In August 1963 a coalition of organizations including the NAACP, the Sleeping Car Porters Union, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and its parent organization the Southern Christian Leadership Council brought 250,000 people to Washington, D.C., marching for Jobs and Freedom. I sense that 2013 would be an auspicious time to march on Washington for Jobs. I would hope to see Occupy, students, unemployed and underemployed millenials, out of work carsleeping former middle class small business owners, coal miners, Christians, repentant PR men and Native Americans, Hispanics and Hippie Organics, blue collar, white collar, and pink collar women and men massing on the Mall to tell Congress and the President that they need to make more jobs, now.
2013 will be a fine year in the nation's history. The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Mark Knopfler, and the Who will be touring. The sound track for the March on Washington for Jobs will include Street Fighting Man, and The Hour That The Ship Comes In. Bruce Springsteen, Arcade Fire, the Foo Fighters, maybe Kanye West, Alicia Keys, the cultural connections with the civil rights movement and the anti-war movements will jangle in the national neuron network when the airwaves fill with the music for the movement sound. Congress will be in disarray, unable and unwilling to focus on anything but their pissing matches. March on Washington for Jobs focuses the news cycle on the real thing.
I played a bit part in this movie in 1963, and again in 1968 and these were times that created meaning in thousands of lives. We are here to change the wrong and make it right. We are here to live so that 100 years from now,someone may be proud of us. We are here to live so that the earth can survive, so that we can have peace with our better selves, so that we can look back on our lives as we lie dying and see that we done good.
Of course, we will need funding from many sources, including the Ford Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trust, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Crowd. I wonder what anyone else thinks?