Work Reform

That's not always accurate. A strike where people sit at home and watch TV might have this result, but a 10 days of people on the streets talking and hyping each other up, can easily grow revolutionary, especially if during those 10-days people use direct action for their mutual aid to cover their needs

1-day strikes and random marches on the other hand are practically useless

Reddit protest be like. Huffman literally said 'You only protest for 2 days? Sure, we'll wait'.

We need a general strike that doesn’t end until the government capitulates to the needs of the people

Many cannot afford to strike but that is the way the system was set however we only need 10% participation to send a powerful message - any more is icing on the cake. Those who cannot fully can participate by cutting back 10% or more. Everyone should be able to cut back to some extent. Yet, expect the corporate controlled MSM to NOT report on the effects or participation of a general strike. Look for your news on independent sites, some reliable foreign sources and the Fediverse only.

The strike is not the end of the exercise, oh, no! To pull off a huge action like this will take coordination, spreading awareness, cultivating relationships of trust, establishing lines of communication, laying the foundations by organizing, and getting people primed for action. That's what we lack now.

Right now, we could all just choose to disobey together, and there are so many of us that they couldn't stop us. But it would take a lot of people; only a few here and there taking action would simply leave those few destitute or in jail.

A general strike is not the goal, it's the announcement that we're organized. That awareness, those relationships, that trust, doesn't just have to go away...

A strike that has a scheduled end date is a strike that’s has scheduled its own failure.

A flex of power is a great way of demonstrating to both your own union members and your bosses/administrators. Proving that coworkers can and will dictate the terms of economic activity is an incredibly powerful statement that illustrates exactly who is in charge of the workfloor.

No, we’re way past the point where our society can afford another failed effort to affect change.

People are going to try things and those things are going to continue to have a mixed chance at success. The idea that an ill-defined indefinite general strike will work better than a highly coordinated short-term shutdown is predicated on a number of your own personal theories about how oligarchs will respond and how long union organizers can effectively maintain a work outage.

You're rolling dice just like the rest of us. Nothing you're suggesting guarantees a particular outcome.

The media will always exist and people will always base their decisions on the information they receive in the media. This is inevitable in any society with the degree of complexity we have today. It is just not possible to gather all the information ourselves about any but the most personal of topics. That is why free, unbiased, and independent media is an extremely important part of liberal electoral democracy. And for the greater part of the past two centuries, this is what we more or less had. Yes, major media outlets have always been somewhat controlled by the upper class (whether in the form of media companies or local media magnates), but until quite recently, most of them didn't care about using those outlets as propaganda pieces; they just cared about continuing to collect their subscription money, which is likely the best-case scenario for privately owned for-profit media. It is astonishing that this system lasted as long as it did.

There’s also the chance that they’d just hunker down and outlast it. Giving them a definite timeline gives them a light at the end of the tunnel. After 10 days, it’s just business as usual again. A general strike without a posted timeline would lead to capitulation within only a few days. It wouldn’t even take all 10 days.

Kidney stones don’t suck just because they hurt. They suck because you don’t know how long they’re going to hurt for. They hurt until you have passed the stone, and you have no idea how long that will take. The pain is analogous to a muscle cramp. People can grit their teeth and bear it if they know it’s just a muscle cramp and will end soon. But when it has been six days and you don’t have any idea how much longer it will last, it makes you desperate.

So what, they gonna come to my house and make me go to work?

Or do they show up at my work and do my job?

How can we help?

Failing to attend to electoral politics is also a great way to ensure that blood has to be spilled again to re-win battles that were already fought, as has been seen with many of those left of center sitting out elections for half a century, which just so happens to coincidence with decoupling of wages from productivity, increasing wealth inequality, and erosion of workers' rights.

If I thought people were consistent enough, I'd say that the founding of anti-electoralism was a right-wing, authoritarian conspiracy, but I don't think that's super likely.

With unions we can change things little by little. A 10 day strike isn't long enough to be effective though....

The goal of the strikes is to stop 10 days from ruining a person, because it never should take a year to recover that

We can't just say "General Strike" on the internet and expect anything to happen.

This is why unions collect dues: so they can pay part of workers' wages and people won't lose their homes. We need to organize enough people in your workplace that your boss can't just fire you and hire someone else.

I am pro strike, but these pictures on the internet are just silly.

This is what bothers me so much about the constant calls for general strikes on social media. They’re almost never paired with serious organization (ex: where are the strike funds to support people who otherwise can’t afford to miss paychecks?)

We’re in a country with very little organized labor compared to other countries in Europe or Latin America where strikes are common. Also cops here are highly militarized. Plus we are a massive country. Still, I think Americans need to consider a general strike and organize if need be. Is it easy? Obviously not. But I’ll happily take some optimism in these dark times.

When a million Americans died of Covid people demanded to end Covid restrictions.

Start saving now, start learning how to fix things, grow food, make do with less.

A whole lot of people may not have any choice about going without pay for awhile, much less one day, the time to start preparing is now. I tell people as often as I can, especially my trans and bipoc friends; now is the time. Get a couple guns (a long one and a short one) and learn how to use them. Learn some basic first aid, you really just need to know how to stabilize someone. Start networking with like-minded people in your communities, learn how to to grow food and repair things.

The police will not protect us, they’ve proven they’ll happily club senior citizens to the ground and shoot any protesters in the face with rubber bullets while escorting a rightwing murderer to safety. Iran was a secular, liberal state until almost 1980 when they (mostly legitimately) elected an Islamist theocracy; it could happen here.

Not if their plumbing needs fixing