None of the march organizers said that they were expecting a million workers on October 17. However, they did probably expect more support from the anti-war movement (see "An Open Letter to the Anti-War Movement," <http://www.millionworkermarch.org/article.php?id=85>), which they didn't receive.
Doug wrote:
>It just occurred to me that a lot of American leftists share Bush's
>preference for faith-based to reality-based politics.
I agree, except that it is those who expect anything -- even merely a better condition for organizing -- from the John Kerry administration that are practicing faith-basted politics.
Doug wrote:
> >"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"
>
>So those are the only two choices? What about a multiracial
>gathering of 250,000?
"[A] multiracial gathering of 250,000" would have been nice, but even coalitions and organizations the majority of whose members are white and yet did endorse the march -- e.g., United for Peace and Justice, the Green Party -- offered only tepid endorsement and made no effort to mobilize their members nationwide. The majority of white activists today have yet to come to a conviction that it's a very good idea to support the leadership of working-class Black organizers like the brothers of ILWU Local 10 (and those who do support them tend to be already socialists in such organizations as Solidarity and Freedom Road Socialist Organization) and that it's worth fighting an uphill struggle to get other whites to come to that conviction, even though a number of white activists do realize that the anti-war movement has been disproportionately white despite the fact that opposition to the war has always been much higher among Blacks than whites or any other race for that matter (and the same contradiction exists in the global justice movement and almost any other social movement on the left).
<blockquote>There's been a lot of talk in the progressive community, that is, in the mostly white progressive community, that Black people are not pulling their weight in opposing Bush's war on Iraq.
I hear these thoughts on KPFK radio in Los Angeles. I heard them recently at the Socialist Scholar's Conference in New York where I "appeared" to be the only African-American panelist. I hear it from my fellow Greens. Why aren't Black people marching against war? . . .
OK, it looks like Black politicians unlike most White politicians, Black people on the street unlike most White people on the street, and Black newspapers unlike almost every mainstream white newspaper, are firmly against the war on Iraq. Why then is the white anti-war movement accusing Black people of not pulling our weight against the war?
The answer to this question lies in the specter of racism firmly entrenched in America.
Still it is true. Black people are not represented in demonstrations in numbers approaching our proportion of the population. And for good reason!
1. Black people remain under the prison industrial complex in proportions far greater than our proportion of the population.
2. White activists do not share leadership with, and are not willing to follow the lead of people and organizations of color.
3. The movement against the war on Iraq fails to recognize the continuing war on communities of color. White activists continue to ignore issues that speak to the experiences and struggles of people of color.
4. Current demonstrations, disproportionately white and middle class, are done by those who can most easily take the time and expense to travel to major anti-war events.
Even given that the above is true, we should ask the questions posed by The Black commentator: "Why should it be assumed that African Americans will come when white people call, for any cause? Have white people responded to Black-led movements seeking broad social change in anything approaching whites' proportion of the population?"
The historical answer is, No!
"It is true that older whites participated in the 1963 March on Washington and in the civil rights movement. Yet whites were only a fraction of the quarter-million strong crowd, [and the civil rights movement], while outnumbering African Americans in the general population eight to one. . . . (Donna J. Warren, "Are Black People Pulling Their Anti-War Weight?" <http://www.blackcommentator.com/35/35_guest_commentator.html>)</blockquote>
And, once again, the answer was NO on October 17, 2004. Most white anti-war activists and organizers chose to work for a white Presidential hopeful John Kerry for free than work with Clarence Thomas, Trent Willis, Leo Robinson, and other Black organizers, even though it is the latter not the former who are opposed to the war! It's one more missed opportunity on top of many others.
>And what union-organized march would ever consist of a 100% white
>crowd? Do you know anything about the demographics of American
>unions?
I specifically said "rank-and-file." You understand the difference in terms of political significance between an entirely rank-and-file initiative organized from below (in this case even defying resistance from the top) and a top-down project commanded by the officials of the AFL-CIO or of its constituent international union, don't you? -- 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/>