tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57280474353726885722024-03-05T09:21:09.817-08:00Democracy CharterCarl Davidsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00215874972566616424noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728047435372688572.post-824314510800708442017-12-07T17:10:00.000-08:002017-12-07T17:39:58.573-08:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">“The Continuing Struggle for a Substantive
Democracy: From the Atlantic Revolutions to Today”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">A panel presentation at the College of
Charleston in South Carolina, June 16, 2017<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
The
panel was part of a 3-day conference on “Transforming Public History from
Charleston to the Atlantic World,” June 14-16, 2017 that<b> </b>brought together some 300 historians and interpreters who work at
museums, educational institutions, and historic sites, mainly in the South of
the U.S. and Barbados. Conference participants are on the front lines of
interpreting to the public the history of slavery and the voices of enslaved
people. Astonishingly, the true history of slavery – departing from the “happy
slave” narrative long told by institutions, if told at all – is only now
beginning to be told in the public square. One of the many conference workshops
was a day-long discussion on “Giving Voice to Long Silenced Millions:
Interpreting Slavery at Historic Sites.” <b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
The
panel on the “Continuing Struggle for a Substantive Democracy” contributed to
the conference theme by discussing two of the most significant events that
occurred during the 15th and 19th centuries, i.e., the development of
industrial capitalism as a world-wide system and the forced migration of
millions of Africans to the Western Hemisphere. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
“These
two phenomena were also interrelated,” reads the panel description. “The slave
trade provided the primitive accumulation of capital, while slave-produced raw
materials (cotton, tobacco, sugar) provided the initial consumer commodities
that fueled capitalism. The central role that African-descended people occupied
in the course of capitalist development also placed them in a strategic role in
the development of democracy, the political system that developed out of
capitalism.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
The
panel interrogated the ways in which African Americans helped to define the
meaning of American democracy through their struggles to end chattel slavery,
realize quality health care, and define the terms of citizenship and how
institutions of public history can provide forms for a public discussion of
these issues.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75"
coordsize="21600,21600" o:spt="75" o:preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe"
filled="f" stroked="f">
<v:stroke joinstyle="miter"/>
<v:formulas>
<v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"/>
<v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"/>
<v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"/>
<v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"/>
<v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"/>
<v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"/>
</v:formulas>
<v:path o:extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect"/>
<o:lock v:ext="edit" aspectratio="t"/>
</v:shapetype><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_2" o:spid="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75"
style='width:303.75pt;height:202.5pt;visibility:visible'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Guest\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image001.jpg"
o:title=""/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqbTf-pJxTtgXXpdsHq7_MGXoiZdb2OgK1XJkX1Ma7FB-E6EeJGIibwkbcsvDPdribF8h7WKEhL9wT4sb2qqb0HfuEXug3VWM5dsEWngcRSjMhjxJVoswTFQARSSjjUMlmnG7EViY2clo/s1600/PanelOpening.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqbTf-pJxTtgXXpdsHq7_MGXoiZdb2OgK1XJkX1Ma7FB-E6EeJGIibwkbcsvDPdribF8h7WKEhL9wT4sb2qqb0HfuEXug3VWM5dsEWngcRSjMhjxJVoswTFQARSSjjUMlmnG7EViY2clo/s320/PanelOpening.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>From l to r:
Conference Moderator Donald West, Jim Campbell, Tim Johnson<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh26WrZFwCfLSvBBjLEUKH73ChMMPED_lfcHNNKxDCQugQSLLnBiwYeNM4-iJ0EAE-QgK_4K8uL-DfyrEf3fnAaepsD8PxyW1mgK2dZki2MOaBsdsivmWDf8ha0-oOJucYOOHJlNRN14LA/s1600/JimCampbell.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh26WrZFwCfLSvBBjLEUKH73ChMMPED_lfcHNNKxDCQugQSLLnBiwYeNM4-iJ0EAE-QgK_4K8uL-DfyrEf3fnAaepsD8PxyW1mgK2dZki2MOaBsdsivmWDf8ha0-oOJucYOOHJlNRN14LA/s320/JimCampbell.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5728047435372688572" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5728047435372688572" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5728047435372688572" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5728047435372688572" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5728047435372688572" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5728047435372688572" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td bgcolor="white" height="113" style="background: white; vertical-align: top;" width="268"><!--[endif]--><!--[if !mso]--><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="mso-ignore: vglayout; position: absolute; z-index: 1;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width: 100%px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div class="shape" style="padding: 3.6pt 7.2pt 3.6pt 7.2pt;" v:shape="Text_x0020_Box_x0020_6">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<b><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%;">James E. Campbell</span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%;">, longtime
resident of Charleston, SC, is a </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%;">retired public school
administrator and National Co-Chair Emeritus of
the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
<!--[if !mso]--></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><!--[endif]--><!--[if !mso & !vml]--> <!--[endif]--><!--[if !vml]--></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype
id="_x0000_t202" coordsize="21600,21600" o:spt="202" path="m,l,21600r21600,l21600,xe">
<v:stroke joinstyle="miter"/>
<v:path gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect"/>
</v:shapetype><v:shape id="Text_x0020_Box_x0020_6" o:spid="_x0000_s1026"
type="#_x0000_t202" style='position:absolute;margin-left:258pt;margin-top:37.35pt;
width:198pt;height:81.75pt;z-index:1;visibility:visible' stroked="f"
strokeweight=".5pt"/><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAcnITHt1caMAZD-B0Ny1IzTDEnoToTxrBsAG13w7uCHQMK_LhVuk6B2hYJriAOFj0TEGz0syNlmUYyj8-NsZByuqrHTluzlOI2SvyI7BGDJzvO_YKB3-y4OUAl-UAV7sIAjCQAdEaENU/s1600/TimJohnson.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAcnITHt1caMAZD-B0Ny1IzTDEnoToTxrBsAG13w7uCHQMK_LhVuk6B2hYJriAOFj0TEGz0syNlmUYyj8-NsZByuqrHTluzlOI2SvyI7BGDJzvO_YKB3-y4OUAl-UAV7sIAjCQAdEaENU/s320/TimJohnson.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="height: 113px; margin-left: 344px; margin-top: 49px; mso-ignore: vglayout; position: absolute; width: 268px; z-index: 1;">
</span><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
id="Picture_x0020_1" o:spid="_x0000_i1026" type="#_x0000_t75" style='width:246pt;
height:164.25pt;visibility:visible'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Guest\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image003.jpg"
o:title=""/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--><b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td bgcolor="white" height="82" style="background: white; vertical-align: top;" width="272"><!--[endif]--><!--[if !mso]--><span style="mso-ignore: vglayout; position: absolute; z-index: 2;">
</span><!--[endif]--><!--[if !mso & !vml]--> <b><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">Timothy V. Johnson</span></b><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"> is the director of the Tamiment Library & the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University's Bobst Library.</span><!--[endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><br />
<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE3t6uZ4UboenFsBkQF4awg26gJS6APb7ruUJfXMP5HcyVofFYva8Dm6CbDZwL__4-5rZDikbHKnd_RYf740RcZi0viozDBA4LqsMGxZTZJbOLFUQyoW-QDXS5nqadM52L26oOSmQFNdM/s1600/MildredWilliamson.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE3t6uZ4UboenFsBkQF4awg26gJS6APb7ruUJfXMP5HcyVofFYva8Dm6CbDZwL__4-5rZDikbHKnd_RYf740RcZi0viozDBA4LqsMGxZTZJbOLFUQyoW-QDXS5nqadM52L26oOSmQFNdM/s320/MildredWilliamson.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Mildred Williamson</span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> is the
Director of Research & Regulatory Affairs for the Cook County Health &
Hospitals System (CCHHS) and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of
Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health (UIC-SPH).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody>
<tr><td bgcolor="white" height="93" style="background: white; vertical-align: top;" width="269"><span style="mso-ignore: vglayout; position: absolute; z-index: 4;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width: 100%px;"><tbody>
<tr><td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnz5qJ3rmNcZokZSfTCc-GIKMxzkAIL9fEu7_kbJ9tzm3pTm0UrS-UrZHO_uUYeHP12KrfqZJIAssE2e4vZnd8l9KgEj172uYsZVmLFMDFAuTPq8gb9w5vqmU01WpFAmJw80sJ2ZBpgfI/s1600/MarkSolomon.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnz5qJ3rmNcZokZSfTCc-GIKMxzkAIL9fEu7_kbJ9tzm3pTm0UrS-UrZHO_uUYeHP12KrfqZJIAssE2e4vZnd8l9KgEj172uYsZVmLFMDFAuTPq8gb9w5vqmU01WpFAmJw80sJ2ZBpgfI/s320/MarkSolomon.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="shape" style="padding: 3.6pt 7.2pt 3.6pt 7.2pt;" v:shape="Text_x0020_Box_x0020_9">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<b><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<br /></div>
</div>
<!--[if !mso]--></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="mso-ignore: vglayout; position: absolute; z-index: 4;">
</span><!--[endif]--><!--[if !mso & !vml]--> <b><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Mark Solomon</span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> is <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Prof. Emeritus of History at Simmons College and Associate of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University.</span></span><!--[endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
id="Text_x0020_Box_x0020_9" o:spid="_x0000_s1029" type="#_x0000_t202" style='position:absolute;
margin-left:224.25pt;margin-top:40.4pt;width:198.75pt;height:66.75pt;
z-index:4;visibility:visible;mso-position-horizontal-relative:margin'
stroked="f" strokeweight=".5pt">
<w:wrap anchorx="margin"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
id="Picture_x0020_5" o:spid="_x0000_i1029" type="#_x0000_t75" style='width:206.25pt;
height:138pt;visibility:visible'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Guest\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image009.jpg"
o:title=""/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5728047435372688572" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5728047435372688572" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5728047435372688572" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5728047435372688572" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5728047435372688572" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5728047435372688572" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
</div>
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU3d2H4-9puFiBKFPZ3bXhiVCgvqrG7AmXwr9iJ7hpp3z1eCdo-Q1ko7gxntbVJjEI72bpCkbcmh0NNQo_hoqLWEPFa4n-DGm1t2MWiEfT5CMUlbzIgEeDF3sRslvJi2r5LiW25j8Sv3o/s1600/Literature+%25282%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU3d2H4-9puFiBKFPZ3bXhiVCgvqrG7AmXwr9iJ7hpp3z1eCdo-Q1ko7gxntbVJjEI72bpCkbcmh0NNQo_hoqLWEPFa4n-DGm1t2MWiEfT5CMUlbzIgEeDF3sRslvJi2r5LiW25j8Sv3o/s320/Literature+%25282%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
id="Picture_x0020_10" o:spid="_x0000_i1030" type="#_x0000_t75" style='width:300pt;
height:200.25pt;visibility:visible'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Guest\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image011.jpg"
o:title=""/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
To
order “The Struggle for a Substantive Democracy: An Organizing Framework and
Study Guide for Activists” ($10) and<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
“Climbin’
Jacobs Ladder: The Black Freedom Movement Writings of Jack O’Dell” edited and
introduced by Nikhil Pal Singh ($20)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
Contact
the Committees of Correspondence Education Fund, Inc.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
2472
Broadway #204, NY, NY 10025
646.578.3609 <a href="mailto:edfund@coced.org">edfund@coced.org</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Karl Kramerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13409084446285409050noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728047435372688572.post-62727725645794801332017-11-30T20:34:00.005-08:002017-11-30T20:34:49.254-08:00Vision for a Congress of the People<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; text-align: justify;">The
first five months of the Trump administration have confirmed our worst
assumptions about the 2016 elections. In this brief period, the Trump
administration has unleashed an all-out assault on the rights of working
people, oppressed nationalities, women, the LGBTQ communities, the
undocumented, and those who struggle for peaceful solutions to the world’s
problems.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Trump’s
actions in this short period have foretold how he intends to “make America
great again.” He has appointed an Attorney General who has made it clear that
he intends to restrict voting rights and strip victims of police violence of
legal recourse. He has appointed a Secretary of Education who is an avowed
opponent of public education. He has appointed a Secretary of Health and Human
Services who is determined to strip millions of U.S. citizens of access to
decent health care, including reproductive rights. This list goes on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Clearly
the people of the U.S. are facing the most critical, all-sided attack on their
democratic rights in a generation. Discussions will continue over what led to
the Trump election. What is clear from the discussions so far is that the
issues of racism, sexism, and the weaknesses of the Democratic Party are all
major problems that need to be addressed by the Left.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">What
is also clear is that recent events have confirmed Newton’s third law: for
every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Demonstrations
of over two million (worldwide) occurred on the day after Trump’s inauguration.
In nearly every major city in the U.S., people took to the streets to
demonstrate their opposition to Trumps agenda – taking on the moniker of “The
Resistance.” This spontaneous reaction to Trump’s agenda is promising, but
without organization it will be limited.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">In
1955 in South Africa, a call was made for a Congress of the People to
strengthen the struggle against apartheid and lay out a vision for a democratic
future. The Congress met in Kliptown and the result was the Freedom Charter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">We
believe it is time initiate a process for a Congress of the People in the
United States. We envision this as a gathering of “The Resistance,” taking as
its starting point the Democracy Charter, a document developed by longtime
civil rights leader Jack O’Dell, which lays out a broad programmatic outline
for a substantive democracy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">The Democracy Charter<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="ListParagraph" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .75in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;">I.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: JA;">A national commitment to end homelessness during this next decade;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="ListParagraph" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .75in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;">II.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: JA;">A national commitment to an
economy of full employment, at socially useful jobs, and a livable wage as
public policy;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="ListParagraph" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .75in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;">III.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: JA;">The right to an environment
free of bigotry, violence, and intolerance as an expression of our nation’s
irreversible commitment to human rights, including full recognition of reproductive
rights and the rights of gays and lesbians;</span></span><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="ListParagraph" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .75in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;">IV.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: JA;">The doors of learning open
to all, from early childhood education through college, as a public trust;</span></span><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="ListParagraph" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .75in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;">V.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: JA;">A new foreign and military
policy as an expression of our nation’s character;</span></span><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="ListParagraph" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .75in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;">VI.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: JA;">Universal health insurance
coverage (Single-Payer Model);</span></span><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="ListParagraph" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .75in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;">VII.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: JA;">A Social Security system with firm and undiminished integrity;</span></span><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="ListParagraph" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .75in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;">VIII.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: JA;">A farm economy restructured to rest on family and cooperative enterprise;</span></span><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="ListParagraph" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .75in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;">IX.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: JA;">A prison system accountable
to the public for fulfilling its charge as a center for rehabilitation;</span></span><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="ListParagraph" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .75in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;">X.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: JA;">Restoration, preservation,
and protection of the quality of our natural environment as a vital social
inheritance for future generations to use and enjoy;</span></span><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="ListParagraph" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .75in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;">XI.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: JA;">Expanded public ownership
and management of resources strategic to the health of our nation’s economy;</span></span><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="ListParagraph" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .75in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;">XII.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: JA;">The right to know that every vote will be counted – a guarantee that is
an inseparable part of the right to vote;</span></span><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="ListParagraph" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;">XIII.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: JA;">The airwaves maintained as national public property.</span></span><span style="color: #343434; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;">Issued by the Democracy
Charter Committee: Jim Campbell, Tim Johnson, Mildred Williamson, Mark Solomon,
Anne Mitchell, Pat Fry, Karl Kramer, Janet Tucker, Erica Carter, Meta Van
Sickle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;">For more information
contact the Committees of Correspondence Education Fund, Inc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;">2576 Broadway, #201, NY,
NY 10025 646.578.3609 edfund@coced.org<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
Karl Kramerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13409084446285409050noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728047435372688572.post-87228873717257397232017-11-30T20:33:00.001-08:002017-11-30T20:33:12.876-08:00"Continuing Struggle for a Substantive Democracy: From the Atlantic Revolutions to Today"<div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1512100521562_15957" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
A panel presentation held at the College of Charleston on June 16, 2017. The panel was part of a 3-day conference on "Transforming Public History from Charleston to the Atlantic World," June 14 - 17, 2017.</div>
<div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1512100521562_15957" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1512100521562_15964" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
To hear an audio recording of the panel, click on the link and hit Download to the right of the title of the panel: <a href="https://vimeo.com/222846455" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1512100521562_16093" rel="nofollow" shape="rect" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; background: transparent; color: #196ad4; font-size: 12.8px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">https://vimeo.com/22284 6455</a></div>
<div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1512100521562_15955" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br clear="none" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;" /></div>
<div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1512100521562_15951" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Your feedback would be most welcomed.</div>
Karl Kramerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13409084446285409050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728047435372688572.post-6520383056355000352017-11-30T20:13:00.003-08:002017-11-30T20:14:29.518-08:00From the Freedom Charter to the Democracy Charter<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">(Paper delivered at the 2017 </span></b><st1:city><st1:place><b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Carolina</span></b></st1:place></st1:city><b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"> Low Country
and Atlantic World Conference on “Transforming Public History from </span></b><st1:city><st1:place><b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Charleston</span></b></st1:place></st1:city><b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"> to the
Atlantic World,” </span></b><st1:date day="16" month="6" year="2017"><b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">June 16,
2017</span></b></st1:date><b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Mark Solomon<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In 1955, as the dark night of
apartheid was descending in force upon </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">South Africa</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">, the liberation movement of the South African people,
the African National Congress with its allies rallied 50,000 volunteers to
spread out through townships and countryside to learn the needs and priorities
(“freedom demands”) of the people. Those demands were collected and synthesized
into a “Freedom Charter,” a definitive expression of the democratic will of the
country’s majority. It was adopted by 3,000 delegates at a semi-clandestine
“Congress of the People,” convened at </span><st1:place><st1:city><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Kliptown</span></st1:city><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">, </span><st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">South
Africa</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">
on </span><st1:date day="26" month="6" year="1955"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">26
June 1955</span></st1:date><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The list of demands in the
Charter was more than a recitation of a growing movement’s aspirations. Those
demands recapitulated the historic experience of the South African people’s struggle
for freedom and of ANC’s experience since its founding in 1912. Crucially, they
constituted the vision of a liberated society and a strategy for attaining that
liberation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">A vision is essential to all
transformative movements. Without one, a movement is rudderless, without clear
objectives and purpose. That can be fatal to the clarity and fighting capacity
of the movement. The vision inherent in the Ten Demands that constituted the
core of the Charter was grounded an analysis of the past and present social
realities of life in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">South Africa</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">. That analysis located the country’s brutal white
supremacy in the nation’s capitalist system enforced with military brutality to
protect and aggrandize the intense exploitation of the native black majority
and other oppressed nationalities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The vision of a liberated </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">South Africa</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> was manifested in the Charter’s opening words: “We,
the people of </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">South Africa</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">, declare for all our country and the world to know:
that </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">South
Africa</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">
belongs to all who live in it….” An apartheid government rules on “injustice
and inequality” without the will of the people who have been “robbed of their
birthright to land, liberty and peace.” That declaration committed the
liberation movement to a future of equality – with equal rights and opportunities
for all without distinction based on color, race, sex or belief. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The emotional and political
heart of the Charter was a pledge to build a democracy that pervaded every
aspect of South African life. That meant free universal education shorn of the
color line, an end to segregated slums and a commitment to decent housing for
all. It meant universal health care founded on an end to hunger, reproductive
choice and special care for mothers and children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In a society with a multitude
of ethnic and tribal groups, all were guaranteed the right to their own
languages and cultures and “protected by law” against insults and white
supremacist attacks on the group’s race and national pride. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">At the heart of the Charter’s
vision was a contention that substantive democracy required deep structural and
institutional change in South Africa’s economy – change that deeply transformed
not just the country’s politics and culture, but its economic structure as
well. Thus, the Charter advanced a vision of restoring the country’s wealth to
its people. That meant people’s ownership of mineral wealth beneath the soil as
well as banks and monopolized industry. It meant that every South African had
an equal right to training in crafts and professions. All racial restrictions
on ownership of land would end. Forced labor and farm prisons would be
abolished. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">That vision of economic equality
is yet to be realized. The liberation of economic institutions has proved to be
harder to achieve than political progress towards equality. The promise of land
reform and re-division of lands among working farmers also has not been
achieved. However, that struggle in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">South Africa</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> for a decent life goes on in the face of neo-liberal
globalization generated by transnational capital. That globalization has led to
a frontal assault upon working people around the word – driving wages down, assaulting
labor’s rights, accelerating inequality, bankrupting peripheral countries,
engaging in seemingly endless wars and uprooting populations, thus creating
vast numbers of refugees. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Against that background, many
of the Charter’s social and cultural objectives have been stymied by globalized
corporate power. Yet, the Freedom Charter remains a guidepost to emancipation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The Charter’s vision of a just
society became the basis for one of the most progressive constitutions in the
world – one that aspires to full citizen participation at every level of
government. One person, one vote is constitutionally guaranteed, as is equal
pay for equal work. No South African can be imprisoned without a fair trial;
punishment for crimes aim at re-education, not vengeance; all laws that
discriminate based on gender, race, color or belief have been repealed. An
indivisible right to speak, to organize, to publish, to form trade unions, etc.
is assured. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The Freedom Charter in 1955
recognized the inseparable link between peace and domestic development. It
embraced the principle of self-determination for all and the transcendent need
to advance diplomacy over war, recognizing that genuine social progress can
advance only with peace. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">On its second day, the
Kliptown conference was broken up by police with Nelson Mandela in disguise, barely
escaping arrest. Before their departure, the delegates shouted approval of the
Charter with pledges that they will fight side by side throughout their lives
until liberation is won. The Charter guided the long struggle for freedom
through massive non-violent resistance and armed struggle when conditions
warranted such an approach. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The Freedom Charter embedded
a strategy along with its vision of liberation. That strategy was based on
building a mass multiracial movement aimed at establishing a non-racial </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">South Africa</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">. Thus, the Charter addressed the needs and demands of
a multitude of constituencies – forging unity out of diversity – unity that
would eventually overwhelm the apartheid system. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">At the core of the strategic
building of a freedom majority was an historic alliance of the ANC with COSATU,
the prime union sector of the predominantly black working class and the South
African Communist Party, which since the 1ate 1920s had been a principled force
in opposing the white supremacist regime. That alliance, under the leadership
of Mandela and colleagues, most of whom, spent more than a quarter century in
apartheid prisons, built a powerful international movement, advancing worldwide
support for liberation through a massive campaign of boycott, divestment and
sanctions that played a critical role in bringing the racist regime to its knees.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In the fall of 1979, the
Reverend Jesse Jackson asked legendary labor organizer, activist, writer and
former international liaison for Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern
Christian Leadership Council, Jack O’Dell to join him on a ten-day visit to </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">South Africa</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> coordinated by the ANC.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Jack O’Dell writes,
“Everywhere we went, from Cape Town to Durban, from Port Elizabeth to
Johannesburg, the Freedom Charter would come up … in our conversations.”
Despite the ruthlessness of the regime, the Charter “united the freedom
movement in all of its sectors to inspire hope and confidence in ultimate
victory.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The Freedom Charter remained
in Jack O’Dell’s intellect, in his activist persona and in his heart. He noted
that the Charter was promulgated in 1955, a year still enveloped in the oppressive
force of the Cold War and institutional racism. Nineteen-Fifty-Five was also a
time of ground breaking transformative events: the Bandung Conference in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Indonesia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> that gave birth to the movement of non-aligned
nations and the Montgomery Bus Boycott that spurred the mass movement against
segregation and launched a new stage in the historic civil rights movement. For
Jack, all three events were “seminal” in their own right. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Of greatest significance,
those events took place in the darkest of times, confirming that even under the
most oppressive circumstances, resistance stirs, visions of justice emerge and
masses awaken to new possibilities for a better life and a better world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Today, we are witnessing the
emergence of right wing nationalism around the world and at home – exploiting
anger and resentment over perceived abandonment by political power and fueled
by racism, homophobia and misogyny. At the same time, we are witnessing an
upsurge of resistance to that nationalism and its disastrous undermining of
democratic rights. Millions of women, communities of color and working people
are mobilizing to fight back in the streets and at the ballot box.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> (The stunning success in recent days of the
British Labor Party led by Jeremy Corbin, is a striking confirmation of the
powerful impact and enthusiastic public embrace of a political program
unambiguously grounded in the fight against austerity and for social justice
embodied in the Party’s forward-looking manifesto “For the Many, Not the Few.”)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In the present climate of
crisis and opportunity, Jack O’Dell has brought forward the Democracy Charter
in the spirit of the South African Freedom Charter. It aspires to be a starting
point for a national discussion aimed a building a consensus vision and program
for urgently needed change. The Democracy Charter seeks to end the
fragmentation of progressive groups divided into s a multitude of disconnected
single-issue organizations that sap the vitality of the movement. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The Democracy Charter affirms
the inseparability of issues and the need for connection and cooperation among all
progressive forces fighting on a variety of fronts. The Democracy Charter
demolishes the artificial separation between so-called identity politics (such
as issues of concern to women, to African Americans, Latinos, LGBTQ, etc.) and
class anchored issues of deep concern to working people. The Charter connects
the inseparable concerns grounded in race, class and gender, demonstrating that
women and all racial, ethnic and national groups are inseparable sectors of the
working class. The Charter stresses “substantive democracy,” rejecting
palliatives that sustain the status Quo. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The demands enumerated in the
Charter require a deep and thoroughgoing advance of democratic people’s power
expressed in a qualitative redistribution of the country’s resources. In key
respects, the Democracy Charter is embedded in the country’s progressive
history, particularly augmenting Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Economic Bill of Rights”
unfurled during World War II that called for a full employment economy, health
care for all and an end to poverty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Among the most salient points
of the Democracy Charter are: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">A commitment to full
employment at a living wage with equal pay for equal work; <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">A farm economy based on
family farming and cooperative enterprise;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">An end to homelessness;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Education from early
childhood to college as a public trust;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Single payer universal health
care;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">A strong and fully reliable
Social Security system with undiminished integrity;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The right to be free of bigotry,
hatred and violence as part of an irreversible commitment to human rights,
including full recognition of women’s reproductive choice and the rights of the
LGBTQ community.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">A prison system accountable
to the public that privileges rehabilitation over punishment;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Expanded public ownership and
management of resources central to the health of the country’s economy;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">A new foreign and military
policy that is built on diplomacy, cooperation, the dismantling of over 700
military bases around the world, prohibition of weapons of mass destruction and
a reduced military budget commensurate with the country’s domestic goals;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">An unqualified and unimpeded
right to vote and the right to have every vote counted; <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Restoration, preservation and
protection of our natural environment as a vital social inherence for present
and future generations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Inspired from across the </span><st1:place><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Atlantic</span></st1:place><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> by the South African Freedom Charter and by the powerful vision of a
better country and world, the Democracy Charter can be a vessel of unity among
all who resist proto-fascism. It can be a foundation for beginning the long
transformation process of returning the country’s material wealth and spiritual
values to its people. It can be the basis
for building a “Congress of the People,” to facilitate the final draft of the
Charter and lay the groundwork for a vast grass roots movement for social
change. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The final words are Jack
O’Dell’s: “This is a great moment for
all of us as we confidently take up the challenge to create a vision shared
with the people all around us. … Recognizing and accepting this challenge is
the key to the success of all our collective efforts to transform our nation
into a peaceful, socially conscious democracy.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In this spirit, we shall
overcome!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Mark Solomon is the author of
<i>The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African
Americans, 1917-1936 </i>(University Press of Mississippi). He is a past
national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and
Socialism (CCDS) and is currently an associate at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute
of the </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Hutchins</span></st1:placename><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Center</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> for African and African American Research at </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Harvard</span></st1:placename><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">University</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Karl Kramerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13409084446285409050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728047435372688572.post-23542879713008027362011-12-22T18:12:00.001-08:002011-12-22T18:12:55.221-08:00GOP Engaging In Mass Vote Theft<h3><img height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3BnGfcMnNuKdmxgSYFZLjPqTZ4NlZg94EW80IbIGQvJs0rjAWoywLkJN1kIbKYRRuOLRRMjKuNxjtSr2D5SQELY8pug-kn8p7xLVr-vk71Z6_TJhN4fkA9YgpAAKFcUxpj9m4WgM1i0Nm/s1600/bond.jpg" width="398"> </h3> <p><em>Julian Bond, center, in the SNCC days of the early 1960s</em></p> <h3>Voting Rights: Which Side Are You On? </h3> <p align="left"><strong>By Julian Bond <br></strong><em><a href="http://progressivesforobama.net">Progressive America Rising</a> via Chicago Tribune</em> </p> <p align="left">Dec. 18, 2011 - Our democracy is threatened today in ways I could not imagine we'd face in the 21st century, when back in 1960, as a 20-year-old, I helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. We were called the "shock troops of the civil rights movement" and our sit-ins and other nonviolent protests energized the movement. A new generation of youth is now occupying the public debate, changing how we discuss social and economic justice, forcing us to rethink class and privilege. But they dare not take for granted the hard-won gains of a previous generation, who secured the vote as a fundamental right, not a privilege only for those with means. <p align="left">In the 1960s, at great personal risk, we fought poll taxes and literacy tests to ensure that every eligible American could vote. Today, there is a nationwide attempt to dismantle the protections put in place by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In addition, in the last few years some states have passed laws requiring government-issued IDs to vote. Millions of Americans don't have these documents. <p align="left">There is no evidence that voter impersonation — the only thing voter IDs at the polls could prevent — exists. These laws are intended as a barrier to the ballot. <p align="left">Other states are limiting early voting, making it harder for working people to vote. Some states are making it so difficult to register new voters that the League of Women Voters won't register people in Florida for the first time in its history. <p align="left">These new voter-suppression laws make it difficult for poor people, racial minorities, the elderly, students and the disabled to vote because of added costs and undue burdens, in essence a 21st century poll tax. This is a direct assault on democracy and the biggest threat voters have faced since the passage of the Voting Rights Act. <p align="left">The overt obstacles of the Jim Crow era and the voter-suppression efforts today are different only in their tactics, not their intent. In the 1960s, intimidation came from fire hoses, police dogs and a culture of white supremacy. Today, the tactics may be less obvious but they are equally insidious. The results are the same: Fewer people on the margins of our democracy will vote, tilting the system even more toward the powerful interests it already serves. <p align="left">In America's first national election in 1792, approximately 5 percent of the adult population (white, male, landowners) was eligible to vote. Expanding access to the ballot has been a hallmark of our history ever since. From Reconstruction-era reforms giving the vote to nonwhite men, to suffrage securing the vote for women, the civil rights struggle to end Jim Crow and language and access accommodations made for naturalized citizens and the disabled, wave after wave of Americans have claimed this fundamental right. <p align="left">In the 1960s, as we marched for our freedoms we sang of them. As I watch another generation of youth protest and drum and chant, I am reminded of one lyric in particular: "My daddy was a freedom fighter, and I'm my daddy's son. And I will fight for freedom, until everybody's won. Which side are you on, boy? Which side are you on?" <p align="left">When it comes to preserving the power of each American's right to vote, and encouraging everyone eligible to vote, which side are you on? <p align="left">Julian Bond is a professor at American University and the University of Virginia and chairman emeritus of the NAACP. <p align="left">Copyright © 2011, Chicago Tribune Carl Davidsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00215874972566616424noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728047435372688572.post-40362525820584100632011-01-16T06:32:00.001-08:002011-01-16T06:32:39.384-08:00Democracy: Inertia Is Not an Option<h3><strong><img height="243" src="http://www.seiu.org/images/20101002_OneNationRally_DC_31.jpg" width="389"> </strong></h3> <h3><strong>Whither One Nation? </strong></h3> <p align="left"><strong>By Mark Solomon </strong></p> <p align="left"><em>Published by Portside.org </em></p> <p align="left">The October 2, 2010 "One Nation Working Together" rally at the Lincoln Memorial was a successful expression of the working class and multiracial foundation of the progressive majority. The large turnout of labor unions, African Americans and other communities of color provided a solid start for building a broadly based national coalition to urgently address the crisis of unemployment and inseparably related crises in education, health care, housing, militarism and the environment. While the imperative issue of peace and the ending of Washington's wars was not insistently stressed (except for Harry Belafonte's inspired speech and the strong words of Bob King of the UAW), the peace movement was a large, highly visible and indispensable presence whose major role in the coalition cannot be questioned. </p> <p align="left">Since October 2, there has been little or no visibility of "One Nation Working Together." Such a lack of evident activity is fairly typical of coalitions that often fall prey to inertia after initial bursts of engagement. That is largely due to the pull upon participating organizations to address their own agendas and constituencies while organizational and financial commitments to the larger coalition fester. </p> <p align="left">However, while such inertia is not atypical, it is not an option: not when the depth and urgency of multiple crises compel the existence and activism of the broadest and most inclusive coalition of nearly fifty major national organizations. </p><a name='more'></a> <p align="left">Inertia is not an option in the face of right-wing control of the House of Representatives. It is not an option in the face of an impending right wing assault on Social Security and Medicare aimed at destroying all vestiges of the historic social safety net. It is not an option when there is no end in sight to the hopeless Afghanistan war. It is not an option in light of finance capital's remorseless and disgraceful class war against the vast majority while it continues the reckless practices that plunged the country into deep recession in the first place. It is not an option in the face of brutal roundups of undocumented immigrants that threaten the constitutional rights of all. The compelling need for an inclusive and powerful coalition to stem the accelerating environmental crisis, to launch urgent and related "green jobs," to shift resources from military spending and unconscionable tax breaks for the rich to the rescue of bankrupted states and municipalities - is a task that is shunned at the price of unprecedented painful social dislocation. </p> <p align="left">As if those threats and challenges were not enough to reactivate "One Nation," the horrific killing and maiming in Tucson punctuate the need for a strong organized progressive majority to challenge the right wing's growing impact on the nation's political culture. Pleas for media and politicians to tone down inflammatory rhetoric will be short lived while pleas to the gun lobby to scale back its corrosive influence will fall on deaf ears. The greatest promise for countering the present climate of violence and coercion clearly resides not in dependence on those controlling the media and politics, but in the unified strength of a progressive social movement able to positively influence and change the political culture. </p> <p align="left">There is a consensus among progressives that a national social movement is needed; that the movement must be independent of the two parties; that its posture towards the present Administration must be to galvanize grass roots pressure upon it to consistently address the needs of the nation's majority; that the movement must address all aspects of the many-sided crisis - the economy, the wars, the environment. In acknowledging the inseparability of issues, it must build cooperation and mutual support among various single issue-oriented groups; it should have a strong, highly visible national center to give sharp focus to the issues while encouraging affiliate grass roots coalitions; its decisions should be transparent and based upon democratic input from the local and national participating organizations. </p> <p align="left">Some on the left have criticized the October 2 One Nation rally for being tepid, for being too deferential to the Obama administration, for not encouraging a more active presence (such as a march and rally). Some of those criticisms are justified. But that criticism has to be balanced against the potential of a movement that embraces the broadest and most influential organizations of left and center. In addition, the active participation of national, local and regional groups, including peace activists, can have a constructive and democratizing effect on the functioning of the coalition. </p> <p align="left">There has been considerable discussion lately on strategies for building a national progressive alliance. But that discussion has tended to ignore "One Nation Working Together," a framework that already exists and already embraces major organizations such as the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, the National Council of La Raza, US Students Association, Green for All, The Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights and dozens of other organizations. </p> <p align="left">The task of regenerating One Nation has to come from the grass roots. At this crucial political moment, action by individuals and organizations is needed to press the leadership of One Nation to urgently convene a transparent national meeting. That gathering should reactivate the coalition, establish a national structure, recruit staff, develop programmatic ideas, set up media relations and assign personnel to work with groups at the regional and local levels. </p> <p align="left">Groups and individuals should contact the principal organizers of One Nation ( www.onenationworkingtogether.org): Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP, George Gresham of SEIU Local 1199, Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO, Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers and Bob King of the United Automobile Workers. Phone calls, letters, email, faxes, etc. should respectfully and supportively urge the activation of One Nation to meet the urgent challenges of the moment (contact information can be conveniently found on Internet websites). That action can be completed in minutes and can have an impact on activating, organizing and mobilizing the progressive majority. This is the moment to re energize One Nation Working Together. ________________ </p> <p align="left">Mark Solomon is past national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) and is currently Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. </p> <p align="left">___________________________________________ </p> <p align="left">Portside aims to provide material of interest to people on the left that will help them to interpret the world and to change it. </p> <p align="left">Submit via email: portside@portside.org </p> <p align="left">Submit via the Web: <a href="http://portside.org/submittous3">http://portside.org/submittous3</a></p> <p align="left">Frequently asked questions: <a href="http://portside.org/faq">http://portside.org/faq</a></p> <p align="left">Sub/Unsub: <a href="http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe">http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe</a></p> <p align="left">Search Portside archives: <a href="http://portside.org/archive">http://portside.org/archive</a></p> <p align="left">Contribute to Portside: <a href="https://portside.org/donate">https://portside.org/donate</a></p> Carl Davidsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00215874972566616424noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728047435372688572.post-71170776233019654782010-07-27T10:26:00.001-07:002010-11-11T19:28:18.751-08:00'Who Will Thread the Needle?' Getting the Charter Movement Organized at the Grassroots<h3></h3><b><u></u></b> <br />
<b><u></u></b> <br />
<h3><b><img height="182" src="http://i352.photobucket.com/albums/r349/carld717/21stCenSocPanelMarkS.jpg" width="324" /> </b></h3><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Mark Solomon promoting the Charter at Workshop</span></i></span></h3><h3><b><br />
</b></h3><h3><b>The Democracy Charter at the </b></h3><h3><b>United States Social Forum in Detroit</b></h3><b></b> <br />
<b></b> <br />
<b>By Mark Solomon</b> <br />
The Democracy Charter, formulated by civil rights legend Jack O’Dell, was introduced to an activist audience at the United States Social Forum in Detroit on June 25, 2010. The content and potential of the Charter as an organizing force for a resurgent progressive majority was quickly registered by a distinguished panel and was explored with vigor by an engaged audience. <br />
The session began with reading of a statement from Jack O’Dell who underscored the systemic crisis of a faltering economy, environmental degradation, the staggering burden of endless wars and the withering of democracy. He insisted that an expansive, robust democracy (“the people shall govern”) was the answer to that many-sided crisis. Reflecting his profound sense of history, he noted: “At the heart of the Democracy Charter<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=justicefora04-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0620425652&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> is the ‘dual authority’ represented by the social change mass movements of the people. … That dual authority has been the essential element in defending and enlarging democracy throughout the nation’s history.” <br />
<img height="162" src="http://i352.photobucket.com/albums/r349/carld717/carl-dc-workshop.jpg" width="326" /> <br />
<br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Our Panel: Carl Davidson (standing), Tim Johnson, Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Frances Fox Piven</span></i><br />
<br />
The panel and the audience faced a large blow-up of the 13 points that constitute the present draft of the Charter – expanded and deepened social policies to assure full employment, an end to bigotry and racial violence, total education for all, universal health care; a foreign policy of peace and cooperation, restoration and preservation of the environment, expanded public ownership of resources strategic to the nation’s health and economy, the airwaves maintained as public property – as well as other points that address needs crucial to salvaging and extending democracy.<br />
<a name='more'></a>Emphasis was placed upon the process inherent in advancing the Democracy Charter. Panelist Bill Fletcher, Jr., stressed that the process required a coming together of progressives to explore, debate and agree upon what is needed. The process breaks down fragmentation, opens communication among disparate groups and individuals and at this moment is possibly more compelling than the outcome. Small group discussions across the country about the meaning of the Charter and how to improve it could eventuate in “people’s assemblies” that would reflect the reality of race, class and gender – the essential categories upon which the battle for people’s rule is based. Audience members stressed the democratic essence of a process where the participants themselves fully control the outcome of discussion. <br />
A major workshop theme was the role of the Democracy Charter in linking issues and movements. Panel member Carl Davidson described the Charter as a vehicle for expressing the needs of a progressive majority and as an organizing tool to coalesce that majority. He also noted that the Charter could serve as a counterpoint to Glen Beck’s reactionary “Nine Principles and Twelve Values” that is being used to organize groups around the country. Panelist Jackie Cabasso of United for Peace and Justice said that the relationship between a collapsing economy and militarism is becoming a central concern of peace activists and is increasingly obvious to large sectors of the population. She also noted that the prologue to the Democracy Charter pointed to the Bandung Conference of 1955 (the same year as promulgation of the South African Freedom Charter, the inspiration for the Democracy Charter) that gave birth to the non-aligned movement against colonialism and underscored the poisonous presence of racism in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Also, the connection between assaults on democracy and weapons of mass destruction was captured by the observation that “no population was ever asked to vote on possession of nuclear weapons.” <br />
Panelists and audience engaged in a thoughtful and probing exploration of the agency needed to successfully launch and sustain the Democracy Charter. Bill Fletcher pointed to the role of the South African Communist Party in 1955 in helping to make the historic Freedom Charter a major political project. Panelist Tim Johnson said that an advanced force was needed at a transformational moment when the movement for a deeply expanded democracy transcends the existing capitalist system but does not yet establish socialism. With no existing major left party in this country, an audience member asked if it were possible for socialist groups to cooperate in helping launch the Charter. Another audience participant said that “advanced forces” need not be solely based in organizations, but could be individuals and informal groups with an understanding of the intent and potential of the Charter. Another member of the audience said that “more conscious” groups and individuals should come together to facilitate discussion of the Charter without in any way imposing their views on a widening circle of participants of all ages. <br />
Panelist Frances Fox Piven and Bill Fletcher engaged in an illuminating exchange. Piven affirmed the present version of the Charter as a vibrant program that in her view did not provoke controversy. Yet, she insisted that in general charters do not come first before movements arise, but arise out of existing movements. Those movements, she said, function laterally, without the imposition of vertical lines of authority. Fletcher countered that no one was suggesting that that any force impose its will on the process of advancing the Charter. The challenge was how to get diverse forces talking about it. The crucial question was: “Who will thread the needle?” <br />
While the debate was not fully resolved, it underscored the scope of the challenge to make the Democracy Charter the pivotal focus for a resurgent progressive movement. Members of the audience addressed that challenge with thoughtfulness and commitment. One participant argued for the need to respond to the most urgent demands of working people, from which an embrace of the Charter could grow. Another audience member focused upon the forthcoming One Nation march in Washington on October 2 as a challenge to the Charter’s diverse agenda and to the “conscious forces” working to expand a primarily jobs agenda to embrace peace, an end to a militarized economy and environmental survival. That expanded agenda was viewed as essential to mobilizing a massive force to counter the Tea Party movement and to set the stage for a successful challenge to right wing efforts to capture the 2010 elections. <br />
The content of the Charter was also addressed. Tim Johnson noted that the present assemblage was self-selected and that it should not be assumed that more diverse constituencies would uniformly accept all thirteen points in their present form. An audience member called for additional points to defend labor’s rights and to call for urgently needed electoral reform. <br />
The workshop ended with a plea to all participants to become involved in a deeply worthwhile effort to spread and build the Democracy Charter. It was reiterated that in regard to the issues there is a progressive majority that has to be nurtured, focused and unified. The Charter with its call for people’s rule through expanded democracy gives greater coherence and content to the fight to turn the country around. Audience members were invited to join the Democracy Charter Grass Roots Organizing Committee, to organize small group discussion in their own spheres, to interact with the Charter website (www.democracycharter.org), to solicit endorsers of the process and to help give coherence, direction and solidarity in building a unified movement for democracy, justice, peace and equality. The people shall rule!Carl Davidsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00215874972566616424noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728047435372688572.post-66808178845527013082010-04-13T19:57:00.000-07:002010-04-13T19:57:55.126-07:00Finding Common Ground for Shaping the Future<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/governence-projects/freedom-charter/graphics/freedomcharter-big.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/governence-projects/freedom-charter/graphics/freedomcharter-big.gif" /></a></div><h3><strong> </strong></h3><h3><strong>Democracy Charter</strong></h3><strong>Submitted by J.H. O’Dell</strong><br />
<em>Second Revision, October 2009</em><br />
<br />
This coming year, 2010, marks the fifty-fifth anniversary of three significant events in the post-World War II period. It is the anniversary year of the Bandung conference, held in Indonesia in 1955; the Congress of the People, held in Kliptown, South Africa; and the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama.<br />
<br />
Each of these was a seminal event in its own right. The Bandung Conference gave birth to the Non-Aligned Movement and established the prospect that the struggle to abolish colonialism would be victorious. The meeting in Kliptown, South Africa, adopted a Freedom Charter to guide the movement to abolish apartheid at a time when the apartheid system was being tightened by repressive measures. And the Montgomery bus boycott shifted the center of grassroots mass action to the Southern heartland of segregation and set into motion an example that would inspire the freedom movement across the country in our struggle to abolish institutional racism.<br />
<br />
Each of these events, in one way or another, has informed our activism in the movement, whatever the moment we entered into involvement. Because these events in 1955 occurred at the height of the Cold War abroad and Cold War McCarthyism at home, they carry the fundamental lesson: even in the darkest periods, the people have the power to create the light that illuminates our path to more hopeful times.<br />
<br />
Today these events remind us of the achievements that have been made, as well as the unfinished agenda of concerns that continue to challenge us. Today, even as the world observes, in memory, the ending of the Second World War and the victory over Fascism, we are all at the same time witness to the martyrdom of the cities of Iraq by an unjustified, unprovoked U.S.-led military invasion of that small country. We are all witness to the tragedy of the growing impoverishment taking place in our own country among the unemployed, the homeless, those trying desperately to hang onto their jobs with little or no hope. We are all witness to the breaking up of the sense of community that so many feel. Our movement strains to keep up the creative energy of protest against these injustices, often even in the face of assaults on the right to peacefully assemble, frustration with the election process, and other experiences. These add up to “a long train of abuses” that have become part of everyday life.<br />
<br />
One of the most common questions often expressed in conversation is, “What do we do now?” One step we could take, which holds the potential for fundamental changes in our country, would be to take a page from the South African experience in their long struggle to abolish apartheid. In 1955, after many months of organizing and public meetings across the country, a grassroots Congress of the People was elected, and it assembled in an area outside Johannesburg. It proclaimed and adopted a Freedom Charter that served and inspired sustained mass mobilization for a South Africa beyond apartheid.<br />
<br />
A similar act of realignment and purpose for our country, in the conditions prevailing here, would be the adoption of a “Democracy Charter” as the vision of the America we hope to create. Such a vision, born of experience, would embody the hopes and possibilities of this age in human history. A Democracy Charter would be designed to unite our movement and involve ever-broader sections of the population in the struggle to achieve what we are for, as our efforts to overcome continue to remove obstacles, injustices, and deprivations. It would be an intentional source of energy and shared responsibility and enlightenment for rebuilding the sense of community that empowers us to take on with confidence the challenges that we will overcome.<br />
<br />
The Democracy Charter would have as its central purpose bringing into the national dialogue the millions in our country who now feel disenfranchised and disrespected, or otherwise ignored. This involvement will give all of us a confident new identity, as social change agents.<br />
<br />
The time is ripe for us, the People of the United States, in all our multicultural diversity and breadth of experience, to adopt a Democracy Charter that brings together as part of a shared vision all of the dimensions of the civilizational crisis that are now being actively addressed, on a limited scale, by one or another organization.<br />
<br />
The essential purpose of such a charter is the expansion of democracy and fundamental human rights in our country. Therefore, the historical point of reference of the Democracy Charter is our nation’s Bill of Rights and the subsequent Amendments, won over generations of struggle to enshrine them in the U.S. Constitution. In the U.S. American experience, unyielding resistance to any and all efforts to weaken the Bill of Rights is an essential condition for the transition from formal democracy to a society of substantive democracy. At the very heart of the unfolding struggle for substantive democracy today are the issues of race, class, and gender, in relation to power and decision-making. This has been the fundamental reality since the birth of this Republic.<br />
To briefly review this historical point, the U.S. was the first of a number of communities of European settler colonialism in the hemisphere of the Americas to break with its “mother” country. The architects of the new state then rapidly proceeded to structure their own “made in U.S.A.” mechanisms of exploitation and wealth accumulation.<br />
<br />
During the first century following its Declaration of Independence, this structure put into place and rested upon four pillars: First, the seizure of lands held by Native Americans and the privatization of this property, accompanied by the dismantling of the centuries-old social organization of these original inhabitants; second, the consolidation and expansion of the system of enslavement of Africans, as an economic institution inherited from years of British rule and codified into law in the new U.S. Constitution (a kind of affirmative action to the benefit of the slave owners); third, the military seizure and annexation, in the War of 1846-1848, of a land area amounting to one third of the Mexican Republic; and fourth, the exploitation of a wage-labor working class among the new immigrant population brought in primarily from northern Europe, with the notable exception of Chinese workers, who were admitted for long enough to help complete the railroad to the West Coast, then denied further entry through the Chinese Exclusion Act passed by Congress. The position of women in this paradigm is self-evident, especially since they were denied the formal democratic right to vote until 1919. These historical circumstances, taken together with the success of the American Revolution itself in breaking free of the British Empire, provided both the material conditions and the political power base for the economic royalists of the new republic to shape and promote the ideology of “American exceptionalism” as a major component in U.S. culture. Further, the much-valued achievements of formal democracy as exemplified by the Bill of Rights reveal their limitations in daily life experience. Consequently the need is urgent to take up the banner of struggle for substantive democracy and empower this process.<br />
<br />
The following points suggest primary items for inclusion in a proposed Democracy Charter.<br />
<br />
<strong>I. A national commitment to end homelessness during this next decade</strong><br />
Eighty percent of the homeless are women and people of color, more often than not, families with children. Twelve million people pay more than fifty percent of their monthly income for either rent or mortgage, often for substandard housing — such is the shortage of affordable housing. Relief to these twelve million and the uncounted numbers of homeless beyond them would also create jobs and the basis for expanding job skills training in the construction and other industries.<br />
<br />
Rising unemployment and the millions of families made economically insecure by the subprime mortgage racket may prove to be a set of circumstances of long-term duration. Democracy, in this instance, requires the emergence of nonviolent organized mass actions to stop the evictions, neighborhood by neighborhood, and enable people to stay in their homes while new mortgage terms are negotiated. This is the indispensable ingredient in this situation. Such community activity should be accompanied by full use of the Legal Services Corporation, which is legally required to assist homeowners in preventing evictions but should also be empowered to bring class action suits against those insurance, bank, and real estate corporations that have created this subprime problem.<br />
<br />
<strong>II. A national commitment to an economy of full employment, at socially useful jobs, and a livable wage as public policy<br />
</strong><br />
In the late 1970s, Congress passed the Humphrey-Hawkins bill, which set a national goal of full employment: the maximum allowable unemployment was to be 4 percent. Even this goal has largely been ignored as public policy and rarely achieved; and 4 percent unemployment is still too high. Yet in some of our largest urban centers, for example, unemployment among African American men is over 40 percent. Official propaganda in times of recession praising a “jobless recovery” is a cover-up for long-term depression and stagnation as the economic reality.<br />
<br />
Today, the many grassroots state and local movements are the standard bearers setting the pace for the demand for jobs for all who seek them. Recognition of workers’ inalienable right to self-organization is one way of guaranteeing that the struggle for these goals is sustained.<br />
<br />
<strong>III. The right to an environment free of bigotry, violence, and intolerance as an expression of our nation’s irreversible commitment to human rights, including full recognition of reproductive rights and the rights of gays and lesbians.</strong><br />
<br />
The twentieth century witnessed landmark Supreme Court decisions including Roe vs. Wade (1973) affirming the reproductive rights of women, and Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) affirming the right of African American children to equal access to education in the public schools, free of state-imposed racial segregation.<br />
Despite the significant contributions these decisions have made to the moral progress of the nation, they continue to be the subject of sustained attack in a variety of forms, primarily coming from the conservative right, some striving to assert biblical support for their positions. This is often combined with relentless organized efforts to consign gays and lesbians to an outcast status in violation of their basic human rights.<br />
None of this is acceptable to a society committed to preserving and improving its democracy.<br />
A principled defense and active protection of the entire fabric of human rights, as an indivisible whole, is the real basis for guaranteeing respect for all<br />
<strong><br />
IV. The doors of learning open to all, from early childhood education through college, as a public trust.</strong><br />
<br />
This is for our time the next step in the “Economic Bill of Rights” proposed by President Roosevelt in 1944 as public policy, but abandoned after his death and the rise of Cold War politics.<br />
<br />
The National Education Association estimated in 2002 that the nation’s public schools could be put into Grade A condition for an investment of about 380 billion dollars. Our nation spent almost half that amount on the war on Iraq in its first year, and the accumulated cost is still rising, quite aside from the moral deficit it so markedly represents. The quality of our public school educational system is not a “states’ rights” issue. It is an issue of paramount importance in shaping the quality of life and character of the United States. All of us have a stake in putting an end to the common experience we share that every time there is an economic crisis and budget cuts are called for, the first things scrapped in our public schools are art, music, recreational sports, and field trips. These are character-building school subjects and are among the essentials of a quality education.<br />
<br />
As for postsecondary education, we must never forget that tens of thousands of our young people who volunteer for the Armed Forces are not seeking an opportunity to go to war or be trained to kill. They are looking for an opportunity to go to college and improve their lives. This is an investment in our nation’s future.<br />
A public education system that prepared youngsters to begin formal learning, then supported them as far as their ability and inclination took them, would strengthen our country’s economic position and civil society.<br />
A major contribution towards substantive democracy would be for the U.S. to become officially bilingual, as a nation, in English and Spanish. As one benefit, national bilingualism would greatly enrich our knowledge of the hemisphere in which we live.<br />
<br />
<strong>V. A new foreign and military policy as an expression of our nation’s character.</strong><br />
<br />
This means a foreign policy of peace, cooperation with our neighbors throughout the hemisphere of the Americas, and mutual respect that guarantees the future of the planet as our shared home. The “Superpower” or “Lone Superpower,” rhetoric of the Cold War, is without merit as an operational concept in the conduct of foreign policy. It promotes racism and national arrogance, accompanied by a false sense of national security. It helps institutionalize bloated, wasteful military budgets as normal; pollutes and distorts the practices of government diplomacy; and predictably depletes our reserves of moral capital in the world.<br />
<br />
Nothing underscores the latter cluster of circumstances more clearly than the role played by the U.S in denying the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people over decades, and the U.S.-led or -sponsored military aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, and Colombia today. These harsh truths have been amply documented, as has the record of calculated deception of the public here at home which usually accompanies these activities — regardless of which “major political party” is in power. This abuse of power constitutes a monumental example of unaccountable government. Public awareness of U.S. overseas activities — both corporate and political — and their effects has been steadily growing. This is evidenced in our country’s very active anti-war movement, which is increasingly putting emphasis on creating a peace culture, as an antidote to the war culture so pervasive in the U.S.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, foreign and military policy is an area of the people’s business that requires a quantum leap in public awareness and involvement, in order that a progressive content be given to our relations with the rest of the world. Experience has shown that such a transformation is not only a moral imperative; it is absolutely essential to improving conditions here at home.<br />
<br />
A new foreign and military policy means a new kind of defense budget, one in harmony with other domestic goals, not one designed to enrich the biggest corporate “defense” contractors and their stockholders, while the public pays the bill. A new foreign and military policy also means that no longer will the U.S. government produce, use, or sell weapons — such as land mines, cluster bombs, depleted uranium shells, or Agent Orange — that destroy the environment in which living beings have to survive. The Vietnamese people are still suffering from the catastrophic effects of these weapons used against them.<br />
<br />
A new foreign and military policy means getting our representatives in Congress to undertake the closing of all of the estimated 700 US military bases now operating on foreign soil — and to secure the closing of these bases “with all deliberate speed.” In this regard, particular attention should be given to restoring to the peoples of the islands of Guam (South Pacific) and Diego Garcia (Indian Ocean) the right to return to their traditional lands, from which they were forcibly removed to make way for the construction of military bases. This aggressive militarism is one of the new forms in which the old colonialism is being revived. Our movement has significant expertise in the area of developing more principled foreign policy, as represented, for example, by the work over many decades carried out by the American Friends Service Committee.<br />
<br />
Since our nation led the world into the era of nuclear weapons, we should lead the world by example out of that era by renouncing the possession of nuclear weapons and taking concrete steps to eliminate the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons, as a matter of principle. The continued production of these weapons of terror is neither morally justified nor socially useful economic activity. It contributes to neither the real wealth nor the well-being of society, while it uses up nonrenewable resources that could otherwise benefit our country. Further, the use of these terrible weapons inflicts long-term damage on other countries and on our ability to function as a member of the worldwide community of nations. We, the people of the United States, can end this!<br />
<strong><br />
VI. Universal health insurance coverage (Single-Payer Model)</strong><br />
<br />
The cost of worker contributions to health care premiums in industry-sponsored plans has tripled since 1988. That tens of millions of people have either no health insurance at all or inadequate insurance to cover catastrophic illness is well known. In recent years, lack of adequate health insurance has become a major source of family financial insecurity, often leading to bankruptcy. As a nation, we in America spend $400 billion a year on health insurance paperwork, much of it designed to eliminate patients from eligibility for benefits. At this writing, health care costs are rising three times as fast as wages. An estimated 100,000 people die every year from illnesses contracted while in the hospital as patients, and the US has the lowest life expectancy of any of the wealthy industrialized countries in the Western world.<br />
<br />
A system in which the government paid expenses necessary to cure illnesses and injuries and also took responsibility for promoting practices that help maintain good health would improve our country’s international standing in measures of life expectancy and productivity. It would also remove the unfairness and pathology of a health care system in which prices are based upon satisfying corporate greed and the concerns of private investors, while the quality of care is based upon the patient’s ability to pay.<br />
<br />
The United States has an outstanding tradition of public service institutions. These are represented, in part, by the public land-grant colleges authorized by Congress at the end of the Civil War; the system of public health clinics, whose professionals provide inoculations for communicable diseases like diphtheria and measles; the neighborhood public libraries all across the country that are centers for quiet reading and relaxation and often provide space for community meetings; and our outstanding National Parks Service, which has recently celebrated its centennial year. These are among the precedents that give us full confidence in the advocacy of a universal health insurance system, single-payer model.<br />
<strong><br />
VII. A Social Security system with firm and undiminished integrity.</strong><br />
<br />
Our present Social Security system is both a shared commitment to contribute during our employed years and a universal benefit we share in our retirement years. It is our nation’s premier anti-poverty program, protecting more young people as beneficiaries than does current “welfare,” in its “reformed” state. Without Social Security, half of all women over 65 would fall into poverty. One major way to strengthen this important institution, put in place during the years of Roosevelt’s New Deal, would be to tighten federal regulatory control so that the Social Security Trust Fund could not be raided to finance “off-budget” wars. (Yearly surpluses in the Trust Fund were used by President Lyndon Johnson, for instance, to finance the early years of the war in Vietnam.)<br />
<br />
<strong>VIII. A farm economy restructured to rest on family and cooperative enterprise.</strong><br />
<br />
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is a major problem area needing restructuring for the renewal of our democracy. In the early decades of the 20th century, family farming was the major form of property ownership among Americans, including African Americans in the South. Today, African Americans own less than 2 percent of farms. Millions of people in our country are skilled, professional farmers. They should not be subjected to the greed and unbridled power of the corporate monopolies in agriculture and the retail market. Everyone will benefit if the traditional family farm, cooperatives, and the new urban community food gardens and farmers markets become once again the primary source of food production.<br />
<br />
<strong>IX. A prison system accountable to the public for fulfilling its charge as a center for rehabilitation.</strong><br />
<br />
The responsibility of the penal system is to guide the rehabilitation of incarcerated people so that, with the help of families, neighbors, and social service agencies, they can renew their place in the community. The existence of a “prison-industrial complex” in our country is a fundamental violation of the social purpose of the prison system in a democratic society. As for the operation of U.S. prisons in other countries, this is an affront to the sovereignty of such countries and a disgrace to our own. All such institutions should be permanently closed as a matter of public policy, and the penal system should be redesigned to carry out its social purpose.<br />
<br />
<strong>X. Restoration, preservation, and protection of the quality of our natural environment as a vital social inheritance for future generations to use and enjoy.</strong><br />
<br />
Reversing the present pattern of pollution and degradation requires promoting and expanding community activities, as well as public works projects, that encourage a culture of social responsibility towards keeping our rivers, lakes, parks, and other environmental gifts in healthy condition.<br />
<br />
Our country has a long-term interest in becoming one of the leaders in worldwide efforts to stop contributing to global warming and to protect from harm our common home, this planet.<br />
<br />
XI. Expanded public ownership and management of resources strategic to the health of our nation’s economy<br />
Such strategic resources include oil, gas, and other sources of energy, as well as public transportation. Stricter federal and state regulation against pollution and mismanagement would accompany the growth in public ownership. Louisiana, with its “cancer alley” created by the reckless disregard of the petrochemical industry for public health concerns, makes the case for public ownership and accountability. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) offers one model even as it currently undergoes steady attack from the coal-power lobby.<br />
<strong><br />
XII. The right to know that every vote will be counted – a guarantee that is an inseparable part of the right to vote.</strong><br />
<br />
The assault on the voting system itself, which we and the world witnessed in Florida, Ohio, and other states in two successive Presidential elections, is now recognized as a nationwide problem of scandalous proportions. Because this problem remains unrepaired, we face yet another Congressional election in which defects in the voting process could determine the results. As long as we allow this situation to continue, our elections are far less representative of democracy than those held in most Western industrialized countries. The principle of fair voter access and accurate, accountable vote tabulation should be visibly maintained, and should be reinforced by the introduction of proportional representation in all elections where applicable.<br />
<strong><br />
XIII. The air waves maintained as national public property.<br />
</strong><br />
We affirm this principle upon which the Federal Communications Commission was founded, as a regulatory agency, during the New Deal period: “The air waves are the property of the American people.” The democracy that this principle embodies has been hijacked and distorted by the hucksters of marketplace television and the demagogues of hate-radio. The consolidation of corporate power in these areas — together with their counterpart, the film industry — denies the public’s right to be informed, limits public access to a violence-free culture, and confines the exercise of artistic creativity.<br />
<br />
The media must be responsible to their audience, not to advertisers or powerful pressure groups. We affirm the principle of public airwave ownership as indispensable to the struggle for achievement of a substantive democracy in our country, especially in this age of global communications and the bright possibilities they offer.<br />
<br />
<strong>Towards the Second Reconstruction</strong><br />
<br />
The electoral coalition which brought victory to the American people in the election of President Barack Obama has the capacity to become a Movement, and indeed it has a mandate of history to do so. What the people of the United States, in a clear majority, elected was not only an affirmation of our best hopes for the future: it is important to note that it also closed the door, momentarily, to a bid for power by a much darker spirit in the American experience. This magnificent moment is ours to preserve and extend, but it will not remain so without our concerted and sustained attention and social change activism guided by both past and present experiences.<br />
<br />
These thirteen points, with the abbreviated comments that accompany them, are meant essentially as a framework for incorporating other vital issues of concern to such a Charter. There is no order of priority herein, but an attempt to present a picture that will enable us to view these vital issues as a body in their interconnectedness, rather than just separately. To further elaborate and project remedies applicable is the purpose for movement-building, as a sustaining force.<br />
<br />
The Charter proposal is designed to acknowledge and enhance the effective work that is already being done in many areas of Movement activity. When harnessed to the grassroots organizing tradition, the Democracy Charter can bring new energy that is transformational in its possibilities for social change in our nation. It must become a full part of the “good news” that involves and inspires our artists, poets, and creators in all cultural media to give of their talents spreading this message of hope and new possibilities.<br />
<br />
Because of its perspective of emphasis on our Movement’s goals and objectives, the Charter is an invitation that seeks to engage a different kind of national conversation — one that is positive and purposeful in the sharing of experiences and free of the tone that too often discourages participation. This is a great moment for all of us, as we confidently take up the challenge to create a vision, shared with the people all around us, that embodies “Freedom from Fear” and expands the Movement/community, built by the people all around us, as they actively embrace the ideas of the Charter they have created and proceed to translate these hope into constructive actions.<br />
<br />
The common ingredients in all this liberating work are integrity and love.<br />
<br />
The Democracy Charter seeks to penetrate the depths of what Dr. Martin Luther King nearly forty years ago called “the deeper malady that afflicts the American spirit, of which Vietnam is but a symptom” (Riverside Church speech, April 4, 1967). This malady which Dr. King identified has become in our lifetime a contagion the symptoms of which are all around us.<br />
<br />
Recognizing and accepting this challenge is the key to the success of all of our collective efforts to transform our nation into a peaceful, socially conscious democracy.<br />
In this spirit, we shall overcome!<br />
<br />
J. H. O’Dell<br />
Second revision, October 2009Carl Davidsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00215874972566616424noreply@blogger.com4