- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/58550623
The Democratic senator Ruben Gallego has proposed that, should Donald Trump try to sabotage the midterm elections, Americans should respond with a general strike that would “grind the country to a halt”.
Earlier this week the US president called for Republicans to “take over” and “nationalise” voting in at least 15 unspecified locations, repeating his false claims that elections are plagued by widespread fraud.
On Thursday Gallego, a senator for Arizona and an Iraq war veteran, warned that Trump could seek to interfere with the November midterms that will determine control of Congress – and urged citizens to fight fire with fire.
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I’ve said many times that i would leave this country, but nationalizing elections has gotta be the last straw… this country is just going to shit atp
They’ll cave on whatever it is before it comes to a national strike.
General strikes are hard to plan and organize. It requires coordination and active participation. Stop reading and posting “someone should do it”.
Find a way to GET INVOLVED. FIGHT.
Yes it is bad, do something, do anything. Don’t let the defeatism take you over.
Adding onto this:
The country would be brought to its knees if suddenly deprived of profit and labor, allowing us to simply ignore the democrats and their lack of spine, and instead demand real changes (abolishing ICE should be towards the top of the list).
That tactic was extremely effective in Chile in 2019, and had they not fallen for the trick of liberal reform, they would’ve had a successful revolution on their hands with virtually no bloodshed.
There are some concrete steps all of us can take toward enacting that hard-core general strike to make it more viable and bearable for us all. (the titles below expand if you click them).
Learn First Aid! ⛑️
As we’re seeing, deadly violence is being used against us and it will only continue. It extremely important to have the skills to be able to keep yourself and others alive if they get hurt.
Tacticool Girlfriend provides a great introduction to building a personal first aid kit, called an IFAK, which can deal with things like bullet wounds and other serious bleeding wounds. I also want to emphasize her recommendation of only buying medical gear from reputable sources (not Amazon!), such as North American Rescue to avoid fakes that could cost you your life.
But you’ll need to learn how to use that equipment, too. The best resource for that is to take a local Stop The Bleed class, which are pretty widely available in most places. They may cost a small fee, but can also sometimes be free. Alternatively, if you cannot access a local class, this video by PrepMedic will give you a solid understanding of how to use Tourniquets and Gauze for wound packing.
Injuries are less harmful if they are tended to early. Learning first aid can help conserve resources when healthcare becomes unaffordable. Having several medics in case of harm by police is an extremely powerful morale booster during a protest that may become a police riot. When you become comfortable with the basics of first aid, riot medicine is the next suggested step.
Establish or join local Mutual Aid networks ✊
If you haven’t already, get to know your neighbors. Mutual aid is a willingness to support and grow your community. This can include informal networks through friends, tenant/renter organizations, solidarity groups, and industrial unions.
These are groups using direct action to solve each other’s problems. Building strong communities makes it difficult for fascism to take root. The actions of the government are going to hit every community hard, and the ones who build trust in each other and work together are most likely to survive. We’ve been building a list of resources in !inperson@slrpnk.net to help you on your way. Also check out this handy guide to find existing groups in your area.
This isn’t only for your own community protection. Your ability to organize today will change the political landscape tomorrow. When revolution occurs, the social organizations that show the greatest resilience through the regime are the ones typically calling the shots when the dust settles. When it comes to elections, get out the vote drives are useless if most of the voters are fascists. At some point, you have to do grassroots political education if you don’t want fascist candidates winning elections. Mutual aid networks are excellent forums not only for teaching each other good political ideas, but demonstrating them in practice.
Join a Union and Prepare for an even longer General Strike! 💪
If you aren’t in a union (or even if you are, it’s worth dual-carding), consider joining the IWW to unionize your workplace (bonus: you’ll get higher wages, better benefits, and more time off if you succeed!) to strengthen a general strike if we manage to enact one, as most unions have a strike fund that can supplement your income during a general strike to make it more financially bearable (you should also save as much money as you can reasonably do, so it can also be used to keep yourself afloat during a strike). A General Strike is officially planned by the UAW for May 1st 2028, but it was planned before Trump was elected, and by then may be too late, so prepare now for one that may start sooner.
And for our international friends, you should join one as well, as fascism is gaining momentum globally. If your country isn’t listed below, just contact the IWW directly in the link above, and they’ll help you set up a new local branch.
Adopt Security Culture and Digital Camouflage 🛡️
Sometimes benign seeming efforts can turn into unexpected personal data collecting traps. Like an obscure website for exchanging contact info with other students turning into a global ad-tech surveillance network (Facebook), or innocent seeming online personality tests being use to harvest character profiles. Even Etsy, Reddit, Tinder, and Duolingo are feeding information to US Government Agencies like ICE.
Security culture is commonly used to describe the general awareness of such potential traps and how it can affect groups or entire communities. This goes beyond mere individual privacy efforts, as without joint efforts these often fail to work.
Especially in activist circles, security culture is paramount. For opsec reasons not everyone in the group might be aware of what clandestine efforts others are involved in, but with a general security culture many potential data leaks can be avoided.
Movements are made by the volume of their participants, and the easier and less dangerous it is to participate, the more people will get involved. As more people get involved, individual involvement becomes even less dangerous, creating a virtuous cycle.
We’ll start it off with some General Advice:
- Mentally wall off personal uniquely identifying info from your online presence, actively build a habit of opsec so that withholding information is your default mental state
- Be careful about who you meet online
- Use different, unrelated usernames, passwords & emails for every account. And try not to connect to those accounts with your real IP address (use Tor or a VPN)
- Be mindful that anything done online leaves a trail
- agents provocateurs may seek to find patsies willing to perform an ill-advised illegal activity in order to legitimize police repression. If someone is trying to pressure you, especially if you don’t have a long and proven history with them, be extremely wary.
For a full guide on what encrypted communications platforms to use, and how to stay off the radar, read the Digital Camouflage section within the Monthly Meta post here (you’ll need to scroll down. I’d add it here, but it won’t fit in this comment).
I’d also highly recommend Full Spectrum Resistance to anyone who wants further info on how to resist (audiobook version here).
If? And after midterms?
Jesus they want to let him get away with it and then do too little too late.
I mean historically general strikes are in response to something because they require some amount of momentum and general public support.
I think you’re right though they’re not making the moves they should if they wanted to prevent this obvious fiasco. The #1 thing would be don’t pass a budget through the senate.
Jesus they want to let him get away with it and then do too little too late.
This has already happened. See Biden, Garland, et al.
Hell, Obama let the Bush crime family walk back in '09. Clinton turned a blind eye to Reagan/Bush. Carter refused to prosecute Nixon.
Etc, etc.
Just go ahead and plan for the general strike.
We don’t need to fucking wait for the meddling to happen then act all surprised and disgusted when it does.
They’re fucking saying they’re going to do it right now. They’ve been saying it for over a year. They were saying it in 2020. It was on the recordings. The Garland slow walked the election interference case and acted all surprised when the charges were instantly dropped after trump took over the DOJ.
So. Let’s organize a general strike, right fucking now. Let’s plan for it to happen in October ahead of the election.
They are going to fuck with it. They’re fucking with it now.
The time to plan and organize is now. We don’t need a plan for a plan for an organization.
Democracy is ending right now. Today. Let’s fucking go.
general strike, right fucking now. CAPS please.
Resistance groups across the country are already organizing this. You should get plugged into them if you want to help.
ICE killing 10 innocent people this year, kidnapping and sending them to concentration camps abroad (people is still there, if not more people being sent), the government is actively protecting pedofiles…
If after all of that they aren’t calling for a civil war, I don’t think they will do much.
If after all of that they aren’t calling for a civil war
I’m trying to imagine how turning the current situation into a shooting war improves things.
Do or do not. There is no try.
If it gets to the point where Trump meddles in elections it’s already too late.
Probably already happened TBH. There are statistical anomalies in voting data that absolutely should be investigated.
Trying not to conspiracy rabbit hole myself, but it looks like votes were being added specifically in swing-state counties that were reporting votes electronically via starlink on election day. Basically the ratio of votes for trump skyrockets in that demographic when the turnout rate reaches a certain point. It’s not hard evidence, but it is a lot of smoke coming out of a gun shaped object.
Yeah I’ve been banging that particular drum since like December 2024. Trying to get people to just look at the data has been like pulling teeth. Got called blue maga and “just like maga” for it.
Fucking annoying that all I wanted was people to take a critical eye to the data, and keep in mind that Trump is a known fraudster and cheater. That he Elon musk backing and his billions. That cyber security experts, and data experts were sending in letters that the election was compromised. That Kamala herself(likely ghost written) had released a book about the discrepancies in our previous elections with Trump.
The data shows a Russian tail in every election with Trump, with 2024 being the most pronounced and obvious.
Trump cheated …again.
Unfortunately, without hard evidence, it is technically a conspiracy theory. I don’t think the statistics alone can prove that the election was manipulated. It’s entirely possible that those numbers happened organically. What the statistics do show is that there are patterns specifically in critical demographics that are identical to elections that are known to be manipulated.
My real conspiracy theory is that the Democrats know this, and they also know that no amount of evidence will get trump impeached and removed, so they are holding back court cases on this, hoping that congress is more favorable after the mid-terms. Depending on an election to counter a rigged election is fucking dumb, but we are taking about senior (in both senses of the word) Democrat leadership here.
I agree that the Democrats do know, but you have a lot more faith on them as a party than I do. I think the majority of the DNC are controlled opposition, and are happy with this current situation where they don’t have to try to do anything. Which is why the narrative has been more or less “you should have voted for us, now we can’t do anything” even though in reality anytime they can do something, they fold.
We’ve been there before. There are no consequences.
The consequence is who is winning the election
Can’t say I disagree.
I feel like the Israel run child rapist ring and the fact that both sides of our political divide are bought and paid for by Israel should’ve been enough to do a serious general strike already
Really? A strike? For stopping elections and destroying democracy?
No man. Our constitution allows us to legally go “open season” on anyone that does this.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”
Forcibly taking our elections away would definitely threaten the “security of a free state,” and make it perfectly legal to create armed, well-regulated militias to protect our rights.
I would further argue that it means that we have the RIGHT to employ those armed, well-regulated militias in defense of the “security of that free state,” which means attacking our enemies, the ICE Apes. If they want to make them the front line troops of their domestic army, they should remember, we have much, MUCH larger numbers.
Your mention of “legality” assumes there’s some neutral third party deciding what is and isn’t acceptable, but when the fascists control the judicial branch and the law enforcement portion of the executive branch, it no longer matters what the law says.
There’s that negativity we can all expect, begging us to surrender in advance.
Yeah, no shit, Sherlock, that’s kind of the point - we have to FORCE them to abide by OUR CONSTITUTION, not their whims. WE WON’T SURRENDER IN ADVANCE!
What are you talking about? I’m simply pointing out the fallacy of thinking that you can use the very system they’ve hijacked as a way to bring them down.
It doesn’t matter if militias are legal or not because they’ve demonstrated quite clearly that they don’t give a shit what the law says. You’re not going to get them to back down by applying the law if they don’t respect or recognize the law. You’ll have to do it by force, and at that point the rules don’t matter. The only thing that matters is who wins.
We don’t let them hijack it, it’s as simple as that. If they can take it from us, we can take it back. All we have to do is play Hard Ball, and force them to abide by the Constitution, with NO EXCEPTIONS.
Protecting The Constitution is the objective, and it doesn’t help at all to advocate for calling it lost, and proceeding in a vacuum. Otherwise, they can fill that vacuum with whatever they want.
If we don’t want MAGA to decide what America will look like forever, then we better go all in on defending and preserving the Constitution, because we don’t have anything else.
Your comments are so weird. It’s as if they were pre-recorded or LLM slop as you’re making references to things that were never said or even alluded to previously and you don’t seem to be acknowledging anything I have said.
bububububububut LAW AND ORDER!!!
He has a good reason
it’s because of the ACTUAL meddling!!!
Immigrants!!! (Actually I see them now use “illegals” consistently, the bastards)
Trans ballot stuffing!!!
Communist interference!!!
It’s good actually!!!
There, the majority of the incoming talking point meta from the right wing grifter npcs has been patched into the game and unlocked for all players.
That switch from illegal immigrants to illegals and the focus on Antifa as the enemy are not accidents … they are meant for us normal citizens. Protesting against the government? They are Antifa … Bunch of illegals! This was always the plan.
Why not just have everyone refuse to work on election day, every election day. It’s insane that it’s not a national holiday
FANTASTIC idea
Doing it AFTER the midterms is too late.
The election will be stolen and no amount of striking will get a NEW election to happen. Furthermore Trump will continue to have unfettered control of all 3 branches of the government, the military, and a paramilitary police force answerable only to him.
A strike at that point will lead to nothing less than civil war.
It makes me sick to say this but civil war is coming if we want it or not. Truthfully, it is already being fought by one side and the other is run my Chuck Schumer. Get ready.
“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be” – Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts
If shit goes down and it’s mad max up in this bitch, I will make it my life’s remaining mission to personally hunt down every single name penned to Project 2025, starting with this guy!
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ya if this happens I’m not protesting, me and my family are leaving the country.
Do you have a realistic plan to leave?
My partner and I are seriously talking about putting things in place so we can ya, have a couple options, some better than others, some more expensive than others. Looking at Costa Rica and Panama, Portugal is a high contender, potentially Mexico. I’d love Thailand or Vietnam also. Definitely expensive though, and we have prep work, but we are going to play it by ear and make sure we have options. I’m a combat vet and engineer, and she’s a former teacher and now an electrician, I think we can probably find work, even if under the table to get by wherever we go.We are pretty resourceful.
Using LLMs is a great way to get a sense of what visas might work, timelines practically, costs (though definitely expecting 25% or more than what it estimates)
Why not grind the country to a halt for all the shit he has already done?
should Donald Trump try to sabotage the midterm elections, Americans should respond with a general strike that would “grind the country to a halt”.
They have started their election interference long ago.
Can we just agree, all of us here, that we will not let this happen?
Now this is a real threat that the olirarch class is actually afraid of.
