How can we arrange a nationwide across-the-board strike

[relayerbob]

Seriously. I have no idea on where to start or who to talk to.

This is what brought Solidarnosc into power in Poland. Strikes work.

I'd suggest a time frame like the dates of the GOP convention, but clearly way too soon.

We need to hurt the money backers of the GOP to feel some real pain. We partially shut down the economy for Coronavirus. Let's do it for real.

Who can help?

[progressive nobody]

1. Get the unions to start walk outs.

[relayerbob]

6. Agreed

I don't know any union leaders.

Do any read DU?

[TreasonousBastard]

2. We can't.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Great-Railroad-Strike-of-1877

<...>
The strikes dissipated, first and foremost, because the federal army did not break. Unlike the militias, those professional soldiers stayed together and followed orders. The strikes also collapsed because, despite the fears of the industrialists and the government, they were not organized uprisings but rather spontaneous outbursts. Once the anger of the strikers and crowds had run its course, so too did the revolt. There had been no leaders with greater political vision to take command of the strikers.

More than 100,000 workers participated in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, at the height of which more than half the freight on the country’s tracks had come to a halt. By the time the strikes were over, about 1,000 people had gone to jail and some 100 had been killed. In the end the strike accomplished very little. Some national politicians talked of labour reforms, but nothing came of it. Industrialists continued to cut wages and break unions. In a few years the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was all but forgotten.

[relayerbob]

5. Not 1877 any more

It has brought down many governments in the century since

[TreasonousBastard]

8. But not ours. Unions have far less power than they had in the past and we can't even get...

people to wear masks-- we're going to get them to strike?

A strike of any kind is expensive, and if we can get little support for organizing at Amazon or Walmart, how we gonna get support for a national strike?

Cheaper and easier to buy a few Congressmen. That's what the other side does.

[relayerbob]

9. That's pretty defeatist

Thanks, maybe someone else will have some better suggestions

[TreasonousBastard]

11. It's not defeatist-- it's realistic. We can get things done, we just have to find out how...

We'll have a lot more success getting out the vote and firing these bastards.

Then we may not have to strike.

[soothsayer]

3. Maybe we should work to GOTV

[relayerbob]

4. Already am

Won't help if we can't vote

[soothsayer]

7. So maybe make good trouble to get businesses to decry the postal shenanigans?

I don’t know how exactly, but drumpf would react to negative feedback from businesses or to stories about businesses failing because of the USPS debacle.

Assuming it’s the USPS that’s keeping us from voting.

[relayerbob]

10. Yes, that's the point of a general strike

But how do we get this out there.

[GulfCoast66]

12. We aren't the French. It's not in our political DNA.

Focus on getting out the vote.

[Codeine]

13. It won't start with one internet rando

asking a handful of other Internet randos how to do it; were a general strike that simple we would have already managed them.

Solidarity was successful because it started as a single trade union in an industry that was both geographically concentrated (the shipyards in Gdańsk) and utterly essential to the economy, formed after decades of repression that makes what we’re experiencing seem like kindergarten. That’s a confluence of events that is incredibly rare, and is probably not a model one should assume is applicable to any given situation.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

14. Sorry, this is not a country in which a general strike can happen.

Lots of reasons.

Weak unions for one.

No sense of across the board solidarity for another.

A huge gap between working classes and everyone else for yet another.

It's a nice idea, but won't happen.

[NBachers]

15. I'm a 71 year old Senior who's lucky to still have a job to go to, and an affordable place to live

in the city, and enough food to eat. If I don't work, I lose all this. Please don't volunteer me. I've been homeless; I've been hungry; I've broken the law and done major time in prison trying to support my family, which I lost. I know brutal reality. I ain't goin' back.

Sorry to be a brutal realist. Spare me your counter-arguments or accusations.

[MoonlitKnight]

16. Apparently September 1 is the date

Not sure how many will participate or if it will fizzle out.

If you think it has a chance of happening, refill those prescriptions.

[relayerbob]

18. Thank you

Do you have a link for further info?

[relayerbob]

19. I'm seeing some others for that date

[McCamy Taylor]

17. Also find out who donates to Trump and boycott

their products.