by ANNA FOR Indymedia
Wednesday, May. 05, 2004 at 9:18 PM
annekunkin@earthlink.net
What the "Powers That Be" Have Feared Since Colonial Times Is coming to be. They should be shaking in their boots.
The rich elite have always known that the numbers have never been in their favor. From the beginning of colonia settlement and the establishment of agriculture as a commercial trade The numbers of people needed to work the fields vastly outnumbered the few rich landowners. This need was filled with both black and white in great numbers.
When these people, all at the bottom of the bottom of the social heirarchy, began to work together to create movements against their situation, the landowner class freaked out. They knew that if all these people ever really became organized the rich elite would be overpowered and would lose everything.
So they created class division by giving the white people the ability to earn their freedom and the opportunity to gain enough in the way of stuff to keep them just content enough to stay in their "place". This place being a couple of notches above the black population who would never have the opportunity to move out of the slave class. This created tension between the races which was the beginning of the racist system we know and which still keeps us divided in so many ways.
This racist system is starting to crumble in the face of the larger corporate system we're all up against now; and this was never more evident than on the May Day Caravan for Justice this past Saturday.
The caravan, made up of 500 people in 9 buses organized by a multi-racial coaliton of worker and immigrant groups, took off from McCarther Park, and made it's way through the city, holding rallys at the Westwood Federal Building, Arnold Schwartzeneger's office in Santa Monica, with a final march and rally near the Azzi Market in Koreatown, where it was joined by a large group coming from a Mecha conference.
What made this day really extraordinary however, and something really different from a typical march and rally, was something that happened on the buses.
The bus that I was on was made up of an amazing diverse group of people; Chicanos, Latinos, Philippinos, Koreans, Vietnamese, African Americans, and others. All of these people, some not English speaking, came across race lines to the solidarity of class and humanity.
these people, men and women, all workers, sang labor songs in each other's languages, shared stories of struggles and triumphs, bad bus food, water, and amazing spirit throughout the whole day. Friendships were made alliances forged.
This is what the bosses have always feared, and it's beyond stopping now. What I saw in my bus and heard about from riders of all the other buses, is a microcosim of what is happening on the planet. This is the "blowback" to the corporate power structure and the nationalistic agenda of the U.S. Government: the Globalization of humanity and of the labor forces.
The other superpower is starting to get how much power it has.
All I can say to the bosses is Watch Out. It's only a matter of time now.