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:
“Our Germany’s dead. However hard this may be for some of us older people, it’s a blessing for our children. Our children grew up against new backgrounds, new horizons. And they are free. Free to grow up as children. Free to run and to laugh without being forced into uniforms. Without being forced to march up and down streets, singing battle songs.”
—Emeric Pressburger (1902–1988)
“The blue and the gray. Let us march together beneath the star- spangled banner.”
—Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)
“At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)