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General Strike

The Era Of Mass Strikes Begins On May 1, First Day Of General Strike Campaign

April 26, 2020 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance , , ,
On Friday, May 1, an ongoing General Strike campaign begins. This campaign could become the most powerful movement in the United States and reset the national agenda. It comes when the failures of the US political system have been magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which triggered an economic collapse in a presidential election year.  The General Strike campaign will be ongoing with actions on the first of every month. Strategic strikes of workers, students, consumers, prisoners, and renters will also continue. This new era of mass strikes builds on successful strikes by teachers, healthcare workers, hotel workers, and others.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the last two years, there has been the largest number of major work stoppages in 35 years with more than 400,000 workers involved in strikes in both 2018 and 2019.

General Strike Campaign Growing In The United States; Begins On May Day

April 20, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
Over the last two years, there have been record numbers of worker strikes in the United States not seen since the depression. Since the recession and COVID-19 pandemic started this winter, there have been many wildcat strikes in response to workers having their pay cut and being required to work in hazardous conditions even though they are deemed essential. Now, as the government demonstrates its unwillingness to provide basic protection for the population even as it injects billions of dollars to big industries and banks, support for a general strike is here. We speak with Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson about the plans being made for the first general strike on May Day, what that will look like and how the campaign will be sustained over time.

2020 Election Year Is An Opportunity For Transformational Change If We Embrace Our Power

April 19, 2020 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance , , , ,
Although we do not tie our organizing to the election cycle, the 2020 election is an opportunity for the people to set the agenda for the 2020s. We need to show that whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden are elected, the people will rule from below. We need to build our power to demand the transformation we need. As Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson said in our recent Clearing the FOG interview, the right-wing is using this time to push through their agenda of corporate bailouts, deregulation, and worker exploitation. If the left doesn't organize and counter this, the country will continue on its current destructive path. The changes we want won't come from the top. Both corporate duopoly candidate's priorities are the wealthy investor class and big business. We are going to have to organize and mobilize for the necessities of the people from below.

A Call To Action: Towards A General Strike

April 11, 2020 Cooperation Jackson, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the world before our very eyes. In less than 3 months, it has exposed the grotesque nature of the capitalist system to millions, ground the world economy to a halt, and revealed how truly interconnected our little planet really is. As bad as this crisis is on its own terms, it is made considerably worse by the misleadership from the White House, Congress, and many state and local governments. President Trump not only failed to heed the advice of the state's intelligence services regarding the potential threat of the coronavirus, but he downplayed its severity for months as well, and has refused to mobilize the vast resources at the disposal of the US government to address the crisis.

From Strike Wave To General Strike

April 10, 2020 Richard Moser, Be Freedom. , , ,
The strike wave is here. The strike wave is real.  Can workers take the next steps toward a General Strike? The current crisis is a rare opportunity for us to build a movement both outside of electoral politics and based on an organizing model. That matters because the biggest shortcoming of the left and the social movements is our lack of organizing. Organizing can do what good intentions or radical theory or electoral campaigns cannot: turn solidarity from a dream into a living thing. But without some serious solidarity, all our hopes for a General Strike will fail to materialize. As we build the solidarity infrastructure needed for a General Strike lets not lie to each other. It’s called “class struggle” for a reason. Strikes are painful with workers pitting their sacrifice and suffering up against the bosses’ profits. Strikes are no party. But, general strikes, while rare, are a good match for the unprecedented interlocking crises we face.

Here’s What A General Strike Would Take

April 4, 2020 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. , , ,
You know that things are getting serious when #GeneralStrike starts trending on Twitter. It happened last week when Donald Trump was publicly mulling the idea of sending Americans back to work by Easter, a move that would imperil countless lives. A general strike has long held a strong utopian allure. But what would it take to actually pull one off? We spoke to the experts about the reality behind the dream. Amid a healthcare crisis intertwined with an economic crisis, with millions of people freshly unemployed and new wildcat strikes and work stoppages popping off daily, we are living through the most opportune environment for massive, radical labor actions in many decades. America has had great crises before, though—and it has never had a true, nationwide general strike.

French Protest Day And Night Against Macron’s Banker Economy

January 23, 2020 Staff, Popular Resistance , , ,
The people of France continue to protest against President Macron's neoliberal policies and the cutting of French pensions. France has seen months of protests, starting with the Yellow Vests over a year ago and joined by the unions to become a general strike. Firefighters, teachers, railroad workers, electrical workers, lawyers, dancers -- across multiple professions people are in the streets sometimes speaking in front of guillotines or carrying Macron's head on a stick. They remind Macron what happened to King Louis XVI, call for revolution and say 'we can begin again.' Torchlit protests occurred in major cities across the country tonight with people dancing, singing, chanting and releasing Chinese lanterns in vivid displays against Macron's neoliberal policies for the wealthy.

France At A Crossroads

January 14, 2020 Richard Greeman, Popular Resistance , , ,
The nationwide general strike in France, now entering its record seventh week, seems to be approaching its crisis point. Despite savage police repression, about a million people are in the streets protesting President Macron’s proposed neo-liberal “reform” of France’s retirement system, established at the end of World War II and considered one of the best in the world. At bottom what is at stake is a whole vision of what kind of society people want to live in – one based on cold market calculation or one based on human solidarity ­– and neither side shows any sign of willingness to compromise.

Lesson From Radical Seattle: How General Strike Rhetoric Became A City-Wide Reality

January 5, 2020 Steve Early, Popular Resistance , ,
Winslow’s new book, Radical Seattle: The General Strike of 1919 (Monthly Review Press) hows how “labor’s most spectacular revolt” was many years in the making. It drew on the experience of previous “workplace struggles and political battles, in which working people built an infrastructure for radical politics” and became class conscious “political actors in their own right.”

French Union Workers Vote To Halt Production At Key Oil Facility

December 24, 2019 Sudip Kar-Gupta, Bate Felix, Reuters , , ,
French workers voted on Monday to halt production at a key oil facility that supplies Paris and the surrounding region, joining other petroleum industry shutdowns in a nationwide strike against government pension reforms. Industrial action against President Emmanuel Macron’s reforms has also crippled train services over the past two weeks, escalating into clashes between protesters and police in the capital earlier on Monday. Protesters scuffled with police at the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris early on Monday as the strike went into its 19th day. The strike, which has disrupted Christmas preparations, has also affected other main Paris stations such as the Gare du Nord, which handles Eurostar services to London and Brussels, and the Gare de l’Est.

Colombians Launch National Cacerolazo Against Tax Reform

December 22, 2019 Telesur English. , , ,
Thousands participated in a pot-banging protest in Bogota on Monday afternoon [December 16, 2019] in the Plaza de Bolivar, in order to demand the burying of a tax reform bill in the Congress of the Republic, as it lowers duties on businesses. Colombia's National Strike Committee, comprised of major unions and student organizations, called this Monday for a national 'cacerolazo' (pot-banging protest) in rejection of the tax reform that the government insists on defending, despite the fact that many consider it harmful to millions of citizens. The Colombian Federation of Education Workers (FECODE) pointed out that the aforementioned bill had a detrimental impact on national revenue, mainly because of the reduction of income tax from 32 to 30 percent for legal entities.

General Strike In Finland Saves Their Postal Service

December 17, 2019 By Brian Wakamo, Inequality.org , , ,
Finland now has the youngest prime minister in the world, 34-year-old Sanna Marin. The Social Democrat was catapulted into power when her predecessor, Antti Rinne, was forced to resign after a postal worker dispute escalated into a nationwide general strike. Rinne’s downfall was shockingly rapid. At the end of August, the government proposed changes to the classification of around 700 workers in the postal service, known as Posti. The proposal was to shift 700 Posti employees working in packaging and e-commerce shipping into a separate collective bargaining unit.

Chileans Have Launched A General Strike Against Austerity

October 25, 2019 Felipe Lagos-Rojas and Francisca Gomez-Baeza, Jacobinmag.com , , , , ,
In Chile’s main cities, armed forces and tanks are filling the streets. But civilians are holding their ground, refusing to abandon public space. Official reports indicate eleven fatalities so far, though there are indications that the number is higher. The president has taken to national television to announce that the country is “at war with a powerful enemy who is willing to use violence without any limits.” There are blackouts all across the country. This is October 2019, but it could just as easily be 1973, when socialist president Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup, replaced with dictator Augusto Pinochet.

“We Can’t Remain Indifferent”: Chile Trade Unions Call For General Strike In Support Of Student-Led Uprising

October 22, 2019 By Eoin Higgins, Commondreams.org , , ,
As protests against the Chilean government continued Monday, trade unions across the South American country called for a general strike to support demonstrators drawing attention to the nation's high cost of living, inequality, and injustice. "We can't remain indifferent to the social movement out there," Escondida Union No. 1 president Patricio Tapia, whose organization voted to stop work at the Escondida copper mine for 10 hours Monday night or Tuesday morning, told Bloomberg Monday.

French Unions Call General Strike For Better Pay, Retirement, Education

March 20, 2019 Staff, En.rfi.fr , , ,
The CGT, Force Ouvrière, Solidaires and student unions Unef and UNL hope their demonstration will put further pressure on President Emmanuel Macron, who is expected to put forward propositions in response to the Yellow Vest crisis in the coming weeks. The French communist party also declared it would take part in today's action. National Education, transport and garbage collection are expected to be affected by the strike. Four out of ten primary school teachers are expected to be absent to protest against recent education policies.
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