The American workers shake the dust in the streets (
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/pers-f18.shtml ). What can conclude on this?
The politics is almost always extremely deformed forces that dominate the Political Field (see:
http://jornaldedebates.uol.com.br/debate/quais-os-verdadeiros-valores-sociedade/artigo/sobre-campo-pol-tico/13965). The USA are not an exception.
The American imperialism (with their wars, military expenses, interferences in the life of other States) it affects the domestic politics inside of the USA in a very strong way (since the end of the Cold War the American military budget increased when the logic said that the same would have to decrease) and it won't be overcome because of labor protests.
In reason of they be completely out of the Political Field in the moment, the labor protests will be considered political anomalies that will subject their organizers and participants to the police, politics and journalistic repression. The phenomenon is very known.
The instituted power tends always to ignore the alterations that are operated in the field of the potency (see Michel Maffesoli). When the government is weak the power is overcome quickly as in Egypt now. When it is still very strong the power suffocates and it destroys the manifestation and the demonstrators as it happened in China two decades ago.
I think that at this time the instituted power is still very strong in the USA. In the USA the government and government's form has great popular, military and journalistic support. The American press, that conscious or unconsciously, it is consumed by the imperialism (for which contribute exalting the benefits in the "American way of life" and of the influence of the USA in the world) it can only make two things in relation to these protests: to ignore them or to treat them as no patriotic and anti-democratic manifestations.
In the limit the journalists will fall back upon the old discursive structures of the Cold War to minimize his influence. They will say that the workers in the streets are communist, they are not true Americans and other things of the gender.