Feminist Global Resistance will be posting a series of articles on techniques and safety tips for activists.

Our next article deals with larger action – a timely and important action to confront the power and corruption that hurts all of the people. 

It is a call to action – a movement that reaches throughout a nation, or multiple nations, joining all cultures and all peoples who are finding their lives, their family’s lives and their very existence threatened by those who have bought and manipulated their way into power and view the people as a commodity.

“General Strike Guide: How to Organize and How to Strike,” was written in conjunction with some of our friends.  

To all activists: Now is the time to come to the aid of all workers.  Time to stop “Business as usual.”

In the immortal words of Mario Savio, Sproul Hall Sit-in Address given on December 2, 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley:

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

 

 

General Strike Guide: How to Organize and How to Strike

 

General strikes take hours of organizing, and they rely on a foundation of learned “resistance muscles” of the working class. General strikes do not suddenly appear just because someone calls for one. We can and will build from the ground up, and everyone has a part to play. Here are some ways you can organize towards a general strike:

1. Identify Our Capacities Identify how much time you can give to organizing towards a strike action, and make a commitment. Have face-to-face conversations with co-workers, friends, and neighbors. Share why you care about a general strike, what it is, and listen to their concerns. Get them excited about joining in. Such difficult conversations are the backbone of strong movements.
2. Identify Our Networks Identify where you can be the most effective organizer: Where do you work, live, or play? What networks are you already a part of, and who is persuadable? Can you find two colleagues to strike with you? Ten? Identify a few people you can turn out for a strike, and focus your energy on them. If your workplace cannot be moved, organize your neighbors, your family, or your friends.
3. Expand Our Networks Building a movement requires us to reach outside our familiar networks, and to find connections across workplaces, ideologies, and class lines. If you’re a graduate student, can you organize student workers? Clerical staff? If you are a warehouse worker, can you organize the truck drivers who make deliveries? You can start discussions about a general strike in all kinds of institutions- workplaces, schools, churches, neighborhoods, in homes, on buses, etc. Build excitement with others around the fact that working people have a social power like no other!
4. Have a Strategic Conversation Map out the communities and organizations in your city. Disagreements may be unavoidable, but you can move organizations to embrace diverse tactics for a broad coalition. What do workers and oppressed groups need? What existing campaigns can a general strike support? Remember: the law is pitted against workers, women, immigrants, and people of color. Few workers are unionized and can easily be replaced; few workers can carry out a strike without breaking the law. A general strike is a big ask under these conditions. If it is by workers and for workers, how will we mitigate the risk and harm we are asking all workers to bear?
5. Work with the Unions Relationships of solidarity between movements and labor unions are essential for organizing a general strike. Unions under attack have the strongest incentives to get involved: teachers, transit workers, postal workers, scientists. These specific attacks can help to establish links between movements and organized labor.
6. Identify the Targets When we come together, we can halt traffic, stop businesses, and build power. Where will we go when we walk out of our workplaces? What will we shut down? Where do we have the most leverage to halt economic activity? What industries have driven gentrification in our cities? What corporations have ravaged our rural areas? What companies have exploited our suburbs?
7. Target Transportation Corridors The economy has physical conduits: airports, highways, ports, and distribution centers are choke points for industrial and commercial exchange. The interruption of daily flows of economic activity is a strike action. What would happen if the ports were blocked, the highways shut down, and distribution warehouses occupied? Getting rail workers, port workers, truckers, aircraft workers, cab drivers, and mariners on board is critical.
8. Build an Intersectional Solidarity A strong general strike needs to stand against racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, islamophobia, and other forms of oppression. The majority of the working class today is comprised of women and people of color, and they endure the brunt of the state’s repression and discrimination, and endure subordinations from more privileged members of the class. A general strike must be as diverse as the working class is. People of color are often the first to suffer reprisal; an attack on one is an attack on all. The general strike must be planned by and with workers of color across a range of industries.
9. A General Strike Will be the First of many once a date is chosen. General strikes are not spontaneous. They build on existing worker militancy and resistance. Even ‘failed’ strikes mobilize us, politicize us, and embolden more forceful resistance in the next attempt. We have a movement to build, and this is just the beginning

 

THE TIME TO STRIKE IS NOW. POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

The slide into authoritarianism is downhill, and it is easier to stop a slide than to reverse one. If we take action to resist now, the downward slide can be halted. People have already begun to do so, but where do we go from here?

Many are now calling for a GENERAL STRIKE. But what exactly does this mean?

A general strike is not just another protest. It is a strike. Unlike most strikes, however, it is not confined to one company, but rather cascades outward. In the past, such actions have targeted whole communities or cities, a complete industry, a sector of gendered labor, or even an entire country.

General strikes have included workers in public and private sectors, women, students, prisoners, and even the military. In all cases, the aim of a general strike is not merely to protest, but to demonstrate the productive power of the people by halting all industrial and commercial activity for some period of time, and by interrupting normal patterns and subordinations of daily life, bringing the economy and society to a standstill until demands are met.

The effects of a general strike can be powerful: States and corporations exercise an enormous power over our lives. However, they ultimately only do so because we permit this. Most of the time, we are not unified enough to coordinate action against these more dominant actors. In the general strike, however, by freezing the social and economic gears of society, working people withdraw their consent to be governed. This demonstrates that the power over us is something we can take back. But only if we do it collectively. The only thing that can prevent a slide away from democracy and toward tyranny is our collective action. Through a general strike, we don’t just remind the government of this basic fact; we remind ourselves.

 

 

As always, Love and Solidarity!