50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington
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12 SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 2013 laws of the land in pursuit of ever-growing surveil lance and denial of civil liberties, and of Nancy Pelosi, his most prominent aide in pushing his reactionary agenda through Congress, was an obscenity, an insult to those present—and those moldering in the grave— who have given their lifetimes or even their lives in the fight for freedom and social justice. The same, of course, can be said about Obama’s scheduled speech on the commemorative events on Aug. 28 (the exact 50th anniversary of the 1963 March).
And Obama-era repression was even visible at the March itself: Radical sports columnist Dave Zirin re ported that as a contingent with signs denouncing racist violence and police tactics was gathering, DC cops seized hundreds of their signs with no legal justi fication. Still, links among attendees and across issues were forged, as is inevitable at such mammoth gath erings and is the reason socialists advocate building them—as well as linking them back to struggles in neighborhoods and workplaces before and after.
The crowd was 85% to 90% Black; probably the majority were middle-aged. The biggest contingents (judging by organizational t-shirts) were the Urban League, NAACP, Black sororities and fraternities, the United Auto Workers, and the Laborers’ Union (Li UNA). The Communications Workers of America had a smaller but still very visible turnout, as did the A. Philip Randolph Institute (considering their general invisibility throughout the year, it was a shock to see the banners of so many local chapters there).
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees 1199 of Philadelphia had a respectable turnout. But New York unions had relatively tiny con tingents, with the exception again of the UAW.
One UAW marcher from Flint, Mich., said that his Re gion brought 105 buses, a huge number for such a long trip. Given what’s been happening in auto, and the in tertwined crisis in now-bankrupt Detroit, the eager ness of UAW members to rally is understandable. And the potential of the union to easily mobilize such huge numbers is testament once again to the still remaining organizational power of even the most beaten-down unions. But that is a potential yet to be realized in pro gram and in practice.
One indication of that gap was brought out in a New York Times op-ed published the week after the March, in which labor historian William P. Jones compared