Winter 2010
New CCDS Leadership Takes Stock of the Crisis
and Gets Itself Organized
by Carl Davidson and Tina Shannon
Some 25 members of the newly elected leaders of the Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism held their first National
Coordinating Committee meeting it New York City over the Dec. 4-6, 2009
weekend. Charged with following through on the tasks set for CCDS at its 6th
Convention in San Francisco, along with the nuts and bolts work of getting
itself organized, the meeting was successful and even inspiring at
times--although much work remains to be done.
We could feel the new spirit as the arriving NCCers filled the conference
room of the union hall where the meeting was held. It was clear that the
Convention had done a good job in selecting a new leadership, while keeping
the strengths of the NCCs that had gone before. We were clearly a leadership
more closely aligned with a diverse left and progressive movements. We were
Black, white and Latino, men and women, workers and professionals-all deeply
positioned and integrated in the major struggles and political coalitions of
the day. There was good representation from the South and the West Coast,
from the Midwest and Pennsylvania, and, naturally, from Boston and New York
City. Most critically, the average age was considerably younger than at
previous leadership meetings, although there is still much room for
improvement here as well.
One new feature of this meeting was the conference-call speaker phone in the
middle of the room. Two members from the West Coast who couldn't make the
trip were able to listen and speak on all matters over the weekend. This
will be upgraded in the future to allow video-phone participation as well.
In fact, we agreed to have the next NCC meeting in April entirely by
conference call, in order to save on transportation cost, as well as
experiment with new communications technology. (Read entire article)
