General Strike

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General Strike

Postby barracuda » Mon Jan 30, 2017 1:40 pm

I'm beginning to see calls for a General Strike on February 17th, the Friday before President's Day. Anyone else?
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Re: General Strike

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 30, 2017 1:54 pm

I'll go out and get a job today just so I can strike on the 17th :P
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: General Strike

Postby liminalOyster » Mon Jan 30, 2017 2:44 pm

Forget protest. Trump's actions warrant a general national strike
Political movements rarely succeed without causing discomfort and inconvenience
Francine Prose

On the morning after Donald Trump’s so-called Muslim ban went into effect – preventing all Syrians from entering the US, halting refugee admissions for 120 days and banning the citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days – I received an affecting email featuring the photographs and names of Jewish men, women and children who died in Nazi concentration camps because “the US turned me away at the border in 1939”.

Now, America is repeating its mistakes of the past. But our fellow citizens did not stand by idly as this happened. On Saturday, a large crowd of protesters had gathered outside Terminal Four at John F Kennedy international airport, and similar demonstrations were in progress at airports across the country.

These protests succeeded in several significant ways. Two Iraqi men, Hameed Khalid Darweesh (a former interpreter for the US military) and Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi were released, through the valiant efforts of ACLU lawyers. Ann Donnelly, a federal judge in Brooklyn, as well as federal judges in Massachusetts, Virginia and Washington, ruled that those still being held in detention could not be sent back to their home countries.

But what was also extremely important was that the demonstrators at the airports – and the thousands more cheering them on from home – had been given concrete, inspiring evidence that their protests had made a difference. Their active refusal to let innocent people be sent home, perhaps to die, had mattered.

Since Trump’s election, we’ve seen dozens of demonstrations – most notably, the Women’s March on Washington – that have reinforced our sense of solidarity and provided encouraging evidence of how many Americans oppose our government’s fundamentally anti-American agenda.

But the trouble is that these protests are too easily ignored and forgotten by those who wish to ignore and forget them. The barriers go up, the march takes place, the barriers come down. Everyone goes home happier.

One reason that Saturday’s protests were so effective was that, while peaceful, they were disruptive. Terminal Four was closed, incoming flights were delayed. One traveller wrote, on Twitter, that his fellow passengers applauded when their pilot announced the reason why their plane would be landing an hour behind schedule.

Taxi drivers went on strike in solidarity with the detainees, and arriving passengers were forced to find alternate ways on getting home. Many used Uber, a company whose CEO, Travis Kalanick, serves on Trump’s economic advisory board, and which thoughtfully suspended “surge pricing” to make it easier and cheaper to subvert the taxi strike.

The struggles for civil rights and Indian independence, against apartheid and the Vietnam war – it’s hard to think of a nonviolent movement that has succeeded without causing its opponents a certain amount of trouble, discomfort and inconvenience.

And economic boycotts – another sort of trouble and inconvenience – have proved remarkably successful in persuading companies to cease supporting repressive governments. Of course, nonviolence has often been met with violence, but one can only hope that our hearts have not so hardened that we, as a nation, would not be troubled and shamed by the spectacle of peaceful people being arrested and bloodied, as they were in Selma and Birmingham.

So what can we do to protest our current government’s callousness about our environment and our health, its rampant greed, its disrespect for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

I believe that what we need is a nonviolent national general strike of the kind that has been more common in Europe than here. Let’s designate a day on which no one (that is, anyone who can do so without being fired) goes to work, a day when no one shops or spends money, a day on which we truly make our economic and political power felt, a day when we make it clear: how many of us there are, how strong and committed we are, how much we can accomplish.

Meanwhile, I’m deleting my Uber account and adding Lyft (which donated generously to the ACLU) in its stead. Leaving Uber is not uncomplicated, and it’s taken me the better part of a day to persuade them to let me go. But in the process, the site asks subscribers why they are leaving, and it’s a pleasure – a small pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless – to let them know.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... disruption
"It's not rocket surgery." - Elvis
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Re: General Strike

Postby barracuda » Tue Jan 31, 2017 2:20 pm

https://www.facebook.com/events/1756631744665376/

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Re: General Strike

Postby barracuda » Tue Jan 31, 2017 2:21 pm

Reddit thread, appears to be ex-bernie supporters:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Political_Revo ... ters_will/
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Re: General Strike

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Tue Jan 31, 2017 2:22 pm

One day? Powerful!

Sounds like Celebrate Yourself on Facebook Day to me.
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Re: General Strike

Postby stefano » Tue Jan 31, 2017 2:26 pm

Wombaticus Rex » Tue Jan 31, 2017 8:22 pm wrote:One day? Powerful!

Sounds like Celebrate Yourself on Facebook Day to me.


Still a very good idea, you guys should do it. When last was there a big strike in the US?
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Re: General Strike

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Tue Jan 31, 2017 2:37 pm

I couldn't get anyone in DC or NYC to answer my calls as recently as November 8th-11th.
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Re: General Strike

Postby barracuda » Tue Jan 31, 2017 2:38 pm

Wombaticus Rex » Tue Jan 31, 2017 11:22 am wrote:One day? Powerful!

Sounds like Celebrate Yourself on Facebook Day to me.


Lolcucks, yes. Corporate and social media has the ability to apathize any event, person, thing or idea to kitsch oblivion.

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Postby Perelandra » Tue Jan 31, 2017 2:50 pm

So what can we do to protest our current historic government’s callousness about our environment and our health, its rampant greed, its disrespect for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Fixed that.

Wombaticus Rex » Tue Jan 31, 2017 10:22 am wrote:One day? Powerful!

Sounds like Celebrate Yourself on Facebook Day to me.
Me, too.

a day on which we truly make our economic and political power felt, a day when we make it clear: how many of us there are, how strong and committed we are, how much we can accomplish.
Yes, we can't.
“The past is never dead. It's not even past.” - William Faulkner
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Re: General Strike

Postby Luther Blissett » Tue Jan 31, 2017 2:55 pm

The last big one was probably during Occupy Oakland, the losses were huge.
The Rich and the Corporate remain in their hundred-year fever visions of Bolsheviks taking their stuff - JackRiddler
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Re: General Strike

Postby brekin » Tue Jan 31, 2017 3:18 pm

I'm just not seeing this helping.
A general strike would only antagonize those law and order folks who want to get on with making America Great and irritate/exasperate the middle of the roaders. Protestors not being able to handle the interference/non interest of counter protestors and regular joe blows not keen on sitting in traffic all day or just watching American flag burnings will get pulled into/jump into mobs that think being a working class hero is stealing someones bullhorn/Trump hat or wrestling a burnt American flag out of another immortalized FedEx worker's hands.

I get the frustration but "shutting the mother down" actually feeds into Trumps hands.
I live in a blue sapphire city of liberalism and people are becoming more and more fed up/tired/shocked at the constant protests and the behavior of the increasingly intolerant and reactive protestors. I can only imagine in more conservative, already seething at "the disruptive liberals", areas the Nixon era counter measures being implemented.
And just what is increasing "the inconvenience" of daily living supposed to achieve?
Convince those that are already being inconvenienced by Trump (and trust me his immigration orders have personally complicated my life already) that we are still more privileged those in limbo in airports?
We are supposed to appreciate this lesson of our new captors showing us what it is like to be under the power of a tyrant? We don't need to learn the lesson twice, thank you very much!

There's got to be some third way between either burning trash cans or just reading Hegel. I don't know a class action lawsuit maybe? The People vs. President Donald Trump? Everyone hops at the same designated moment to create a slight earthquake symbolized growing displeasure? Wear their clothing backwards?
If I knew all mysteries and all knowledge, and have not charity, I am nothing. St. Paul
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind. Eric Hoffer
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Re: General Strike

Postby Elvis » Tue Jan 31, 2017 3:25 pm

The 17th works for me, I have Fridays off.

I'm for it if millions of people turn out in the streets. Millions of upset people in the street is just a stone's throw from Ceaușescu-style ransacking. Overton window?
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Re: General Strike

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Jan 31, 2017 3:33 pm

I don't know a class action lawsuit maybe? The People vs. President Donald Trump


that will be the way if congress doesn't get him first

people that have businesses that compete with Trump's have standing
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: General Strike

Postby MacCruiskeen » Tue Jan 31, 2017 3:38 pm

Strikers make demands. What would this strike be demanding, exactly?

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