The March on Washington, 2013 by Norman Markowitz

by: Sunday 25 August 2013

Here are some very quick comments on the fiftieth anniversay March on Washington yesterday.  I went down on a bus sponsored by my union, Rutgers AAUP-AFT, and the CWA. I didn't get a chance to hear so many of the speakers, since we were dropped off at RFK stadium and then had to take the Metro(cards were supplied and walk, but I did get a good chance to see the people and they were impressive, more so than those I had seen on the  many marches and demonstrations that I had been on over the last fifty years

First, the people were overwhelmingly working class black and white, young and old, male and female, pregnant women, men and women with children, teenagers and people my age who were around during the first march.  And there was an atmosphere of seriousness, a lack of ostentation in dress and in sloganeering. 

There were busses and people from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference young and old, the group formed after the Montgomery Bus Boycott and led by Martin Luther King.  There were parents and teachers from Chicago chanting "hey hey ho ho, Rahm Emmanuel has got to go."  There was a large UAW contingent and I spoke to an African American trade unionist about the conditions in Michigan, the fight against the right Republican government's attempt to destroy the trade union movement by forcing  down "right to work" legislation without a referendum down the peoples thrats.  Like other rightwing Republicans in Ohio and Wisconsin, he had  fooled voters angry with the failures of the corporate bailouts to vote for him, portraying himself as a "well meaning moderate." And the unions especially,  the Michigan trade unionist said, had spent too much time "on their duff," believing that the Obama victory had offered an escape from the Bush policies.  Now Labor was working in concert with other other progressive organizations to get rid of both the rightwing Republican governor and legislature.

And I ran into many many other working people--friendly, polite, as we walked and walked.  Someone from another AFT local said that he had passed Dick Gregory, the hip political comedian and activist who is still a hip comedian and activist more than a half a century later.  I also heard that Barbara Buono, the progressive Democrat running from Governor  of New Jersey against Chris  Christie, the most virulent anti- labor, anti-public employee union Governor in anyone's memory, was  at the rally.  Most of the people I spoke too had bad news about their states, their local economies, but they also conveyed a quiet optimism that the Walkers, Kasischs, Christies, et al, would be either out or on the defensive soon. 

I  haven't seen too much media coverage of the event yet.  I expect they may portray this as an exercise in nostalgia, which is the last thing it was.  The people understood the what had been achieved in the past, but were keenly aware of the present and the future, from the continuing stories of police brutality against people of color, to the Trayvon Martin murder  and travesty of a trial  "stand your ground laws"where "the verdict" hinged on who was on top of whom in a fight, that is, if an armed person is fighting with an unarmed person and losing the fight, he can kill him and be acquitted.

Unlike the first March on Washington, where the nation and the world was transfixed by Martin Luther King's speech, here it was clear that the tens of thousands of people who were there were much more important than all of the speakers(King I am sure would have said the same thing about the first March)

and would have seen this march as another step forward on the road to what he called "positive peace," a peace rooted in economic and social justice

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  • Thanks to Norman Markowitz for this excellent piece on the 2013 March on Washington. It, alongside the series of excellent articles in the PW by Scott Douglas, Michele Kern, Tim Wheeler, Mark Gruenburg, Liz Elkind, April Smith(and others)on the 1963 and 2013 Marches, give much useful information for struggle.
    Biblical references to Amos 5:24 and Isaiah 40 at the marches, and the activities of workers for jobs, peace and freedom saturated the march climate as did the need to widen, deepen and lengthen the march's and activists' volume to include many more millions of exploited workers, unemployed, underemployed, homeless and oppressed.
    The present writer was there on a bus from St. Louis, MO with activists associated with both National Action Network, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and homelessness.
    I met Tim Wheeler and Lew Moye there, the contigent of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, a powerful group with long, deep ties to critical movements; from the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, to the trade union and civil rights movements here, in the U. S. Also, I met the veteran activist that brother Markowitz wrote of, my fellow Sumnerite, Dick Gregory.
    A worker from the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, St. Louis Branch, recognizing me,(while I did not recognize him, or our St. Louis contingent)shoved a microphone in my face, asking me the meaning of the March for me- I said (paraphrasing here)"The 1963 March honored W. E. B. Du Bois, and marked a milestone in the liberation of African derived peoples, especially those in the U. S., but the whole diaspora, and therefore all peoples-pointing the way to future development of meeting the needs of all, through an emphasis on labor, its freedom and power, and the role of communists in winning that power and freedom, the future role of the CPUSA.
    The workers and I laughed together after I discovered the harmless fun we'd had, within the endless, varied sea of human souls with the theme of organize, organize, and organized, in your community for jobs, peace, equality and freedom-make the dream of Mahalia Jackson and M L K as real as the beautiful people and workers of the U. S. at the march, and in the world.

    Posted by E.E.W. Clay, 08/26/2013 2:40pm (11 years ago)

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