Sleepwalking to Disaster

The Fierce Urgency of Now

By Jay D. Jurie

Endorsed by the CCDS National Executive

Later this year the midterm elections will determine whether the Democratic Party will lose control of the US Senate, the House, or both.  A loss of either would significantly advance the Republican Party drive to create a one-party state along with a neo-fascist seizure of power.  If such success was followed by a Trump victory in 2024, or the victory of an even more capable neo-fascist in 2025, such a takeover would virtually be guaranteed.

Already underway is a reconfiguration of a wide variety of public policies by state governments under the control of Republican governors and/or supermajority legislatures.  Besides standard Republican goals denying worker and reproductive rights, more corporate welfare for  the wealthy, and so on, the ante has been upped by the Republican conversion into a de facto neo-fascist party.  More recently we’ve seen measures that directly assault democracy, the democratic process and institutions.  These include voter suppression, the designation of false slates of electors, and the substitution of far right loyalists for conventional election officials, among others.

Cementing such a transformation into place would produce drastically severe consequences for progressive organizations, campaigns, and ideals along with the restructuring and disruption of the daily lives of millions of US citizens and residents.  For the neo-fascist project to succeed, more in the US would need to be persuaded to get on board and support changes brought about, as many doubtlessly would.  Others who are not in accord, or who resist these changes, will find themselves subject to active repression, including quite possibly detention and violent reprisals.

Yet many, including progressives, continue to go about their normal routine oblivious to this looming threat.  Much of what the progressive agenda seeks to advance will of necessity have to be put on sustained hold if such events were to come to pass. There will be little or no chance to pass, enact, or administer legislation or other measures that vitally affect the lives and well-being of millions and our environment.  It has not registered with the public at large what these changes would mean to their routines and aspirations, which for those not in accord with them, would prove extreme and highly undesirable.

We have two urgent responsibilities at this moment.  First, regardless of other issues we may be pursuing, we must add significant electoral involvement to our “must do” list.  In some instances we can use the electoral dilemma to advance our causes de jour, so the two might dovetail.  In other words, we don’t have to drop what we’re doing to rush over to do electoral work. But to the extent that work is not on our current agenda, it is incumbent upon us to make it so, or, to prioritize it if need be.

The important second task is to consider what we might do in the aftermath of a possible neo-fascist victory.  What will we need to survive, carry on important elements of our work, even if underground, and to mount effective resistance?  We do have models to draw upon, about which we should undertake a quick study, and learn more.  We need to think through this contingency and be as prepared as possible, to incorporate what we need into our planning, and be ready to keep moving even under what would prove to be very adverse circumstances.

As Palmiro Togliatti, who survived fascism under Mussolini, taught us in his Lectures on Fascism, “Totalitarianism does not close the path of struggle…but opens new paths (p. 27).”

CCDS Statement on Cuba

CCDS Stands with the Cuban People

All Out to Defend the Cuban Revolution

November 14,2021

On November 15th – the day that Cuba opens its schools and borders following the months-long pandemic – the U.S. government has engineered protests that are intended to subvert the economy and overthrow the Cuban government.

 

The operative organizing the protests through a Facebook page called Archipelago is Yunior García Aguilera, a Cuban playwright who has been exposed as a long-time U.S. agent. In an explosive interview on Cuban television, Dr. Carlos Vazquez Gonzalez revealed himself as a Cuban State Security Agent known as Fernando who has been functioning for more than 25 years in the circles of counter revolutionary Cubans. He has evidence to prove Garcia’s links to the U.S. government and the anti-Cuban mafia in Miami, also funded by the U.S. (See the report in Gramna: https://en.granma.cu/cuba/2021-11-05/agent-fernando-exposes-us-trained-counterrevolutionary)

 

The counter-revolutionary scheme, exposed by Dr. Gonzalez, is also connected to far right and fascist organizations internationally – and has been in the works for many years.

 

No country in the world allows its citizens to ally with foreign governments to overthrow its own government.

 

The Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism stands with the Cuban people and demands that the U.S. cease its subversive plans which are being paid for with U.S. taxpayer money in the millions of dollars funneled through NGO organizations and media outlets.

 

The cruel and inhumane, illegal economic blockade of Cuba and the additional brutal sanctions of the Trump administration are meant to inflict maximum suffering on the Cuban people in the hopes they will join a counterrevolutionary protest movement. The overthrow of the socialist government of Cuba has long been the goal of U.S. corporate interests and the far right who want to regain what they lost when the US-supported dictator Batista was overthrown in 1959.

 

Public opinion polls show that the U.S. people, by a large majority, support a return to diplomacy and a path towards normalization of relations with Cuba. President Biden was elected with a promise to repeal the onerous sanctions of the Trump administration and return to the diplomatic path set by his predecessor in the White House. We are waiting for him to live up to his campaign promise.

 

President Biden, we demand you lift the sanctions and end the economic warfare waged on Cuba, end the travel ban that prevents people to people contact, and normalize relations. To that end, CCDS urges its members and friends to:

1)    Call your Member of Congress, and ask them to sign on to a Dear Colleague letter to President Biden issued by Reps. McGovern (D-MA), Bobby Rush (D-IL), Barbara Lee (D-CA), and Gregory Meeks (D-NY). It asks President Biden to change U.S. policy towards Cuba and return to diplomacy including the lifting of the embargo. See letter here: letterhttps://bit.ly/2YHcBAu  

2)    Help mobilize and join protests of U.S. policy in solidarity with Cuba on November 15th.

3)    Continue to build support for legislation in Congress to end the embargo and travel ban – and make plans to visit Cuba.

AT THE END OF THIS HATED WAR, WE NEED TRUTH

The U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan should force a reckoning with a long history of military intervention.

By David Bacon
Foreign Policy in Focus | August 30, 2021
View at Foreign Policy in Focus


Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) was the main speaker at the rally of over 200,000 people who marched up Market Street in San Francisco to protest the Bush administration’s war on terror and threatened invasion of Iraq. (© 2001, David Bacon)
Many in the U.S. media continue to credit the good intentions of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, while belaboring its failure over 20 years to achieve any of them. But to say that the United States wanted a progressive, liberal democratic, and secular government in Afghanistan can only be believed by those who refuse to remember what Washington did when Kabul actually had one.

In the days following the attacks on September 11, the United States was called on to declare war against an enemy those in Congress who voted for it couldn’t even name. Policymakers asked American citizens to sacrifice civil liberties for security and give the military money that was so desperately needed to solve the country’s social problems.

Congress did those things with only one dissenting vote: Barbara Lee’s. Now it’s time to look at historical truth, to understand how the United States got this 20-year war, with its ignominious end at the Kabul airport, and how the overarching framework of U.S. policy was responsible for creating it.

Other countries facing similar traumatic changes wrenching them from the past have pioneered a way to examine their own history. El Salvador, Guatemala, South Africa, and elsewhere established truth commissions to probe into and acknowledge each country’s real history. Such public acknowledgement is a necessary step towards change.

The United States is no stranger to this process. After the end of the Vietnam War (or the American War, as the Vietnamese call it), Senator Frank Church held watershed hearings that brought some of the Cold War’s ghosts to public attention. But the process was cut short, the policies responsible for Cold War atrocities never fully questioned, and as a result, the ghosts were never laid to rest. Those ghosts still haunt the United States, and in Afghanistan hundreds of thousands died for them.

The massive social upheaval at home following the Vietnam War- and the deaths of over a million Vietnamese and 40,000 US soldiers-forced Senator Church’s examination. Before the people of this and other countries pay a similar price in yet another war, the United States need to reexamine that history.

The roots of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington lie in the Cold War. Without truly ending it and untangling its consequences, there will be no security for us.

Full Story at David Bacon’s Blog Site