The Long March ..and the Million Worker March

By Joann Wypijewski

The Million Worker March was designed as part of attempts to build coalitions in the USA on issues around, work health, housing and social justice generally.

Wypijewski highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the various groups, in particular the fractions of the labour movement.

History and its symbols having been central in conceptualising the demonstration for jobs, peace and human needs that took place at the Lincoln Memorial on a crisp afternoon this past October 17, it is worth casting the mind back a bit before proceeding with our story of that event, recalling first the organizational finesse and political discipline of this latest demonstration's most famous forebear (depicted on its fliers and literature), the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

The idea for the demo emerged this past January within ILWU Local 10 in Oakland. Throughout the proceedings in Washington, it was referred to as "the storied", "the legendary", "the historic" Local 10, justifiably given that it was home base for Harry Bridges, founder of the ILWU and leader of the 1934 West Coast maritime strike (and San Francisco general strike), that it pioneered US labor actions against apartheid in the 1980s, that it has played a central role in shutting down the West Coast ports on behalf of everything from contract grievances to international solidarity to Mumia Abu Jamal. It is a rare bird in labor's aviary, a militant, black, rich local (it donated $1 million to the Southern California grocery strike earlier this year, and some of its members and retirees shelled out thousands, in one case $50,000, of their own money for the MWM). It is a local that has come to see audacity rewarded, so why shouldn't it call for a national mobilization? But it is still a local, and without the endorsement of even its International president and executive board, it was clear from the beginning that mounting such a demonstration two weeks before a tooth-and-claw national election would be a mighty, contentious undertaking.