Hundreds of Events Planned for Friday's 'General Strike'

[TomCADem]

Source: MSN/NBC News

Tens of thousands of people across the United States are expected to skip work and attend rallies and marches Friday as part of a "general strike" to "get our democracy back."

Strike4Democracy, one of the groups organizing the nationwide event, which is called the "#F17 General Strike," said more than 100 public protests are expected. Event pages on Facebook indicate the potential for high participation: Nearly 20,000 people have responded to the page for a New York City march alone.

It will be the second straight day of national protests, following Thursday's "Day Without Immigrants" campaign, which was aimed at making a point about the economic impact immigrants have on the U.S. labor force.

Foreign-born residents of the United States were asked to stay home from work or school — and to refrain from shopping — in rallies and marches in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Denver and many other cities.

Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/hundreds-of-events-planned-for-fridays-general-strike/ar-AAn1RTA

[Marthe48]

1. I won't leave my house today

My heart is with all of those who are risking their jobs, their families, who are marching. We must be right--we have warm sunny days, a stark contrast to Jan. 20, when the sky wept.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Every manager, every accountant, every behavioral consultant knows

that when an organization is structured against the workers, you get
blowback. It might be long lunches, pencils going home, poor productivity,
sick days, whatever. The workers develop a different incentive system than
the owners of the business intended or want. In extreme forms, slave labor
during war time will sabotage the quality of the products they make. A
warehouse without proper inventory control will see product disappear.

I'm thinking this is no different. Citizens are not happy. Oh, the Tea Partiers
are jubilant, but remember, they make on average $72K a year, many in retirement,
so they don't do any of the work anyway. I expect poor productivity in the
years ahead.

[kimbutgar]

3. They won't be happy when they lose their pensions because the rethugs did away with fiduciary

Responsibility and an unscupulous investment person could rip them off. And those poor companies who are burdened by paying pensions to retirees and chump will sign those bills taking that burden off them. And those ways of fixing socialsecurity means cutting monthly payments. Those rethug chump supporters are going to take a hit. They will get what they voted for and they can't blame Prsident Obama or the Democratic party.

[bigtree]

4. k&r

[brooklynite]

5. This was a mistake...

The post-inauguration marches were successful in large part because they didn't promise millions of people in advance; they promised A march, and things grew and spread organically. A few weeks ago a local demonstration of a target demographic (NYC Yemenis) turned out thousands, again not over-promising the outcome.

I was outside this afternoon and saw no signs of a "general strike"; streets were full, restaurants and stores were buzzing, and nobody skipped work.

You should NEVER overpromise or promote a protest event if you can't deliver the outcome, because THAT then becomes the story. Right now there are a LOT of protests being organized, and if they don't have impact, they're going to set back the anti-Trump movement.

[tenorly]

6. Or as Gandhi preferred to call them, "a day of fasting and prayer."

"Of course," he added, "no work could be done. No factories, no railways, no administration; the country would stop."