Remembering Manning Marable - Three Organizations Salute
Their Fallen Member and Leader

* Remembering Manning Marable
  Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
  (CCDS)
* Manning Marable
  Democratic Socialists of America
* Statement on passing of Dr. Manning Marable
  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
  (NAACP)

==========

Remembering Manning Marable

Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
(CCDS)

April 4, 2011

http://cc-ds.org/index.html

The Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
(CCDS) mourns the death of Manning Marable. At the same
time, we celebrate his outstanding contributions to
scholarship and his powerful impacting work for equality and
for a world without exploitation, war and injustice.

Manning was a founding co-chair of CCDS. We are proud of
Manning's membership in our organization and of his many
profound contributions to our own understanding of our
society and of how to fight for a just country and world.

From the founding of CCDS Manning provided inspiration and
insight drawn from his penetrating understanding of the
country's history and its complex contemporary currents. He
was a forceful presence at a number of our conventions and
symposia over the past two decades. At our national
convention in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1999, Manning spoke
powerfully of the need for unity of all progressive forces
in advancing the battle for social change. In 2004 Manning
addressed a large throng at a CCDS symposium at the Boston
Social Forum where he drew a compelling picture of the human
cost of a militarized economy. In 2005 Manning was a
featured speaker at our first national symposium on building
a progressive majority where he spoke of the racialization
of Washington's foreign and domestic policies. Manning had
located the latent and increasingly manifest racism inherent
in the Iraq war and in the Bush administration's broader
strategic objectives. With brilliant command of a vast array
of data, Manning underscored the poisonous role of white
supremacy in extending and consolidating the interests of
those at the commanding corporate, military and government
heights. These are but a few of Manning's pivotal and
indispensable contributions to our organization and to the
broader progressive community.

At every juncture, Manning stressed the centrality of the
struggle against white supremacy as decisive to dismantling
the social structures that oppress, exploit and stifle the
full realization of our human potential. The defeat of
racism was an essential basis for all working women and men
to come together as equals; to breach traditional categories
of "black and white" in order to dissolve existing
exploitative social relations and instead build a radical
democracy embodied in socialism. Manning's vision of
liberation was neither integrationist nor separatist, but
driven by the quest to give life to new values of human
solidarity and to advance collective efforts to transform
society into a vessel of justice and equality. In striving
for that objective, Manning stressed the need for all the
oppressed and all who work for economic justice, for peace,
for environmental survival to make common cause.

That vision of social transformation justly placed Manning
Marable in the pantheon of great thinkers and fighters for
liberation such as W.E.B. Du Bois. Manning's weekly column
that reached legions of readers of the African American
press was aptly titled "Along the Color Line" echoing the
great writing of Du Bois. Manning's scores of books and
articles, many written while he suffered from a serious,
debilitating illness, are testaments to his brilliance, but
also to his remarkable courage and will to contribute to the
struggle for justice under extremely difficult
circumstances. His landmark work on Malcolm X, published
just days after his death is a testament to his scholarly
brilliance and his determination to reexamine Malcolm's life
to better educate and sustain all working for a better
world.

Manning Marable will be sorely missed. While he is
irreplaceable, we honor his life and his values by
continuing the struggle for a transformed society, for a
truly human epoch that he advocated and worked so hard to
achieve. CCDS pledges to continue to work for the world of
justice and freedom that he envisioned and for which he
fought.

==========

Manning Marable

Democratic Socialists of America

http://www.dsausa.org/ManningMarable.html

Manning Marable, a founding Vice-Chair of DSA, passed away
Friday, April 1, 2011 from complications of pneumonia. He
had suffered from the degenerative disease sarcoidosis for
25 years, and last year had undergone a double lung
transplant.

The death of our comrade Manning is a great loss for the
broad left in our country. His major biography of Malcolm X
(which, tragically, will appear on Monday, April 4, 2011) is
just about to come out, and it will be a major work. The New
York Times published a lengthy obituary, and a front page
article about this book, on Saturday, April 2nd . It is
indeed sad that Manning will not live to see its publication
and the reviews and debate around the book that will follow.
He had many other major works, including "How Capitalism
Underdeveloped Black America", a biography of W.E.B. DuBois,
and a wide range of published essay collections.

Manning played a major role in the merger of our predecessor
organizations, NAM and DSOC, into DSA. He was both a Vice
Chair and a member of the National Executive Committee
(later the NPC). For the first years of DSA he brought
together a significant group of activists of color around
his publication "Third World Socialist", the publication of
the DSA Anti-Racism, African-American, and Latino
commissions. He put a lot of hard work into getting the
various commissions off the ground, and hosted two DSA-
related conferences of over 100 activists and academics of
color in the mid-1980s.

For various personal and political reasons, including some
frustration that DSA's anti-racist work did not grow
significantly stronger over time, Manning shifted some of
his political activism to the Committees of Correspondence.
Even so, he remained a warm and good friend of DSA; and an
especially strong friend of the Youth Section (now YDS),
speaking often at its summer and winter conferences.

Manning accomplished a tremendous amount in his 60 years,
both politically and intellectually, and was that rare
academic who never stopped being an active, political
person. His work remains a major part of our heritage. He
will be sorely missed by us as a movement and, by many DSA
members, personally.

==========

NAACP statement on passing of Dr. Manning Marable

April 2, 2011

Washington, DC

http://www.mvinquirer.com/

The NAACP issued the following statement on the loss of Dr.
Manning Marable, an African American scholar and activist
who worked as the director of the Institute for Research in
African American Studies at Columbia University's School of
International and Public Affairs in New York:

"Dr. Marable's contributions to the struggle for freedom of
African Americans will never be forgotten," stated NAACP
President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous. "Dr. Marable
brought one of the keenest intellects of our age to the
contemporary conversation on race in America.  As an
academic he was never afraid to speak his mind, and as an
activist his words carried the gravitas of a published
author. His life was dedicated to the struggle, and he will
be sorely missed."

The Marable family is planning to hold a public memorial
service on May 27. Dr. Marable leaves behind 3 children and
two stepchildren.

Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest and
largest civil rights organization. Its members throughout
the United States and the world are the premier advocates
for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter
mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public
and private sectors.

==========

___________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate