9 million American workers in the street March 19, 2009
Posted by Zack in Uncategorized , trackbackFrench unions claim three million in the streets today — the second huge mobilization in just a few months. Police estimates were 1.2 million.
Hey Hey Ho Ho Le Capitalisme has got to go! A few weeks ago I met some people involved in building the “New Anti-Capitalist Party” over there, one force involved in these mobilizations. It’s an almost mainstream thing. A guy named Olivier Besancenot is the most visible spokesperson — and in opinion polls he’s scoring above the French president for credibility. It’s an old radical party that disbanded itself and reformed along more open, non-sectarian lines. Some of the leaders I met reminded me in a way of the kind of new political activists you find in movements like MoveOn or the Dean or Obama campaigns: people who have wanted change for a long time but who were deterred by tired old organizations with their boring meetings and confused messages and jumbled agendas.
If we split the difference on those crowd numbers, and call it 1.8 million, and then adjust it to be in proportion to the American population, that’d be 9 million American workers in the street!
Can you imagine that? It’s happened here, actually — in the great organizing movements during and after the Great Depression and before that in the struggle for the 10 hour day.
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