At the Washington, DC rally, Dupont Circle was filled with people—perhaps close to a thousand. I'd love to give you a more authoritative crowd estimate, but since this was a progressive event and not a tea party one, it didn't receive blanket media coverage.
But whatever the total, that crowd joined several thousand in New York, hundreds in Richmond, Virginia, hundreds in Boston, and more across the country.
And as one speaker in Washington pointed out, crowds like that can gather across the country on a Saturday afternoon because unions fought for a 40-hour week for all workers. Van Jones, also speaking at this rally, even folded the tea party into his remarks: "They're our sisters and brothers too. They just don't know it yet...We're fighting for them too" because they don't want to live without adequate public services.
This event suffered one of the classic sins of protest organizing: I have been to pro-choice rallies and I have been to anti-war rallies and I expect I will go to both again in my life, but I didn't necessarily expect a rally in solidarity with Wisconsin's workers to also be a pro-choice and anti-war rally. The former addition to my expectations was explained: pro-choice groups had a rally permit for Dupont Circle today, and generously shared it with the Wisconsin solidarity organizers. And Code Pink is right, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are legitimate budget issues. Still...the occasionally muddled message was a distraction.
Muddled messaging notwithstanding, think about it—a thousand people rallying for workers here, a few hundred there, a couple thousand elsewhere—did you think a month ago that we would see this happening in the United States? Did you think that a mass of people would sleep in a state capitol building for a week and a half, that thousands and tens of thousands would gather day after day at that capitol, that thousands would gather to protest similar bills in other states, that solidarity rallies across the country would be held, with people in some cities going out twice in one week?
I didn't think we'd see it. I hope beyond words we keep seeing it; that people who have found their sense of urgency maintain it. Because Scott Walker and John Kasich and the Koch brothers are not giving up. And it will take a lot of sustained energy from a lot of us to hold our own, and more to defeat their agenda.
Please share your rally stories and links to coverage in the comments.
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