One Nation Working Together - report‏

Report from a UNISONActive reader in Washington DC: Union members, students, peace and environmental activists, and advocates for immigrant rights travelled from across the country yesterday to gather for a mass demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. The extremely diverse crowd was pulled together by speakers on the platform calling for Americans to stand together as "One Nation" -- against the right-wing extremism of personalities like Fox News' Glenn Beck and the Tea Partiers, as well as demanding the Obama Administration to bring about "The Change I Voted For."

Crowd estimates for the One Nation event were 175,000-200,000 -- gathered for several hours at the site of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech forty-seven years ago. While initially conceived of as a response to Tea Partyism and a GOTV (get out the vote) for the Democrat Party for the November midterm elections, some of the rally's key constituents like the anti-war movement and the Palestine contingent helped to bring a deeper critique of the nation's foreign policy and military spending.

Chants and placards challenged the Democrats in power to connect the Federal Government's budget priorities (favouring Defence and Pentagon spending) with the state of the domestic economy and the need for better jobs, affordable healthcare, and education.