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Today's
Stories
October
30 / 31, 2004
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The Long March and the Million Worker
March
Winslow
T. Wheeler
Spartacus Tells All
Bruce
Anderson
Notes from the Big Empty: When the Hippies Invaded NoCal
Vicente
Navarro
They Worked for Franco: How Sec. of State Cordell Hull and Nobel
Laureate Camilo Jose Cela Collaborated with the Fascist Regime
Robin
Blackburn
How Monica Lewinsky Saved Social Security
Greg
Bates
A Question of Character: What Makes Nader Tick?
Nancy
Welch
The American Health Care Crisis: an Interview with Dr. David
Himmelstein
William
Lind
Election Day: Which Menendez Brother Will You Vote For?
Brian
Cloughley
Uzbekistan and Bush Hypocrisies
Suzan
Mazur
Oops They Did It Again: the NYTs the Paper of Record and Rip-Offs
Greg
Moses
Standing at the Graves of Iraq
John
Chuckman
Osama's Endorsement
Richard
Oxman
Why Not Accept Osama's Offer?
Ken
Avidor
Landscape of Fear: When Ugly is Suspicious
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Bush, Ba'ath and Beyond
Hope
Bastian
Strangling Cuba's Economy
P.
Sainath
Tower of Gabble: Toward a Sustainable Rhetoric
Dave
Zirin
Bush League: Why MLB Owners Support the Prez
Jon
Swift
The Dry Drunk Thang: Put a Cork in It
Ron
Jacobs
The Joke's on Me: a Review of Bob Dylan's Chronicles Vol. 1
Alexander
Billet
Taking Theatre Back: Are the States Ready for "Stuff Happens"?
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Laymon, Norris, Ford and Albert
October
29, 2004
Harry
Browne
No Justice for Peace Activist in County
Clare
October
28, 2004
Forrest Hylton
"The Gas is Ours:" Bolivia's
Ghosts of October
Col. Dan Smith
Rebellion
in the Ranks
Alan Maass
Jon Stewart v. the Pundits
Ron Jacobs
Ecstasy
in Red Sox Nation
Alexander
Cockburn
Kerrycrats and the War
October
27, 2004
Jules
Rabin
Crammed with Distressful Politics
Dave
Lindorff
Bulgegate: the Lies Continue
Katherine
Van Tassel
On the Home Front: Both Parties
Ignore Working Parents
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Bi-Partisan Politics of Oil
October 26,
2004
Brian Cloughley
Three
Weddings and Lots of Funerals: Atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan
William Blum
Fear
Factors
Lenni Brenner
The
1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Lessons for 2004
Ben Tripp
The
Chicken Salad Election
Fidel Castro
After the Fall
Greg Bates
The Nation's Flawed Calculus
Walter Brasch
Gag the Public: the War on Dissent
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
An Open Letter to Pat Buchanan
Mickey Z.
Rumble in the Jungle at 30: Ali, Foreman and the Congo
Amir Taheri
The Boom in Conspiracy Theories
Alexander Billet
Say It Ain't So, Bruce!: the Boss Endorses Kerry
Doug Giebel
The Religion of G.W. Bush
Kathleen Christison
Why
I Liked Thomas Friedman's Latest Column Before I Didn't
October 25,
2004
Ralph Nader
Letter
from a Minnesota Highway
Werther
West
Texas Wahabbism
Dave Zirin
Boston's Killer Cops: Death of a Fan
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Oregon Revokes Dr. Leveque's License
Omar Barghouti
Executing Another Child in Rafah
William J. Nottingham
Lori Berenson's Story
John Chuckman
A Foolish Consistency
Uri Avnery
On
the Road to Civil War
October 22
/ 24, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
You
Can't Blame Nader for This
Rev. William Alberts
On Bended Knee: Faith-Based Deceptions
Willliam A.
Cook
Killing for Christ
Saul Landau
George W. Bush: a Man of His Words?
Bill Quigley
I Held the Bullet in My Palm: Masked Haitian Police Shoot Children
While Arresting Priest
Christopher Brauchli
Seal It With a Frown: What Compassionate Conservativism Really
Means
William S.
Lind
Fallujah and the Moral Level of War
Sharon Smith
Guilt Trippers for Kerry
Greg Bates
Kerrynomics: "Hurt the Ones Who Vote for Us"
Justin E.H. Smith
Is Lesser Evilism a Compromise with Evil?
Rebecca Evans
Tarnished Legacy: Pinochet and the Chilean Military
Mike Whitney
Al Hurra TV: the Second Invasion
M. Junaid Alam
Purchasing Individuality in America
David Krieger
Nuclear Non-Proliferation: Examining the Policies of Bush and
Kerry
David J. Ledermann
The Emperor's New Crumbs
Lawrence Reichard
Same Old FBI Story
Website of
the Weekend
Lie Girls: the Real Coalition of the Willling
October 21,
2004
Ben Tripp
The
Undecided Voter Examined
Joshua Frank
Kerry
and the Environment:
It's Not Easy Pretending to be Green
Stan Cox
What
the Left Doesn't Get About Small Businesses
Bill Martinez
State
Depart and Cuban Visas: Only Anti-Castro Agitators Need Apply
Mark Engler
The War and Globalization
Lina Britto
and Lucia Suarez
Bolivia:
a Year After the October Insurrection
Website of the Day
Two Pampered Children of Wealth
October 20,
2004
Yitzhak Laor
"Did
You Two Squabble?": a Bullet Fired for Every Palestinian
Child
Jason Leopold
Sinclair
Broadcasting's Air War: a Long History of Journalistic Deception
Jesse Sharkey
A
Teacher's Account of How Military Recruiters Prey on High School
Students
Col. Dan Smith
Choking
Free Speech About the Draft
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Using My Religion
David Vest
If
Bush Wins, Blame Me
Jack Random
The Jackson 17: Reflections on a Mutiny
Ron Jacobs
Time
to Kick It Up a Notch
James Brittain
Plan Patriota and the FARC: a Change in the Countryside?
Christopher
Dols
Bombing Madison: Michael Moore's Fright Fest
Dave Lindorff
First They Came for the Nurses...
Website of
the Day
Banana Republican Catalogue
October 19,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Party
Favors: the Political Business of Terry McAuliffe
Jeff Taylor
Confessions
of a Swing State Voter
Matt Vidal
American
Myopia: "More Money in Your Pocket"
Victor Kattan
"It's Not Who You're Against; It's Who You're For":
Palestine Takes Center Stage At Euro Social Forum
William Loren
Katz
What Goes Around Comes Around
Sean Carter
O'Reilly Should Shut Up About Extortion Claiims
CounterPunch Wire
Who's Really in Bed with Republican Funders: Kerry or Nader?
October 18,
2004
Saul Landau
Facts
and Lies; Slogans and Truth
Dave Lindorff
Bulletin
on the Bush Bulge
Diane Christian
Sheep
and Goats: On the Language of Goodness
Greg Bates / Dave Lindorff
Betting on War: a Wager on the Fallout of a Kerry Presidency
Uri Avnery
Ariel
Sharon's Philosophy
Peter LaVenia
Leaving the Greens So Soon? a Response to Josh Frank
Mike Whitney
O'Reilly at the Whipping Post
Elaine Cassel
The Other War: Civil Liberties Three Years After 9/11
October 16
/ 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
October 15,
2004
Paul Craig
Roberts
Where
Did These "Conservatives" Come From?: The Brownshirting
of America
Laura Carlsen
Wal-Mart
vs. the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
Greg Bates
Empire of Insanity: Kerry's Iraq Troop Numbers
Michael Donnelly
News from a Swing State: Does Anyone Here Have a Spine?
Katherine Lahey
The Venezuelan "Threat": Why Do Kerry and Bush Fear
Hugo Chavez?
Robert Jensen
/ Pat Youngblood
Election Day Fears
Leah Caldwell
From
Supermax to Abu Ghraib: the Masterminds of Torture and Abuse
Website of
the Day
An Anti-Billionaire Policy? Why That Would Be Economic Racism
October 14,
2004
Darcy Richardson
The
Other Progressive Candidate: the Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown
Willliam A.
Cook
Turning
Myths into Truth
Laura Santina
Water, Women and War
Evelyn Pringle
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma: What You Can't Say About Drug
Importation
Alan Farago
Lessons
from Nature
Rep. Maxine Waters
A Letter to Colin Powell on Haiti
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
Halloween Edition
October 30 / 31, 2004
The Long March
...and
the Million Worker March
By
JOANN WYPIJEWSKI
History and its symbols having been
central in conceptualizing the demonstration for jobs, peace
and human needs that took place at the Lincoln Memorial on a
crisp afternoon this past October 17, it is worth casting the
mind back a bit before proceeding with our story of that event,
recalling first the organizational finesse and political discipline
of this latest demonstration's most famous forebear (depicted
on its fliers and literature), the 1963 March on Washington for
Jobs and Freedom.
It is too bad that the 1963
march is so welded in both the liberationist and popular imaginations
to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech,
because "that speech" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
overshadows political lessons that aren't reiterated every January
15 over the radio waves. Lessons that begin with a series of
questions, like Why was that march called for that time anyway?
To demonstrate a public demand for action on civil rights legislation
then before Congress. The dreams were bigger, of course-freedom,
equality, economic and every other kind of justice. But when
King proposed the idea, on June 1, 1963, less than three months
before it would become a reality, he had particular strategic
objectives: to "take advantage", as Taylor Branch writes
in Parting the Waters, "of the fever he felt sweeping
ahead of them" in the form of mass actions throughout the
South; to put heat under the Kennedy administration, whose vacillating
affinities King rightly gauged; to pressure Congress and spark
the national conscience by the display of a unified "mass
meeting" the likes of which the country had never seen.
Who was its immediate target?
A recalcitrant Congress. King and other organizers initially
considered expending equal firepower against the Kennedys and
Congress, but made a tactical decision to divide their opposition,
appealing to the former as a limited ally, though without many
illusions.
Whose resistance did it have
to defuse, disarm, defy? The NAACP leadership, much of the liberal
establishment, the Kennedy administration. In radical retellings
of the march, it's often recalled that Malcolm X scorned it as
the "Farce on Washington"; that SNCC's Bob Moses disdained
political maneuvering (of which he regarded the march an example)
and carried a sign declaring "When There Is No Justice,
What Is the State but a Robber Band Enlarged?"; that a last-minute
hullabaloo resulted in striking a line deemed too incendiary
from John Lewis's speech: "We will march through the South,
through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We will pursue
our own 'scorched earth' policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground-nonviolently."
Less commonly remembered is that NAACP poo-bahs had had an allergy
to marches, had worked overtime to denigrate direct action of
any kind until history confronted them with the question of their
own relevance; that much of organized labor was hostile; that
Kennedy, as Branch writes, "toyed briefly with legislating
'a reasonable limitation of the right to demonstrate'",
distrusted King, whom he regarded as "so hotthat it's like
Marx coming to the White House", and allowed the FBI to
raise an alarum of Negro Violence and warn people to stay away.
Who ultimately defined the
march? The masses who answered the call, and the organizers marshaled
by Bayard Rustin, working under the aegis of the great labor
leader A. Philip Randolph, who made sure they not only heard
it but also had a way to make their answer felt in the flesh:
2,000 organizing manuals disbursed to 2,000 local leaders, 200
core volunteers, 2,000 buses, 21 chartered trains, 80,000 cheese-sandwich
bag lunches packed by volunteers at Riverside Church, 400 march
marshals, a seven-minute limit on speeches and a hook man to
enforce it. Rustin had set a goal of 100,000 marchers. Two hours
before the scheduled rally, police estimated the crowd at twice
that. Buses from the North had been rolling through the Baltimore
tunnel at a rate of 100 an hour. The final demonstrator count
may have been 300,000, maybe more. While hardly revolutionary,
the march was another kind of festival of the oppressed-complete
with celebrities, and with the conviction that so many people
can't, at last, be denied. For most of the participants it was
their first national demonstration, uniquely cross-racial but
majority black, an unprecedented expression of popular will and
solidarity; and, as they say, you always remember your first.
It may seem unfair to juxtapose
the Million Worker March, as the October 17 demonstration was
called, and one of the iconic events of modern American history,
but the event's organizers invited the comparison; they even
had a King, MLK III, on the Lincoln steps. The name, on the other
hand, they borrowed from the Nation of Islam's 1995 Million Man
March, a clash of symbols, given the Nation's views on racial
separatism; and of politics, given the MMM's emphasis on personal
responsibility and entrepreneurship, and the MWM's on the collective
action of workers, union and nonunion, against structures that
depend on racism, exploitation and war. The name was unfortunate
for another reason, rousing expectations that the event didn't,
couldn't, live up to, either in numbers (by generous calculations,
there were 3,000 to 5,000 people) or in action (there was no
march, which came as a rude surprise to workers I rode on the
bus with from New York, who learned they were in for a day-long
speechfest only upon disembarking in DC).
And yet the demonstration was
important-for the agenda it enunciated, for the prospect it dangles
of what one of its organizers, Clarence Thomas of the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) executive board, called
"the civil rights initiative for the 21st century"
and the coalition that would necessitate, for the weaknesses
it exposed of both institutional labor (the International unions,
the AFL-CIO and its state and local bodies) and rank-and-file
formations at this stage.
The idea for the demo emerged
this past January within ILWU Local 10 in Oakland. Throughout
the proceedings in Washington, it was referred to as "the
storied", "the legendary", "the historic"
Local 10, justifiably given that it was home base for Harry Bridges,
founder of the ILWU and leader of the 1934 West Coast maritime
strike (and San Francisco general strike), that it pioneered
US labor actions against apartheid in the 1980s, that it has
played a central role in shutting down the West Coast ports on
behalf of everything from contract grievances to international
solidarity to Mumia Abu Jamal. It is a rare bird in labor's aviary,
a militant, black, rich local (it donated $1 million to the Southern
California grocery strike earlier this year, and some of its
members and retirees shelled out thousands, in one case $50,000,
of their own money for the MWM). It is a local that has come
to see audacity rewarded, so why shouldn't it call for a national
mobilization? But it is still a local, and without the endorsement
of even its International president and executive board, it was
clear from the beginning that mounting such a demonstration two
weeks before a tooth-and-claw national election would be a mighty,
contentious undertaking.
On June 23, the AFL-CIO's director
of field mobilization, Marilyn Schneiderman, sent a memo to all
state federations and local labor councils encouraging them "not
to sponsor or devote resources to the demonstrations in Washington,
DC, but instead to remain focused on the election." As Thomas
notes, there's something badly amiss when mobilizing on behalf
of such things as national health care, a living wage, affordable
housing, jobs, literacy, Social Security, progressive taxation,
democracy and an end to the war in Iraq is considered audacious.
(Other demands included cancellation of neoliberal trade agreements,
an end to "the criminalization of poverty and the prison-industrial
complex", an end to privatization and the "mad race
to the bottom", repeal of Taft-Hartley and other impediments
to the right to organize, major investment for neighborhood revitalization,
environmental restoration, free mass transit, repeal of the Patriot
Act and similar repressive legislation, deep cuts in the military
budget, open airing of military and intelligence "black
budgets", enforcement of all civil rights, resistance against
all forms of discrimination, development of democratic media
and an end to media monopolization.)
"These are things workers
can agree on, no matter what a person's political persuasion",
Thomas says. "We felt it was important to express the urgent
demands of workers-organized and unorganized-in the face of assaults
on the working class, hardships not seen since the Great Depression,
and the failure of either political party to take up a workers'
agenda. Fact is, we need to be making demands on all politicians."
That is the MWM's short answer
to the first of the questions posed earlier, namely Why was the
march called for this time? Local 10's original resolution for
the demonstration spoke of it as a necessary adjunct to voter
registration, education and get-out-the-vote work, a means of
motivating people who might reasonably find the candidates lacking.
In the world as it might be, this is what organized labor would
do: mobilize voters but also organize mass action to buck up
the base, build and leverage power; engage closely enough in
the electoral process to influence politicians but independently
enough to challenge and, as necessary, punish them. In the world
as it is, however, this is not what most of institutional labor
has experience in, and union swells were not going to start experimenting
in an election year in which the incumbent administration had
eliminated workers' collective bargaining rights, overtime, ergonomic
standards, had threatened to eliminate union recognition by card
check, equated unionists with terrorists, locked up immigrants,
opposed affirmative action, endorsed outsourcing, presided over
huge job losses and even greater inequality-not to mention the
war, which some of the most powerful affiliates oppose.
In the days before and after
the demonstration, AFL HQ on 16th Street was a ghost place, virtually
everyone from secretaries to executive vice presidents having
gone to "battleground states" to work the phone banks,
leaflet communities, get out the vote. In places like Wisconsin,
the 5,000-member Teamsters Local 200, with a rank and file TDU
leadership, committed all its mobilization efforts in the run-up
weeks to the election. Steelworkers in biker leathers were going
door-to-door with an enthusiasm longtime labor political operatives
say they have never seen. From Philadelphia, the head of the
Central Labor Council, which opposed war in Iraq before it began,
told Gene Bruskin, co-convener of US Labor Against the War, that
they couldn't spare a single body for the Million Worker March
if it were held before the election; everyone was working flat-out,
particularly on the weekends. Thomas found it insulting to suggest
that unions couldn't do two things at one time, but realistically
even doing one thing is hard for most of them, such is the state
of underdevelopment. And Bruskin says he heard the same from
other member groups, which, he believed, would have participated
enthusiastically at another time.
Along with all those bodies
focused on elections flow dollars, millions of them. Donna DeWitt,
president of the South Carolina State AFL-CIO, the only state
fed to endorse and organize for the MWM, said she understood
the importance of the resource question for the federation ("they're
broke!") but, like all the union people I spoke with, resented
the memo. (And especially resented Schneiderman gesturing disapprovingly
at her MWM T-shirt at an earlier federation gathering, and snapping,
"We have to talk.") "If the AFL had supported
and mobilized for the march-even tacitly, even by just encouraging
affiliates to do what they could and giving a little money,"
DeWitt continued, "it would have been a lot bigger. As it
is, they gave all affiliates an excuse not to participate."
And, she added, gave organizations like USLAW and the Labor Party,
which depend on unions and state and local labor bodies for their
funding, a reason to be fearful about endorsing. Neither did
endorse, though Bruskin did personally, as did individual Labor
Party members, like DeWitt and Brenda Stokely, a march organizer
who is also president of AFSCME District Council 1707 in New
York.
It might be countered that
march planners allowed the AFL its excuse; a post-election demo
would have deprived them of it. Even if this stirred no more
official support (and no one would want so much support that
it translated into control), it would have made opposition more
awkward, placing class concerns at the center of the table, prodding
labor officials who might want to relax if Kerry wins and capitalizing
on the public assertions of those like SEIU's Andy Stern that
no matter who is president, labor will need to fight. In a switch
from previous periods, labor strategists began talking seriously
in October about organized pressure on a putative President-elect
Kerry. Back in October 1992, when Jesse Jackson called for national
civil rights and labor leaders to meet two weeks after the election
to figure out how to put some concentrated heat on Bill Clinton,
none of labor's representatives could make it.
As the rally on October 17
actually played out, there was no compelling sign that it would
have made any difference whether the event occurred before or
after the election. Who was its immediate target? It's hard to
say. Speakers thundered against Bush but also against the Democrats.
Some urged the crowd to vote for change and get their friends
to do the same; others said not to worry about the election.
None that I heard made a tactical United Front-style argument
for voting for Kerry, followed by a clear program of resistance
and pressure from the left on the issues. None I heard advocated
for Nader or Cobb or anyone. A few floated dreams of a real labor
party, of a general strike, requisite sky-castle of sectarian
newspaper floggers and hangers-on. There were a couple of Kerry
signs, multiple anti-Bush insignia, a few digs at union bureaucrats.
The best speeches stuck to the heart of the matter: the war on
workers, the war on the world.
Afterward, rally organizers
said the election wasn't the issue; the demands transcend it.
Certainly, but then what was the strategic value of the timing?
When most of the organized working class is highly interested
in an election outcome and the rest of the working class is made
no stronger by disenfranchisement in a system where the rich
do vote, being fuzzy about that election, on the cusp of the
election, indicates a disconnect from the base. Demonstrations
do need some kind of message discipline and critical mass if
they are to be political interventions at a moment in time. Like
politicians, workers can count.
Clearly, it was the AFL's resistance
that demonstration organizers had to defuse, disarm, defy. Perhaps
as important, though-because the day the AFL is a rank-and-file
organization, the revolution will already have happened-is what
one union electrician at the march called "activistism",
the tendency of some left activists, because they spend so much
time talking to each other, to convince themselves of a reality
at an angle to actual fact. There is a perdurable romance about
the rank and file's willingness, consciousness to move, often
detectable by pronouncements beginning, "Working people
know" In the summer there was talk among march organizers
about rethinking the event if the numbers weren't building, if
the money wasn't coming in sufficiently. It was never pursued
further, mostly because nobody wanted to be seen as throwing
cold water on the project. In the weeks before the march some
activists involved with the planning, particularly those connected
with International ANSWER, continued to insist that there would
be 100,000 demonstrators, even when the buses so far on order
would hold only 2,000. This is classic sectarian fantasism: look
at the list of endorsers, who in this case were legion, some
real, some not, and extrapolate. American Postal Workers Union,
representing 330,000 workers; National Education Association,
representing 3.5 million workers, and so on like that. That those
organizations have no history of mobilizing workers, even for
their own causes, is ignored.
Who defined the march? The
activists, but perhaps just for now. Ralph Schoenman, a fellow
long in the sectarian trenches who somehow became the MWM's communications
chair, hogged the mic, affecting the cadences of a Southern minister
as he made introductions, among them his "best friend"
Dick Gregory. Even as the day lengthened and the crowd thinned,
there seemed to be no adjustment of the program. A representative
of twenty-six trade unionists who had come all the way from Japan
for the march was kept waiting until the very end, when most
of the audience had already headed off to meet their buses. ANSWER's
Larry Holmes said afterward, "We hit a homerun." Because
the event was broadcast over CSPAN, Clarence Thomas could justifiably
say, "We may not have had a million people but we reached
a million households." But he didn't talk about homeruns;
like some of the workers from New York waiting for the bus home,
he admitted disappointment.
The most hopeful note is that
the people who did come were not by and large professional activists.
From their jackets and T-shirts, flags and caps, they seemed
mostly to be workers or organized immigrants. At least half the
crowd was black. Two buses had come from South Carolina (compared
with one from Chicago), and the day after, Ken Riley, president
of International Longshore Association Local 1422 out of Charleston,
said workers who had attended or watched it on TV thanked him
for affording them an opportunity rare in their home state. (The
local had hired two additional buses based on expressed interest,
but in the end, Riley said, a lot of the younger longshoremen
decided to take advantage of the older-timers' absence to get
work on the docks.) As Ron Washington of Black Telephone Workers
for Justice out of New Jersey said later, the overall success
of the event will be determined by whether it begins to construct
a skeletal framework on which people can build, uniting workers
who are now fragmented and isolated, articulating the interests
of the broad working class through specific fights but also helping
those struggling to gain power or even just develop a strong
left opposition in their unions. The nature of leadership does,
after all, influence the nature of engagement.
There's no rule of politics
that says national mobilizations must come only after strong
local networks have been built and are active, but it helps.
The 1963 March on Washington followed at least eight years of
vigorous local militancy. But there's no saying it can't work
the other way around, especially if the most serious people behind
this effort forge good regional leadership, good coalitions,
good communication and define a clear aim and enemy. For the
past seven years the AFL has been trying to fan interest in the
idea of the right to organize as the spark for a new civil rights
movement. But as tough, progressive black trade unionists, many
of whom participated in the MWM, regularly say, the old civil
rights movement is yet unfinished. And there's no way you're
going to get a person who can't find a job, can't feed the kids,
has no health care or is about to be sent to jail or Iraq to
believe that the most important thing in life is the right to
form a union. Now, if the union cut a public presence caring
for that job, those kids, that health care, that jail sentence
and that war, maybe...
Joann Wypijewski is a writer living in New York. She
contributed an essay on Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition
to CounterPunch's new book, Dime's
Worth of Difference. She can be reached at: She can be reached
at: jwp@thenation.com
Weekend
Edition Features for October 30 / 31, 2004
Winslow
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Notes from the Big Empty: When the Hippies Invaded NoCal
Vicente
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They Worked for Franco: How Sec. of State Cordell Hull and Nobel
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Robin
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How Monica Lewinsky Saved Social Security
Greg
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A Question of Character: What Makes Nader Tick?
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The American Health Care Crisis: an Interview with Dr. David
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William
Lind
Election Day: Which Menendez Brother Will You Vote For?
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Uzbekistan and Bush Hypocrisies
Suzan
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Oops They Did It Again: the NYTs the Paper of Record and Rip-Offs
Greg
Moses
Standing at the Graves of Iraq
John
Chuckman
Osama's Endorsement
Richard
Oxman
Why Not Accept Osama's Offer?
Ken
Avidor
Landscape of Fear: When Ugly is Suspicious
Niranjan
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Bush, Ba'ath and Beyond
Hope
Bastian
Strangling Cuba's Economy
P.
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Tower of Gabble: Toward a Sustainable Rhetoric
Dave
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Bush League: Why MLB Owners Support the Prez
Jon
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The Dry Drunk Thang: Put a Cork in It
Ron
Jacobs
The Joke's on Me: a Review of Bob Dylan's Chronicles Vol. 1
Alexander
Billet
Taking Theatre Back: Are the States Ready for "Stuff Happens"?
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Laymon, Norris, Ford and Albert
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