cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/59378754
The calls for a nationwide (US) shutdown this Friday (Jan 30) are growing louder
So how did the general strike go?
Never even heard of it till now, so it probably didn’t work the way they wanted it to.
This won’t actually do anything.
In order for a strike to be a strike, it need to be organized and it needs to achieve a specific goal. If there’s no demands then it’s not a strike, it’s a boycott or a walkout.
Currently there is no movement, just a national level reaction. A movement requires leadership, a significant level of coordination and mobilization, very specific set of demands and goals, and an underlying message/philosophy that is backed by the general public. We currently have non of this.
In order to get to the point of a national level general strike, there needs to be a series of much smaller strikes that do all of the above, and have those localized strikes merge with each other to eventually have the size to pull of a national strike.
Currently there is no movement, just a national level reaction. A movement requires leadership, a significant level of coordination and mobilization, very specific set of demands and goals, and an underlying message/philosophy that is backed by the general public. We currently have non of this.
Which is why I’m so pissed at the democrats and not just the liberal right wing corpo ones but in particular AOC, Bernie and the other members of the progressive arm. They should be leading a general fucking strike.
And not just them but those adjacent to the party ie Jon Stewart, Colbert and Steph (and all the rest of the YouTube / social media sphere talking heads). Not only have they made incredibly lucrative careers attacking Trump, speaking truth to the insanity of the last ten years (because even under Biden it was always still about Trump), making it clear trunp is a clear and present danger to all.
I’m sick of their never ending jokes and serious moments.
A call to fucking action is required. The world is watching whilst you say your pretty, empty, words.
The time is now.
I realized years ago that the progressives in this country a complete joke. They constantly put their own careers ahead of the greater good, they talk big but their actions never match, when push comes to shove they cower, and the most infuriating thing is that they always choose to uphold the status quo.
If they were the real deal then they would’ve worked day and night to build a coalition to stop Trump in 2016, but they didn’t. They would’ve build a strong opposition during his first term and stopped him from passing anything, but they didn’t. They would’ve use their opportunity under Biden to prosecute Trump and his gang of criminals after Jan 6th, but they didn’t. They would’ve at least fielded real candidates to stop Trump from returning, but they didn’t. Now that Trump has been in office again and literally dismantling the country, they’re still not doing shit. I lost all faith in them. If change were to happen it has to come from the people.
You’re right. We should do nothing until a self-organizing, grassroots, independently funded organization gets enough signatures to get enough permits and consent to formally complain.
You didn’t have to write anything. Instead, you argued semantics. Then you argued that progress needs to be made on your terms. (Also what is the difference between a national reaction and movement if not just time and effort? Most movements are reactions). This is exactly how you counter-message and push people away from the concept of activism.
I do agree that effective long-term change likely comes through critical and organized methods. But that is not to dissuade anyone from participating in resistance or activism. Change is rarely graceful, and does not need to conform to anyone’s prescription.
You can’t go from 0 to a 100 and expect results. The national strike that the post is talking about is going to result in absolutely nothing. Barely anybody is going to participate if at all.
Why? Because most people aren’t even aware this is a thing, and to the small minority that is, they still won’t participate because they’re going to be the only people doing it. If one or two people from your workplace participate, they’re going to be penalized for not showing up. Same goes with boycotting or whatever else is planned.
My point is that there is currently no foundation to support such a strike. You can’t scale up if the people aren’t mobilized and onboard. How about instead of calling for a national strike, you work to convince your local unions to buy in? Two people participating at a workplace will do nothing, but if 70% of workers don’t show up at then that means something. It will send a message to the local community and might even make it to the local news. Then from there you coordinate the unions and other orgs (churches, schools, universities, nonprofits, etc) to organize a city wide strike, then a statewide strike, and then a regional strike, and if that succeeds then you can think about doing something on a national scale. However, trying to skip all the steps usually doesn’t result in real change, which is what’s going to happen here.
Yeah, this is armchair, if not just rationalization. Stay proud that it’d all have just worked had they just followed the steps like you told them.
I’m not giving steps, I’m merely stating a very basic fact. Movements need substance, that’s just reality. They need foundations to stand on to do anything meaningful. That’s the most basic of observations.
Like do you seriously think that the civil rights movement happened overnight because MLK decided one day to do a big march and everybody decided to randomly join? No the civil rights movement and all the other movements in history took decades of independent grassroots movements organizing, mobilizing, and coordinating with each other. That’s how they eventually consolidated to form unstoppable national political force.
You can be butthurt at what I said or deny it all you want, but reality isn’t going to change because what I said is a simple truth. If I was wrong then something would’ve happened today, but nothing did. January 30th is already over, and there was absolutely no impact or buzz surrounding this “strike”, not even on social media.
Nobody’s butthurt here. I’m saying your rhetoric carries water for fascists. And every time you say “it’s just facts”, you reinforce that in everyone’s mind. It’s not about winning an argument about how progress gets made, its pointing out how the way speak identifies our politics. Its ok, lots of people agree with you. And more people will be shot in the streets while you’ll be correct about how progress works.
Me: “These hollow performative stunts have no impact and resulted in zero results. We need to work establishing a real opposition with true roots to get actual results in the most effective way possible!”
You: “iS tHiS fAsCiSm?”
Like come on, you gotta be a troll. There’s no way anybody is dim enough to think a small collection of individuals posting random “national strike” pics on Reddit and Lemmy is going to actually produce anything substantial nationwide. It’s Jan 31st, we literally saw this fail because it wasn’t a real attempt to begin with. Nobody knew about it, nobody is backing it, nobody is leading it, there’s no goals, there’s organization, there’s no coordination, there’s literally nothing… and what do you know? Nobody fucking participated. How much further into tyranny do we have to slip before you mouthbreathers understand that you can’t virtue signal your way out of authoritarianism.
Let’s set aside the ridiculous bad faith restatement aside as just an emotional reaction.
Here are things that are occurring: https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/ice-out-of-everywhere
This is 10 seconds of typing into a browser to attach to a single organization effort. Yet “nobody knew about it, nobody is backing it, nobody is leading it, etc.”. You’re objectively wrong. You’re willfully ignorant. You would know this if you even attempted to look. It’s the coldest its been and people are in the streets across the country. Get up, go outside, and find out. And repeating this the futility of it all is exactly how you support the current tyranny facing us.
You seem so frustrated that people are patting themselves on the back for sharing jpegs, yet you sit here doing significantly less than the bare minimum. You are working against it.
There is no union in my industry.
I am in the pot industry. None of those will help me.
AFL-CIO is the umbrella, aka every industry falls under it
It’s planned for one day which sounds less than useless. Only sustained strikes and protests are effective.
A one day general strike across the US would be an amazing achievement. If we can pull that off it’s a great place to start. Would a more sustained effort have to be planned? Probably, but being able to achieve this shows that the people are serious about this and the threat of a more sustained strike can be taken seriously.
Exactly. We need to build these muscles and demonstrate to other would-be protesters that acting en masse is possible. Otherwise, everyone new to this just feels like they’re sticking their neck out.
This. Don’t forget how uncultured civil action is in the US. They literally replaced it by 2A. Buy a gun and ammo, and you never have to protest. A one day general strike would bring awareness to the OPTION of civil action to way more than we care to admit.
If it has a set end date then it’s a party not a protest.
honestly where the fuck r the unions? we need them
literally illegal in the US for unions to call for a general strike, its insane
It is and I wasn’t saying this in expectation of them calling for a strike right out of left field like this but unions have political weight and i haven’t seen any union leaders stepping up and speaking out in a meaningful way.
Unions are made of normal people and the normal US citizen pretends to be a millionaire thus doesn’t need to be in a union.
Also the ratio of people that want to be in a union to positions available in a union is like 1000:1
You can just join a union, they don’t have a wait list…
Tell that to all the people who’ve been on Union wait lists for years.
https://www.iww.org/membership/ It’s literally the easiest thing in the world to become a member. There’s strength in numbers, so please join.
How will this help me get off the waitlist and into a union job?
This will get you to be a union member and you will be able to bargain collectively.
The high paying jobs will come once enough people are organized in your industry. You can’t have it the other way around.
How does this affect anything?
Missing a day of work on a Friday is part of people’e schedule now whether they have a 4 day work week just take a day off. Same with school. This is minimally disruptive. The shopping one is the most useless imo. You could just do all your shopping Thursday and skip Friday.
Sorry, but can we just try to succeed at this small step before we build to larger actions?
They should strike on a Tuesday instead.
Why?
- cause it’s generally the most productive day of the week
- to silence any voices claiming they’d only do it for the long weekend
Is it better to skip work entirely or go and just goof off? Probably the former?
No call no show sends a stronger message if you’re privileged enough to be able to do that. If not, call in sick. Or go-slow all day. Do what you can.
I’m all for protesting in any way possible but a general strike in three days seems really ambitious. Most strikes take months to arrange since people will need to stock up on food and household items or they risk the strike ending before the strikers get their demands.
These kinds of strikes are intended to be short term, it’s a single day strike. It’s not about stopping work until demands are met, yet. It’s about proving to those in charge that there are enough people in agreement that the next step will be much more costly if things don’t change.
Sometimes they are smart enough to get the message, other times they either think they’re smarter because they are narcissistic or inherently will win because of money.
At this level though if you actually manage to coordinate an effective strike day, what you usually end up with is hundreds or thousands of smaller organizations that can’t survive and prolonged strike siding with the strikers and getting changes made, because the cockweasels at the top still rely on the smaller companies they stepped on to get there.
finally americans doing something that works
keep striking
