a bit taken aback by Candeais. He attacked the Green New Deal because it included more "infinite economic growth," which he saw as civilization-destroying. Wolf answered him, supporting the Green New Deal as a "Red-Green Project," one that worked best with transitional demands of structural reform take could open a path to socialism.

Needless to say, I became an immediate fan of Wolf, but decided to cross swords with Candeais on his opposition to "infinite growth." I argued we needed infinite growth, especially in high design technologies and the growth of knowledge, and that these were critical to both a green and socialist future. In this way, economies could grow in sustainable ways, however large they became. He simply wouldn't accept my framework, and clung to a vision of growth as accumulating garbage heaps. We had to agree to disagree.

The last panel was one where I was the chair, "Solidarity Economy: Building Alternatives for People and Planet." Our panelists were Pasqualino Columbaro of the Global Economic Alternatives Network, Maliha Safri of the Center for Popular Economics, and Peter Ranis, Political Science, CUNY. We had the final 3-5pm slot Sunday afternoon, and I didn't expect much. I was surprised when about 30 people showed up, so I quickly passed the sheet and got everyone's emails, a critical task for organizers these days.

The purpose of our panel was to introduce activists to the concept of a solidarity economy, which is still relatively new in the U.S. Columbaro described many of the principles, and the various organizations, together with a good description of the Emilia-Romano region of Italy, where hundred of thousands of workers are involved in thousands of interconnected cooperative enterprises. Safri gave an overview of the US Solidarity Economy Network, and the achievements of some of the groups in it, ranging from food coops and credit unions, to worker coops and public schools like the Austin Polytechnical Academy in Chicago, focused on high tech manufacturing with a worker-ownership component to the school's outlook. Ranis stressed the importance of connections with trade unions, and getting them to partner in joint collaboratives, and put the capital in union pension funds and banks to good use.

Most of the discussion here was more in the form of questions than debate, with the participants wanting to learn more. I pointed out that the solidarity economy was value-centered, but than so were all schools of political economy-Marxism's core value was the emancipation of the working class, the economics taught in school had private accumulation of wealth as the core value, while the green economy was focused on sustainability and harmony with the environment. In the solidarity economy, obviously, the values of solidarity and mutual aid are at the center.

Since I had an eight-hour drive back to Western PA, I had to leave and miss the final plenary. Too bad for me, since I was told later that one of the speakers had quoted from a paper of mine negatively, where I made the point that if we were going to move forward as a more dynamic and broader left, within a wider progressive majority, we had to make a decisive break with a semi-anarchist and ultraleft mindset. I would have loved to debate the point since, from just my experience at the Left Forum, I though my case was fairly evident, to those who cared to think it over in some detail. A clear majority of groups calling themselves socialist and communist in our country, not even mentioning the anarchists, had solidly opposed Obama and his movement every step of the way, and as far as I could see, it hadn't helped them one bit. Those who had engaged that movement in a positive way, however, were making some solid advances. Maybe next year, we can revisit the topic, hopefully with a little more clarity and, also hopefully, from positions in the class, anti-imperialist and democratic struggles that are a little further down the pike.

[Carl Davidson is webmaster for 'Progressives for Obama' and SolidarityEconomy.net, a national committee member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and a coordinating committee member of the US Solidarity Economy Network. Together with Jerry Harris, he is author of 'Cyber-Radicalism: A New Left for a Global Age, available at http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker If you like this article, go to 'Keep On Keepin' On at http://carldavidson.blogspot.com and make use of the PayPal button. Email him at carld717@gmail.com ]

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Green Jobs Meets the Solidarity Economy

Green Jobs Meets the Solidarity Economy:
A Dynamic Duo for Changing the World

A Review of 'Green Collar Economy:
How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems'
By Van Jones, Harper-Collins, 2008

By Carl Davidson
SolidarityEconomy.Net

It's time to link the newly insurgent U.S. Green Jobs movement with the worldwide efforts for the solidarity economy. Both are answering the call to fight the deepening global recession, and both face common adversaries in the failed 'race to the bottom,' environment-be-damned policies of global neoliberalism.

That's the imperative facing left-progressive organizers with connections to these two important grassroots movements. It's even more important in the wake of the appointment of a key leader of one of these movements, Van Jones of 'Green For All', to a top environmental and urban policy post in the Obama administration.

Jones is a founder of an urban-based campaign focused on low-income young people, multinational and multicultural, that first developed as a progressive response to police repression, gang killings and all-round "criminalization of youth." He saw the exclusion of this sector of the population from living-wage work and other opportunities as a key cause of the violence and destruction. Putting young people to work at low-to-medium skill levels retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency seemed like a no-brainer, so the demand for 'Green Jobs, Not Jails' was raised.

The slogan found deep resonance as it spread across the country. Its all-round implications were spelled out in Jones' widely acclaimed book, "The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems." It spells out a string of ingenious, interconnected programs aimed at resolving the savage inequalities of structural unemployment and the global dangers of climate change rooted in carbon-based energies systems.


"Let's be clear," says Jones in the opening pages of his book, "The main piece of technology in the green economy is a caulk gun. Hundreds of thousands of green collar jobs will be weatherizing and energy-retrofitting every building in the United States."

He doesn't leave the matter there, but makes use of this picture to point out what's "shovel ready," to use the lingo of debate around stimulus spending. Green jobs span the entire range of occupations, with a special focus on high-tech manufacturing in emerging alternative energy industries.

"Green Collar Economy" was instantly a powerful voice in policy circles. It gained a wider and deeper significance in light of the financial crises that hit the fan soon after it reached the bookstores. Just as the voter revolt against Wall Street helped lift Obama to the Oval Office, so too was Van Jones's urban policy monograph raised into a "What Is To Be Done" manifesto for deep structural reforms capable of busting the onset of a major depression.

"The best answer to our ecological crisis also responds to our socio-economic crisis," Jones explains. "The surest path to safe streets and peaceful communities are not more police and prisons, but ecologically sound economic development. And that same path can lead us to a new green economy."

How does it connect with the solidarity economy? This parallel movement with even earlier roots is widely known throughout the Global South, especially Latin America, as well as Europe and Quebec. It has been comprised of a range of projects where social capital is partnered with worker, community, consumer and peasant cooperative ownership structures. These were designed to fight back against the economic devastation wrought by neoliberal IMF-imposed "solutions" that left people without a safety net or means of survival. People turned to each other at the grassroots in common efforts, hence the term 'solidarity economy.'

Both the solidarity economy and the green economy are "value centered" schools of economic thought. They are in the classical tradition of political economy, which in turn is rooted in moral philosophy. They are not simply descriptive of supposedly objective economic processes, but are prescriptive. At full throttle, they are organizing principles for shaping the future, locally and globally, via local organization and mass mobilization. For its part, the solidarity economy stresses the values of cooperation and mutual aid, especially in governance structures of productive, consumer or financial units. The green economy emphasizes ongoing sustainability and harmony between people and the eco-system of which they are a part.

The solidarity economy is about how people relate to each other, while the green economy is about how people relate to their wider environment. Naturally, there is considerable overlap between the two. Both see the current order as destructive of people and planet, and are working to turn things around.

"Equal protection of all people, equal opportunity for all people, and reverence for all creation."--these are what Jones terms the "three pillars" of the new green global economy.

Neither economic vision is monolithic. Both schools of thought span a range of views, some of which are in contention. In the Green Jobs movement, for instance, there are debates on nuclear power and "clean coal," and what role, if any, these might have in a low-carbon future. In the solidarity economy movement, there are discussions on the place of markets and government, and whether cooperative structures can use either or both to their advantage. There is also debate over the importance of "high road" allies within the business community, "high road" meaning traditional business structures that bring wider community and environmental responsibility into their business plans, rather than simply short-term shareholder profit.

Where Van Jones' approach to both the green and solidarity economies most compels our attention is that he starts where the need is greatest, the millions of unemployed and underemployed inner city youth. The structural crises of neoliberal capitalism has long ravaged this sector of our society through deindustrialization, environmental racism and a wrecking ball approach to schools in favor of more prisons. To borrow from Marx, these young people are bound with radical chains, and when they break them with the tools suggested in 'Green Collar Economy,' they free not only themselves, but the rest of us are set in a positive direction as well.

"The green economy," Jones explains, reflecting on Hurricane Katrina, "should not be just about reclaiming thrown-away stuff. It should be about reclaiming thrown-away communities. It should not be just about recycling materials to give things a second life. We should also be gathering up people and giving them a second chance. Formerly incarcerated people deserve a second shot at life-and all obstacles to their being able to find that second chance in the green sector should be removed. Also, our urban youth deserve the opportunity to be part of something promising."

Jones is a strategic thinker who gives definite answers to the question, "Who are our friends, who are our adversaries?" He narrows the target to speculative capital with roots in carbon-based energy industries and the militarism needed to secure their supplies. He seeks close allies in the wider working class of all nationalities, especially in the Blue-Green Alliance formed on the core partnership of the United Steelworkers with the Sierra Club. He also looks for allies among faith communities, environmentalists in the suburbs and rural populations suffering at the hands of anti-ecological agribusiness, offering a vision of wind farms and solar arrays for sustainable rural development. He sees the importance of cutting back defense spending and opposing unjust wars abroad.

Finally, he holds out a hand to green businesses in alternative energies, the current and future manufacturers of clean power:

"Our success and survival as a species are largely and directly tied to the new eco-entrepreneurs-and the success and survival of their enterprises. Since almost all of the needed eco-technologies are likely to come from the private sector, civic leaders and voters should do all that can be done to help green business leaders succeed."

Jones is not talking just about mom and pop operations here, but an important and growing sector of productive capital. These will range from small upstarts to T Boone Pickens-type investors wanting to create giant wind farms and large coastal arrays of wave generators, along with the manufacturing firms that build their equipment. Some on the left who want to see a clean renewable energy future will have to make adjustments in their "anti-corporate" strategies if they want to pursue this goal effectively with these high-road allies. Dan Swinney of the Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council explains his current project, the Chicago Green Manufacturing Network, as a case in point:

"CMRC is working with the Cleveland-based Great Lakes Wind Network/WireNET and the City of Chicago in building the capacity of local manufacturing companies to become the supply chain for the explosive wind turbine industry. Illinois and other states currently have ambitious Renewable Energy Portfolios that create a huge market for wind turbine companies and others in the renewable energy field. Currently the components for these companies are principally made by European and Asian suppliers. We will rise to the challenge of building the capacity of local companies to supply the high quality components for wind turbines and other renewable energy companies. This will be a means to diversify the markets for some of the 12,000 manufacturing companies in our region and an opportunity to create hundreds if not thousands of new permanent, full-time jobs in manufacturing."

But Green Collar Economy's core mass base remains a united Black and Latino community in close alliance with organized labor, the same engine of change that put Obama in the White House. And by asserting the interests and needs of that base, the green jobs and infrastructure proposals in Obama's stimulus package serve to drive the entire recovery effort in a progressive direction.

"We want to build a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty," says Jones, 'We want this green wave to lift all boats…In the wake of Katrina, we reject the idea of 'free market' evacuation plans. Families should not be left behind to drown because they lack a functioning car or credit card…In an age of floods, we reject the ideology that says we must let our neighbors 'sink or swim'."

The nature of the Green New Deal's adversaries--the carbon-based energy speculators and the military industries defending them--is the key reason Jones' strategy requires a massive mobilized base. The structural reforms needed to dislodge and displace them are going to require a great deal of popular power from below. The petroleum-coal industrial nexus alone is subsidized to the tune of $1 trillion annually, according to Congressman Robert Kennedy Jr. in his foreword to Jones' book. Some are outright opposed to any "New Deal," green or otherwise, as the GOP in Congress reveal with their votes against the Recovery Act. The Green Jobs components were often cited by the right as "pork" or "the road to socialism." Others want to destroy the Green New Deal from within, via "greenwashing." These are politicians who take their lead from some corporations that have become skilled at changing their ads to "green" but continue producing toxics and other waste from the polluter's agenda.

Jones singles out Newt Gingrich, the GOP's neoliberal-in-chief, as particularly devious: "He has skillfully used rising fuel prices to stoke public support for climate-destroying measures…Their new tactic is to spread confusion about the real solutions by deliberately blurring distinctions between themselves and the champions of genuine answers." Jones has to take the battle into the government and electoral arenas. The resources of state power are required to bring the green economy to scale, even if it requires a gut-wrenching struggle with polluters who have a good number of politicians on their payrolls and with revenue streams long fused to the public trough.

The solidarity economy faces these battles as well. For the most part, it overlaps with the green economy at the grassroots. Its mission can be summarized as generating new wealth in a green way, but with a worker-community ownership or control component built into a project's agenda from the start. As a major finance capitalist and former oilman who wants to invest in wind farms in a major way, T Boone Pickens is clearly part of the green economy, but not part of the solidarity economy. A wind farm on an Indian reservation cooperatively owned by the tribe and employing its members and selling power both locally and regionally would be very much part of the solidarity economy.

But the picture is more complex. "Stakeholder" solutions are not quite as clear-cut. For instance, GAMESA, a Spanish high-tech firm and a leading European manufacturer of wind turbines, recently opened a plant in Bucks County, PA. To do so, it formed stakeholder partnerships with the county and state governments, getting tax allowances and land-use easements to refit and old closed steel mill. The United Steel Workers union was brought in as a partner: 1000 new union jobs were created, hiring many of the unemployed steelworkers. The "solidarity" here is between high-road capital, the USW, local government and the unemployed of the area, but it's a stretch for some who might want to reserve 'solidarity' strictly to cooperative ownership structures.

The stakeholder solidarity offers practical flexibility in the wider struggle to bring both movements to scale. Cooperative structures that evolve out of deeper structural reforms have the quality of altering the relations of power in production and local governance. Even if on a small scale, they can point to a future of wider economic democracy, acting as a bridge to new socialist relations.

In any case, a powerful high-road alliance opens the door to those on its left wing who want to take it farther. Van Jones himself has no problem with either form; his book celebrates the stakeholder green jobs alliances implemented by the Green Party mayor of Richmond, CA, as well as the Green Worker Cooperatives in building salvaging businesses in the South Bronx, NY.

At one point in his book, Jones uses a metaphor of two ships to sum up the current crossroads facing the American people, the Amistad and the Titanic. The latter carried the wealthy elite indulging in idle pleasures, and a proletarian crew labored below in an unsound structure. The former had been taken over by insurgent slaves, taken to safe harbor, but still lacked wider resources for the crew's future. The folly of reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic has long been a metaphor for doomed tinkering at reforms in a closed system. The Amistad, however, offers a more open future. Those familiar with the story know it involves further complex struggles, with new allies, high born and low, against a dying system. But it offers hope and change, both of which are in high regard these days.

[Carl Davidson is a member of the coordinating committee of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network, and a national committee member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and currently webmaster for 'Progressives for Obama.' He is co-author of 'CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age,' and co-editor of 'Solidarity Economy: Building Alternatives for People and Planet,' both available at http://lulu.com/stores/changemaker. If you like this article, go to http://progressivesforobama.net and make use of the PayPal button.]

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Steelworkers Meet Hip-Hoppers and Tree-Huggers

Photo: Van Jones at
Green Jobs 2009

Blue-Green Insurgency
Gets Fired Up at the
DC Green Jobs Conference

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

When you walk into a large and stately Washington, DC hotel lobby and find it teeming with thousands of smiling, buzzing people-half in labor union jackets and ball caps, the other half dressed in 30-something hip-hop causal-you know some special is happening.

This was the lively, energized scene for three cold wintry days this Feb 4-6 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, as nearly 3000 activists and organizers gathered for the "Good Jobs, Green Jobs" National Conference. The gathering was convened by more than 100 organizations, representing every major trade union and every major environmental group in the country, among others.

It's called the "blue-green alliance," the core of which is the United Steel Workers and the Sierra Club, which jointly launched the "Green Jobs" movement nationally at a conference in Pittsburgh, PA a year ago. The turnout this year is triple in size and highly energized by both the victory of President Barack Obama and the looming onset of an economic crisis unmatched in scope since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In addition to the steelworkers, the building trades were well represented, and the green groups spanned a wide range of concerns, for toxics to alternative energy to climate change. Also notable was the participation of a contingent of "high road" corporations rooted in the growing "green economy." Gamesa, a major Spanish firm specializing in wind turbines, and Piper Jaffray, a large paper company focused on recycled paper products, are two examples.

But a critical new dimension was added by Green For All, an organization rooted among inner city youth, and headed up by Van Jones. Jones is the author of "The Green Collar Economy" and an inspirational voice for a rising generation of multinational, multicultural insurgent youth.

The conference started off with 'Advocacy Day,' with a well-organized deployment of buses and team leaders that took hundreds of participants to Capitol Hill, and got them headed in the direction of the offices of their respective Senators and Representatives. With remarkable serendipity, the Senate was deadlocked that same day over details of the Obama stimulus package, with the GOP Right trying to gut many of the Green Jobs components as "wasteful," while seeking tax cuts and bailouts for the rich. The voices and pressure from the conference activists come not have been timelier.

"A trickle has become a torrent,' said plenary speaker Margie Alt from Environment America the next morning, comparing their present efforts with the organizing and direct action campaign of the civil rights movement of the early 1960s. There are two paths in repowering America with clean energy, she explained. "One would have us chase short-term profits; the other has us moving on new public transit and plug-in hybrid cars, built in the USA and powered by the sun and the wind. Only the second puts us back to work. It means that when the clean energy revolution is done right, when each does their part, all benefit."

Alt warmed up the session for Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO's Secretary-Treasurer and a former leader of the United Mine Workers. Trumka was a hero to millions in the Obama campaign for the no-nonsense way he took on the question of racism in rallying trade union organizers to win over white workers to vote for a Black candidate in the Appalachian areas.

"What a year!" Trumka proclaimed as he took the podium, referring not only to the election, but the Blue-Green Alliance's growth since Pittsburgh. "It's brought forward all the issues of race and class, and there's no going back. Good ideas and loud voices are desperately needed. In the mines, we were often told, jobs or the environment was the choice. But now we know the truth. It's not one or the other; it's both or neither. So get over it! This blue-green alliance isn't going away. We're in this together for the long haul."

Trumka had warm praise for Obama, but a sharp rebuke for the GOP Right. "All they can do is say, No!-No to fair trade, no to the Employee Free Choice Act, no to protecting the environment, no to domestic investment in new manufacturing. In the face of this, we have no guarantees; we'll get nothing here without a fight."

One topic discussed across many panels and workshop was the theme of the conference, "What is a Green Job?" and "What is a 'Good Job'?" The later was easily defined: a good job was a union job, a living wage with decent benefits. Green jobs were viewed from a number of angles. Trumka defined it as every job that contributes to a low-carbon future. Nuclear power and 'clean coal' efforts might come under that, but would be opposed by a good number in the coalition. There was no effort, moreover, to enforce unanimity on the point; debate and discussion would continue. There was wide agreement, however, on the Green jobs most in reach of unemployed youth: solar panel installations, 'winterizing' older housing stock to Green standards, urban agriculture plans, and expansion of mass transit.

The conference planners stressed the issue in a booklet distributed to all attendees, entitled "High Road or Low Road? Job Quality in the New Economy." It was aimed at Green corporations trying to do things on the cheap, paying workers at near the minimum wage. Terence O'Sullivan, president of the Laborer's International Union, exposed the problem:

"We did a survey of every job currently being called 'Green' by employers, and found the majority of them didn't pay enough to support a family of two." There was no sustainability, he suggested, without the working class itself being sustained. Borrowing from Henry Ford, he said, "Every worker building a Green product should be able to afford a plug-in hybrid car. It's very possible to build green, pay union wages, and still make a profit. There's no caring for the Earth that doesn't also include caring for the people on it."

Labor, government and business could be partners, O'Sullivan explained further, so long as the focus was "good jobs, at a living wage and the prevailing wage." The dynamic union leader, whose union represents some 500,000 building trades workers, stressed that "low road businesses and policies must not be rewarded….This fight isn't over; it's just started. The Republicans can't lead us anywhere; they couldn't find the supposed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and today they can't find even a trace of the first half of $700 billion given to the banks on Wall Street." To tremendous applause, he concluded by saying "No retreat, no surrender!" and that a "workers revolution" had to be paired with the "green revolution."

The conference participants got to speak their minds in the nearly 50 workshops spread over the three days. These covered a wide range on topics, from prison re-entry and green jobs to high road capital strategies for new wealth creation in a green economy. Everywhere, however, there was the common theme of expanding employment and guarding the environment.

In a workshop on capital strategies, for instance, about 100 people discussed methods for investing in a green economy. One case in point was Ontario's Algoma Steel, one of the largest worker-owned coops in North America, now thriving after a worker buyout assisted by venture capital and government funds. Fred Richmond, USW International Vice President, presented the example of his union's cooperation with Gamesa, a Spanish firm specializing in building wind turbines. One mill has been recently reopened in Bucks County in Eastern Pennsylvania, and another is underway in Western PA, creating 1000 new USW jobs. The ensuing demand for structural steel for the turbines has directly meant 250 steelworker jobs in Northwest Indiana.

Another workshop of 200 people went deeply into the energy policy of the state of Colorado, which now has the target of 20 percent 'clean energy' consumption set by the state legislature. Discussion focused on the transformation of two isolated minorities, green militants and labor unions, in a traditionally GOP-dominated 'Red' state. By coming to see each other as allies rather than adversaries, they were able to reframe common issues and win majorities. Said one presenter: "When you explain to farmers how the royalties from a wind turbine in their county can pay their local school budget and lower their taxes, and bring some new jobs as well, you have their attention. That's what we did, and as you know, Colorado turned 'Blue' in the last election, with the blue-green alliance playing a key role."

James Hoffa of the Teamsters also spoke to the blue-green alliance and how it started in the streets of Seattle in the massive street battles of "Teamsters and Turtles" on one side, and the World Trade Organization and the police on the other. "You learn who your friends are," he declared, 'and you learn a few things in the process. We originally supported drilling in ANWAR. I'd like to announce to you today that we no longer do."

Some of the most powerful presentations came on the last day. First up was Winona LaDuke, member of the Ojibwe (Chippewa) Tribe living in the White Earth Indian Reservation in Minnesota. She was the Vice Presidential Candidate with Ralph Nader on the Green Party ticket in 2000, but endorsed John Kerry in 2004 and Obama in 2008.

After greeting the crowd in her traditional language, LaDuke proclaimed with a smile, "I must admit it's a treat to come here from Minnesota to the home of the Great Black Father!" which brought down the house.

But she quickly turned serious, and the need to break with a petroleum-centered economy. "We can't build a society based on conquest. We are addicted, and like addicts, we hang out with dealers and do bad stuff. Our people lived in a green economy on this continent for nearly 30,000 years, and knew how to live within their means." She also took aim at the nuclear industry, noting that two-thirds of uranium was mined on Indian lands, and all of the proposals of where to store hazardous nuclear waste were Indian lands as well. "In what was the largest uranium mine in New Mexico, they've now build three prisons. How's that for a future?" For a Green solution, she pointed out that Indian lands were also "the windiest and sunniest' places in the country, and welcomed wind turbines and solar collectors, "but we want local ownership and control" as part of the package.

Fred Richmond of the steelworkers took the platform next and declared to the several thousand now present, "Feel the spirit of our sister, Winona LaDuke! Feel her passion for this land, as opposed to those global corporations with no loyalty to anyone apart from themselves!"

Richmond went on to give a history of how the blue-green alliance started and evolved, beginning with the USW and the Sierra Club. "We both came to understand that we cannot get good jobs without a clean environment, and that we can't get a clean environment without good jobs. We both needed unconventional allies to fight the low road's worldwide race to the bottom." Speaking about decades of fathers and grandfathers killed and poisoned in the mills, he ended with "We need to take our planet back!"

Now it was time for Green For All, which fired everyone up with the Hip-Hop video, "Green Anthem 1," (available on YouTube) a powerful portrayal of the entry of multicultural youth into the mix of "unconventional" but very natural allies. It brought Van Jones to the stage.

"We started this because we were tired of going to funerals," Jones began. "We were tired of police killing kids, and kids killing kids." These were rooted in the oppression of the inner city's joblessness and hopelessness, he explained and described initial work with the Ella Baker Center to fight for home repair and cleanup jobs, and called it "Green Jobs, Not Jails." Later the concept deepened into major structural reforms described in his book, "The Green Collar Economy."

"This is a profound movement that goes deeper than installing solar panels," Jones went on. This is showing the world a new America…. But no change can come in one day. We have to work every day. We have to change the economy, not just with green proposals, but with solidarity back in the center of it. We have to move democracy from the ballot box to the workplace. We are the human family coming back to itself. Think long and hard on this question: in the final hour, who are we? Who are we on this planet? Are we a swarm of locusts, devouring everything? Or are we honeybees, building together and adding to life?"

"This is our world historic moment, am I right, brother steelworkers?" Jones said gesturing to Richmond. "I'm not working for a lot of grants and awards on a dead planet….The clean energy movement can't be stopped, and labor is the pillar of the whole pro-democracy movement we need." To the Green For All youth, Jones added, "You are Ground Zero in this fight. To green the planet, we must green the city, and there's no greening the city without greening the ghetto. This is a movement that let's you rise!

Jones was adamant on the need to organize and mobilize at the base, to go back to the union halls and neighborhoods, and speak to all those not yet involved. He was warmly supportive of Obama, and the need to back him up. "But there will be times to push him, and times to be a few steps in front on him."

The question of war and militarism was brought front and center by Rev. Lenox Yearwood, who followed Jones. Yearwood is president of the Hip-Hop Caucus and a minister who serves as an ambassador for the hip-hop generation. Formerly an Air Force officer and chaplain, he raised a ruckus when he delivered a sermon to the Joint Chiefs of Staff entitled, "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" and was further radicalized by the events around Hurricane Katrina. Trying to enter a Capitol Hill hearing featuring General Petraeus, he was arrested and severely beaten.

""No War, No Warming!' is a slogan that has to link our struggles," said Yearwood. "I recall the words of our departed brother, Damu Smith, asking me if my job was to keep to myself, or fight for my people. This is our generation's lunch-counter moment. One hundred years from now, not of us in this room will be here; but we have to make sure the planet will still be inhabitable for our children and grandchildren. Organize everywhere, mobilize everyone, and lift up all! Power to the people!"

It was a fitting summation of the spirit of the conference participants. Their next task was clear enough: to take the nature of the unity and the wide alliances in the room at this national gathering, and replicate them at the grassroots in every state and major city in the country.

[Carl Davidson writes for "Beaver County Blue," a website anchored in Western Pennsylvania. He is also a steering committee member of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network (http://ussen.org) and a national committee member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (http://cc-ds.org), as well as webmaster for 'Progressives for Obama' If you like this article, go to the http://progressivesforobama.net and make use of the PayPal button.]
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