The big unions are marching in solidarity with the protesters today.

Big Labor is going to work: endorsing the protests, offering manpower and resources, and helping stage a major march in New York City’s financial district on Wednesday. They are adding organizing muscle, fresh energy, and greater numbers to the boisterous demonstrations that began in downtown Manhattan more than two weeks ago.

One of the things labor leaders do not want to do:

. . . they’re not trying to co-opt Occupy Wall Street. They say that they want to help without getting in the way. “My sense is that the outrage they’re speaking of is the same outrage we’re feeling here in the union,” says Larry Hanley, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union International. “We’re going to do anything we can to promote and publicize the actions.”

My sense is that’s a good thing. The media likes to hang labels on demonstrators, and this movement didn’t start with labor unions. Those organizations have been relatively marginalized in society over the past 30 years, and if the media (particularly Fox) decides these protests are primarily labor it will start dismissing them as the last gasps of a dying unionism.