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NEWS & LETTERS, November 2004Other America marches
CHICAGO--Between 7,000 and 10,000 people attended the
Million Worker March on Oct 17. It wasn’t actually a march, but a rally with a
litany of speakers and some amazing performers. There were many workers of
color, and a lot of young people and women. Many of the demands touched those who came to the march:
adequate health care, amnesty for undocumented workers, getting rid of free
trade agreements, caring for the environment, good education. I wasn’t excited about the more self-congratulatory
remarks by some of the national organizers about bringing people to Washington.
A quarter or less of the speakers were pushing some sort of electoral politics,
but that was not was not the nature of the rally. The ILWU Local 10 people who
initiated the call for the Million Worker March were sometimes authoritarian in
how they organized and controlled the rally. The media nightmare for the march was to call it
“Million.” It made people’s expectation’s unrealistic. I wasn’t
disappointed I didn’t have high expectations, but hoped that I would be
pleasantly surprised. We in Chicago were realistic because we soon found out how
hard it was to get people to commit to getting on the bus. This was very close
to the election and people and mainstream unions were wrapped up in the
election. I saw a lot of people that I know from around the
country--San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York and Virginia--from work defending
Mumia Abu-Jamal. Our contingent from Chicago had a lot of
anti-authoritarian youth. The Wobblies brought a significant group to the bus.
The IWW, after two previous attempts to organize bike messengers, are gaining
some ground in Chicago. They are also trying to organize retail workers in other
cities--a lot of under-organized workers. One young person's work brought people to the march. He
talked on a regular basis to the Congress Hotel strikers to invite them. We
raised money to sponsor them specifically. They invited him to a HERE local
union meeting because he had built up a relationship with them. The head of the
local union was pissed off, because the local had already “discussed the
issue” of the Million Worker March at a previous meeting. The MWM was
considered a plague to some unions because of the mainstream unions’ focus on
the elections. The national organizers were highly critical of the
people organizing locally in Chicago. We pulled off a small action at the
AFL-CIO national delegates meeting in Chicago asking them to support the march.
We weren't even protesting their lack of support--which some in Chicago were
disappointed that we didn’t do. In the end, there were a lot of paper endorsements of
the March. The postal workers were a significant exception nationally and
organized their own bus from Illinois. Once the national union got behind it,
the local postal union got in touch with the organizing committee here in
Chicago. The postal workers took a stand along with AFSCME locals and the Black
Caucus of the Teamsters who donated money to our bus from Chicago. I think their positions come from the prominence of
Black union members among the city, postal and government workers. They are
threatened with privatization right now, so they are very motivated.
Organizations like Jobs with Justice and US Labor Against the War I would have
expected to support the march took a “neutral” position or worse. People from various groups came to meetings only to
influence what we did without actually doing anything to organize for the march.
We also had more authoritarian people spouting orders about what we should do,
while not actually doing it. This contrasted to community organizing I have done
to support Mumia and other struggles over the years. I also saw how messed up existing labor organizing is,
including the more progressive unions. This is not the end of organizing locally
and supposedly nationally. But what form it takes is still a question. We are
having meetings in the weeks ahead to figure that out. --March organizer |
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