>[lbo-talk] MWM, take 2
>Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
>Sun Sep 26 07:32:18 PDT 2004
<snip>
>Michael Dawson wrote:
>
>>Here's my question: Why not make the MWM a movement to generate a true MWM?
>>Why not spend a year or two recruiting enough people to actually put a
>>million workers in the street?
>
>Because one suspects the organizers wanted to be able to say: "see
>how in bed big labor is with the Dems!" So when the march turns out
>to be a trickle, they can justify it with a "told you so!" It's
>almost the definition of sectarianism.
>
>Doug
The sad reality is that the state of organized labor is such that even if the AFL-CIO were to endorse and mobilize for the Million Worker March, it wouldn't supersize the march to one million workers. Action Motown '97 on Saturday, June 21, 1997 -- "[t]he first-ever national AFL-CIO solidarity demonstration in support of a strike" (Chris McKie, "Action! Motown '97: 100,000 Flood Detroit," <em>People's Weekly World</em>, <a href="http://www.pww.org/archives97/97-06-28-1.html">June 28, 1997</a>) -- drew *only 100,000*, in an optimistic estimate of the People's Weekly World, *even though the march was officially endorsed and mobilized by the AFL-CIO from the top down* (my partner and I went to the Action Motown march on a bus paid for by the CWA, with meals and beverages generously provided for by the union -- the cushiest trip to a demonstration that we have ever participated in).
It is no wonder that the New York organizer for the Million Worker March who talked to Doug said that the march organizers would "view 75,000 as a great success" (Doug Henwood, "Fwd: Help Build the Million Worker March - Oct 17," September 19, 2004, <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040913/020838.html>). For if 75,000 workers do show up in D.C. on October 17, 2004, that puts the labor left's capacity to organize a demonstration on a par with the AFL-CIO's!
>[lbo-talk] Fwd: Help Build the Million Worker March - Oct 17
>Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com, Sun Sep 19 12:43:03 PDT 2004
<snip>
>I see that NYC's DC 37, the big municipal workers union, endorsed
>the march. When I mentioned that to this organizer, he said, "Yes!
>and they're sending two busses!" Two, what's that, 160 people?
>ANSWER could get almost that many from Normal, Illinois, for an
>antiwar march.
>
>Doug
In the same way, in Columbus, Ohio, my fellow organizers and I have called many demonstrations over the last decade that drew far larger crowds than the ones called by union officials, for union officials are not capable of mobilizing their members as well as we can mobilize activists, some of whom are union members, on our painstakingly build mailing lists and phone trees. That is because union members are not necessarily labor activists and most of them do not even attend any union meeting (except when they go on strike). And that is why the officials of the AFL-CIO, as well as of its constituent unions, need to *pay* (tens of millions of dollars!) for the time and energy of activists (many of whom are non-union members) through ACT and the like as well as their own unions to campaign for the Democrats, for they can't count upon union members to do so on their own at the grassroots level.
In a strict sense, we do not have "a labor _movement_" in the United States that is larger than the labor left. The Million Worker March organizers would like to change that, putting movement back into organized and unorganized labor, so that we will be able to say in the future that we do have a labor movement in America capable of setting and advancing its own political agenda. -- 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/>