D.C. Women’ March Union hacks promote voting, workers want to fightback!

Washington, DC, January 19 – At the third annual Women’s March, thousands of protestors gathered and marched down Pennsylvania Avenue past the Trump Hotel. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members joined both the feeder rally at the New York City union headquarters of the AFL-CIO, and the main rally, getting our communist line out with sales of CHALLENGE and flyers inviting marchers to an event sponsored by Mass Liberation, a local anti-racist group on January 26.
Mass Liberation’s event  focused on the case of Roxana Santos, a Salvadoran worker who has been threatened with deportation after being unlawfully arrested a decade ago in Maryland (Washington Post 1/1). Workers at the Women’s March were astounded to learn that Ms. Santos was arrested by ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) for deportation, as she was leaving the courthouse after winning her civil rights lawsuit against the Maryland county sheriff’s department for racial profiling and illegal detention.
The issue resonated with the crowd and generated a lot of interest at the AFL-CIO rally because it supported the workers leading the Los Angeles teachers’ strike. The strike, a militant reform action, was anti-sexist, pro-education and pro-labor, challenging the exploitation of public school privatization; it gave workers the opportunity to organize and work together. Some workers even saluted CHALLENGE sellers with a clenched fist in response to the “STRIKE!” headline as they passed by.
The AFL-CIO speakers were a disappointment, limiting their strategy for change to electoral activity. Workers’ rights will never be won by voting, but only by an international, worker-led revolution. In stark contrast, one local protestor, and friend of PLP gave a fiery speech calling for a general strike against the shutdown of the government. Young workers cheered in support, while AFL-CIO hacks simply studied their shoes carefully during the speech.
 Meanwhile, a Ford worker from Kentucky suggested we should respond the way workers in France do—all walk out!  We had a lengthy conversation with a Black steelworker from Pittsburgh, who wondered, like the Kentucky Ford worker, why the 800,000 workers furloughed by the shutdown weren’t in the streets, shutting down the city.
“We need worker solidarity across unions,” he said, “to shut down the country until they get people back to work.” He added, “workers have to be less afraid.” He went on to describe how the Pittsburgh bosses have dressed up the city’s waterfront, but have left the neighborhoods in terrible shape due to corruption and cutbacks.
One young woman from San Diego, whose brother is incarcerated, was interested in the APHA (American Public Health Assn) resolution that names police violence as a public health threat (see CHALLENGE, December 19, 2018). A former guard from North Carolina told us he was horrified and quit his job once he realized the private prison industry just wanted to make profits by getting more and more prisoners. Two young Black D.C. teachers also took CHALLENGE, saying that conditions in D.C. schools were deteriorating as well.
With new friends and connections made at the rally, PLP will continue to grow the communist movement, fight past the no-win electoral strategies, and advance on the road to revolution.