Big Labor to Obama: Where are the Jobs?
Try and guess what sort of rally this quote came from: “Our children are discouraged, our teachers are discouraged, and we’re on our way to a third world country.” It sounds like the apocalyptic pessimism of the Tea Party. They were actually comments from Pam Thomson, a member of the teachers’ union from Chattanooga, Tennessee who came to Washington for the “One Nation” rally at the Lincoln Memorial.
The “One Nation” rally was billed as a counter-rally to Glenn Beck’s “Rally to Restore Honor” but the two rallies had more in common than their participants (and organizers) might be willing to admit. Both rallies were really about the bad economy. Beck’s rally dealt with it by appealing to faith in God; this rally dealt with it by hammering home a simpler message: asking Washington to focus on jobs, jobs, jobs.
The speakers represented the 21st century version of the old left. Among them was Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, National Education Association president Dennis Van Roekel, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, (the union that threw $1 million into the recent D.C. mayoral primary against school reformer Adrian Fenty) and Van Jones, the proposed “green jobs czar” whose appointment to that position was torpedoed by Glenn Beck.
The labor unions had an obvious stake in pushing the message about jobs, but a smorgasbord of liberals latched on and tried to get in on the event. One anti-war activist, handing out posters calling for a pullout from Afghanistan, explained why he felt solidarity: “it is all connected…you have an unemployment rate that they say is 9% or 10%, but really it’s 25%.” Code Pink, 9/11 Truthers, and even PETA, were able to set up sideshows to the main event.
The Glenn Beck’s event hung over the rally as the event to counter, but most speakers avoided saying they were against Beck, preferring to reference Beck and Fox News in oblique terms. Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO spoke of the “voices of fear and hatred” in the media, without mentioning Fox by name.
The event was definitely smaller than Beck’s rally. Beck could fill both sides of the reflecting pool to capacity and multiple TV screens had to be set up to handle the overflow. This rally was significantly easier to traverse, and there was an ample amount of open grass to rest on.
Beck’s event also had better production values and a greater sense of a unified theme. It might have been a schmaltzy theme for America to be restored because it had “lost its honor” and “turned away from God”, but at least it was a “Big Idea” that could resonate outside the rally. The One Nation rally in contrast was a blatant expression of labor union politics: We want jobs for our unions, pass comprehensive immigration reform, and don’t “demonize” our public school teachers. It's a message for a particular part of the Democratic base, not a broad idea to campaign on.
Yet the Tea Party’s rhetoric was present. Dennis Van Roekel of the NEA said during his speech that “America’s standing is being threatened.” While the old Big Labor left is not going to turn on the president anytime soon (Jesse Jackson spoke about how Obama “cannot bare this cross alone”) they have similar economic anxieties and concerns as the Tea Party movement they label as racist. In truth, the economic anxieties of the Tea Party and the unions unite them. They have more in common with each other than they want to admit.
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