California's Celebration of Communism Comes Up Short

According to this piece in the LA Times, today's May Day parade in Los Angeles drew pitiful crowds. This is in spite of beautiful weather and political developments that would presumably have energized union supporters and brought them into the streets.

Last year, of course, the controversy over immigration policy in Arizona brought a crowd of some 60,000 into LA's streets. This year, organizers hoped to bring out as many as 50,000, even though their permit from the city estimated the event's size at about 10,000. Turns out everyone was off, as only a few hundred union supporters and immigrant-rights activists showed up.

We were in San Jose today, and would say the same thing about the May Day march here. The SJPD had a heavy downtown presence, as if expecting a large event, but the crowd we saw outside City Hall couldn't have been more than 400 people. To us, this suggests that people like Steven Greenhut are right, and the plight of unionized government workers just isn't as compelling as it used to be.