March
Following the firing of the PATCO workers, officials from that union visited various other unions in an attempt to garner support from various other unions. These efforts were not particularly well received because in the 1980 presidential election, PATCO refused to back President Jimmy Carter, instead endorsing Republican Party candidate Ronald Reagan. PATCO's refusal to endorse the Democratic Party stemmed in large part from poor labor relations with the FAA (the employer of PATCO members) under the Carter administration and Ronald Reagan's endorsement of the union and its struggle for better conditions during the 1980 election campaign.
The AFL-CIO's Solidarity Day march in Washington, D.C., in September 1981, came a few weeks into the PATCO strike, and drew half a million union people. The solidarity march was even bigger than the great 1968 march. In other ways the march was a new experience in post-war Washington. Because, though many groups and parties supported the demonstration, it was overwhelmingly a demonstration of organised labour. It was the first major demonstration to have been organised for decades by the AFL-CIO.
Read more about this topic: Solidarity Day March
Famous quotes containing the word march:
“The march of the human mind is slow.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“What if there’s nothing up there at the top?
Where are the captains that govern mankind?
What tears down a tree that has nothing within it?
A blast of wind, O a marching wind,
March wind, and any old tune,
March march and how does it run.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Knowledge, Virtue, Power are the victories of man over his necessities, his march to the dominion of the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)