Suggestions For Planning Our Future Work

Posted by admin on September 5, 2009 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

After the Convention:
Some Suggestions
For a Plan of Action

By Carl Davidson

Following this Convention, CCDS needs to hit the ground running with a clear program of action. We want clear and concise answers to the question often posed, ‘What is CCDS Doing?’ While it’s never been the case than the vast majority of our members have been inactive, it’s also been the case that we haven’t always focused our diverse activities in a way that made the organization more effective, more visible and thus better able to grow.


We need to better organize our activities on two fronts at once, the mass democratic and the socialist. The two are necessarily linked, but not the same.


ON THE MASS DEMOCRATIC FRONT:



--Peace and solidarity. We need to press for ‘Out Now’ as a demand expressing the urgency of ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and any other similar conflicts that might arise. If Obama doesn’t reverse course and is suckered in by the ‘Long War’ advocates, it will destroy him, his presidency and anything decent he wants to accomplish. The fight for peace and the fight for economic justice are linked in a way that has never been more clear. Obama can chart a path to recovery or he keep us in the quagmire of unjust wars. But he can’t do both, and we need to be the clear, insistent and determined voice delivering exactly that message. Educational work within the working class around the Gaza crisis and the Agent Orange crimes also stands out as a priority in solidarity work.



–Health Care for All. We need to stay engaged in the movement for universal health care, building support for HR 676 ‘Single-Payer’ Medicare for All. We need to work with all forces mobilizing for health care reform, even if we are not in agreement on the best solution. But we need to stick to our guns on single-payer, patiently explaining its rationality and practically to all concerned, continuing our ‘long march through the institutions’ of winning every union, every labor council, every local and county and state government, every CD, until we can amass the strength to encircle the opposition and win this sorely needed structural reform.



–Labor Solidarity. We need to join with the labor movement in fighting for Congress to pass EFCA and pressing the President to sign it into law. In addition to working in our unions, we need to build wider community alliances for EFCA. A strong labor movement makes for a stronger progressive majority beyond the unions. This legislation can vastly expand labor’s ranks relatively quickly once it wins, which is the key reason the fight around it has been so fierce.



–Jobs, Environment and Affirmative Action. We need to work with the ‘Green Jobs’ movement to make it successful, especially in every community with high concentrations of unemployed and underemployed youth. For many, green jobs are the way out of a life leading to prison incarceration or being pressed into the military. It’s a powerful tool for affirmative action against racism. It’s also part of a wider effort for a transition to green and clean energies that can move us away from an unsustainable energy system burning carbon or uranium.



–Jobs and Industrial Policy. We need to be engaged in the ‘Jobs Now!’ effort by the unions to use stimulus funds to rebuild and renew the manufacturing sector of our economy. We need an expansion of public infrastructure in health and schools, stressing that those new jobs go to women as well as men, with pay and job equity. We need to insist on Fair Trade with other countries, where agreements are for mutual benefit of the peoples concerned.



–Students and Youth. We need stimulus funds applied to broad educational opportunities for all, but especially our youth from minority and working-class communities. Our students need debt relief on student loans, and public funding for higher education all around. We need to work with the campaign of young people on these issues, and link them to wider alliances and resources.



–Elections. We need to work for election law reform, especially fusion and IRV. We also need to develop the electoral engagement capacity of all our base community organizations, and link them to independent left formations with an orientation toward uniting a progressive majority.



ON THE SOCIALIST FRONT:



–Study Groups. In a time of both demagogy and illusion about what socialism is and isn’t, and a renewed positive interest in large numbers of people, we need to expand the presence of our SEP, especially among the active organizers and fighters in the progressive movements. We need organized, face-to-face study groups in every city, which we can organize together with others in a left unity effort. We need to add to the online and electronic multimedia resources that can help popularize this educational work.



–Socialist Policy. We need to work with think tanks and organizations holding conferences and developing solidarity economy-like initiatives. Especially important are those that actively organize and promote radical structural reform, on the micro and macro levels, that are part of an Economic Democracy movement which also serves as bridge to a socialist future.



--Left Unity Project. We need to work with other socialist organizations, especially those sharing our approach and key values, to organize wider socialist unity projects, conferences and gatherings. Working together, we can have a wider public impact than working separately.



–Build the CCDS. Finally, we need to be far more assertive in organizing new CCDS chapters and recruiting new members to our existing ones. An old party-building slogan used by the Vietnamese throughout their struggle was ‘The harder the core, the broader the front.’ The work to develop a progressive majority will flounder without a strong left-progressive pole rooted to strong socialist organizations; likewise, any efforts to build a powerful socialist left without a positive engagement and presence in these wider movements will stagnate and die.