She was a middle-aged Black auto worker from Detroit: “I never went on any of the civil rights marches. Wish I had. This is my first time on a women’s march. I’m proud to be here.”

First they gathered by the hundreds, then by the thousands, and soon tens of thousands of marchers. They felt they were making history—and they were right. The July 9 National March for the ERA—the first march on Washington for the ERA—was the biggest demonstration for women’s rights in U.S. history.

As the action drew closer, the urgency of marching sharpened. On June 7, the Illinois House defeated the ERA, leaving three states still needed to win ratification by the March 1979 deadline.  
 
July 20, 1953
Washington and Bonn have tried to make what propaganda capital they can out of the workers’ uprising in East Germany. But their efforts are noticeably lacking in any attempts to encourage a continuation of the same type of revolutionary struggle. As the July 1 Wall Street Journal noted, the American capitalist leaders want the East German and East European peoples to resist their Kremlin overlords “short of open revolution.”

The reaction of the political spokesmen of Wall Street and their puppet rulers of West Germany has not been one of unmixed elation at the terrible blow dealt the oppressive rule of the Kremlin and its East German gauleiters by the independent action of the workers.

All the evidence points to the fact that the anti-Stalinist uprising in East Germany was a class battle conducted by socialist-minded, anti-capitalist workers. That is enough to render it mortally dangerous in all capitalist eyes.  
 
 
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