Potential power of U.S. working class & the political crisis it must overcome

On Oct. 2, the “One Nation Working Together” mobilization brought together an estimated 200,000 people of all nationalities, ages, genders and sexual orientations in Washington, D.C. The unifying theme for this massive outpouring was for the creation of good-paying jobs for the more than 30 million unemployed and underemployed workers.

Jobs rally, Washington, D.c., Oct. 2. WW photo: Liz Green

The multinational social composition of the demonstration reflected the changing character of the U.S. working class that has taken place since the mid-1980s. Many who came were Black women and Latinas. There was also a significant number of young people of color there demanding both jobs and a decent education. The trade union movement poured millions of dollars into organizing thousands of buses full of members representing every union, large and small.

Feeder marches were organized by students and youth, immigrant rights, anti-war and socialist activists. In the wake of the Sept. 24 FBI raids and grand jury repression against political activists, banners, placards and literature on this important development were very visible throughout the day.

WW photo: Alan Pollock

Getting 200,000 workers to Washington for anything is no small thing and it’s something that happens far too seldom. The organizers of the Oct. 2 rally are to be commended. The fightback, however imperfect, has to start somewhere, and here was an attempt, however contradictory, at starting it.

Even the name of the Oct. 2 mobilization was not without contradiction. The organizers’ decision to call the Oct. 2 rally “One Nation Working Together” was an attempt to counter the divisive and racist message of the Tea Party movement. Instead of “One Nation,” a far more inclusive name might have been “one people” or better still, “one class.” It’s not an insignificant point as the bankers and politicians are gearing up to focus the working class’s anger toward China instead of directing it at the capitalist system and the superrich who profit from that system.

More than 2,000 people marched from Freedom Plaza to the Jobs rally at the Lincoln Memorial, Oct. 2 demanding jobs and education. Larry Hales, a national organizer for the Oct. 7 Defend Public Education actions and a leader of Fight Imperialism, Stand Together, told WW: “The student and youth contingent, which had a large number of Black and Latino/a youth and students from around the country and the D.C. area, demonstrated the ability of youth organizers nationally — who worked for months to organize the contingent — to mobilize young people. It is so important to organize young people who are feeling the economic crisis not only as students who face school closures, increased class sizes, a crumbling infrastructure and threats of privatization, along with the inequalities that come with the attacks on the public education system, but who also are dealing with the highest level of youth unemployment the country has ever faced.” WW photo: Monica Moorehead

The Oct. 2 rally reflected the central contradiction of the working-class movement in the U.S., perhaps more than any event in memory.

The rally was at once the single, biggest mass mobilization of workers by organized labor in a generation. That alone made it an important step forward in the struggle of the working class against the depression-level unemployment, rising poverty and cutbacks that are part and parcel of the biggest global capitalist economic crisis since the 1930s.

At the same time the rally also demonstrated the biggest barrier to the independent development and radicalization of the U.S. working-class movement and its organizations — a process that is absolutely essential to the capacity of the workers to defend themselves as capitalism makes preparations to solve the crisis of its system on the backs of the workers.

This is the political crisis of the U.S. working class.

Challenges facing Oct. 2 rally

The main problem with the rally is that at the end of the day its principal purpose was to generate enthusiasm amongst the workers for voting for the Democratic Party in the midterm elections in November instead of demanding a real jobs program, a moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions, an immediate end to the wars and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, and other demands that address the real immediate needs of the working class and the poor.

Larry Holmes, Oct. 2.. WW photo: Brenda Ryan

The excitement that the working class, especially the Black working class, felt two years ago over the election of the first African-American president has turned to disappointment and demoralization.

Even while Wall Street and the capitalist media prop up the racist Tea Party and feed reactionary attacks against President Barack Obama, he and his officials have not given the working class any reason to rally behind the Democrats in the elections.

To the contrary, the Obama administration has merely served to give the capitalist assault a thin sugar coating, while at the same time working hard to hold the workers back from fighting in their class interest.

Rhode Island Unemployment Council members and allies, Oct. 2. WW photo: Brenda Ryan

At the early stages of organizing for the Oct. 2 rally, there was some evidence that it reflected at least a partial effort to take on both capitalist parties. When the NAACP and other Black leaders began planning for the rally last spring, there was a lot of talk about the deepening anger with the Obama administration over its failure to do anything about mass home foreclosures and the horrendous unemployment crisis, especially the jobless crisis for Black youth and other youth of color.

Last May, one of the main architects of the rally, George Gresham, the African- American president of the big health care workers union, 1199 SEIU, said, “I always thought we just can’t put President Obama into office, but we have to be constantly out there to support the change we believe in. I remember what Franklin Delano Roosevelt told the labor movement about reforms: ‘Go out and make me do it.’” (New York Times, Oct. 5)

Jobs, yes! War, no! WW photo: Liz Green

It is significant that the call for the Oct. 2 rally did not initially come from organized labor, but from a group of Black leaders involved in labor and civil rights, and some politicians. Six months ago, the top leadership of the AFL-CIO was opposed to a mass march on Washington and formally rejected a movement for such a march within sections of the labor movement out of the concern that a march would take away the focus from supporting the Democratic Party in the upcoming elections.

The group of Black leaders who initiated the Washington protest engaged in quiet but intense negotiations with top labor leaders for several months to win them over to the rally. It took until August for the AFL-CIO to back the mobilization, and that was only after an agreement was reached that criticism of Obama would be toned down, and that the main purpose of the rally would be to push for a large electoral turnout.

Even with the political contradictions, clearly such a march would not have been possible a year ago when many top labor leaders maintained that such a demonstration was unnecessary now that the Democrats were in office.

Still, the most helpful, and most honest, message coming from the stage on Oct.2 should have been to say that the capitalists who run both the Republican and the Democratic parties are coming after the workers with a vengeance and resolve, and that this can only be turned back by the most massive, classwide militant struggles that the U.S. has experienced since the worker uprisings, occupations and battles of the 1930s. Merely being frightened into supporting the Democrats is not the solution.

We can all take a lesson from the heroic workers at the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago, who in December 2008, when faced with a plant closing, did the unthinkable — they occupied their plant and forced Bank of America to make concessions, along with scaring the hell out of every boss and banker in the country.

Like the Republic workers, the more independent and militant forces in the working-class movement are now giving consideration to what course of action must come next to push the working-class movement toward independence and struggle.

Oct. 2 should only be viewed as a beginning. The ever escalating attacks on the workers and the oppressed in the U.S. and across the world, as capitalism and imperialism sink deeper and deeper into crisis, are setting the stage for the emergence of working-class struggle on a higher and higher political level.