|
Liberation News: “One Nation” Rally Washington DC from PSLweb.org. |
It was the biggest outpouring of
union members and civil rights activists in decades. Thousands of buses from
around the country descended on Washington, D.C., on Oct. 2 to demand “jobs,
education, and equality” for what organizers billed as the “One Nation Working
Together” demonstration.
 Photo: Ana Maria Ramirez |
The core of the demonstration was
made up of workers who came with their unions. Huge contingents came from the
Health Care workers (1199) and Service Employees (SEIU), State, County and
Municipal workers (AFSCME), and teachers (AFT and NEA). Practically every union
was represented, including steelworkers and mineworkers.
The NAACP also organized thousands of their supporters,
including large youth contingents from the South. The biggest organized groups
of college students were Black fraternities and sororities.
Several hundred organizations endorsed the demonstration, including the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism). ANSWER distributed thousands of placards featuring a photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. and the slogans “Stand Agaisnt War and Racism” and “Jobs Not War.” The workers and youth who were present eagerly carried the signs at the main rally, as well as in feeder marches focusing on opposition to the war, immigrant rights and other issues.
Members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a member of the ANSWER Coalition Steering Committee, helped to hand out the ANSWER placards and distributed copies of Liberation newspaper.
While a large part of the crowd
was from the Mid-Atlantic region, sizeable groups traveled from the South and
Midwest to attend as well. Some traveled from as far as Seattle to participate.
The demonstration had been planned
for months, but an obvious spur that motivated many participants to make such
sacrifice to attend was the Aug. 28 “Tea Party” rally staged by right-wing
media personality Glenn Beck on the National Mall, the same location as the
Oct. 2 demonstration.
The Oct. 2 demonstration was of
the same magnitude as the Beck crowd—“One Nation” organizers estimated more
than 175,000 participants—but the comparisons ended there.
The “Tea Party” rally, despite
claims of spontaneity, had been whipped up by right-wing media and churches.
Those who attended were uniformly white and predominantly from upper-income
professional households. In order to mask the racism that bubbled at or just
under the rally’s surface, Beck’s lieutenants enforced a strict policy against
signs or banners, and Beck and the others speakers clothed their political
poison in religious and ultra-patriotic rhetoric.
By contrast, the “One Nation”
demonstration was broadly representative of the U.S. working class. In addition to
the huge outpouring from the predominantly Black churches and unions, delegations
from a broad range of nationalities attended, bringing their own demands and
concerns.
At a time when right-wing
demagogues like Beck and more extreme racists claim to speak for white people
in the United States, it was significant that half of the participants of the multinational
“One Nation” rally were white.
Broad support for a progressive agenda
 Photo: Natasha Persaud |
There was broad unity around a
range of different demands.
Chuck Loveless, an AFSCME member
from Washington, D.C., best summed up the main issue on the
mind of most participants. “The fact that we have 10 percent unemployment in
this country is unacceptable,” he told PSLweb. “We need good jobs for people.”
Others brought demands for health
care. “I think we should all have decent medical insurance,” said Valerie
Crawford, an SEIU member from Inkster, Mich.
Teachers carried signs demanding
“Keep the ‘public’ in education.”
Theodore Flary, a 78-year old
NAACP member from Brooklyn,
N.Y., saw the demonstration as
part of a continued struggle for equality. “When we came here in the 1960s, we
had the same type of problem—no jobs, and Blacks were treated badly,” he told PSLweb.
“Now it seems like it’s getting back to that situation again.”
Tinika McIntosh said her organization,
Black Public Health Student Network, took part in the rally to draw connections
between “unemployment and racist cutbacks, because we know that these things
affect minority communities far more than they affect other communities.”
McIntosh is a student at George Washington University, just blocks from the
National Mall.
Groups advocating immigrant rights
also mobilized, although not on a scale representative of the mass
mobilizations of immigrant workers that have taken place since millions took to
the streets on May Day 2006. Hundreds of members of the National Council of La
Raza brought signs demanding reforms to immigration law.
Anyone who held stereotyped views
of union workers as narrow-minded or only concerned about “America first”
would have been surprised by the extent to which the vast crowd was open to a
progressive agenda. Anti-war activists received a warm welcome in the crowd,
and signs and banners calling for an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were widespread. LGBT
activists were embraced as well.
Socialists got a good reception.
Devon Whithman, a young AFL-CIO staff member who organized for the rally, told PSLweb
that many people, especially younger people, saw the connections between
socialism and trade unionism. “We might not use the same words, but we’re
fighting for working people’s issues,” she said. “You can call it socialism,
you can call it communism, or you can just call it justice.”
For all these reasons, the
demonstration was an important show of strength by the multinational working
class. It was a brief glimpse at the potential power that the multinational
working class holds in its hands to be the central force in a movement for a
new society based on the interests of poor and working people.
Big business’s election trap
 Photo: Ana Maria Ramirez |
That is not to say that the day
was without shortcomings. The orientation of the rally organizers, reflected
uniformly in the message of speaker after speaker, was toward the Nov. 2
midterm elections.
Democratic Party politicians were
not featured prominently, nor were there explicit calls to vote for Democrats.
But the big-business party played a clear behind-the-scenes role in what its
leaders hoped would be an effort to divert the energy of the masses into
keeping its grip on the national government. The repeated calls to “vote, vote,
vote” only meant to vote for Democrats—regardless of their commitment to jobs,
education, equality or justice.
The problem is obvious. The
Democratic Party has had complete control of the White House and Congress for
two years, yet has not delivered on any of its promises for “change.” Instead,
they have presided over the biggest bailout giveaway to the banks and
corporations in history. They have continued the war in Iraq and widened the
war in Afghanistan.
Faced with electoral losses, the
Democratic Party leadership is now trying to co-opt the very “base” that the Clinton
“New Democrats” abandoned 20 years ago—labor and the Black community.
So instead of hearing a message to
embrace their own power, the masses of workers who turned out on Oct. 2 were
directed to hand over their power to a handful of politicians who every day
demonstrate their loyalty to the very forces of big business that were being
condemned. They were told over and over that they were part of “one nation,”
but were not told that there were two major classes, and that the enemy class
has two political parties.
Challenges ahead
 Photo: Gabi Lazaro |
For partisans of poor and working
people, the challenges are clear. The recession continues to deepen, with
widening unemployment, poverty, and foreclosures. The scourge of racist
violence is widening. War and occupation are still the order of the day.
These are the realities of the
profit-driven capitalist system.
These also form a powerful basis
of unity for the multinational working class to fight for its own interests.
Will the Democratic Party
leadership be able to constrain the potential power of our class within the
bounds of the big-business parties? Or will the depth of the crisis undermine
those electoral constraints, allowing the potential power that could be
glimpsed in the Oct. 2 rally to break through?
It is the responsibility of
socialists to help make sure the latter becomes reality.
Naira Brown contributed to this article.
