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As preparations are finalized for the largest independent demonstration of worker solidarity, and progressive opposition to the anti-labor movement policies of the Bush Administration, in our nation's capital on October 17th, the Million Worker March receives no mention in major commercial news media. Learn about this important and historic event.
The Million Worker March is scheduled for October 17th in Washington DC. Organized by a grass roots consortium of labor and community organizations, the goals of this march are to voice the concerns of working people and to demonstrate the political will of the majority of American workers who are not content with just accepting passively whatever little the two main political parties think they have to give them.
There are many speakers scheduled for the main rally, including:
This march continues the long and proud tradition of direct political involvement by our citizens. Despite the many obstacles to the free expression of direct political action and the many assaults upon our civil liberties, particularly since 9/11, the organizers of this march have a deep and abiding faith in the United States as a representative democracy. They feel that it is the peoples' principal duty and responsibility to organize to peacefully espouse their beliefs and to inform their representatives of their perspective on the affairs of the nation.
From the mission statement of the March organizers:
"Thirty-six years ago Martin Luther King, Jr. summoned working people across America to a Poor Peoples' March on Washington to inaugurate 'a war on poverty at home.' The crisis facing working people today is even more acute. Under the cover of systematic lies and deception, wars of devastation have been launched at the expense of working people everywhere. In our name, a handful of the rich and powerful corporations have usurped our government. A corporate and banking oligarchy changes hats and occupies public office to wage class war on working people. They have captured the State in their own interests.
The time has come to mobilize working people for our own agenda. Let us end subservience to the power of the privileged few and their monopoly of the political process in America. Come together, brothers and sisters. Join The Million Worker March on Washington as we launch a great movement for social change. Let us forge together a social, economic and political movement for working people. We are the many .The secretive and corrupt who cont
rol our lives are the rapacious few...
August 2005
The organizers of the Million Worker March also list a series of "demands" they seek to deliver to the national government. Among these are:
In common with many idealistic endeavors, the Million Worker March focuses on the ideals of putting people first without spending much time on the mechanics of how these changes could actually be incorporated into the national landscape. Conservative critics will doubtless point out that many of the initiatives are little more than pipe dreams without any practical value in a harsh and demanding globalized world.
There is a place for the dreams of a nation, and it resides not just with the young, nor with the privileged, nor indeed with any group. The place for the dreams of the nation is to act as a compass for the nation, to establish and correct the direction in which the nation travels. Even if the stated destination is admittedly beyond our reach, there is value in recognizing the goal as a further means of accomplishing the achievable.
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