Barely a week after the Million Man March in Washington sent a message of moral uplift to black Americans, a groundswell of AFL-CIO activists meeting in New York sent a similar message of solidarity and hope to the working poor across America. PNS associate editor David Bacon analyzes the new militancy sweeping through American labor.

NEW YORK -- Delegates were still reveling over the victory of John Sweeney as the first insurgent candidate for AFL-CIO president in 100 years, when dozens of locked-out workers and strikers took the podium. The huge hall fell silent as the audience strained to hear Ray Lane, in the 56th day of his hunger strike against Staley in Decatur, IL, recite the old union anthem, "Solidarity Forever".

"When the union's inspiration ... through the workers' blood shall run, there shall be no power greater ... anywhere beneath the sun," Lane intoned in a voice of quiet intensity. "For what force on earth is weaker ... than the feeble strength of one ... " ending in a near whisper, "But the union ... makes us ... strong," Lane brought the hall to its feet in cheers with a final shout: "Brothers and Sisters, Solidarity!"

Solidarity is the byword of the reborn AFL-CIO, connecting today's labor movement not only to the worker unity of the past but to the new diverse workforce of the global economy. While Congress busied itself last week severing the poor from the body politic, one thousand delegates at the AFL-CIO convention pronounced those working at the bottom-most tiers of the economy as the future of a reborn labor movement.

Ray Lane would never have addressed an AFL-CIO convention in the days of federation presidents Lane Kirkland and George Meany. He would never have been invited. Meany and Kirkland saw strikes as betrayals of the smooth partnership they advocated between workers and their employers.

Nor would Lane have come, even if he had been invited. Since the late 1940s, militant labor activists have been alienated from Meany, Kirkland and the bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO in Washington. They've seen it as out of touch, too friendly with big corporations and mainstream politicians, and an obstacle rather than a resource for winning fights like that at the Staley plant in Decatur.

But over the last decade, more and more labor activists have repudiated the narrow notion of a "trade union movement" led by labor statesmen walking the corridors of Washington in favor of building a social movement from the bottom. People like Stewart Acuff, head of Atlanta's labor council, have mobilized national campaigns like Jobs with Justice. Acuff, who organized a sit-in and civil disobedience at House Speaker Newt Gingrich's office earlier this year, says that Jobs with Justice was designed to nurture a "culture of militancy" in the labor movement, and to encourage coalitions with other organizations based among poor people, minorities, environmentalists and others trying to challenge corporate priorities.

The lines between these advocates of change and supporters of the old order couldn't have been drawn more sharply at the AFL-CIO convention. Incumbent president Tom Donahue called on delegates to "build bridges, not block them," a slap at his adversary John Sweeney's union, the Service Employees. The organizing tactics of the union's showpiece campaign, Justice for Janitors, involve bringing low-wage and minority workers into the streets, where they block thoroughfares and get arrested.

Donahue warned that militancy would "marginalize" the labor movement. His alternative was continued Beltway lobbying and support for the Democratic administration. But most AFL-CIO delegates saw Donahue's vision as the source of labor's marginalization, not the solution to it.

In previous years it would have been impossible to observe, let alone challenge, the federation leadership for being top heavy with white males, even as it advocated a civil rights agenda. This year, diversity in leadership was debated on the floor, and endorsed by virtually every speaker. The slates competed in trying to demonstrate a commitment to changing the color and sex of union leaders. In the end, a new, expanded executive council has a significantly larger number of women and minority unionists. While it still doesn't reflect the U.S. workforce, especially on the bottom, it is a big step in that direction.

Under Sweeney, the federation has made a commitment to move away from Washington onto the streets, to organize and speak for immigrants and low-wage workers, in unions and out of them. The organizing drives he proposes will still be led by paid organizers with technical expertise, but other models look more to an upsurge among workers themselves. To what extent they will supplant the older framework remains to be seen.

On other issues, like support for Clinton, there may be less change in old policies. It is unclear, for example, whether the new AFL-CIO leaders will undertake a housecleaning of the International Affairs Department, accused over the years of fighting militant unions abroad on behalf of the U.S. government and corporations.

Nevertheless, the demonstration of locked out workers and strikers led by Ray Lane set the tone for the future. In many ways, Sweeney's top-down program for change is more limited than the grassroots movement which propelled him into office. While he emphasizes hiring new staff or organizing committees, rank-and-file activists debate new ideas and tactics with a more bottom-up flavor. Changes are coming and a door has opened.