> But the early protests were nevertheless more widespread and militant than you suppose and than we have witnessed to date, and it is important to understand why they were in order to make sense of the current period and the state of the contemporary left.
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> As early as March, 1930, for example, 500,000 people in 25 cities demonstrated against the Hoover administration's refusal to extend unemployment relief
I agree with you - even before 1933 the response was far sharper than today, and the CP had more to do with it than anyone else.
On the March 1930 demonstration, I take your point - although 500,000 is probably way too high. I just looked at the interesting NYT coverage. In Chicago, e.g., the AP reported that 4,000 attended a peaceful parade. The major riot was the NYC demo on Union Square. 25,000 people showed up. In Detroit 75,000. Of course, who knows how much to trust these figures?
By the way - and I'm not trying to suggest any unmerited, ennobling equivalence - the SEIU and NAACP are scheduled to have a big demo in DC in October for jobs. It may well be as big as the combined March 1930 demos. Sadly, it will almost certainly not be as militant. On the other hand - and I think this is an important point - the participants at this demo will be, on average, much more integrated into the social mainstream than the participants at the March 1930 demo, in part because America has become a much more pluralistic society. The social distance between the average 1930 American in Middletown and the people at Union Square was staggering.
For some, that's a bug, for others a feature.
SA