Brief report about the April 10 demo in Seattle
from comrades of the Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee
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. It's easy to get overwhelmed with emotion on a day like today: Hundreds of thousands of people in the streets demanding respect, equality, RIGHTS! -- and overwhelming proletarian. Maybe 20,000 marched in Seattle, maybe 40,000, I can't say. All I know is that I when I stopped to rest and wait for a couple comrades to come by the crowd just kept coming, and coming, and coming. . . . maybe for 40 minutes, maybe for nearly an hour.
. A seemingly endless collage of slogans and chants: "Si, se puede!", unity slogans, my favorite "Bush! Escucha! Estamos en la lucha!" (remember, u has the ooo sound). Who could not be inspired, joyous, and have a lump in one's throat all at the same time? Me, I'm also angry at myself for underestimating the number of leaflets we should make. My 500 were gone before we started marching. People lined up to take them, and I have no money to get more printed. Edwd. only had 100! Pray he had enough money to get more printed.
. "Obreros, unidos, no seran vencidos"! Indeed, united, the working class can never be defeated. And, are not the workers here! Tens of thousands of them! Their mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, and children. Overwhelmingly Mexican and Latino, but also others, including a few African Americans and Anglos.
* * * * *
. This is a new movement rooted in long-standing grievances (racial discrimination and oppression, super-exploitation of labor power), and provoked by the brutal legislation that BOTH the Republicans and Democrats are cooking up in Congress. Being a new movement it also has a lot of political naivete within it. Thus, while the lead banner read something like "Comprehensive Immigration Reform Now!", probably a large majority of the people there had no idea that "comprehensive. . . reform" is the Washington code word for the McCain-Kennedy and Senate compromise type bills that would in fact be huge ATTACKS on immigrants. That's their reform, not ours -- their "comprehensive reform" means comprehensive attack. To win a progressive reform means a mountain of work to raise the class consciousness and organization of the movement. In this work our lead banner must be "Full rights for ALL immigrants NOW!"
. This is also a movement that is not going to go away. April 10 will be followed by May Day and other future events. Therefore, all class-conscious workers and other revolutionaries will have many more opportunities to do whatever they can to help it move forward.
. Below is the leaflet the SAIC was passing out today (and we'll have a new leaflet for May Day).
Use it. Take ideas from it for your own leaflets, posters, or signs. Check out our website or
correspond with us. Let us unite together for work to help make this spring's mass upsurge one
that will be able to sustain itself. And let us work to bring into being many new class-conscious
and revolutionary workers. <>
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. The Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee (SAIC) is a loose group of anti-imperialist activists in and around Seattle, Washington. We work to build genuine anti-imperialist consciousness and organization, and oppose the influence of liberal-imperialist and opportunist politics within the progressive movements, particularly the anti-war movement. We believe that imperialism can only be eliminated through the independent political action of the masses of people and not through the "good-will" or "kindness" of various liberal-imperialist saviors.
. All SAIC members are free to struggle, publicly, for their individual political lines. Many of us have various disagreements with one another, but are militantly united around the need to fight imperialism and the need to do so independently of the imperialist ruling class.
. Our website ...gives readers the ability to publicly post comments, suggestions, questions and criticism of our work. SAIC welcomes and encourages such ideological struggle-which is crucial for the development of a mass, conscious anti-imperialist movement.
Broken links corrected, December. 30,2023.
http://www.communistvoice.org
e-mail: mail@communistvoice.org