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On October 17, 2004, thousands of union members from across the country participated in the "Million Worker March" (MWM) in Washington, DC. According to the Washington Post, there were 10,000 participants. The rally featured speakers addressing a multiplicity of issues from the resistance in Haiti, to the struggle to end the war in Iraq, to the fight for universal healthcare, to the need to smash the Patriot Act. What made this gathering different from typical anti-war mobilizations is the origin and class basis of the MWM. This march represented the political expression of the most conscious sections of the American working class.
The original call for the march came from Longshore Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). It was quickly endorsed by the Coast Caucus of the ILWU. Major organizing came from Black Workers for Justice in the Carolinas, the Teamsters National Black Caucus and other predominately African-American union formations and locals. Postal workers and other public employees were well-represented, as were organizing and workers' rights groups across the South.
Since the call put forward for the march focused on the real needs of the working class such as health care, union rights, housing, pension rights and peace, and it was endorsed by dozens of union bodies, the organizers expected neutrality if not support from the union establishment. That was not to be the case.
Union officials met with Democratic Party politicians at Hyannisport, Massachusetts during the Democratic National Convention to firm up opposition to the MWM. At the meeting were Senator Edward Kennedy, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, SEIU President Andrew Stern and ILWU President James Spinosa. The Million Worker March was discussed. Spinosa stated that he objected to the timing of the March, and they concurred.
The AFL-CIO top officials came down on the organizers of the MWM like a ton of bricks. These labor lieutenants of capital passed a resolution rejecting the MWM and stating that their effort would be focused on winning the election for the Democrats.
These were not mere words. The bureaucrats had considerable resources at their disposal to sabotage the MWM. Unions that had gone on record supporting the event were pressured to back out. After a labor council in North Carolina came out in support of the march, the AFL-CIO hacks threatened to withdraw their funding.
To their credit, the organizers of the march openly and clearly fought the AFL-CIO's reactionary position in spite of the overwhelming odds against them.
As usual, there is controversy on the left about the Million Worker March. Some deride it for not successfully mobilizing a million workers others denounce the organizers for "giving the Democrats a platform," others rejected the march because it would weaken the effort to elect Kerry. Let's look at what actually occurred.
Many criticized the MWM because it just wasn't large enough. The number of workers who attended the event was nowhere near the "Million" in its name. Does this mean it was a failure? Numbers may be important, but the crucial ingredient of this movement was the programmatic call and demands. The MWM program clearly called for workers to organize themselves independently of the Democrats and Republicans, two parties that act as one in representing the interests of the capitalist class.
The demands raised by the MWM included an independent Labor Party, an end to the destruction and cutbacks in social services, affordable heath care, and so on.Having these calls come from union bodies is an important development for those who see workers as the fundamental agents of social change. This was the critical reason to support the march
Politically principled movements always start small. While the recent anti-war marches attracted hundreds of thousands of people, once the American Imperialists fired the first shots, many pacifists and liberals hid their heads in the sand. The demonstrations after the war started were considerably smaller. There was a qualitative drop in participants. That is why considerations of program must come first.
The Democratic Party grotesquely postures as the "party of the people". Nothing could be further from the truth. For example: "In September, John Kerry appeared before the Detroit Economic Club and presented his chief policy makers, notably Warren Buffet, Lee Iacocca, Bank of America Chairman Charles Gifford and August A. Bush IV of Anheuser Bush. All are registered Republicans and all were architects of George W. Bush's 2000 campaign."(MWM Statement "On October 17 And The Way Forward").
Even the capitalist press revealed that there was not a dimes' worth of difference between Kerry and Bush with headlines such as: "Foreign Policy Divide is Slim for Bush, Kerry" (Los Angeles Times, 9/30/04).
For the past 50 years, the union bureaucracy has been subordinating the interests of rank and file workers to the Democrats. While no elected officials or candidates were allowed to speak at the MWM, some Democrats such as Jessie Jackson and Martin L. King III did speak, and along with a few others, called for a vote to John Kerry. Did this constitute a betrayal by the leaders of the MWM?
It is not necessarily a betrayal of the interests of the working class for the organizers of a workers' fight back movement to let Democrats speak from a platform they have built.
What is key is that the interests of the working class are expressed from that platform. Our mission is to win over the working class base of the Democrats to the program of workers' power. Dragging the Republicrat misleaders before the masses to account for themselves is a part of this process. We cannot substitute organizational methods like excluding Democrats for politically educating people to break from the Democratic Party.
In order to forge political independence by the workers against the bosses, it is crucial to create a workers' party that can lead and calls for the working-class to take political power in its name, rather than waiting for a spontaneous upsurge. A workers' party must actively intervene in the working-class, even when there is not a mass fight back against the onslaught of capital. What the MWM focussed on is that workers are getting economically squeezed more and more all the time by the bosses. The union bureaucracy knows it but doesn't want to break from the bosses, and the workers can sense this.
In my view, the most significant weakness of the program offered by the MWM Committee is the party question. The working class will never become a "class for itself," conscious of its historic mission and capable of taking and keeping power without a revolutionary workers party.
[Gerald Smith is a union electrician in Oakland, CA, and active in the Peace and Freedom Party.]
This story was accompanied by a photograph of a woman carrying a picket sign with a Million Worker March poster on it, while in the background are others with t-shirts and signs not readable in the picture. On the MWM poster, the slogans "Jobs, health care and a living wage for all", "Workers want to bring the troops home now" and "We Will Fight Back" are visible, along with the Million Worker March's URL www.millionworkermarch.org.
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