> On Feb 7, 2025, at 5:59 PM, Charlie via groups.io
> <charles1848=sbcglobal....@groups.io> wrote:
>
> My impression (not evidence) is that compared with the 1960s today's
> demonstrators are more representative today of the working class as a whole
> in terms of their socio-economic position.
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s had more of a working class
character than any of the movements that followed. The largest antiwar marches
were in the early 1970s, not the 1960s, and by that time, the movement moved
from elite universities to become massive and better rooted in the US
population as a whole. The anti-Vietnam war movement also had more of a working
class character than the movements that followed. I'm not referring to the
economic status of the participants but the class character of their
organizations. That's apparent if we compare the list of endorsements for
antiwar demonstrations in the early 1970s compared to today. There were
national unions like the UAW and AFT who endorsed massive anti-war marches of
hundreds of thousands of participants; there were labor federations like the SF
Labor Council, and militant unions like Hospital Workers 1199, Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters, and many locals. We have not seen that level of
participation of workers organizations in the movements of recent decades and
that is reflected in the strategies and the tactics of those movements.
The tactic of shutting down traffic reflects the mistaken strategy of trying to
force Democratic Party politicians to act at the expense of expanding the mass
appeal of the movement. For many, it's a stunt to get more media coverage of a
small action at the expense of gaining more participation in the movement.
Mark
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