[rad-green] Jack O’Dell – An Appreciati on

*https://portside.org/2019-11-07/jack-odell-appreciation
<https://portside.org/2019-11-07/jack-odell-appreciation>PORTSIDE
 November 7, 2019 Jack O’Dell – An AppreciationThe life and work of Jack
O’Dell who died last week at 96 at his home in Vancouver, British Columbia
were marked by an unwavering radical vision fused with an immovable
partisanship for working people the world over.By James Campbell and Mark
Solomon  *
Jack O'Dell, speaking March 2013, University of the Fraser Valley, is a
Canadian public university with campuses in Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Mission
and Hope, British Columbia., credit: The Cascade

Jack’s quietly effective teaching, his strategic acumen, his theoretical
insight, his unbending internationalism and his generosity of intellect and
spirit inspired and enriched the struggles of many for a better world and
will remain a pillar for those who continue those struggles.

Jack’s invaluable contributions were rooted in a lifetime of activism
spanning nearly eight decades. That activism began in wartime service in
the Merchant Marines where Jack gained insight into what is today called
“social movement trade unionism” – an indispensable convergence of labor’s
interests with the struggle of African Americans and all people of color
for liberation. From there, Jack moved on to community organizing in
Florida, Alabama and Louisiana, working in some of the country’s most
intractably racist regions. With the emergence of the historic Montgomery
bus boycott in the mid-fifties, followed by the proliferating student-led
sit-ins, Jack shifted his activism to New York City. There, he was engaged
in organizing the early student marches for school desegregation,
culminating in the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Along the way, he became active in the emerging Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC), working with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as
SCLC’s liaison with various political forces and liberation movements the
world over. Citing his previously acknowledged association with the
Communist Party, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI targeted Jack for removal from
his post at SCLC. Jack’s effectiveness and fidelity to principle is
affirmed by the ferocity of Hoover’s redbaiting smears.

Jack was also privy to the birth of *Freedomways *in 1960, the essential
journal of African American history, politics and culture for twenty-five
years of its existence. There, he often anonymously wrote penetrating
articles and functioned as an associate editor. His role as educator
continued as a professor at the Antioch Putney Center in Washington, D.C.
Jack was a key advisor in the formation of the Rainbow Coalition and in
Jesse Jackson’s historic presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988, providing
support and inspiration to the groundbreaking conjunction of labor activism
with the first major African American presidential candidacy.

Inspired by the South African Freedom Charter that galvanized the
successful overthrow of the apartheid state, the *Democracy Charter*,
formulated by Jack, is an inclusive framework for movement activists to
discuss, advocate and organize in pursuit of substantive democracy. That
substantive democracy itself is the enrichment and deepening of the
historic tradition that began with the Bill of Rights and continues in
transformative democratic struggles today relating to power and
decision-making. The Charter’s draft program does not simply enumerate
issues; it provides various movements with a common positive identity,
linking them to a shared heritage of struggle – bonding them in unified
battle against the inseparably related crises of empire, racism, the
economy and the environment.

At the heart of the *Democracy Charter* is the “Dual Authority” manifested
in mass movements that have challenged the dominant “Official Authority”
represented by governmental and corporate power. That “Dual Authority” in
Jack’s view has persisted throughout the country’s history, struggling on a
broad political canvas through periods of setback and triumph to overcome
slavery and found an anti-corporate populist movement. It fought against
emergent imperialism, built the industrial union movement, pressed the New
Deal to the left, drove the “Second Reconstruction” ushering in a new phase
of the battle for racial justice, resisted the Vietnam War, advanced the
women’s movement and supported the struggles of the LGBTQ community for
recognition and equality.

By framing the country’s political and social history through the
dialectical interplay of “dual” and “official” forces, Jack provides a
compelling portrait of contending alignments. He emphasizes the essential
role of progressive coalitions fighting for a robust democracy against
corporate power that foments systemic crisis marked by massively growing
inequality and impending environmental disaster. Today, newly energized
labor struggles and increasingly strong progressive activism within the
electoral system are beginning to shift power, confirming much of Jack’s
political and strategic insights.

Anticipating the growing movement for prison abolition, Jack has
characterized mass incarceration, especially imprisoning of black youth, as
acts of war, in large measure designed to suppress resistance of working
people of color to their oppressive conditions.

Before the foundational role of slavery in establishing capitalism achieved
consensus among historians, Jack was writing about slavery as central to
the capital accumulation that cemented the system. The institutionalization
of a “white man’s country” with the denial of land, the franchise and
freedom to blacks exploded the dominant myth that the nation was born in
democracy. As for a “free market,” Jack wrote, “It may be that we who stand
in the lineage of people who were sold in the marketplace have something to
say about the limits of market freedom.”

Central to Jack’s thinking was the connection between war, racism and
empire. Racism was an essential link from genocidal war on Native
Americans, to the Mexican War, to Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. The
struggle for peace, especially for nuclear disarmament, was a central
political concern for Jack and a major aspect of his activism. It
inevitably incorporated the battle against racism and militarism and their
global reach. Anti-racist activism demanded international engagement.

Anchored on the building of mass movements emerging from the grass roots,
Jack’s concept of “Dual Authority” left no room for narrow sectarian
concerns. His whole life as a merchant seaman, political organizer, worker
intellectual, labor activist, significant voice in SCLC and the Rainbow
Coalition consistently urged the building of a progressive majority against
established authority – advancing “limited objectives” within the historic
continuum of the broader struggle of working people the world over for
power.

Jack’s legacy is the foundation upon which all who strive for a better
world stands. His historical, theoretical and strategic contributions are
amplified and summarized in his book  *Climbin’ Jacob’s Ladder *edited by
Nikhil Pal Singh.That book is worthy of serious study linked to
participation in the long movement for justice and freedom.

Jack died peacefully on October 31 in the company of his family. At his
side, as always, was Jane Power, his wife, confidant and equal partner in
the fight for a world of peace, justice and equality.

*[James Campbell** and Mark Solomon are past national co-chairs of the
Committee of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. They were
long-time friends and political collaborators with Jack O’Dell.] *

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