This page was last updated on October 11, 2010.
Report Back: Huge Rally in DC for Jobs, Justice, Education and Peace; Carl Davidson; Progressive Democrats of America – PA 4th CD Chapter; October 7, 2010.
The leadership of Progressive Democrats of America – PA 4th CD Chapter consists of Tina Shannon (chairperson), Randy Shannon (treasurer), Robert Schmetzer (vice president), Peter Deutsch (secretary), and Carl Davidson (webmaster), a self-described Marxist who once “tr[ied] to create a new communist party.” They also appear to be the leaders of Beaver County Peace Links. The Shannons were also leaders of the apparently-defunct Beaver County Coalition for Social Justice. In the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) [originally a splinter group of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA)], Mr. Davidson is a co-chair and the Shannons are members of the CCDS national coordinating committee. Robert Schmetzer is Democrat party local town chair for South Heights.
At nearly 2,500 words, Mr. Davidson’s piece is pretty long. Therefore, I’ll forego my usual format.
To start with, I watched part of the subject rally live and then watched the C-SPAN replay. With a couple of exceptions, the speakers were all representatives of myriad leftist (“oppressed”) groups, including the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), and their speeches can be summarized quickly: “Gimme, gimme, gimme” with plenty of name-calling and old, tired, and bogus talking points thrown in. In addition to their own messages, it appeared someone told the speakers to work in the words “jobs” and “justice.”
Mr. Davidson claims “an estimated 175,000 people filled the area.” It appears that estimate came from the rally organizers. According to The Washington Post, “The Associated Press merely says that ‘thousands’ of people were there, but that the crowd was ‘less dense’ than the one that greeted Glenn Beck on August 28th. The Post and the New York Times both said ‘tens of thousands.’” Regardless of the actual numbers, photographs taken from the top of the Washington Monument indicate far more people attended the Glenn Beck rally on 8/28 than the 10/2/10 rally. I found this amazing given the “coalition of some 400 groups,” including just about every labor union, are the kings of getting their members to attend protests.
Mr. Davidson wrote, “… you could clearly see the clusters of SEIU locals everywhere in the crowd, with their distinctive purple T-shirts. Everyone was color-coded—red for the communications workers, sky blue for the NEA teachers, navy blue for the steelworkers, yellow for the NAACP, and so on.” This is a perfect example of leftist mentality. In the leftist mind, the U.S. is composed of groups (oppressors and oppressed), not individuals, and this was another example of that view. Mr. Davidson continued with, “The next surge was hundreds of African American youth from community colleges in the DC area …” Assuming Mr. Davidson meant black when he wrote “African American,” who cares what the color of their skin was?” Lefties.
© 2004-2010 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved.