• Marxist anti-war activist
• Former member of Students for a Democratic Society
• Political supporter of Barack Obama

Carl Davidson is an American Marxist who serves as a national steering committee member of United for Peace and Justice, a field organizer for the Solidarity Economy Network, and co-chair of Chicagoans Against War & Injustice. The latter organization has formed alliances with such groups as the League of Women Voters, Rainbow/PUSH, Citizen Action, People for the American Way, the Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Aiming ultimately to transform the United States into a socialist nation, Davidson advocates the mobilization of "new grassroots majorities required for progressive, systemic change."

As a college student in the 1960s, Davidson was a national secretary of Students of a Democratic Society and a national leader of the anti-Vietnam War movement. He received a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Penn State University and later found employment as a philosophy instructor at the University of Nebraska, also in the 1960s.

Davidson and Tom Hayden take credit for having launched in 1969 the "Venceremos Brigades," which covertly transported hundreds of young Americans to Cuba to help harvest sugar cane and interact with Havana's communist revolutionary leadership. (The Brigades were organized by Fidel Castro's Cuban intelligence agency, which trained "brigadistas" in guerrilla warfare techniques, including the use of arms and explosives.)

Many years later, Davidson would reflect on his SDS days when he, along with Dave Dellinger and Tom Hayden, had taken advantage of an opportunity to converse at length with President Castro. Said Davidson: "He [Castro] is a remarkable man, with a photographic memory, wide knowledge and keen insights.... We should all wish Fidel and Cuba well, and double our voices against the blockcade."

In 1988 Davidson founded Networking for Democracy (NFD), an initiative that teaches computer skills and radical politics to Chicago-area teenagers. The NFD program encourages students to engage in "mass action" aimed at "tearing down the old structures of race and class privilege" in the U.S. "and around the world."

In 1992 Davidson became a leader of the newly formed Committees of Correspondence, a Marxist coalition of former Maoists, Trotskyists, and Communist Party USA members. The organization has since changed its name to the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, where Davidson remains a prominent figure.

In the mid-1990s Davidson was a major player in the Chicago branch of the New Party, a Marxist political coalition whose objective was to endorse and elect leftist public officials. Most New Party members hailed from the Committees of Correspondence (the Marxist coalition cited in the preceding paragraph), the Democratic Socialists of America, and the militant leftist organization ACORN. Davidson first met Barack Obama through the New Party, which endorsed the latter in his run for the Illinois state senate in 1996. Obama had actively sought this endorsement, and he used a number of New Party volunteers as campaign workers.

Davidson quickly became one of Obama's most ardent political supporters. He helped organize a large 2002 rally where Obama first established himself as an eloquent anti-war spokesman.

A longtime admirer of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Davidson views the Iraq War as an endeavor rooted in American imperialism and "racism." In June 2004 he endorsed John Kerry for U.S. President and condemned "the Bush administration's ill-conceived 'War on Terror' [the sneer quotes are Davidson's], its drive to an unjust war with Iraq, and … the ongoing brutal occupation of that country." Blaming "Bush's unilateralist, militaristic approach" for having "lost the battle for hearts and minds … in the Islamic world," he accused the President of using the professed goal of "expanding democracy" as "a cover for U.S. hegemonism and Empire."

In Davis' view, "[T]he U.S government, at least over the past 50 years, has been the chief terrorist and sponsor of terrorism in the world. We can never forget that our government has the blood of a million Vietnamese on its hands."

By 2007, Davidson had become somewhat disillusioned by what he perceived as a diminution in Barack Obama's anti-war fervor. Early that year, for example, Davidson wrote the following:

"I'm from Chicago … and [I've] known Obama from the time he came to the New Party to get our endorsement for his first race ever…. He said all the right things to the ACORN and New Party folks, and we endorsed him [in 1996], but I noticed too, that he seemed to measure every answer to questions put to him several times before coming out with it....

"After he visited Iraq when the war was on, he turned. Now we had to set aside whether it was right or wrong to invade, now we had to find the 'smart' path to victory, not Bush's 'dumb' path. Also, in dealing with Iran, we had to leave on the table bombing their nuclear sites. For this, a lot of the local antiwar activists started calling him 'Barack 'Obomb 'em'…. Our peace groups here are sending a bunch of us to visit him soon, and get on his case. Perhaps he's still a work in progress, as Jesse Jackson says, but he still has a way to go to get back in my good graces …"

Davidson is the author of several books, including CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age (co-authored with Jerry Harris), and Stopping War, Seeking Justice (co-authored with Marilyn Katz).