Feminist Global Resistance continues our Activist Action Series with a discussion of “General Strike”.
Our article, “Why a General Strike?”, is a dive into the reasons for organizing a General Strike and the importance of a “Strike” right now.
As usual, this is a combined effort of activist friends and Feminist Global Resistance.
A reminder:
“It has to start somewhere
It has to start sometime
What better place than here?
What better time than now?”
Rage Against The Machine. “Guerilla Radio”
Be inspired and organize!
To all activists, “dancing the streets” requires a knowledge of what one may encounter during any action. Stay vigilant.
Remember, we are in this together; together we help each other.
Why a General Strike?
Most Americans are one missed paycheck from crisis. Medical debt, inflation-adjusted rent, and stagnant real wages have been grinding people down for decades. Protesting only while being afraid to strike doesn’t protect survival it locks in the slow-motion version and passes it to the next generation. A general strike flips the script: it uses the threat to survival as leverage to demand higher wages, universal healthcare, rent relief and debt cancellation. It’s the exact pressure that makes employers and governments fold faster than in any other form of protest.
When millions stop work at once (not 10% of one industry), capital loses the ability to replace you, starve you out, or wait you out. History shows this repeatedly: the 1919 Seattle General Strike, the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike, France’s repeated national strikes, or even the 2022–2023 UK and French strikes. Governments and corporations concede because the alternative total economic paralysis is worse than meeting.
There are safeguards in place, mutual aid networks, strike funds, community fridges, church basements, GoFundMe campaigns, and even state unemployment systems (in places where strikes qualify) have kept families fed during past actions. In a true general strike the scale is larger, but so is the public sympathy and the pressure on politicians to intervene with emergency relief. If you aren’t aware of these safeguards then it’s up to you to educate yourself, educate others, start building networks and to get involved.
General mass strikes are rarely marathons. They’re designed to be intense, coordinated shocks that force negotiations in days or weeks not months of individual poverty. The fear narrative that has overcome the majority of the population assumes an endless personal sacrifice; the tactic is the opposite.
Every major gain in wages, hours, safety, or benefits in the last 150 years came from exactly this kind of “risky” collective action not from waiting until survival felt convenient or protesting once every now and again. The people who benefit from low wages and high profits want you to believe the choice is between feeding your kids today or maybe feeding them better in some distant future. A general strike collapses that timeline.
Workers with families, jobs and responsibilities have gone on strike before. They will again. The difference isn’t that today’s conditions are uniquely impossible they’re uniquely ripe. The fear is real don’t get be wrong there is risk involved, but treating it as an unbreakable law is what guarantees the survival struggle never ends. A general strike is the calculated, organized way to turn that fear into power instead of paralysis.