The Million Worker March organizers have been organizing since February 2004. It's not like they popped the idea yesterday, out of nowhere. If national anti-war coalitions had not adopted the AnybodyButBush strategy of concentrating overwhelmingly on organizing against the Republican National Convention and instead responded to the call of the Million Worker March organizers -- "We call upon United for Peace and Justice, Not in Our Name, leaders and all organizations preparing to demonstrate at the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention to *make these great demonstrations a build up* to a vast convergence in Washington, D.C. on October 17, 200" (emphasis added, "An Open Letter to the Anti-War Movement," <http://www.millionworkermarch.org/article.php?id=85>) -- we would have been all much better off.
But let's get over the national anti-war coalitions' political error of historic proportions. What's done cannot be undone.
If you ask the Million Worker March organizers, you will hear that the demonstration on October 17, 2004 will be the beginning of a movement, not just a movement to eventually organize a march of a million workers or more but also "a great movement for social change . . . a social, economic and political movement for working people" ("Our Mission," <http://www.millionworkermarch.org/article.php?id=28>). They don't see the march on October 17 as the end of organizing.
And the thing to remember is that many of the organizers and participants of the Million Worker March are not isolated individuals who have become newly politically active like many of the participants in the largest anti-Iraq War and anti-Bush demonstrations. They are formal and informal leaders of their unions at the local level, so the presence of tens of thousands of them in D.C. represents the presence of a larger number of their brothers and sisters in their unions and communities at home who have and will work with them. That is why the Million Worker March will be a more promising point of departure than the march of the same size or even larger size called by ANSWER, Not In Our Name, United for Peace and Justice, or any other anti-war coalition. -- 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/>