Today’s rally against Howard’s industrial relations ‘reforms’ was enormous [photos: 1 | 2 | 3]. As big as the anti-war rally before we invaded Iraq. It was empowering and impressive… and like the anti-war rally before we invaded Iraq, I don’t think it’s going to stop anything unless we really keep it up.
This isn’t the first huge rally I’ve seen. It’s apparently one of the biggest in Melbourne for 40 years, but I’ve been in some before. 2.5 million people walked across the Harbour Bridge for reconciliation.
Except that this time the unions are behind it too. This time we’re talking about the heart of capitalism: labour. I’m not a socialist, but I’ll acknowledge that the power of the worker is as powerful as Marx said it was. I personally believe the power of the people is even stronger than the power of the worker, but without the worker, we’re stuffed. In 1988, I helped organise one of the biggest rallies in the history of the Teachers’ Federation, 100,000 people in the Domain in Sydney. We won that fight, because we had teachers behind us as well as just secondary students.
So… here’s to the beginning of something…