I can't help but notice that mass media coverage of labor action has tanked since the John Deere union got what it wanted and the Starbucks in Buffalo unionized.
Seems like we're moving from "Mock you" to "Ignore you".
Cool, but we still don't have the organization to actually do it. But it is nice of them to let us know that the just-in-time economy can be broken by 10 day of inactivity.
Honestly, might be able to do that with a sufficiently militant ILWU strike, tho. But they'd send in the national guard to break that.
But they’d send in the national guard to break that.
And if the National Guard shot people (even killed them) - libs would simply adopt a serious tone and say vile shit like "The strikes threated our national security".
Yup. "Treats are the basis of our national security" would become a media narrative.
And the very next day after the "unfortunate shootings" Rachel Maddow has a special report...
Maddow: "There are indications Russia could be behind the strikes. Isn't that the case, Mr. Tool?
Mike Tool - MSNBC national security expert: "Yes, Rachel. It seems suspicious that organized labor could do anything by themselves. There is chatter that Russia influenced events via Facebook activity..."
And they have a great time chatting and blue skying for ~10 minutes until the ads start.
The state in question would ask Biden for help. And Biden would be chomping at the bit to crush the strikers damaging America.
I'm not a lawyer but I've seen one on teevee so I'm sure Biden's legal legal team could come up with a mechanism to temporally suspended (or whatever the legal term is) The Posse Comitatus Act. Biden would give a speech and say this action was done in the name of - you guessed it - national security.
The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385, original at 20 Stat. 152) signed on June 18, 1878, by President Rutherford B. Hayes which limits the powers of the federal government in the use of federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States.
No I mean like, what happens when the laws of probability have a stroke and a crowd of protestors successfully routs the National Guard, drone strikes and all?
There's a great couple episodes of the working class history podcast about a similar situation under the dictatorship in South Korea in the 80s. The workers liberated the city for a few days, and then the full force of the military was concentrated and the uprising was suppressed :(
Speaking far more realistically - the governor would bring in 10x as many NG along with stuff like armored personnel carriers and other matériel to scare the utter crap out of the strikers. The governor would give them an ultimatum - "Disband with ______ hours or face the consequences".
And - if we want to go back to a sci-fi like unreality - the next day if there were "enough" strikers - in the mind of the governor - they'd be arrested. And if they refused - ridiculous amounts of force would be used on them. Maybe there would be an "unfortunate" death or two. And then the state government and/or the DOJ would give them obscenely long jail sentences.
They can't let the plebs think they have any sort of power at all.
They can’t let the plebs think they have any sort of power at all.
well, as long as we're just lying down and taking it, we don't :(
Take a look at what is happening in Kazakhstan literally right now, the protesters there just did that
Don't worry, reddit is on it, i saw three different, uncoordinated calls for general strikes in the past 24 hrs
I wonder if there'll ever be a thread where someone mentions even the notion of a general strike without several comments immediately denouncing the idea as completely outside the scope of possibility :thinking-about-it:
Like... maybe instead of "the working class isn't effectively organized for it" the reaction should be "how can we go about getting the working class effectively organized for it"
Every time some enthusiastic kid who's just heard about general strikes tries to get one to happen by tweeting about it on Twitter, don't just sit there and laugh, try to turn it into a "talk to your coworkers about unionizing day."
There's no point in going around telling people their ideas won't work if you don't tell them how to fix them.
You aren't talking about that with your co-workers every day?
Honestly these talks of general strikes are nice, but seem far fetched.
Plus you don't need it to cave the system. Small localized strikes at say.... shipping and rail yards, would devastate the country in a matter of hours.
Small localized ones are easier to discount in the media and attack with police. We need a broad action of solidarity, not just for the moment but to shift the country away from the very far right path we're on.
I think about 3-4 industries striking at the same time would do the trick. Our big transportation industries including Shipping/Rails/Trucks, Teachers, and Nurses/Medical support staff.
TBH any one of these could tank the country by themselves, but easier to demonize and fight a single industry. If several of them went on strike simultaneously I think more timid, smaller, or less impactful (though no less respectable) unions and industries may strike in solidarity. Whoops there goes your airlines. Whoops there goes college staff and tenured professors. Oopsie daisy there goes state and local governments. Get just a couple of the big players on board and I genuinely believe the rest of the dominoes would fall.
Totally, but as you say it's gotta be industries . Which means Union backing, which means them getting their heads out of their asses. Which means we need to radicalize them and their leadership because any union out there backing Clinton or Biden over Bernie in previous primaries sure ass hell isn't gonna give a rats ass about a general strike.
I mean, just the threat of a few airports going on strike during the shutdown a few years ago forced Trump et al to concede.
100% it can. We'd need a large portion of the population to believe in strikes and solidarity. We'd also need these people to feel secure enough to strike. We'd need large unions to not be corporate black holes. We'd need the police to not be able to intimidate the strikers. We'd need the president to not outlaw the strike.
I think there’s gonna be a fair amount of wildcat teacher strikes this month, if my wife’s school district is anything to go by. Fully expect Biden to press the charter school button is response though :biden-harbinger:
Fully expect Biden to press the charter school button is response though
And I bet most dems will follow suit. They are such shit.
Yup. They’ll go full Thatcher “enemy within” on them, should the unions fail as controlled opposition.
Would it tank the economy or cost enough profits to be lost that they don't care about mass deaths as an alternative
I want like a really really big Reese’s. Put that on the list
