Supporting only what is already popular doesn't help us move US politics to the left. And no mass movement is born fully-grown and -armed like Athena out of Zeus's head.
More often than not, only tens of thousands, rather than millions, are committed to a cause, especially at its birth, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the cause is not worth championing or has no chance of growing. The question is if we can build on a small beginning. Taking no action today, just because the action doesn't immediately attract the support of millions, won't help us attract those millions later. You can't take the second step without taking the first step.
For instance, the first anti-war demonstration after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 attracted only about 15,000 (roughly several thousand anarchist youths and approximately ten thousand hardy pacifists and socialists that answered ANSWER's call), and from that small beginning, the anti-war movement kept growing until the invasion of Iraq began; it lost the momentum after the fall of Baghdad, but it began to come back with the rise of Iraqi resistance and US casualties, and it kept growing again until overlapping AnybodyButNader/AnybodyButBush campaigns killed much of the anti-war movement -- dead because it was unable to find its electoral expression to sustain it.
It's about time to begin building a new movement. That the call for the Million Worker March came from Black trade union leaders supported by rank-and-file labor activists makes this new beginning a much more promising point of departure than the first post-9/11 demonstration led by predominantly white anarchists, socialists, and pacifists with no deep roots in the labor movement. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.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/>