[Marxism] Election validates premise of Million Worker March

[Octob1917@xxxxxxx]

By Larry Holmes

Sometimes it takes a little while for people to appreciate
how significant something was. This is very true of the
Million Worker March on Oct. 17 in Washington, D.C.

It's no small accomplishment to bring together some 10,000
workers, representing scores of labor unions in every part
of the country, along with a slice of the anti-war
movement and
progressives in Washington, D.C., on any day, under any
circumstances.

To the many who came to the MWM, it was like holding a
national convention of workers who understood the
necessity of the working class having an independent voice
or "speaking in its own name"-- as MWM literature
explained.

In all honesty, when one considers what the MWM was up
against, the "Anybody But Bush" pressure to do nothing but
concentrate on the election, the lack of any serious
funds, as well as constant hostility both from
wrong-minded leaders in the labor movement who should have
known better and from the government--it's almost a
miracle that it happened at all.

Now that we are all pondering what to do with the outcome
of the presidential election, it's instructive to remember
the essential message overriding the MWM: no matter what
happens on Nov. 2, the working class is going to be
organizing, it's going to be fighting, it's going to be in
the face of the bosses, getting stronger, getting more
unified, no matter who wins.

As I looked over the election exit polls from state to
state, it occurred to me just what the election is from
our view. On Nov. 2, tens of millions of low-wage workers
and unemployed people--the workers who make $7 an hour and
less, who have no health insurance, who work in hotels,
laundries, chicken processing plants, who clean houses and
hotel rooms--tried to vote Bush out.

If the vote was based on those who make under $30,000 a
year, Bush would have lost not only Ohio and Florida, he
would have lost every state, including every state in the
South as well as "Bush country" Texas.


Poor and working people voted in some cases 3 to 1 to get
rid of him. It is these workers, the ones who need a
voice, the ones whose issues were not really talked about,
that the MWM wanted
to, and to a great extent did, push forth into the light
of day.

The election buried the workers underneath John Kerry's
bourgeois business-as-usual politics.

MWM was initiated by African American militants in Local
10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
What made it so unique and revolutionary was that even
though it came from Black militants, the call was to all
workers, regardless of race or nationality. It was a call
for workers' unity.

Many heeded the call. Part of our problem is that more
didn't.

What the MWM leaders understood was that the problem was
not just Bush. It's capitalism.

It's not only George W. Bush who's taking a meat cleaver
to the health benefits, wages and rights and unions of
workers. It is a systemic crisis--the unrestrained rampage
of capitalism pitting workers against each other and
consuming the lives and resources of the planet.

This has popularly come to be known as globalization.

MWM was an effort to respond to this crisis. To push
forward the fight to organize workers. To strengthen
unions. To make them more independent, more inclusive,
more radical, more struggle-
oriented, more militant and global in their outlook.

The response of the top leadership of the AFL-CIO to the
Million Worker March can politely be called a big mistake.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney issued a statement in
response to the MWM last summer saying that, while the
AFL-CIO leadership agrees with the goals of the march, we
feel that all of our efforts should be directed to the
elections and so we are instructing the members of the
AFL-CIO not to participate in it.

In other words, in his view, you couldn't have both. It
was impermissible to work on the elections and the Million
Worker March at the same time. It was impermissible to
have the march at all.

Many progressives in the labor movement--fortunately, not
all--agreed with Sweeney and acted accordingly.

It's an old argument on the left. Whether we should be
"dreamers" and organize independent of the two capitalist
parties, or whether we should be "practical."

All things considered, at this moment those of us who
worked hard on the MWM consider ourselves dreamers who are
acting very practically.

Anyone who went out and distributed a leaflet for the
Million Worker March can tell you that the appeal and the
popularity of it were obvious. What we lacked was the
funds and the support
necessary to fully realize the dream.

The organized labor movement probably spent several
hundred million dollars on the elections. Workers have the
right to do that if they believe that it serves their
interests. Whether it does or not is subject to argument.

If MWM organizers had had a budget equal to 1 percent of
what labor spent--let's say $2 million to $3 million--we
would have had to rent a big part of the state of Maryland
just to have space to park the buses.

One more lesson about the Million Worker March in the wake
of the elections.

When you look at what the Bush forces did to generate
virulent anti-lesbian, gay, bi and trans bigotry,
anti-woman, racist and anti-immigrant ideas in order to
"move their base" to the polls, it should remind us that
when there isn't enough of a strong, independent and
confident workers' movement and workers' struggle, it
makes it all the more easier to fill the void with a lot
of dangerous, reactionary and diversionary stuff.

The good news is that now that the elections are finally
over, we have a chance to open up the next phase of the
struggle against the war and the system responsible for
war.

Anyone for a Million Worker March?

[Holmes is one of the organizers of the Million Worker
March.]
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