In my recent Jacobin essay I called for using a March on Washington as an anchoring tactic in a broader strategy for Medicare for All. I argued that the tactic would complement other organizing strategies, help facilitate the consolidation of institutional relationships, lend itself to the development of programmatic clarity, and serve to help integrate the currently marginal socialist movement with the broader working class and in particular, militant health-care-worker unions.

Fortunately, this essay sparked a lot of discussion within the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the broader socialist left with some accepting the premise of the article and others rejecting it wholesale. Michael Kinnucan’s “Don’t March, Organize for Power” is one of the more skeptical replies. Some of Kinnucan’s criticisms boil down to mere misinterpretations of the original proposal, while other are more fundamental disagreements.

Kinnucan argues that a march of the kind I propose won’t significantly alter the national political landscape. Of course, he is right and I conceded as much in the opening lines of the original essay. But no tactic is guaranteed to change the balance of power. Such an uncertainty exists for even the most militant strikes. And further, I wholeheartedly agree with Kinnucan that we need a strategy and a long-haul campaign in order to win Medicare for All — yet none of this contradicts making a mass march a significant component of such a campaign.