Harper's Magazine: What to do? General Strike.

[grasswire]

I hope that each and every DU member will read this essay and pass it on everywhere. Stop saying "I don't know what to do" -- here is the specific recommendation and the challenge.

Read it, for God's sake. For liberty's sake. For your children, your grandchildren.

Read it.

Here's an excerpt:

"Any strike, whether it happens in a factory, a nation, or a marriage, amounts to a reaffirmation of consent. The strikers remind their overlords -- and, equally important, themselves -- that the seemingly perpetual machinery of daily life has an off switch as well as an on. Camus said that the one serious question of philosophy is whether or not to commit suicide; the one serious question of political philosophy is whether or not to get out of bed.

snip

The question we need to ask ourselves at this moment is what further provocations we require to justify digging in our heels. To put the question more pointedly: Are we willing to wait until the next presidential election, or for some interim congressional conversion experience, knowing that if we do wait, hundreds of our sons and daughters will be needlessly destroyed?

A young man goes to Walter Reed without a face. Shall I make an appointment with my barber? A female prisoner is sodomized at Abu Ghraib. Shall I send a check to the Clinton campaign?

snip

How can we criticize an administration for failing to act in the face of a probable threat given our own refusal to act in the fact of a threat already fulfilled? As long as we're willing to go on with our business, Bush and Cheney will feel free to go on with their coup. As long as we're willing to continue fucking ourselves, why should they have any scruples about telling us to smile during the act?

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/10/0081720

[grasswire]

1. and the last paragraph

"I wrote this appeal during the days leading up to the Fourth of July. I wrote it because for the past six and a half years I have heard the people I love best -- family members, friends, former students and parishoners -- saying, 'I'm sick over what's happening to our country, but I just don't know what to do.' Might I be pardoned if, fearing civil disorder less than I fear civil despair, I said, 'Well, we could do this.' It has been done before and we could do this. And I do believe we could. If anyone has a better idea, I'm keen to hear it. Only don't tell me what some presidential hopeful ought to do someday. Tell me what the people who have nearly lost their hope can do right now."

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. When this was published we crossed some kind of a bridge

what I don't know is whether we have time

[grasswire]

3. he calls for the strike on Election Day

...and he says that for those who think it would be too hard to pass the word, consider the fact that whether we want to or not, the whole nation knows the identify of the new American Idol before morning.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. She

and for some silly reason I don't believe it will happen

Strikes are something commies do

Or people not up to their necks in debt

[puebloknot]

7. I keep remembering the scene in "Gandhi" where a general strike...

...shut down *everything*!

Of course, the people were so desperate they had little to lose. You're right, Americans are so caught in day-to-day fiscal survival that they won't even consider a strike. And too few even understand where we *really* are right now.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. You also have another problem regarding any kind of a strike

people have extensively been propagandized to believe they're bad.

I fear we will see them, but not soon

Hell, I have made the contention that the environment created by the conservs is ideal for a revolution... not strikes.

[puebloknot]

14. Americans are not cold and hungry enough yet for any of these ideas.

Who knows what dreams may come!

[puebloknot]

16. The genesis of my username here -- PuebloKnot --

...comes from a bit of New Mexico history. All the pueblos staged a revolt against the Spanish, and to coordinate the event, they used knotted ropes that runners took to each of the pueblos. Seven knots, seven days. On the seventh day, they all rose up together and threw out the Spanish oppressors.

There was a reconquest, but let's not go there. We need to have a revolt, first!

[Oak2004]

9. i know you've been seeing it too

I think we passed the point of no return when Congress capitulated on the war funding bill. That was a lot more than a bad vote: it was the point when hope that the situation could be resolved through normal channels died. If that wasn't clear enough the first time, Congress capitulated a few more times and spit in the face of the public with the MoveOn vote.

We've now got an angry anti-administration populace who feels that they are not represented by either party and that the system is perhaps irreparably broken. Progressives are becoming radicalized before one's eyes. People no longer talk about fascism as a danger so much as they talk about it as having arrived. People everywhere begin to discuss what actions outside normal political channels need to be taken to put pressure on the government, and mainstream magazines discuss general strikes.

Add to that the smaller but dangerous pro-administration element that, more and more, is calling for killing liberals, and whose "intellectuals" are beginning to publish writing arguing that democracy isn't all that good an idea after all.

The right fears losing power to the masses, the masses fear they've lost power altogether, and neither side can bear the victory of the other.

I'll hold out hope till no hope is possible, but at this point my hope is fading fast that this can be resolved short of chaos and, quite possibly, violence. I just wish I knew how to be an effective wheelchair-user "survivalist".

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. What you described as democracy being bad is another

marker of fascism.

[Selatius]

17. People will strike en masse when they're as poor and destitute as French citizens in 1789

As it stands, they still largely enjoy the fruits and comforts of the bourgeois lifestyle, even if it is evaporating a little bit each year as the gap between the haves and have-nots grows. When the gap becomes a canyon, people will start feeling resentment. They look at their desperate situation and compare it to the extraordinary luxuries and tremendous mansions the wealthy enjoy, at the expense of the worker's labor. If the wealthy are wise, they would be sure to support social programs to spread the wealth around, unless they want resentment to grow.

[emilyg]

4. Kick

[Usrename]

6. I don't think people are interested in a strike.

Most folks are lucky to have a good job, and they certainly are not nearly as dissapointed in their employers as they are with their politicians.

A more subversive move would be an organized witholding of payments to credit card companies. It makes more sense politically, and it would be more effective if it could be accomplished. Three months and the people could have whatever they want. And no one would lose their job.

Just sayin'.

[puebloknot]

8. There are a number of payments that people make against their will...

...periodically, that could cause a world of hurt to the PTB. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," I heard somewhere, although I don't think the author of that phrase had in mind the kind of thing I'm thinking of.

Not paying your credit card payments/other payments is like missing church for too many people.

[druidity33]

11. huh?

Maybe not a job, but don't you think the banks would love to repossess everything? Default rates often go beyond 25%, bankrupcy laws are unduly harsh, CC companies can seize property, can't they?

Sounds riskier than a strike to me. Besides, what if you can convince your employer to go along? It's not like the *resident has been good for anything but megacorporations.

[puebloknot]

15. Nothing will happen until real desperation hits the populace at large! nt

[Oak2004]

19. It's not desperation that causes revolts, it's anger and, paradoxically, hope

Desperate populations don't have the energy to revolt-- too much of their energy is going into survival -- and won't revolt unless they somehow get a spark of hope. Angry populations who believe its possible to make things better do revolt, even if they are anything but desperate.

This isn't "my personal opinion" -- there's been a lot of research on this. Things getting worse in America, by itself, will reduce the chances of revolt. Part of why 2007 America-has-an-unpopular-war looks so different from 1970 America-has-an-unpopular-war is that Americans are so much more near desperation.

Don't watch desperation, except as a countervailing force. Watch anger and hope.

I do not think something like a general strike is possible to execute unless it it called by a national organization with tremendous reach. About the only organization we have that could even plausibly do such a thing is the Democratic Party (yeah, I'm laughing, too). What is far more likely to occur is a spontaneous uprising, but only if anger continues to rise and people still believe democracy is possible.

If what you want is resistance to fascism, what you need to do is fan the flames of anger, and continue to encourage hope and faith in democracy itself. What you do not want to sow is cynicism, and you certainly don't want to do anything to increase desperation. In fact, community activities that decrease desperation (food banks, soup kitchens, affordable housing, support for microbusinesses, community supported agriculture -- anything that provides increased security) is a good thing, both intrinsically and in order to create a climate more favorable to revolt.

[Cleita]

21. Please check your PMs.n/t

[puebloknot]

22. I just did. Call me!

[Usrename]

23. The question is, would the credit companies rather get paid?

Sure, they appear to have all the laws on their side, especially with the recent changes to bankruptcy laws.

But what they really need, and cannot do without, is cashflow. There is no salvation for them in reposessing a lot of stuff.

But just like any kind of strike, the more folks that participate, the more successful it would be.

At the very least, if half the people participated, it would force them to negotiate reasonable interest rates. At the very least.

[bklyncowgirl]

10. I would participate----wouldn't you?

I think that properly promoted this could reach enough people that it would make a difference.

Don't buy anything--and I do mean anything--unless it's an absolute necessity.

Don't go to work if you can possibly do so without losing your job. If you have to work and this general strike works you won't have to do much anyway.

At best, go to the polls and vote and then go to a protest march.

At the very least write a letter to your elected representatives.

If the 50% of the 70% of the population who oppose this war would take part in this general strike even if they don't actually go to a protest march it would it would send a message that would be loud and clear.

If 25% of those people actually showed up at protest marches--and I would suggest silent protest vigils--no signs--no partisan speeches--just American Flags and copies of the Constitution to highlight what we are losing.

At the very least it would scare the hell out of our quivering congress critters and that would be a very good thing.

[eridani]

18. I can't help but think of Dave Barry's Japan travelogue

A memorable quote-- "It would be far easier to get everybody in Tokyo to agree to wear the same outfit than it would be to get the average American bowling team to agree on pizza toppings."

General strike? Fuggedaboudit!

[Oak2004]

24. I was skeptical, above

but I've been browsing the net today, and I'm seeing something actually beginning to stir around this date (much more so than the eighty trizillion other calls made by one or another group).

Whether it will take the classic form of general strikes as held in other countries, or whether it will look like a particularly potent day of protest, I don't know.

I do know I'm ready to help.

[yurbud]

20. kick