[ The 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.] [[link removed]]

JACK O’DELL – AN APPRECIATION  
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James Campbell and Mark Solomon
November 6, 2019
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_ The 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. _

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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