Thoughts on the Million Worker March
by David Jones
The Million
Worker March reaffirmed that the masses of organized workers are in the
mainstream labor movement, primarily the AFL-CIO, and that essentially only the
federation’s leadership can mobilize them in large numbers. This is so obvious
that simply stating the proposition seems like asserting the sky is blue. But
the MWM initiative was plainly an attempt to test the degree to which this
might have been altered.
There seems
to be general agreement that the number in attendance was around 10,000,
possibly as high as 15,000, but not the 100,000 that had been the organizers’
optimistic projection, and certainly not one million. As news coverage noted,
the 1991 and 1981 Solidarity Day mobilizations in
On the other
hand, 1991 was almost 15 years ago, years in which organized labor’s strength
and scope have continued to decline, and in which workers’ wages and
entitlements have taken more big hits, and a period in which all major elements
of organized labor have continued without alteration their slavish support of
the Democratic Party. This includes those national unions that have endorsed
the Labor Party.
However, it
is also significant that the MWM was supported or endorsed, at least on paper,
by many labor bodies, mostly local unions, but
including at least several national unions (most notably the American Postal
Workers Union, and the National Education Association, which is not part of the
AFL-CIO). Further, the AFL-CIO spokespeople took pains to express agreement
with the aims of the MWM and not attack the motives of the organizers or to
redbait them, despite the fact that among the central organizers were a number
of identifiable socialist activists, notably Alan Benjamin and Ralph Schoenman
from the Socialist Organizer group.
This
restraint undoubtedly expresses the influence of the leaders of the
federation’s progressive wing, with or without quotation marks, such as Andrew
Stern of SEIU, Robert Wilhelm of UNITE-HERE, and others, and their desire to
keep their options open. It is reasonable to conclude that they desire to
discourage redbaiting as a tool of political debate
at this juncture, as they continue to formulate their plans for a challenge to
the federation’s leadership and policies.
MWM got
enthusiastic, spontaneous, and wide support from a grass roots amalgamation of
local labor and antiwar organizers, who, despite their limited resources and
influence, were able to cobble together a respectable demonstration of national
scope. The MWM movement managed to project a fairly clear expression of
independence from the political morass of the 2004 presidential elections,
despite the undoubted resolution of most of the participants to vote for some
non-working class variant of Anybody But Bush. It also
projected, which is almost the same thing, a public expression of labor
opposition to the
In general,
it is certainly heartening that the MWM was able to project and pull off an
independent labor action that met most of its commendable objectives, except
massive participation. It has certainly set a positive example that advocates
of further action can point to in the course of the above-ground and
below-ground process of political differentiation that is germinating in the
unions.