Thread: Labor Unions Join Wall Street "Occupiers" for Mass

Labor Unions Join Wall Street "Occupiers" for Mass Rally
By GREGORY J. KRIEG
Oct. 5, 2011

The cavalry has arrived in Lower Manhattan. Representatives from no fewer than 15 of the country's largest labor unions will join the Occupy Wall Street protesters for a mass rally and march today in New York City.

The AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers, and Transit Workers' Union are among the groups expected to stand in solidarity with the hundreds of mostly young men and women who have spent the better part of three weeks sleeping, eating, and organizing from Zuccotti Square.

Their arrival is being touted as a watershed moment for the "Occupy" movement, which has now seen copycat protests spring up across the country. And while the specific demands of the "occupiers" remain wide-ranging, the presence of the unions – implicitly inclined to making more direct demands – may sharpen their focus.

Today's action is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. ET, when the protesters in Zuccotti Square march approximately one mile north to Foley Square, where they will be met by community and labor leaders. Then, at 4:30 p.m., they plan to march together back down toward Wall Street. They do not yet have a city-issued permit for the gathering, but are now pursuing one.

The "Union March" is expected to be the movement's largest yet and there is the potential for a significant number of arrests. The New York Police Department booked an estimated 700 protesters Saturday as they attempted to cross the Brooklyn Bridge, bringing the total number arrested to over 1,000 in less than three weeks.

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Demonstrators with the "Occupy Wall Street"... View Full Size
Mario Tama/Getty ImagesDemonstrators with the "Occupy Wall Street" march against police brutality, Sept. 30, 2011 New York City. Wall Street Occupier On Brooklyn Bridge Protest Watch Video
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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, speaking at a retirement community in Florida yesterday, denounced the movement. "I think it's dangerous, this class warfare," he said.

While some on the ground welcome the concept of a showdown with the "one percent," organizers (who claim to represent "the 99 percent" of Americans they say are being trampled on by the financial elite), say they remain committed to "non-violent" protest.

The question for today, though, is what affect the presence of labor unions will have on the tenor of the demonstrations. To date, Occupy Wall Street has set their agenda during twice-daily "general assemblies" with large-scale votes and directly elected "working groups."

The unions do not operate this way. They are top-down organizations. Their leaders, though elected, make most decisions autonomously. They are well-versed in fashioning specific appeals, the very concept of which runs counter to Occupy Wall Street's purposefully abstract message.

"Think Facebook or Twitter: These protesters have adopted that same decentralized structure, Columbia University political science Professor Dorian Warren told ABC News yesterday. "There's no one leader. It's not top-down. It's much more democratic, much more 'open-source.'"

"One of the beautiful things about [Occupy Wall Street]," says Professor Yochai Benkler, co-director of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, "is that it is a movement defining itself as it 'becomes.'"

While the concept of "becoming" or "creating space" for dissent, as organizers preach, might seem a bit far off to grizzled union vets, it's a bedrock of the "Occupy movement." But to the hundreds who've made their beds on Zuccotti Park's stone encampment the meta-narrative probably seems a little bit beside the point. Whatever the risks entailed in opening up their action to different groups, with different acting ethics, they're happy for the new support.

But as history reminds, there's no such thing as "free love."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/labor-unions-j ... bc-fb-recs

AFL-CIO Joins Marxist/Progressive Get Out the Vote Alliance
by Jeff Dunetz

On the national level it seems as if the Unions have changed priorities. No longer is their primary objective to protect the rights of their own rank and file, their objectives has moved into politics and selling the progressive and/or Marxist agenda. Hence their support of many of the Administrations policies such as Obamacare, the auto bailout and the financial regulation bill in some cases (such as Obamcare) over the objections of their membership.

Fresh from their recent wins, the unions are moving into building the base of Marxist, Communist and progressive voters, as evidenced by the AFL/CIO joining a get out the vote effort run by United for Peace and Justice, an origination established to promote an agenda which is both socialist and anti-war.

The announcement the AFL-CIO move was made in People’s World a magazine for the Marxist and Communist movements in the United Sates:

The AFL-CIO executive committee voted unanimously this morning to join One Nation, Working Together, a new national coalition of labor and civil rights groups that has as its purpose to “reorder America’s priorities by investing in the nation’s most valuable resource – its people.â€