Sadly, I didn't get to see Brad (my cell phone battery died before I got to try to call him back), but I did manage to meet Charles Brown (an LBO-talk subscriber whom I've known since the now-defunct Spoon Collective Marxism lists) in person for the first time. Cool!
As for the turnout, I'd say that the police officer quoted by Manny Fernandez and David Nakamura in their Washington Post article is accurate: "Million Worker March in the Washington Post" (October 18, 2004, <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20041018/023530.html>). It was in the same league as the first anti-war march on D.C. after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The anti-war movement's loss of political independence and acquiescence to the hegemony of the pro-war Democratic Party is a political disaster of historic proportions (the impact of which on anti-war activists has been as stupefying as the 9/11 terrorist attacks), and we have to do all we can to recover from demobilization and depoliticization caused by it as soon as possible. The Million Worker March was an important step in our recovery. The next important steps are nationwide anti-war mobilizations on September 3, 2004 (called by United for Peace and Justice among others), the inauguration protest on January 20, 2005 (called by International ANSWER), and March 20, 2005 (in the works) among other things.
Doug asks if the Million Worker March was still a success, considering the turnout, but I already answered that question a month ago, before my partner and I organized a bus to the march: "In my view, 10,000 Black and Black-led rank-and-file labor activists organizing on their own initiative are more worth knowing and supporting than 500,000 random whites" ("Learn Why We Need a Million Worker March," September 17, 2004, <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040913/020607.html>). As I expected, the march's participants were proportionally far more working-class and Black -- many of them active in their unions -- than previous national anti-war marches called by ANSWER and UfPJ.
The initiative for the march came from one trade union local on the West Coast -- Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union -- well known for its radicalism (currently and historically), and organizing was entirely an rank-and-file effort, actively resisted by the AFL-CIO and tepidly endorsed by anti-war coalitions and the like. Frankly, I'm pleasantly surprised that the West Coast brothers in Local 10 dared to call a national march in D.C. (rather than in San Francisco) and managed to make it happen at all -- something that they (or any other trade union local on either coast for that matter) had NEVER done before. Many of the Black trade unionists who organized and participated in the march came into D.C. earlier than others, networked throughout the weekend, and discussed what's next -- especially in the South -- according to Theresa El-Amin (cf. <http://www.jwj.org/LocalCoal/NC.htm> and <http://www.labornotes.org/archives/2003/11/a.html>). I'll look forward to hearing about what comes out of their networking. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>