The Struggle for Democracy: A Discussion

By Marc Brodine

People's Weekly World

www.pww.org

In 1981, some Republicans made what turned out to be both a tactical and strategic error - they told the leadership of the AFL-CIO that, since so many union members had voted for Reagan, the unions could no longer turn out their membership. This led a conservative AFL-CIO leadership to call "Solidarity Day," a nationwide mobilization of union members and allies who came to Washington, D.C. to prove otherwise.

It wasn't a powerful enough demonstration to change the direction of national policy, but it did force some partial retreats for the Republicans' anti-union campaign. Even more important, it showed that mass mobilization was possible, and in the long run contributed to the fresh winds that started blowing in the labor movement.

As a participant, it was a tremendous experience. I believed in workers' power long before that day. But marching down the streets of Washington with 500,000 other workers, chanting so loudly that the buildings shook, there was nothing theoretical about the power and strength of the working class. That power was a tangible thing, a physical reality. And when we got there and heard that the city subway system was free for the whole day because the AFL-CIO had rented the system for the day, we had a hint of how massive the demonstration would be and what a difference it made to be mobilizing on such a scale.

I think it's time to call on the AFL-CIO to initiate a Solidarity Day for the New Millenium. It won't just happen if it's a top-down plan, nor if it's just a rank-and-file plan. It must combine both aspects to mobilizing the whole coalition.

It should be on Labor Day this September, on an even larger scale than 20 years ago, bringing together the whole anti-corporate alliance. It could demonstrate the broad-based coalition opposed to Bush's anti-union, anti-people policies, and would set the pace for the rest of this decade of struggle.

The time to start agitating for this is now. Bush has already proven how reactionary his policies are, and unless we can help initiate massive struggle, he will succeed much too often. A humongous labor-led people's demonstration would, at the least, force him and his lackeys and masters to think twice and retreat on the worst aspects of their plans.