General Strike

[Belligerent Savant]

I'm imagining they'll blow the fucking things up or at a minimum make them inoperable. Maybe I shouldn't be anticipating that with so much relish, but I have a personal loathing for Uber. Conceivably the rise of the robots in the absence of any sort of equitable redistribution of the increased productivity will finally ignite people to rebel. The country would come to a grinding halt if the trucks stopped for even a short time.

We need some 21st Century Monkey Wrench Gangs.

http://www.abbeyweb.net/books/ea/monkey_wrench.html

Anything 'connected' can and will be hacked. If the union/teamsters want to make a true 21st century statement, hiring a small outfit of hackers -- even one may suffice -- would be far more efficient/impactful than a team of meatnecks swinging tire irons at machinery or planting spike strips, etc.

A zombie army of rogue trucks remotely controlled by hackers under the direction of disgruntled teamsters. The twitterverse/social mediasphere will collapse upon itself in its zeal to amplify/re-tweet/like/share.

One who can control the machines (however briefly) and leverage them for political gain and/or revolt shall be crowned the new Gods of the post-real.

(which will, in turn, lead to a new renaissance in deadbox/analog equipment -- closed systems with no connection to the skynet web, the last resort for those who wish to remain off-grid. This is by no means revelatory; some have already begun to stockpile.)

[Cordelia]

Riding down a major highway today, I imagined the tractor trailer trucks w/o drivers. Kinda futuristic scary, but economically inevitable; plus there's a projected shortage of drivers.

Currently, it costs around $4,500 to ship a full truckload from L.A. to New York. Labor makes up 75 percent of that cost, according to TechCrunch, meaning a lot of that money would be saved if we moved to driverless trucks. In addition to saving labor costs, autonomous trucks would also significantly boost efficiency. Drivers are required by law to take an 8-hour break after driving 11 hours, but an autonomous truck could drive nearly 24 hours straight. In addition, the computer can maintain the optimal speed for best fuel efficiency, whereas a driver who is paid per mile will likely drive faster and thus use more fuel. Future autonomous convoy technologies will allow trucks to draft behind the one in front to reduce wind resistance.

Much of these savings should be passed on to the consumer, lowering the prices of shipped goods. But they’ll come at a price. With more than 1.6 million Americans working as truck drivers, truckers hold the most common job in 29 states. If those jobs are replaced by self-driving trucks, it would mean 1 percent of the U.S. workforce would be unemployed. But the ripple effects could be even more devastating to the American highway as we know it. Truck stops, motels, gas stations, diners, and many other businesses will struggle to stay open without a steady flow of truckers coming through.

But even if the cost savings weren’t huge, the adoption of driverless trucks might have still been inevitable. TechCrunch says the average age of a commercial driver is 55, and rising every year. Most young people don’t want to go into trucking, which has led analysts to project massive driver shortages in the coming years.

Continued....
http://www.motortrend.com/news/report-d ... s-of-jobs/

Truck Driver Shortage: Is it Self-Inflicted?



https://www.trucks.com/2016/06/14/truck ... inflicted/

[liminalOyster]

Apparently the General Strike is being subtitled, A Day without a Woman.

[American Dream]

I'm ambivalent for various reasons but there is also this:

JOIN US FOR A GENERAL STRIKE!!!

WEBSITE: http://f17strike.com/
FACEBOOK GROUP: https://facebook.com/groups/1816330771961327

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On February 17th We SHUT IT DOWN!

We will have day of general strike and non-violent civil disobedience and demonstration.

Our Demands:

1. No Ban, No Wall. The Muslim ban is immoral, the wall is expensive and ineffectual. We will build bridges, not walls.

2. Healthcare For All. Healthcare is a human right. Do not repeal the ACA. Improve it or enact Medicare for All.

3. No Pipelines. Rescind approval for DAPL and Keystone XL and adopt meaningful policies to protect our environment. It's the only one we've got.

4. End the Global Gag Rule. We cannot put the medical care of millions of women around the globe at risk.

5. Disclose and Divest. Show us your taxes. Sell your company. Ethics rules exist for a reason and presidents should focus on the country, not their company.

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In his first week in office President Trump has trampled on human rights at home and around the world. He has banned legal immigrants and refugees from entering the country, defunded critical health initiatives for women in developing nations, dismantled the EPA and environmental protections, approved the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines, and directed the government to begin to dismantle the Affordable Care Act without any plan for covering the millions who would be left uninsured.

Trump has put our foreign policy and our very democracy in peril. He has purged the Joint Chiefs of Staff director of national intelligence and put them on invitation only status for future meetings. Meanwhile Trump added his political strategiest and extreme right media executive, Steve Bannon, on the National Security Council. These are troubling decisions and signal a move away from democratic governance.

His actions are being felt around the globe as legal immigrants are detained and deported. The Muslim ban is immoral, illegal, and un-American. He is not making America safer, he is hurting our economy and damaging our reputation with his racist policies and rhetoric.

Trump is not draining the swamp in Washington. He and his billionaire friends ARE the swamp. He refuses to divest from his company, creating a massive conflict of interest the likes the presidency has never seen. His cabinet is worth more than $9 billion and comes from ExxonMobile, Goldman Sachs, and predatory mortgage investment firms. These are the wrong people to lead our country.

On February 17th we will show Donald Trump and his cronies in Washington that our voices will be heard. No work will be done. No money will be spent. We will not support his corrupt government. We will STRIKE!!

Right now we are putting together a coalition of people and groups that are interested in organizing the strike. If your group would like to help let us know! To be successful we need buy in from a large number of political organizations and labor groups across the country.

#GeneralStrike #StandUpFightBack #BlackLivesMatter #NoBanNoWall #NoDAPL #NoKeystoneXL #StopTrump #RefugeesWelcome #Resist #WomensMarch

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... disruption

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/a ... ocial.html

[Cordelia]

A different era, a very different country,

Some have pointed to Iceland's Women's Strike in the 1970s as an example of how the strike could yield positive results for anti-Trump women.

On this day, 90 per cent of Iceland's women refused to cook, clean, look after children or go to work.

Iceland's men were unable to cope; sausages, the fast food of the time, sold out in shops and many husbands had to bribe older children to look after their brothers and sisters.

Additionally, schools, shops, nurseries, fish factories and other institutions had to run at reduced capacity or shut down.

Many feel the day of action lead to the election of Vigdis Finnbogadottir five years later, the world's first democratically elected female president.

She said: "After October 24, women thought it was time a woman became president.

"The finger was pointed at me and I accepted the challenge."

http://www.todayevery.com/share/S1xtcQMvOg?hint=/

Forty years ago, the women of Iceland went on strike - they refused to work, cook and look after children for a day. It was a moment that changed the way women were seen in the country and helped put Iceland at the forefront of the fight for equality.

When Ronald Reagan became the US President, one small boy in Iceland was outraged. "He can't be a president - he's a man!" he exclaimed to his mother when he saw the news on the television.

It was November 1980, and Vigdis Finnbogadottir, a divorced single mother, had won Iceland's presidency that summer. The boy didn't know it, but Vigdis (all Icelanders go by their first name) was Europe's first female president, and the first woman in the world to be democratically elected as a head of state.

Many more Icelandic children may well have grown up assuming that being president was a woman's job, as Vigdis went on to hold the position for 16 years - years that set Iceland on course to become known as "the world's most feminist country".

But Vigdis insists she would never have been president had it not been for the events of one sunny day - 24 October 1975 - when 90% of women in the country decided to demonstrate their importance by going on strike.

Continued....
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34602822

[bks]

A massive, disruptive general strike would be just the thing. This one will not be anything like that, unfortunately, and the article below makes a very good case for why.

A general strike has to be led by the working class, not the neoliberals who dominate political protest discourse in the US. Call it for Mayday, get out of the way of the working class leadership and get behind their demands.

SNIP

Even when not violent or repressed, strikes are serious business. They are often lost, and if strikers aren’t injured they can lose their jobs, friends, and even families. The law is pitted heavily against workers – they can be replaced, they lose free speech rights when at work, even the whiff of strike activity allows employers to shut down the entire factory, and legal protections of workers are poorly enforced. The police and the rest of the security apparatus are usually happy to enforce that law, and there is often no way for workers to carry out a proper strike without breaking those laws. To the degree we have forgotten this, it is because worker militancy has declined, strike rates are way down, and union memberships have dwindled into the low single-digits.

In the past, workers stayed out on those strikes, even fighting the state, in part because of dense, historically developed, cultures of solidarity; established traditions of militancy; organized, if not always recognized, unions; and long connections with left-wing organizers. These days, the appetite for fighting the state is next to nil, there is no tested public sympathy for labor actions, and there are no clear organizations standing ready to lead.

If you’re going to ask people not just to risk losing their jobs but potentially face the armed apparatus of the state, there had better be preparation, leadership, and some evident readiness for mass labor actions.

https://thecurrentmoment.wordpress.com/ ... se-strike/

[liminalOyster]

A different era, a very different country,

Many feel the day of action lead to the election of Vigdis Finnbogadottir five years later, the world's first democratically elected female president

The Iceland march is inspiring and reminds me of Bush-era nods to Lysistrata.

But I'm cautious about the wisdom of framing a General Strike with the given tagline for all it seems to reify the narrative of the General Election. It feels like it's continuing to feed the ghost of Hillary Clinton rather than signaling the need to fully reinvent the Left.

[Luther Blissett]

I believe that the women's strike is going to be planned for International Women's Day, Wednesday, March 8.

[liminalOyster]

Thanks, Luther. My mistake. Let a thousand general strike flowers bloom.

[Cordelia]

Back to the question; what tangible results would strikers strive to achieve?

Women I know who could participate in a work strike are insulated enough that they wouldn't suffer from a day off; the women I know who wouldn't participate can't afford even one day not on the job, but they are most impacted by any administration's policies/economic cuts.

[Elvis]

Forty years ago, the women of Iceland went on strike - they refused to work, cook and look after children for a day. It was a moment that changed the way women were seen in the country and helped put Iceland at the forefront of the fight for equality.

Around the same time in the Seattle area, my mother had been involved with "women's lib" and very active in League of Women Voters etc. I think she picked up similar rumblings. One day she announced that she was going "on strike" and sequestered herself in the bedroom with a good book. My dad came home from work and was like, "where's Mom? where's dinner?" He went to talk to her but there was no way she was coming out and making dinner that night. "Okay we're gonna have to figure this out." I think we made something with hotdogs in it. And we never again took my mother's role for granted.

[American Dream]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apO3B_o6dz8

http://www.weareplanc.org/blog/what-the ... roduction/

[Cordelia]

Around the same time in the Seattle area, my mother had been involved with "women's lib" and very active in League of Women Voters etc. I think she picked up similar rumblings. One day she announced that she was going "on strike" and sequestered herself in the bedroom with a good book. My dad came home from work and was like, "where's Mom? where's dinner?" He went to talk to her but there was no way she was coming out and making dinner that night. "Okay we're gonna have to figure this out." I think we made something with hotdogs in it. And we never again took my mother's role for granted.

:

Also from 1970's





(fwiw, fewer young people are learning how to cook.)

"People ages 15 to 24 have spent an average of between just 11 and 17 minutes daily on food preparation and clean-up activities in the past decade, according to the American Time Use Survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Instead of cooking, young consumers have come to rely on restaurant and carry-out meals, rarely honing the skills they’d need to prepare their own food, Weikel said.

Why young Americans feel ill-equipped to cook

Part of the reason for millennials’ lack of cooking knowledge may be that as more women have entered or remained in the workforce, fewer millennials have had stay-at-home parents teaching them to cook, Weikel said.

Plus, student enrollment in Family and Consumer Sciences classes, often called “home economics,” has declined almost 40% in the last decade, a trend First Lady Michelle Obama has lamented, since young consumers could make healthy meals for themselves if they had that skill, and restaurant meals tend to be higher in fat and calories. "

More.......
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-mi ... 2016-08-10

[American Dream]

General Strikes, Mass Strikes

This piece by Kim Moody was first published in the September/October 2012 issue of Against the Current.


Strikers surround a mail truck, Oakland General Strike, 1946.

Inspired by the boldness of the movement, activists of Occupy Oakland issued a “call for a general strike” in that city for November 2 — a sign of the movement’s radicalism and its sense of where social power lies.

One criticism of the Occupy activists was that they had not consulted the unions. Had they done so, however, it is very unlikely that very many union leaders would have agreed to jointly “call” such an action. But what’s more important, as I will argue, is that general strikes or mass strikes are seldom simply “called” from above, if at all, or until they are well underway — and those that are “called” tend to be called off just as easily.

Continue Reading

[American Dream]

How Was the March 8 International Women’s Strike Woven Together?

Ni Una Menos Collective February 16, 2017

The Women’s March in the United States on January 21 is part of a cycle that demonstrates a new form of feminism: the overlapping movements of women, trans people, and migrants refuse to remain subjected to the empire of new forms of capitalist exploitation.

https://viewpointmag.com/2017/02/16/how ... -together/