The anecdotal numbers coming in from the May Day walkout yesterday seems to be around a million people, or roughly 10% of one of the estimates of illegals in the country. Of course, probably not all marchers yesterday were illegal, so the number of actual illegals staying away would be less than the 10% number. I have no idea if this is seen by organizers as a victory or not, but if the numbers hold up, it looks like the vast majority of underground workers chose to, well, work.
Regardless of the numbers, the coverage was ubiquitous and the blogs were out in force. Ignoring the danger of redundancy, I'll point to Joe Gandelman's post as the best place to start if you want more information.
There is little to say about this beyond what has been tossed around already, kind of like the ancient Steven "Rosa Parks" Colbert debate (chill, please. I kid). The most interesting feature here is not what the numbers were or how this day will go down in history (lovely weather, not much else to talk about, in my opinion) but the lack of thought inherent in the protests. For instance, boycotting a Mexican McDonald's hurts the fast food giant not at all, while the Mexican franchisee is the one harmed. Make sense? Sure, if what you want to do is live a life of symbolism rather than action.
On the other side, I'll go out on the limb and say that unless there are continued walkouts, yesterday will be seen as a failure in the long run. But if the walkouts continue, farms that rely on illegal labor are likely to make the economic decision to automate, which eventually would cut out a significant amount of jobs. Ironic, indeed.
At The Mighty Middle (cross-posted here), Michael Reynolds posts on Sunday's rally for Darfur and finds it wanting:
The organizers of the rally wanted 200,000. I’d be surprised if they hit a tenth of that. The crowd was confined to a single square on the Mall quilt. Using Google Earth I make it 500 feet by 175 feet. Subtract 20% for the t-shirt tents and the media platforms and the stage, and give everyone just a two foot by two foot square, you’d be straining to call it 20,000.
...
The strange thing, listening to the speeches, and in reading the infrequent signs, was how little idea anyone had about what precisely should be done about Darfur. One speaker would exclude any sense that we should actually do anything other than perhaps pray and beam love rays at people. Then would come someone who’d talk about expeditionary forces. I even heard the word “Marines” spoken favorably from the podium.
I can almost hear Michael scratching his head. And I can't really improve on this:
Part of the reason I seethe at the Bush administration’s incompetence, is that the underlying notion that the United States has the right to pre-emptively defend itself, and the moral obligation to use its power to get between people like the Janjaweed and their victims, is correct.
...
The fact is and will remain that if we genuinely intend to stop genocide everywhere it rears its nasty head, then yes we’re going to need international law, and yes we’ll want diplomacy, but yes we’ll need bullets, too.
There's more to read.
Aside from the obvious differing nature of the protests (jobs here get more protesters than genocide there) there is something telling in these stories. Modern protest is as much technique as intention, and often organized without much thought as to the final prize.
Maybe it's that the prize isn't actually the focus of protest today; maybe it's all about platitudes and slogans and demographics. We are all deficient in the face of actual calamity when perpetrated by our fellow human beings and are more likely to take to the streets for our own self-interest than for the lives of people half the world away.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, just the reality. Surely all nations rely on self-interest. But there night be something in the fact that today, the million who took the day off yesterday are back on the job today while in Darfur, another unknown number will be trampled under the feet of their government in another 24 hours of death.
-Daniel
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