From: Yoshie Furuhashi
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!
^^^^^ CB: Certainly was cooler than cool to finally meet my comrade, Yoshie Furuhashi, in person ! I have often said that part of the value of marches like this is that they are "Party" meetings. And these are meetings with some people you have never met before, people who are in a state of being very openminded about political discussion. As Yoshie mentions, radical trade unionists had a sort of national caucus in the context of the march. The organizing activities and interactions of the marches makes marches into partial conventions.
I usually find the conversations and discussions in the bus rides to be very valuable, intensified by being "locked" in together. Rides from Detroit to DC or NYC are 10 to 12 hours too. We had a real reminiscence and evaluation about the Detroit newspaper workers strike and the tactics and battles, as one of the leaders, David Sole, was the main organizer of the buses from Detroit. We even got into the LBO thread topic of what is fascism and the danger and history of it in the U.S. My LBO membership certainly prepared me for that one. Also, on the ride, we watched Farenheit 9/11 (which I hadn't seen) and two others: one on the Murdoch mindcontrol apparatus and the other on all the CIA and state department experts busting the Bush admin for the big lies fomenting the war on Iraq ( sorry I forgot the names; they are really _au currant_). I mean the whole thing was definitely a conference/convention and march demo, something of unity of theory and practice.
Yoshie and I estimated the turnout as 5 - 10 thou. as we stood there. There was some announcement about the police diverting buses from NYC away from the march location. I don't know if they ever got there. That was bit of nefariousness by the fuzz, in indirect response to one of the questions posed here
Pace Michael Pugliese's friend's poem, the October 17 demo represented an objective unity among the left groups there. The differences in opinion expressed by speakers and demonstrators' signs represented a friendly debate ,and a unity in diversity, unity in/and struggle of the radical left. It is left pluralism. For example, there were speakers for and against Kerry, as well as, of course, demonstrators. On a Detroit local scale, the gathering of activists from diverse radical groups AND "regular" people on the bus was this too.
As I told one comrade, we are back home in plenty of time to vote in
November, so I don't see how the march detracted from election work. I would
have been out partying (the other kind) on the weekend anyway. So,
participation in the march represented some political self-discipline for me
:>)
All Power to the People !