BY MAURICE WILLIAMS AND DEREK BRACEY
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Hundreds of thousands of African- American workers, youth, and middle-class men turned out here October 16 for the Million Man March. The rally has provoked debate and discussion on why so many people would attend, on the results of the day's event, and on what road forward in the fight for Black rights today.
The rally was overwhelmingly made up of working people, many of whom came with co-workers, with church or school- organized groups, or with small groups of friends. Nearly everyone these reporters spoke with explained they participated to demonstrate Black pride and to reject an image in society of Black men as violent, criminals, and an irresponsible "underclass." A few argued that women have supplanted the role men should play in the family, echoing the themes of rally organizers.
U.S. government officials put the rally size at 400,000. Organizers of the event say some 1.5 million participated. It was among the largest events ever held in the nation's capital.
Editorials, news articles, and opinion columns in the big-business media have been generally favorable to the event, supporting the push for "family values" presented by the main speakers and the lack of protest directed against the government by rally organizers.
"One Magnificent Day," was the title of a major opinion column in the Wall Street Journal by editorial page writer Hugh Pearson. "Attendees proved that while most of the pundits and politicians who observed from afar were obsessed with the past racial and ethnic schisms encouraged by the principal organizer [Nation of Islam leader] Louis Farrakhan, unity was the issue for them." Pearson notes that Farrakhan, in a two-hour speech at the rally, "rather than preach a message of racial hate, preached a message of racial conciliation."
Pearson, calling "problematic" Farrakhan's anti-Semitic comments and "his sexism," notes a deeper and more unsettling problem from his point of view: the "gulf Mr. Farrakhan has stepped in to fill" and the "chasm that is the product of years of political grandstanding by both Democrats and Republicans, as well as other interest groups, resulting in the division of the nation across racial lines."
What Pearson merely touches on - and what he and the wealthy rulers in America are unsettled over - is what they face in pressing forward the assault on working people in the United States.
The turnout for the rally shows the intertwined realities of politics in the United States today.
This includes the impact of the employer/government offensive on the wages, social conditions, and democratic rights and its effects on the Black nationality, which remains in its large majority working class in composition. At the same time, the fact that the rulers have failed in their drive to break the resistance of working people or make African-Americans believe that to be Black in America means acceptance of the institutionalized racism and oppression that continues to be perpetuated in capitalist society.
Stark reality for Blacks
An article in USA Today the day of the rally highlighted
some of the most glaring social indicators of this assault.
The figures - for both Blacks and whites - are in "median"
terms, which means half are below and half are above the
figures cited.
According to the statistics, the median Black family has zero net financial assets. If houses and vehicles are included, the median Black family's net worth is $8,300 compared with the median white family's worth of $56,000. The jobless rate for Blacks was 11.3 per cent in September, twice the rate of whites. Since 1960 Blacks on the average have earned 60 percent that of whites. The typical Black family has 11 cents of wealth compared with every $1 owned by a white family.
These stark statistics are in the context of a two- decade long assault which has resulted in a decline in real wages for all working people, cutbacks in the social wage, speed-up and harsher conditions on the job, and permanent high levels of unemployment. This has not come about because of "political grandstanding" but a bipartisan offensive on the federal, state, and local level.
Farrakhan, in literature building the march and in speeches around the country, speaks to some aspects of this government and employer assault, such as attacks on affirmative action, Congressional action to "turn back the hands of time, depriving our Black community of many of the gains made through the suffering and sacrifice of our fellow advocates of change during the `50s and `60s," the rising numbers of Blacks in prison, and greater use of the death penalty across the country.
As with other demagogues, by addressing with radical rhetoric some of the real and perceived aspects of the economic and social crisis in the county, he gains a platform and a broader hearing for his proposals.
At the rally and in promotional material for the event, Farrakhan simply reiterated "self-help" proposals the Nation of Islam has raised since its inception. He does not present a political road forward, or advocate struggle in opposition to the offensive by the government.
For example, he raised that "The Asian doesn't say I'm better than the white man," Farrakhan said at the rally, "he just starts building his economy. All we got to do is go back home and turn our community into a productive place. Clean yourself up Black man, and the world will respect you."
His main proposals at the rally included each march participant adopting a prison inmate and contributing $10 a month to a National Economic Development Fund that could generate $1.2 billion a year to help Black-owned businesses. He also noted 25,000 Black children are without families and need to be adopted.
The rally platform included a broad section of the established officials of civil rights organizations, government officials who are Black, and leaders of various religious denominations across the United States.
These included Congressional Black Caucus chair Donald Payne, who urged the gathering to take "our message to the voting booth;" Jesse Jackson; Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry; Southern Christian Leadership Conference president Joseph Lowery; poet Maya Angelou; Rosa Parks; widow of Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz; along with Congressmen Kweisi Mfume, Charles Rangel, and John Conyers.
No mention of struggles
Like Farrakhan, few made any mention of mounting a
struggle against the bipartisan assault or to reaching out
to those fighting against the effects of the economic
depression and imperialist exploitation around the world.
Brief mention was made of the fight to win a new trial for
Mumia Abu-Jamal - the death-row inmate who recently won a
stay of execution after international protests on his
behalf.
Most accepted the false premise that those in the audience are, at least in part, responsible for the plight of Blacks today. Speakers repeatedly urged the men to stop being violent, build families, and respect women. Farrakhan and others urged participants to register eight million people to vote to "be prepared" for the next elections.
Expressions of Black pride and of determination to stand up for equality were evident throughout the crowd at the rally. The middle-class figures on the platform, though, offered nothing new or any break from the framework of capitalist politics they have been following.
The wealthy rulers have accomplished a great deal in their assault, but they are nowhere near their goal of defeating the unions and the social conquests of the Black and women's rights struggles.
In their pursuit of transforming the relations between labor and capital and thereby laying the basis for a new period of capitalist expansion, the ruling rich have run into strikes, protests, and rallies by those who want to resist these attacks.
Fight for Black rights today
There are real struggles today where the fight for Black
rights can be seen, such as the battle to force the State of
Pennsylvania to drop the death sentence against Mumia Abu-
Jamal and grant him a new trial. Jamal, who is standing up
and fighting against what seem to be overwhelming odds, has
become an emblem in the fight for Black liberation. It can
be seen in the fights to defend affirmative action from
California to New Jersey.
All working people, and the organized labor movement in particular, have a stake in these struggles and in building a movement that can combat racism, national oppression, and the offensive by the wealthy families who run the United States.
We can join fights along with unionists on strike at Boeing and Caterpillar, youth and others marching for equality for immigrants and affirmative action, and protests against U.S. aggression directed at Cuba.
The Nation of Islam - as an organization and in the perspectives its spokespeople put forward - remains a dead end for anyone seeking to fight against racism, economic depression, and the effects of the bipartisan assault against working people today.
In the early 1960s Malcolm X had to break from the Nation in order to build an organization that could do politics, link up with fighters around the world, and take on the Democrats and Republicans and the social order they defend.
It is only through independent working-class political action that workers can begin to know our own capacities and worth. Through common action we build bonds of human solidarity, break down divisions organized and nurtured in class society, and create organizations capable of leading revolutionary struggles.