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Speaker 1: We live in a period of increasing class conflict. During

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Speaker 1: the Trump years, strike action reached the seventeen year high.

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Speaker 1: Strikes surged, increasing almost as workers fought back against rising

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Speaker 1: inflation and the cost of living. Fights over unionization hit

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Speaker 1: sectors previously thought to be un organizable, as workers declared

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Speaker 1: victory across fast food chains, Starbucks, and Amazon. And this

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Speaker 1: increased strike activity is taking place against the rising course

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Speaker 1: of revolt. Tenants are forming unions and launching rent strikes.

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Speaker 1: Riots kick off in the face of police murdering on

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Speaker 1: average over three people per day, and kids walk out

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Speaker 1: of school demanding everything from access to ppe to an

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Speaker 1: end to attacks on queer and trans youth. It's not

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Speaker 1: just that strikes are increasing, but the logic of the

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Speaker 1: strike to strike a blow against one's class enemies, to

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Speaker 1: enact a cost and generalize collective refusal, is spreading. As

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Speaker 1: comes to a close, the largest strike by education workers

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Speaker 1: across the University of California system has seen barricades, occupied buildings,

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Speaker 1: and strikers even liberating dining halls to feed themselves. Members

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Speaker 1: of the United Mine Workers have been on the picket

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Speaker 1: lines for almost two years, and this holiday season, over

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Speaker 1: one thousand rail workers stunned the brink of crippling the

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Speaker 1: US economy and an effort to win sickly as the

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Speaker 1: government rushed to enforce a contract and break the strike.

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Speaker 1: With so many people on the verge of striking, it's

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Speaker 1: easy to wonder what would happen if a strike across

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Speaker 1: industries could be organized, a general strike. It's this very

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Speaker 1: subject that we tackle in today's show. And speaking of strikes,

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Speaker 1: the producers of it could happen here have walked off

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Speaker 1: the job that it's going down. It's taken over, that's right.

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Speaker 1: I g D will be occupying the means of this

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Speaker 1: production for five shows throughout the month of January as

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Speaker 1: we address some of the major issues of today while

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Speaker 1: looking back at recent examples in history about how the

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Speaker 1: exploiting excluded have attempted to meet the conditions which miserate

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Speaker 1: our lives head on. Each episode, of course, is going

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Speaker 1: to have special guests and a deep die from us.

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Speaker 1: Launching the summer of two thousands fifteen, It's Going Down

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Speaker 1: as a media platform, radio show and podcast. It covers

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Speaker 1: a ton of a social movements from an anarchist perspective.

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Speaker 1: As a group we represent folks from across the US.

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Speaker 1: Tom and myself have been involved in covering and participating

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Speaker 1: in social struggles for over twenty years. Sophie's a long

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Speaker 1: time educator and community organizer across multiple continents. Marcella is

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Speaker 1: a writer and comedian. This is Mike Andrews. Happy to

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Speaker 1: be here. I'm Sophie Marcella and I'm Tom. Yeah, this

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Speaker 1: is really cool. Thanks to all that it can happen

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Speaker 1: here people. That's awesome. Yeah, I'm excited to be here

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Speaker 1: and talk about strikes. It's gonna be a fun time. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm excited about today's topic very much. So, just art off.

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Speaker 1: It's interesting. It seems like every few weeks on social media,

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Speaker 1: every couple of months, whenever there's like a big issue

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Speaker 1: that comes up or something's going on in the news cycle,

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Speaker 1: the idea of a general strike will trend or sort

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Speaker 1: of kind of get out in the ether as this

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Speaker 1: zeit guys that becomes really popular, and you know, we

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Speaker 1: live in this time and increasing protests and strikes and riots.

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Speaker 1: But it also seems like the possibility of a general

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Speaker 1: strike seems like very far off, or the idea of

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Speaker 1: it even being this like trending thing on social media

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Speaker 1: is sort of like passe or silly. And also it

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Speaker 1: happens so often and we don't see it materialized, it

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Speaker 1: can be easy to sort of write it off. Or

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, a lot of people will say, well,

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Speaker 1: if you want that to happen instead of just like

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Speaker 1: wishing it to be on social media, you should just

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Speaker 1: join a union and get involved that way. It seems

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Speaker 1: that this drive to constantly declared general strikes, though ambitious,

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Speaker 1: sometimes to the point of, you know, people being able

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Speaker 1: to sort of make fun of it, the reality is

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Speaker 1: is that the repeated sort of call for that has

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Speaker 1: normalized that idea. And what we're seeing a lot in

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Speaker 1: specifically in the US, but we're seeing a lot of

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Speaker 1: people at their workplaces recognized that the business unions have failed, right,

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Speaker 1: It's how we got here. You know, I live in

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Speaker 1: the rest belt. I live in the midst of the

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Speaker 1: failure of business unions every single day in my life.

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Speaker 1: And that they've also come to understand something that the

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Speaker 1: autonomous in Italy were talking about the seventies, which is

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Speaker 1: that workers already control the means of production. They're already there.

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Speaker 1: They already run the coffee shop, run the restaurant, run

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Speaker 1: the warehouse, run the tech company, whatever, and if they

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Speaker 1: just stop, nobody makes any money. And you don't need

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Speaker 1: a union in a formal sense to do that. And

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Speaker 1: so I think a lot of workers that traditionally fell

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Speaker 1: outside of unions are starting to understand their powers workers

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Speaker 1: outside of that structure, and that is incredibly important for

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Speaker 1: us going forward. Yeah, I mean, I think you're totally right.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think quiet quitting came out of nowhere.

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Speaker 1: And I know it's just like an idea. I like

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Speaker 1: loud quating more like I prefer that. But I do

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Speaker 1: think this culture, we're creating a culture where it is

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Speaker 1: okay to be anti work. It is okay for you

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Speaker 1: to say I hate my job and I actually don't

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Speaker 1: do anything and I steal for my boss, and we

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Speaker 1: should normalize that, right, Like, I don't think striking is

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Speaker 1: just this whole thing, and I do want to say

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Speaker 1: this before I move into that. Every single time I

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Speaker 1: posted TikTok video, somebody's always like general strike July. So

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Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, it's definitely on the internet a lot.

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Speaker 1: But I do think even people saying that I'm not

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Speaker 1: doing it has an impact because it's like, what is

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Speaker 1: that Martin Soustri said, you have to fight the culture,

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Speaker 1: and the culture that we live in now is a

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Speaker 1: culture that's like obsessed with work for work sake, and

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Speaker 1: so like maybe part of it is like, yeah, workers

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Speaker 1: already owns the means of production. Yeah, just don't work

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Speaker 1: as hard on your job, you know, and if your

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Speaker 1: work steal from your boss. It doesn't have to be

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Speaker 1: like this organizational thing. Because one thing is that, like

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Speaker 1: you have to realize is that sometimes union work unions

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Speaker 1: work with management. So it's like even if you're like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: like I want to wait for my union, it's like

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Speaker 1: what if your union is like the fertila union that

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Speaker 1: will go behind your back and like make this. Um.

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Speaker 1: I guess all this to say is that I think

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Speaker 1: changing the culture is important. Um, And I think that's

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Speaker 1: happening now. I think yeah, like you said at the

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Speaker 1: end of that, just like how something that I think

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Speaker 1: we'll get into a lot more in this episode is

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Speaker 1: looking at how this life claims to join the union

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Speaker 1: being the practical thing to do towards a general strike

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Speaker 1: just isn't accurate at all, and that when you look

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Speaker 1: back in history at kind of any of the exciting

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Speaker 1: moments of UM general strikes are uprising and stuff. It

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Speaker 1: doesn't come from those official channels UM, and so I'm

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Speaker 1: excited to get into that more. And I think, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I like we're saying like this thing where it's just

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Speaker 1: become this thing that people will like say and talk about,

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Speaker 1: even if there's not that cultural memory of like exactly

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Speaker 1: what a general strike means or what what what's going

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Speaker 1: to happen. There's this idea of like refusal and of

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Speaker 1: solidarity that is captured just in the world and just

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Speaker 1: in saying it. But I think it's really like showing

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Speaker 1: that energy up and speaking of cultural memory. Fact, you're

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Speaker 1: dynamite in your pitchforks because it's time for a trip

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Speaker 1: down memory lane. In the early ninety hundreds of the

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Speaker 1: United States, groups like the Industrial Workers of the World

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Speaker 1: of the IWW, which advocated for the abolition of the

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Speaker 1: wage system and capitalism, rejected racist exclusions of non white

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Speaker 1: workers in the labor movement and even engaged in shootouts

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Speaker 1: with the k KK, popularized the idea of the general

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Speaker 1: strike in the United States on a large scale, with

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Speaker 1: the idea itself and its application in US history it's

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Speaker 1: much older. Throughout the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, anarchists, socialists,

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Speaker 1: and everyday members of the working class all promoted and

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Speaker 1: carried out multiple general strikes as a means to win

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Speaker 1: political and economic concessions. For some, the general strike was

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Speaker 1: also a launchpad for revolution, in which workers could, in theory,

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Speaker 1: seize the means of existence out of the hands of

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Speaker 1: the capitalist class and run society on its own terms.

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Speaker 1: And it's this battle that thrust millions of everyday working

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Speaker 1: class people directly into conflict with the American state and

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Speaker 1: its military. In US history, the first large scale example

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Speaker 1: of a general strike occurred in the midst of the

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Speaker 1: American Civil War and W. E. B. Du Bois famous

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Speaker 1: book Black Reconstruction, he explains how it was the general

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Speaker 1: strike of the enslaved black proletariat that brought down the

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Speaker 1: plantation system, not President Lincoln er union bullets. The boys

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Speaker 1: argues that just like the black lead insurrections of today

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Speaker 1: and ferguson him Minneapolis, this strike took bourgeois white society

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Speaker 1: by total surprise, he writes it. In the South, newspapers

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Speaker 1: denied the very idea that slaves could ever free themselves

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Speaker 1: and even claim that they quote did not want to

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Speaker 1: be free. He writes of white society in the North.

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Speaker 1: The North shrank at the very thought of encouraging servile

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Speaker 1: insurrection against the whites. Above all, it did not propose

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Speaker 1: to interfere with property. Black people on the whole were

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Speaker 1: considered cowards, inferior beings whose very presence in America was unfortunate.

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Speaker 1: Only John Brown knew that revolt would come, and he

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Speaker 1: was dead. So the boys really painted this picture of

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Speaker 1: this mass care and society in which slavery is seen

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Speaker 1: as very sad. More terrifying is the idea of mass

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Speaker 1: black insurrection, which of course and mirrors today's situation. I

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Speaker 1: mean the suburbs are, I mean right like that someburbs are.

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Speaker 1: It's like for you to like pretend like all the

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Speaker 1: things that you have are not built on blood. It's

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Speaker 1: for you to like segment yourself away from the people

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Speaker 1: in society that give you everything you have, yet you

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Speaker 1: deny them everything. See you going you a little home

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Speaker 1: and like drinking a little tea and like watch a

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Speaker 1: little movies and just like ignore the fact that you're

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Speaker 1: an apphle. You know what I mean? Like just like

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Speaker 1: and even not even more more than an apple. I

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Speaker 1: was going as far as saying, I used to say

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Speaker 1: that they're not good or bad people, but like you're

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Speaker 1: acting like a bad person, like you don't care about

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Speaker 1: other people because you've been tricked to think that, like

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Speaker 1: you're getting a good deal. And it's an interesting point

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Speaker 1: that the Boys makes about just like. It was only

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Speaker 1: kind of the radical wing of the abolishness movement that

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Speaker 1: was talking about open revolt. There's this early anarchist A

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Speaker 1: lot of people don't reference a lot but why is

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Speaker 1: under Spooner. He conspired with John Brown various plots, and

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Speaker 1: he later became a member of the First International and

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Speaker 1: a contributor to early anarchist publications like Liberty. He produced

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Speaker 1: this really early text which is just fantastic. It's called

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Speaker 1: A Plan for the Abolish of Slavery, published in eighteen

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Speaker 1: fifty eight. It's a couple of years before the Civil War.

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Speaker 1: He writes, our plan then is to make our war

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Speaker 1: openly or secretly. A circumstances may dictate upon the property

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Speaker 1: of the slaveholders, burn the master's buildings, kill their cattle

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Speaker 1: and horses, conceal or destroy farming utensils, abandoned labor and

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Speaker 1: seed time and harvest and let the crops perish, make

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Speaker 1: slavery unprofitable. I love the line conceal or destroys. Like

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Speaker 1: you can destroy them, you can also hide them. This

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Speaker 1: is like a parallel that we can drawn out to.

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Speaker 1: Like if you want to like have solidarity with like

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Speaker 1: like other wage slaves, is that like do accommodate them

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Speaker 1: and help them steal from their I mean from their jobs.

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Speaker 1: I mean it's like these things happened in the past,

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Speaker 1: but these are tactics that we can still use in

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Speaker 1: the present. There's echoes of this quote later with Lucy Parsons, Right,

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Speaker 1: you see this during the Structure in our work at

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Speaker 1: Chicago where she gives a speech where she's talking about

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Speaker 1: grabbing knives and going to the doors of the rent

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Speaker 1: as a way to make it very very very clear

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Speaker 1: that they weren't going to be able to live off

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Speaker 1: the backs of the working class anymore. Right, Um. And

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Speaker 1: it's the sort of idea of direct action, which now,

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Speaker 1: I mean, if we think about now, what are politicians doing.

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Speaker 1: They're trying to pass laws to make it a felony

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Speaker 1: to have home demonstrations, right, to like do exactly these

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Speaker 1: kinds of things, but in much more passive ways. So

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Speaker 1: if we can really think back, I mean, this is

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Speaker 1: a tried and true technique that people used in the

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Speaker 1: United States for a very very long time, and we

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Speaker 1: can see still how much that terrifies people with power.

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Speaker 1: There's another awesome quote from Spooner I just want to

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Speaker 1: read as well, and this I find this one really

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Speaker 1: interesting because he's speaking actually to white people in the South,

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Speaker 1: especially people that work in the slave patrols. He says,

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Speaker 1: white rascals of the South, willing tools of the slaveholders.

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Speaker 1: You who drive slaves to do their labor, hunt them

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Speaker 1: with dogs, and flog them for pay without asking any questions.

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Speaker 1: You are the main pillars of the slave system. That

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Speaker 1: is the most eloquent way to say exactly, yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: exactly what I was thinking. I think it's interesting to

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Speaker 1: point out, as do boys Rights. And as Frederick Douglas

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Speaker 1: said of the Civil War, it was started quote in

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Speaker 1: the interests of slavery on both sides. The South was

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Speaker 1: fighting to take slavery out of the Union and the

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Speaker 1: North was fighting to keep it in. And the mass

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Speaker 1: black exodus did not kick off at the start of

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Speaker 1: the war. He makes the really important point that union

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Speaker 1: leaders made it clear that they did not want to

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Speaker 1: disrupt the plantation system. At times, generals even offered to

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Speaker 1: put down slave rebellions, and he says that they even forbade,

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Speaker 1: at least in some instances, union soldiers from singing the

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Speaker 1: song John Brown's Body. But as the North pushed into

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Speaker 1: the South, the flood of former slaves escaping into Union

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Speaker 1: hands grew and grew. By eighteen sixty two, is the

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Speaker 1: Boys rights, This was the beginning of the swarming of

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Speaker 1: increasing numbers no longer to work on Confederate plantations, a

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Speaker 1: movement that became a general strike against the slave system.

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Speaker 1: This was not merely the desire to stop work. It

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Speaker 1: was a strike on a wide basis against the conditions

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Speaker 1: of work. It was a general strike that evolved directly

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Speaker 1: in the end, perhaps half a million people. They wanted

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Speaker 1: to stop the economy of the plantation system, and to

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Speaker 1: do that they left the plantations. It's interesting too, and

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Speaker 1: The Boys makes this point the general strike also encouraged

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Speaker 1: and took place alongside many poor whites deserting the Confederate army.

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Speaker 1: One thing that's interesting about the Confederate side of the

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Speaker 1: Civil War, you could get out of fighting if you

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Speaker 1: own slaves, And a lot of poor whites deserted the

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Speaker 1: Confederate army, which further crippled it. As the Boys noted,

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Speaker 1: the poor white not only began to desert and run away,

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Speaker 1: but thousands followed black people into the northern camps. And

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Speaker 1: just some key takeaways to like launching the discussion side

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Speaker 1: of this, It's interesting that the wider society, as the

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Speaker 1: Boys notes, before the Civil War disparaged the possibility of

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Speaker 1: mass collective action. And I think this really mirrors contemporary

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Speaker 1: conspiracy theories and narratives around black rebellion today that happened

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Speaker 1: often either in the midst of the George Floyd Uprising

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Speaker 1: or afterwards. And also the mass strike and refusal that

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Speaker 1: happened during the Civil War, which disrupted the economy and

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Speaker 1: made things like the slave patrols, the policing of the

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Speaker 1: plantation system impossible. That helped bring down the Confederacy, obviously,

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Speaker 1: and I think it's important to ask, as our contemporary

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Speaker 1: society remains structured around racial capitalism, what might be done

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Speaker 1: in the current system in terms of mass refusal and

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Speaker 1: desertion that would cause a similar effect. The idea of

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Speaker 1: the wider society and disparaging mass collective action is because

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Speaker 1: that the fear is letting us know that we do

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Speaker 1: have mass power, you know what I mean. It's like

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Speaker 1: it's not a surprise that people always say that Lincoln

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Speaker 1: freed the slaves, and Lincoln literally said, if I had

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Speaker 1: to end slavery to save the Union, I would have

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Speaker 1: ended slavery. And if I have to keep slavery to

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Speaker 1: save the Union, I would have kept a slavery you

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Speaker 1: know what I mean. So just like this whole idea

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Speaker 1: of like letting black people know you can't do shi it,

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Speaker 1: don't even bother is the they know that we can't

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Speaker 1: do ship, and we are doing ship because black people

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Speaker 1: are always rebelling. Um, if you come to flop push,

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Speaker 1: you see it in full color. They realize the government

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Speaker 1: isn't give a funk about them, and they've created their

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Speaker 1: own institutions to support themselves. Um. Yeah, So it's like

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Speaker 1: this whole idea to let us tell us don't even

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Speaker 1: bother and and and like criminalizing like the informal sector

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Speaker 1: because it's like that's a way for us like gain

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Speaker 1: power outside of like the formal sector, you know what

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Speaker 1: I mean, and things like that. So I just think

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Speaker 1: it's like it's like when they tell us, don't bother

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Speaker 1: trying to fight back, like everybody has to suffer, Like

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Speaker 1: that's what they always think. Everybody suffered, and we all

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Speaker 1: just suffer and it's like, no, we don't want to suffer,

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Speaker 1: and we're actually doing things to ease our suffering. And um,

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Speaker 1: I think this is just like all this is to

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Speaker 1: say that people who are out there doing stuff keep

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Speaker 1: doing stuff, and like, if you want to do stuff,

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Speaker 1: do it. You don't have to be brought of reunion.

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Speaker 1: You don't have to put your job and be an activist.

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Speaker 1: By the way, paid activists not really activists. You can

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Speaker 1: do regular ship and you hold that. You can do

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Speaker 1: a free stool in the corner on the street so

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Speaker 1: people can have clothes. It's like you could striking from

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Speaker 1: the economy means like divesting your time and resources, and

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Speaker 1: you can do it. We can all do it in

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Speaker 1: some shape or form well, And I think it becomes

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Speaker 1: a lot more possible today to think about that than

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Speaker 1: it did, say before. Right, So we had this kind

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Speaker 1: of collapse of the legitimacy of the American political projects,

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Speaker 1: sort of with the Iraq War, right, we all kind

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Speaker 1: of saw how badly that can turn out. But what

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Speaker 1: was left in America to uphold the entire edifice was

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Speaker 1: the idea that even though things politically were kind of

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Speaker 1: screwed up, at least there's economic success. And then that

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Speaker 1: failed to right. And so this sort of idea that

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Speaker 1: built up after World War Two, this kind of concept

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Speaker 1: of you know, the labor corpor compromise, the loyal worker

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Speaker 1: that's going to get provided for for the rest of

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Speaker 1: their life. Not only did our parents generation find out

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Speaker 1: that that was a lie, but younger generations don't really

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Speaker 1: buy it at all. And so what you're really seeing is,

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Speaker 1: I think this kind of breakdown socially of the legitimacy

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Speaker 1: of the idea of the American dream because of all

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Speaker 1: of its problematic elements and it's impossibility and its absurdity,

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Speaker 1: and kind of this revival of an idea which existed

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Speaker 1: prior to World War Two, which was an idea of

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Speaker 1: social revolt, right, and it was something we saw manifest

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Speaker 1: during the Great Depression, and it's part of the reason

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Speaker 1: why the New Deal exists. Was a way to put

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Speaker 1: that down was a way to prevent workers from feeling

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Speaker 1: like the only thing that they had in front of

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Speaker 1: them was to take over their factories and show up

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Speaker 1: at the doors of the rich and so on, so

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Speaker 1: and so on. Right. But that whole idea of the

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Speaker 1: New Deal, that concept that the government was going to

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Speaker 1: take care of you and the company was going to

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Speaker 1: take care of you, collapsed in the nineties seventies, but

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Speaker 1: the idea that it existed still holds on in some

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Speaker 1: sectors of the of America today. I mean, you see

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Speaker 1: this with the magacrat out really heavily, the idea that

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Speaker 1: like nothing systematically needs change, really we just need better outcomes,

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Speaker 1: and we just need, you know, in their case, Donald Trump,

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Speaker 1: to pay attention to us and give us the things

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Speaker 1: that we want. But really, outside of that almost comical patriotism, um,

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Speaker 1: you don't really see a lot of adherence to that

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Speaker 1: vision any further. And that makes the idea of mass

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Speaker 1: refusal not only a lot more possible, but something that's

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Speaker 1: actively happening currently. Yeah, And the other parts who I

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Speaker 1: want to bring in is that when the New Deal

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Speaker 1: is caused, it excluded like black people, right, And so

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Speaker 1: that's one way It's like it's like this constants, like

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Speaker 1: how white people are like tricked into like submitting to

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Speaker 1: the system, and it happens so many times, and they

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Speaker 1: still keep saying, took us again, took us again. It's like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're gonna give you ship so you're not upset, and

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Speaker 1: then they're going to exclude black people because at the

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Speaker 1: end of the day, black people do all the work

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Speaker 1: that we need to survive as a society. Do we

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Speaker 1: not remember who the essential workers were? Like who does

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Speaker 1: the jobs that we need to like live, like, you

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Speaker 1: know what I mean? So yeah, you could like be

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Speaker 1: out of work and get your little thing, But as

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Speaker 1: long as we keep inslating and treating the people who

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Speaker 1: make this aciet any run, it's fine. Um. And now

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Speaker 1: that's happening to white people too, and they're like, oh no,

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Speaker 1: this is not cute, like it's not fun and quiet quitting,

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Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Because like there we are,

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Speaker 1: like the way black people have been treated is certing

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Speaker 1: to happen to white people. And it's just like I

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Speaker 1: hope this is what I was going to ask you.

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Speaker 1: How do we prevent another New Deal situation from happening

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Speaker 1: where white workers are tricked again, Like because I feel

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Speaker 1: it's coming. I feel like they're going to find a

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Speaker 1: way out of this, and like how do we know

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Speaker 1: what if it's like bullshit? And like how do we

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Speaker 1: call it out? And how do we call it out?

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Speaker 1: That's what student unforgiveness was, right. I mean, like, if

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Speaker 1: we really think about it, the Democratic parties been built

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Speaker 1: recently since the Obama era on this idea of reinstituting

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Speaker 1: elements of the New Deal without threatening the existence of capitalism. Um,

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Speaker 1: very intentionally right. We saw that the Affordable Care Act

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Speaker 1: as version of that. Right. So, I mean they are

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Speaker 1: doing this and I think what's fascinating about this, And

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Speaker 1: this is something that radicals in the late sixties pointed

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Speaker 1: out often about Lyndon Johnson is they said, you know,

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Speaker 1: liberals voted for Lyndon Johnson and they put all their

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Speaker 1: hopes in him, so when he failed them, it didn't

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Speaker 1: have anything left to do except hit the streets, right,

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Speaker 1: Like there was no other option. And I think what

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Speaker 1: we've really seen since the Obama era is the collapse

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Speaker 1: of the idea that the way that the Democrats do

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Speaker 1: social assistances in any way going to solve anything. Um,

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Speaker 1: that's just going to continue to perpetuate the situation of

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Speaker 1: which we need social assistance, right, as opposed to fundamentally

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Speaker 1: ending that, which is you know, the language that they

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Speaker 1: put forward when they talked about things like justice, which

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Speaker 1: we all know that they don't really have much adherence to. Right.

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Speaker 1: But I think until the until the Democratic Party gains

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Speaker 1: legitimacy again, if they ever do, which hopefully they don't,

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Speaker 1: but if they ever do, yeah, we might be able

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Speaker 1: to see this kind of use of reformedism, this counterinsurgency again, right,

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Speaker 1: which is really what the New Deal was. But really

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Speaker 1: until that, I mean we saw in twenty you know,

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Speaker 1: when the legitimacy of the group of people who often

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Speaker 1: relies on that technique falls apart, you get uprisings in

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Speaker 1: the streets, right. And so we're at kind of a

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Speaker 1: different point, I think than than maybe just before the

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Speaker 1: new kind of came into effect. Something I want to

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Speaker 1: go back to too, that I think it's relevant to

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Speaker 1: this is the piece where the quote um is talking

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Speaker 1: about concealing or like in secret or in public or whatever.

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Speaker 1: How there's like a lot of power in terms of

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Speaker 1: like things like general strikes in that sort of like

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Speaker 1: invisibility or whatever in the unpredictability in like not going

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Speaker 1: for like building movements based on like visibility or public

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Speaker 1: perception or like the media or whatever, but actually building

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00:21:27,920 --> 00:21:30,040
Speaker 1: them in these ways that can't be seen as much

432
00:21:30,400 --> 00:21:32,920
Speaker 1: and might be concealed. Um. And also this thing where

433
00:21:32,920 --> 00:21:36,280
Speaker 1: people are underestimated, Like it makes me think about the

434
00:21:36,320 --> 00:21:39,560
Speaker 1: revolution in Haiti in the late seventeen hundreds, which is

435
00:21:39,600 --> 00:21:41,720
Speaker 1: you know, a long time ago but still very relevant, um.

436
00:21:41,760 --> 00:21:44,359
Speaker 1: And just thinking about how the kind of like colonizes

437
00:21:44,400 --> 00:21:47,200
Speaker 1: in Paris, like couldn't believe the reports that were coming

438
00:21:47,200 --> 00:21:50,440
Speaker 1: out of uprising in Haiti at the time because they

439
00:21:50,440 --> 00:21:53,720
Speaker 1: were so racist basically that they didn't believe that black

440
00:21:53,720 --> 00:21:56,040
Speaker 1: people there who were they could rise up and could

441
00:21:56,080 --> 00:22:00,600
Speaker 1: have that like no awareness gump or whatever. Um. And

442
00:22:00,680 --> 00:22:02,199
Speaker 1: that gave them a lot of room, you know, that

443
00:22:02,320 --> 00:22:05,320
Speaker 1: was like a position of power for them that like, um,

444
00:22:05,359 --> 00:22:08,440
Speaker 1: they were being underestimated like that much. And I think

445
00:22:08,480 --> 00:22:11,919
Speaker 1: that's something we see with like even though like the

446
00:22:11,960 --> 00:22:14,280
Speaker 1: idea that's gone on from that time really of like

447
00:22:14,440 --> 00:22:17,800
Speaker 1: outside agitator and stuff like in any uprising that we

448
00:22:17,840 --> 00:22:21,359
Speaker 1: see um involved. Yeah, that both part people is that

449
00:22:21,400 --> 00:22:24,080
Speaker 1: there's something in that that is also powerful and it

450
00:22:24,119 --> 00:22:27,280
Speaker 1: gives possibility. Well, speaking of outside agitators, we're going to

451
00:22:27,359 --> 00:22:29,919
Speaker 1: take a break and hear from some of our sponsors

452
00:22:30,800 --> 00:22:44,679
Speaker 1: right now. In eighteen sixty five, on paper, the Civil

453
00:22:44,720 --> 00:22:49,280
Speaker 1: War ended and the Union was saved. A decade later,

454
00:22:49,400 --> 00:22:52,080
Speaker 1: the North began pointing out of the cell, marking me

455
00:22:52,280 --> 00:22:56,040
Speaker 1: into reconstruction efforts in the beginning of both jem Crow

456
00:22:56,320 --> 00:22:59,239
Speaker 1: and a reign of terror and white vigilaneism in the

457
00:22:59,320 --> 00:23:03,000
Speaker 1: form of the ku Klux Klan. The eighteen seventies was

458
00:23:03,040 --> 00:23:07,480
Speaker 1: also a period of increasing poverty, declaiming wages, rising homelessness,

459
00:23:07,600 --> 00:23:11,800
Speaker 1: economic depression, and exploding class conflict, as the stage was

460
00:23:11,840 --> 00:23:14,639
Speaker 1: said for the Great Upheaval of eighteen seventy seven, a

461
00:23:14,680 --> 00:23:18,480
Speaker 1: general strike that rocked multiple states as workers across lines

462
00:23:18,520 --> 00:23:21,800
Speaker 1: of color, gender, profession, and age threatened the very core

463
00:23:21,880 --> 00:23:25,200
Speaker 1: of the capitalist state. As the decades were on, multiple

464
00:23:25,240 --> 00:23:29,119
Speaker 1: general strikes followed, as did a heavy handed government response

465
00:23:29,280 --> 00:23:33,040
Speaker 1: that evolved to police and repressed the broader population. Wanting

466
00:23:33,080 --> 00:23:35,680
Speaker 1: to know more about this history of these general strikes

467
00:23:35,680 --> 00:23:38,040
Speaker 1: in their importance, we caught up with labor historian and

468
00:23:38,080 --> 00:23:41,679
Speaker 1: author Robert Ovett's, author of one workers shot back, and

469
00:23:41,800 --> 00:23:45,520
Speaker 1: we the elites. Ovetts argues that the often violent general

470
00:23:45,560 --> 00:23:48,480
Speaker 1: strikes of the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds

471
00:23:48,680 --> 00:23:51,880
Speaker 1: showcase the ability of working people. It's not only confront

472
00:23:51,880 --> 00:23:55,440
Speaker 1: the state and capitalism, but also organized society on their

473
00:23:55,480 --> 00:24:00,760
Speaker 1: own terms. Well. General strikes have been a rare occurrence,

474
00:24:00,840 --> 00:24:05,720
Speaker 1: but a very powerful example of the way that organized

475
00:24:05,920 --> 00:24:12,359
Speaker 1: workers and communities can transform society and hopefully transcend capitalism.

476
00:24:12,359 --> 00:24:14,960
Speaker 1: I think we have in the examples of general strikes

477
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:20,000
Speaker 1: in US history an example of the potential for getting

478
00:24:20,000 --> 00:24:23,200
Speaker 1: beyond capitalism, and so that's what makes them really exciting

479
00:24:23,280 --> 00:24:25,600
Speaker 1: to to study and to write about. At A general

480
00:24:25,640 --> 00:24:29,560
Speaker 1: strike doesn't just happen, and we don't actually know exactly

481
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:32,679
Speaker 1: why general strikes happen, but we know that they don't

482
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:35,879
Speaker 1: just happen. They're not spontaneous. There has to be a

483
00:24:36,119 --> 00:24:42,280
Speaker 1: groundwork of organizing and engaged activists and organizers who are

484
00:24:43,359 --> 00:24:48,760
Speaker 1: working quietly, sometimes for months or years, to to work

485
00:24:49,040 --> 00:24:53,359
Speaker 1: and organizing their fellow workers and to build community connections

486
00:24:53,359 --> 00:24:56,439
Speaker 1: to support their strike actions. And there also has to

487
00:24:56,480 --> 00:25:01,200
Speaker 1: be a good communication of what what the strike is about,

488
00:25:01,240 --> 00:25:04,080
Speaker 1: what their demands are, and the ability to communicate and

489
00:25:04,160 --> 00:25:09,000
Speaker 1: spread information about that strike. Probably the two most important

490
00:25:09,040 --> 00:25:14,320
Speaker 1: general strikes in US history were the one in eighteen

491
00:25:14,359 --> 00:25:17,720
Speaker 1: seventy seven and the one in nine in Seattle. And

492
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:20,639
Speaker 1: the one in eighteen seventy seven was a general strike

493
00:25:20,680 --> 00:25:28,119
Speaker 1: throughout the railroad industry, but it also had extraordinary um microcosmic,

494
00:25:28,320 --> 00:25:31,000
Speaker 1: if you will, a general strike that was happening in St.

495
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:34,480
Speaker 1: Louis and East St. Louis. But what was fascinating about

496
00:25:34,520 --> 00:25:36,919
Speaker 1: that was that the groundwork had been laid in eighteen

497
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:41,040
Speaker 1: seventy seven, not by a union actually, because the workers

498
00:25:41,080 --> 00:25:43,360
Speaker 1: had tried to form a union, but it was sabotaged,

499
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:47,600
Speaker 1: it was infiltrated, and they tried to the the organizers

500
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:50,520
Speaker 1: tried to call off the set date to start the

501
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:53,359
Speaker 1: general strike and the railroad industry, but the workers went

502
00:25:53,480 --> 00:25:57,919
Speaker 1: on strike anyways, and they built their own organization across

503
00:25:58,160 --> 00:26:02,840
Speaker 1: dozens of different railroad come panies on their own. In St. Louis, however,

504
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:05,720
Speaker 1: there was a new left wing party called the Working

505
00:26:05,760 --> 00:26:11,760
Speaker 1: Men's Party that was formed by various socialists and communists

506
00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:14,399
Speaker 1: and anarchists who had taken over the city and for

507
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:16,520
Speaker 1: a few days tried to run it and that was.

508
00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:19,000
Speaker 1: That was probably closer to what happened in Seattle in

509
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:24,719
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, where over a hundred local unions actually pressured

510
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:28,600
Speaker 1: the Labor Council to call a general strike, and so

511
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:32,320
Speaker 1: that was kind of built up from below through formal unions.

512
00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:35,280
Speaker 1: But then it went far beyond anything that those AFL

513
00:26:35,640 --> 00:26:39,119
Speaker 1: affiliated unions were willing to really do. The St. Louis

514
00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:42,960
Speaker 1: General Strike in eighteen seventy seven that I was just mentioning. Uh,

515
00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:49,360
Speaker 1: there was a multi racial coalition of worker organizers who

516
00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:53,600
Speaker 1: literally took charge of the strike. There had been a

517
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:56,920
Speaker 1: strike committee form and those that strike committee was dominated

518
00:26:56,960 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 1: by the Working Men's Party activists, but the workers themselves

519
00:27:00,800 --> 00:27:05,080
Speaker 1: started to organize outside the confines of the strike coordinating committee,

520
00:27:05,600 --> 00:27:08,880
Speaker 1: and it was very multiracial. They started marching on one

521
00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:12,280
Speaker 1: workplace and another. Uh. There was some evidence that there

522
00:27:12,320 --> 00:27:14,159
Speaker 1: were some women that were involved in it. So there

523
00:27:14,160 --> 00:27:18,680
Speaker 1: were strong ties to the community and various households and neighborhoods.

524
00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:22,320
Speaker 1: But they marched on one workplace to another and spread

525
00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:24,560
Speaker 1: the strike, and within a couple of days much of

526
00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:27,439
Speaker 1: the city had been shut down. And the irony of

527
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:32,320
Speaker 1: this was that the strike coordinating council actually freaked out

528
00:27:32,640 --> 00:27:36,320
Speaker 1: about how multi racial of the crowds were that were

529
00:27:36,359 --> 00:27:40,560
Speaker 1: shutting down these workplaces and leaving and leaving work um

530
00:27:40,760 --> 00:27:46,920
Speaker 1: and internally they became very divided based on their their racism,

531
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:49,399
Speaker 1: and there were some members of the coordinating committee that

532
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 1: were extreme racial supremacists and didn't want the strike to continue,

533
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:57,480
Speaker 1: and they debated how to stop the strike, how to

534
00:27:57,520 --> 00:28:00,679
Speaker 1: call it off, and but the reality was that they

535
00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:03,520
Speaker 1: had lost control of it to the workers outside of

536
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 1: the committee. And when it became clear that the militias

537
00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:11,800
Speaker 1: were being called into St. Louis to attack the city,

538
00:28:12,600 --> 00:28:16,480
Speaker 1: the workers marched on the Medium Hall where the strike

539
00:28:16,520 --> 00:28:20,679
Speaker 1: coordinating council was and demanded that they appropriate money to

540
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:24,800
Speaker 1: acquire arms to defend the city. But they refused to

541
00:28:24,840 --> 00:28:28,040
Speaker 1: do that, and they eventually tried to call off the strike.

542
00:28:28,760 --> 00:28:30,879
Speaker 1: Uh So that lasted a few days, and race was

543
00:28:30,920 --> 00:28:34,680
Speaker 1: a huge factor in why the strikes spread and how

544
00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:36,400
Speaker 1: the workers took over the city, But it was also

545
00:28:36,440 --> 00:28:38,960
Speaker 1: a factor and how it was actually killed by those

546
00:28:39,040 --> 00:28:42,800
Speaker 1: who were supposedly quote unquote running the actual general strike.

547
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:45,560
Speaker 1: In the case of Seattle, we don't know as much

548
00:28:45,600 --> 00:28:49,240
Speaker 1: about the racial composition of the workers. UM. But we

549
00:28:49,320 --> 00:28:53,160
Speaker 1: do know that it was very generalized throughout the entire city. UM.

550
00:28:53,320 --> 00:28:56,880
Speaker 1: And the reason we know this is because the the

551
00:28:56,960 --> 00:29:00,000
Speaker 1: General Strike Committee, which was formed by the Labor count

552
00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:03,960
Speaker 1: soul I, had representatives of every union and they took

553
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:07,720
Speaker 1: care of many of the reproductive needs of the population.

554
00:29:07,760 --> 00:29:10,800
Speaker 1: For example, they kept the hospital running. UH. They set

555
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:16,840
Speaker 1: up free kitchens where people could eat UM. They as

556
00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 1: well as setting up and publishing a newspaper that came

557
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:22,440
Speaker 1: out every day during the five days of the strike,

558
00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:26,440
Speaker 1: so they took care of also of public safety. UM.

559
00:29:26,560 --> 00:29:29,600
Speaker 1: So what was extraordinary about the Seattle General Strike is

560
00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:32,800
Speaker 1: how it incorporated many of these issues that we would

561
00:29:32,800 --> 00:29:36,760
Speaker 1: say is about gender and reproductive needs of the population.

562
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:39,680
Speaker 1: They didn't just shut down the workplace. They actually took

563
00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:43,320
Speaker 1: over the city and reorganized society to meet the needs

564
00:29:43,360 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 1: of humanity. The seven strike actually resulted in what I

565
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:51,880
Speaker 1: show in a lot of detail in my first book,

566
00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:57,760
Speaker 1: when workers shot back, how the state and capital reorganized

567
00:29:57,840 --> 00:30:01,600
Speaker 1: themselves in order to u be able to respond a

568
00:30:01,600 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 1: lot quicker to self organized workers and strikes and especially

569
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:10,600
Speaker 1: general strikes. For example, the modern police came into being

570
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:13,520
Speaker 1: in many cities as a result of the eighteen seventy

571
00:30:13,520 --> 00:30:17,920
Speaker 1: seven strike because up until that point, the police were um,

572
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:20,760
Speaker 1: if you will, they were kind of like gig workers.

573
00:30:20,800 --> 00:30:24,440
Speaker 1: They worked on quote unquote tips or bribes. UH. There

574
00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:28,000
Speaker 1: were very few cities that had any municipal police, and

575
00:30:28,040 --> 00:30:30,360
Speaker 1: if they did, they had very small forces. And so

576
00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:32,840
Speaker 1: that was one reason why the strikes spread so quickly

577
00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:35,840
Speaker 1: around the country over that that ten day or so

578
00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 1: period in July of eighteen seventy seven. UH, So modern

579
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:43,440
Speaker 1: policing really came into being. Also, as you mentioned, the

580
00:30:43,480 --> 00:30:48,720
Speaker 1: militias were transformed into what became the National Guard. The

581
00:30:48,760 --> 00:30:52,360
Speaker 1: militias also proved to be undependable because they were mostly

582
00:30:52,400 --> 00:30:56,920
Speaker 1: composed of working men, and if they were called out locally,

583
00:30:57,040 --> 00:30:59,239
Speaker 1: they knew the strikers, and in fact, some of them

584
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:01,880
Speaker 1: were strikers and didn't even show up for their militia duty.

585
00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:06,160
Speaker 1: So militias were essentially de emphasized and they were replaced

586
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:10,200
Speaker 1: by a state controlled National Guard. UM. As a result

587
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:13,840
Speaker 1: of the passage of a new federal law. UH, the

588
00:31:13,880 --> 00:31:18,600
Speaker 1: military was also funded on a permanent basis. One reason

589
00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:21,360
Speaker 1: why the military was so slow to be UH to

590
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:24,040
Speaker 1: be deployed to put down the strike in eighteen seventy

591
00:31:24,040 --> 00:31:26,640
Speaker 1: seven was most of the soldiers were out in the

592
00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:31,600
Speaker 1: West fighting essentially a genocidal war against the Plans native peoples,

593
00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:35,160
Speaker 1: and so there weren't enough military around. And also Congress

594
00:31:35,200 --> 00:31:37,280
Speaker 1: hadn't funded the military that year, believe it or not,

595
00:31:37,800 --> 00:31:43,240
Speaker 1: and so the military was unfunded and undersized. Another consequence

596
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:46,680
Speaker 1: of this was that many corporations started to work together

597
00:31:47,520 --> 00:31:50,640
Speaker 1: to create their own you could say, mutual aid to

598
00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:54,560
Speaker 1: protect one another. They started forming employer groups in order

599
00:31:54,600 --> 00:31:56,920
Speaker 1: to be able to respond to a more coordinated method.

600
00:31:57,640 --> 00:32:00,680
Speaker 1: Um So you started to see corporations cooperated result of this.

601
00:32:00,760 --> 00:32:03,320
Speaker 1: In fact, many of the technologies that we take for

602
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:06,240
Speaker 1: granted today were a result of the eighteen seventy seven

603
00:32:06,600 --> 00:32:10,800
Speaker 1: railroad strike. For example, UH, the telegraph was installed in

604
00:32:10,960 --> 00:32:13,280
Speaker 1: many rich people's homes as a way to be able

605
00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:16,400
Speaker 1: to contact the police directly. Those lines went directly to

606
00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:21,040
Speaker 1: the police. UH. The so called pattiwagon was also invented

607
00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:23,280
Speaker 1: as a result of the eighteen seventy seven strike as

608
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:26,760
Speaker 1: a weapon against large crowds. Um So, there were a

609
00:32:26,840 --> 00:32:31,040
Speaker 1: number of m of new technologies that were implemented UH

610
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:33,600
Speaker 1: and became more widespread as a results of that strike

611
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:38,600
Speaker 1: in Seattle. Also, the workers were prepared, they had known

612
00:32:38,680 --> 00:32:43,880
Speaker 1: their history, and they formed a self defense group UH

613
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:46,560
Speaker 1: composed primarily of World War One veterans who had just

614
00:32:46,600 --> 00:32:50,400
Speaker 1: come back from more or one UM and they patrolled

615
00:32:50,400 --> 00:32:53,720
Speaker 1: the city and they did things like shut down bars

616
00:32:53,840 --> 00:32:56,520
Speaker 1: because they didn't want UH people to get drawnk and

617
00:32:56,560 --> 00:33:00,480
Speaker 1: start fighting and that would be a justification for the

618
00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:03,000
Speaker 1: the National Guard to be called in. But the police

619
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:06,280
Speaker 1: started to essentially line up outside the boundaries of the

620
00:33:06,320 --> 00:33:11,160
Speaker 1: city and they waited for reinforcements threatenings essentially to invade

621
00:33:11,200 --> 00:33:14,680
Speaker 1: Seattle before the general strike was called off. But the

622
00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:19,600
Speaker 1: workers were prepared. They did carry out and organized self

623
00:33:19,640 --> 00:33:26,320
Speaker 1: defense against that eventuality. The Oakland general strike was part

624
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:29,480
Speaker 1: of an extraordinary wave of post War two strikes that

625
00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:32,840
Speaker 1: were happening just like after Word one and actually during

626
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:35,480
Speaker 1: Worldar one there was a wave of strikes UH. The

627
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:38,160
Speaker 1: same thing happened when a lot of soldiers started coming

628
00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:42,200
Speaker 1: back from War two. Unemployment shot up, women were sent

629
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:47,080
Speaker 1: as sent packing. UH prices exploded, there was a shortage

630
00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:52,080
Speaker 1: of housing UH and workers started to organize and UH.

631
00:33:52,280 --> 00:33:57,200
Speaker 1: During that few year period, UH there was a general

632
00:33:57,240 --> 00:34:00,600
Speaker 1: strike in the steel sector, and Truman threatened to take

633
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:03,640
Speaker 1: over some of the larger companies, and he was repelled

634
00:34:04,360 --> 00:34:08,080
Speaker 1: by the Supreme Court. But as a consequence of this

635
00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:14,520
Speaker 1: uh this upsurge of class struggle, the Congress paths to

636
00:34:14,600 --> 00:34:19,160
Speaker 1: Taff Hardly Act, which still governs US today. For workers

637
00:34:19,239 --> 00:34:23,600
Speaker 1: who try to organize in the private sector where they're

638
00:34:23,640 --> 00:34:26,319
Speaker 1: under the National Labor Relations Act, the Taff Hardley Act

639
00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:28,919
Speaker 1: was an amendment to that law. One of the most

640
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:33,839
Speaker 1: important things it did was a banned so called secondary strikes,

641
00:34:33,920 --> 00:34:38,400
Speaker 1: which means that if workers go on strike somewhere, workers

642
00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:43,680
Speaker 1: can't strike in solidarity um and particularly if they have

643
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:47,680
Speaker 1: a union contract with their employer, it would be illegal. Now,

644
00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:49,719
Speaker 1: there are some workers that are exempted from that, for

645
00:34:49,760 --> 00:34:53,399
Speaker 1: example transport workers because they're under a different federal law.

646
00:34:53,440 --> 00:34:56,440
Speaker 1: They're under the Railway Labor Act, which is part of

647
00:34:56,480 --> 00:34:59,280
Speaker 1: the reason why we almost just saw rail railroad general

648
00:34:59,280 --> 00:35:02,040
Speaker 1: strike before the Democrats killed it a few weeks ago.

649
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:07,520
Speaker 1: But the tapped Hartley Act continues to serve as a

650
00:35:07,560 --> 00:35:10,840
Speaker 1: means of suppressing and repressing the ability not only of

651
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:14,319
Speaker 1: workers but organized unions in their local workplaces, but to

652
00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:18,839
Speaker 1: actually engage in a general strike. So again we've been

653
00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:21,839
Speaker 1: listening to Robert Ovette's author of One Workers Shot Back

654
00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:25,120
Speaker 1: and We the Elites. Just a few key takeaways from

655
00:35:25,120 --> 00:35:28,320
Speaker 1: that discussion. We see various examples in these general strikes

656
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:32,439
Speaker 1: of tensions developing between more radical elements and reformist ones

657
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:37,000
Speaker 1: that want to contain revolutionary expressions and also stop workers

658
00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 1: from really taking over society. We also see positive examples

659
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:45,040
Speaker 1: of these strikes spilling out across lines of race, gender,

660
00:35:45,080 --> 00:35:47,839
Speaker 1: and age and profession. One thing we see, of course,

661
00:35:47,880 --> 00:35:51,040
Speaker 1: again and again is the state responding to these strikes

662
00:35:51,040 --> 00:35:53,880
Speaker 1: with the combination of militia's police and of course the

663
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:56,960
Speaker 1: National Guard. And finally, many of these strikes lead to

664
00:35:56,960 --> 00:36:00,160
Speaker 1: the passing of legislation, which is interesting because far are

665
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:04,200
Speaker 1: from this sort of progressive arc towards justice. Instead, we

666
00:36:04,239 --> 00:36:07,440
Speaker 1: see constantly, again and again the state either reforming itself

667
00:36:07,480 --> 00:36:12,320
Speaker 1: to become more oppressive, engage in surveillance, reconstitute the police

668
00:36:12,360 --> 00:36:16,360
Speaker 1: in a certain way, reconstitute the military, or sometimes bring

669
00:36:16,400 --> 00:36:19,399
Speaker 1: the workers into the superstructure of the state and roorge

670
00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:22,200
Speaker 1: to better manage them. Yeah, I totally agree. It's not

671
00:36:22,239 --> 00:36:24,799
Speaker 1: getting better. They're just being smart about it. They're like

672
00:36:24,800 --> 00:36:27,879
Speaker 1: like little like slimy balls. They're just like reshaping as

673
00:36:27,920 --> 00:36:30,680
Speaker 1: they need to shape and form to like get workers.

674
00:36:30,800 --> 00:36:32,800
Speaker 1: So like when you were reading that, it felt like

675
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:35,080
Speaker 1: a writer's were It felt like a movie of like

676
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:38,399
Speaker 1: how do we control these people? You know what I mean?

677
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:40,320
Speaker 1: It felt like it was like this like checker but

678
00:36:40,400 --> 00:36:42,520
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, they make their move, we make their move.

679
00:36:42,560 --> 00:36:44,160
Speaker 1: And it's like it's like the state as a tool

680
00:36:44,239 --> 00:36:45,960
Speaker 1: and like you see that because it's like it's a

681
00:36:45,960 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 1: tool of the elite, and you see that through the

682
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:49,520
Speaker 1: laws that are passed, and like when they're passed, like

683
00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:52,600
Speaker 1: because when black and white people form them, this violence

684
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:55,080
Speaker 1: like a lot of state violence, like extreme state violence,

685
00:36:55,160 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 1: because it's like they want to remind us like that's bad,

686
00:36:57,560 --> 00:36:59,239
Speaker 1: you don't do that, and then they'll do stuff to

687
00:36:59,239 --> 00:37:01,440
Speaker 1: play get worker like white workers too, like with a

688
00:37:01,440 --> 00:37:03,719
Speaker 1: Wagoner Act, like with unionization, like a lot of black

689
00:37:03,719 --> 00:37:06,640
Speaker 1: people were excluded from that. Maybe just maybe things aren't

690
00:37:06,640 --> 00:37:08,880
Speaker 1: getting better like they're telling you they are. Things are

691
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:11,920
Speaker 1: just reshaving. That's something else I'm thinking about as you're talking.

692
00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:14,239
Speaker 1: And just like from from that history that it is

693
00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:17,360
Speaker 1: like we hear that like the creativity of the state

694
00:37:17,400 --> 00:37:19,840
Speaker 1: with their oppression or whatever that's going on, but also

695
00:37:19,920 --> 00:37:22,600
Speaker 1: how people keep coming back with like new and different things,

696
00:37:22,640 --> 00:37:26,160
Speaker 1: you know, like it actually takes a lot of repression

697
00:37:26,160 --> 00:37:27,680
Speaker 1: to stop these things. Like if you look at what

698
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:30,759
Speaker 1: happened Stubben or whatever, it's like they killed quite a

699
00:37:30,760 --> 00:37:33,120
Speaker 1: lot of people to stop that strike wave and stuff,

700
00:37:33,120 --> 00:37:35,719
Speaker 1: you know, like it's really heavy handed. And then but

701
00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:37,840
Speaker 1: still a lot of strikes happen after that, and it

702
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:40,920
Speaker 1: leads up to Haymarket in age six or whatever. And

703
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:44,480
Speaker 1: I just think, again, again, we seem like repression, but

704
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:47,880
Speaker 1: then we see it flowering again. And I think that

705
00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:50,600
Speaker 1: what we're seeing like right now maybe is like a

706
00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:53,279
Speaker 1: sort of creative non union. And when we're talking at

707
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:55,840
Speaker 1: the beginning about people just saying general strike, general strike,

708
00:37:56,320 --> 00:37:58,839
Speaker 1: it's like whatever happens next will be something different. What

709
00:37:58,840 --> 00:38:01,880
Speaker 1: we're seeing is we're seeing over this time the mechanism

710
00:38:01,960 --> 00:38:04,880
Speaker 1: of counterinsurgency get a lot more complex. Right, So in

711
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:08,200
Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies, it's let's get some guns and force

712
00:38:08,239 --> 00:38:11,359
Speaker 1: everyone to come back to work. But now it's why

713
00:38:11,400 --> 00:38:14,640
Speaker 1: don't we get nonprofits to fund these you know, public programs.

714
00:38:14,680 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 1: Why don't we have community policing and coffee with cops,

715
00:38:18,120 --> 00:38:20,680
Speaker 1: and and so you saw during the George Floyd uprising,

716
00:38:20,719 --> 00:38:23,320
Speaker 1: as he saw a lot of this like, well, I

717
00:38:23,400 --> 00:38:25,520
Speaker 1: know that y'all want to cut funding from police departments,

718
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:27,480
Speaker 1: but really what you should do is you should come

719
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:29,120
Speaker 1: to our budget meeting and we could put it in

720
00:38:29,120 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 1: the city budget and we should talk about it that way.

721
00:38:31,239 --> 00:38:33,120
Speaker 1: And that was the way to force there in the

722
00:38:33,200 --> 00:38:35,759
Speaker 1: streets back into a mechanism that's able to be more

723
00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:39,279
Speaker 1: easily controlled. Um. But we see in like rust belt

724
00:38:39,320 --> 00:38:42,520
Speaker 1: cities Pittsburgh, Cleveland, places like this, the way that the

725
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:45,160
Speaker 1: wealthy at this period of time, the late nineteenth and

726
00:38:45,160 --> 00:38:48,839
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, we're already talking about trying to change

727
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:52,600
Speaker 1: entire environments, right, So like surveillance, nonprofit activity like that

728
00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:55,320
Speaker 1: changes the whole environments. It's not just about a single

729
00:38:55,880 --> 00:38:59,440
Speaker 1: individual objective, but it shapes an entire reality. In these

730
00:38:59,520 --> 00:39:01,560
Speaker 1: rust belt cities during that period of time, I mean,

731
00:39:01,760 --> 00:39:03,600
Speaker 1: you have a lot of like free art museums and

732
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:06,520
Speaker 1: stuff like this that are world class institutions, but if

733
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:09,680
Speaker 1: you look at their charters and actually look at them closely,

734
00:39:10,040 --> 00:39:13,600
Speaker 1: the reason those institutions exist was, to quote inculturate the

735
00:39:13,640 --> 00:39:17,000
Speaker 1: working class, and it was all about like Rockefeller very

736
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:20,640
Speaker 1: specifically Cleveland money to these institutions so the working class

737
00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:22,759
Speaker 1: wouldn't kill them, like wouldn't murder them. And it was

738
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:27,160
Speaker 1: in the middle of really intense anti capitalist activity in

739
00:39:27,200 --> 00:39:30,440
Speaker 1: those cities, right and so we can watch the development

740
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:32,560
Speaker 1: of those techniques right now. It takes the form of

741
00:39:32,640 --> 00:39:35,360
Speaker 1: defunding the police campaigns and things like that as opposed

742
00:39:35,360 --> 00:39:38,680
Speaker 1: to abolitionism. Um It takes the form of trying to

743
00:39:38,760 --> 00:39:42,440
Speaker 1: find softer means of policing, like surveillance as opposed to

744
00:39:42,840 --> 00:39:45,840
Speaker 1: just happen clubs and guns and stuff um. Or, in

745
00:39:45,920 --> 00:39:47,759
Speaker 1: the case of the Democratic Party, of the smart Border,

746
00:39:48,000 --> 00:39:50,040
Speaker 1: when they talk about the smart Border, which is essentially

747
00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:52,280
Speaker 1: putting a bunch of sensors and cameras in the desert

748
00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:54,720
Speaker 1: to try and catch people crossing the border, that somehow

749
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:59,480
Speaker 1: less repressive by shaping the entire space around surveillance, that

750
00:39:59,640 --> 00:40:04,080
Speaker 1: somehow less repressive than just having police. And they use

751
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:06,560
Speaker 1: that idea that if they're not in a uniform, and

752
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:08,239
Speaker 1: they don't have a weapon right in front of them,

753
00:40:08,320 --> 00:40:12,160
Speaker 1: or aren't human, that somehow there's some benefit that emerges

754
00:40:12,200 --> 00:40:14,560
Speaker 1: and somehow the state is retreating a little bit when

755
00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:17,640
Speaker 1: in actuality thinks like body cameras, stuff like that just

756
00:40:17,840 --> 00:40:20,239
Speaker 1: increase the ability of the state to have visibility, just

757
00:40:20,400 --> 00:40:22,960
Speaker 1: increases the number of cameras on the street and increases

758
00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:25,840
Speaker 1: the ability of the state to control information and decide

759
00:40:25,880 --> 00:40:28,520
Speaker 1: what information gets out. Um. These are all things which

760
00:40:28,560 --> 00:40:30,839
Speaker 1: have reinforced the power of the state, but they get

761
00:40:30,920 --> 00:40:34,359
Speaker 1: portrayed as you know, forms of as reforms that are

762
00:40:34,360 --> 00:40:37,040
Speaker 1: supposed to solve these huge social problems that people keep

763
00:40:37,120 --> 00:40:39,719
Speaker 1: raising up. Well, speaking of things rich people give us

764
00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:43,399
Speaker 1: so we won't kill them, We're going to know here

765
00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:56,839
Speaker 1: for some from some of our sponsors. So far, we've

766
00:40:56,880 --> 00:40:59,440
Speaker 1: talked about general strikes that are largely over a hundred

767
00:40:59,520 --> 00:41:01,560
Speaker 1: years old. But now we're going to turn and look

768
00:41:01,600 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 1: at two examples of general strikes that took place within

769
00:41:04,160 --> 00:41:08,240
Speaker 1: the last twenty years. In December of two thousand five,

770
00:41:08,760 --> 00:41:12,759
Speaker 1: Republicans passed in the House of Representatives Hr four four

771
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:17,480
Speaker 1: three seven, also known as the Border Protection, Anti Terrorism

772
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 1: and a Legal Immigration Control Act of two thousand five,

773
00:41:21,640 --> 00:41:25,120
Speaker 1: a proposed piece of legislation that's as jaconian as it sounds.

774
00:41:25,640 --> 00:41:28,320
Speaker 1: The bill as the A C. L You wrote, pushed

775
00:41:28,360 --> 00:41:32,640
Speaker 1: to quote militarize the border, give extraordinary powers to low

776
00:41:32,760 --> 00:41:37,320
Speaker 1: level immigration officials, allowing law enforcement to expel without hearing

777
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:41,600
Speaker 1: anyone believed to be undocumented and detained non citizens and

778
00:41:41,800 --> 00:41:45,919
Speaker 1: definitely without meaningful review. The bill also sought to levy

779
00:41:45,960 --> 00:41:50,200
Speaker 1: criminal penalties against anyone that engage in assisting someone that

780
00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:54,440
Speaker 1: was undocumented, which threatened both employers of undocumented workers, as

781
00:41:54,480 --> 00:41:58,880
Speaker 1: well as union organizers, teachers, clergy, and beyond, foreshadowing the

782
00:41:58,920 --> 00:42:01,880
Speaker 1: Trump presidency. It also called for hundreds of miles of

783
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:05,680
Speaker 1: border fence and authorized state and local law enforcement to

784
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:09,960
Speaker 1: enforce federal immigration law. As George Kemphas wrote in the

785
00:42:10,120 --> 00:42:14,040
Speaker 1: See Say Poity Insurrection, the bill would transform almost every

786
00:42:14,120 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 1: person in the United States into either undocumented violators, police enforcers,

787
00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:23,560
Speaker 1: or classify them as criminally complicit. The authoritarian nature of

788
00:42:23,600 --> 00:42:27,439
Speaker 1: the legislation in the existential threat it represented, pushed many

789
00:42:27,480 --> 00:42:30,000
Speaker 1: a document of workers to take action and organize on

790
00:42:30,040 --> 00:42:33,360
Speaker 1: a mass scale. As Kemphis wrote, starting in March of

791
00:42:33,400 --> 00:42:36,479
Speaker 1: two thousand, six marches and more than half a million

792
00:42:36,600 --> 00:42:41,000
Speaker 1: people overwhelmed the centers of major cities like Los Angeles, Chicago,

793
00:42:41,560 --> 00:42:45,280
Speaker 1: New York, and Dallas halteen business, while there were literally

794
00:42:45,440 --> 00:42:49,960
Speaker 1: hundreds of smaller gatherings and many other smaller cities. There

795
00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:53,240
Speaker 1: were dozens of student walkouts and high schools around the country,

796
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:57,120
Speaker 1: as well as a nationwide immigrant general strike called for

797
00:42:57,280 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 1: on Maybia that was heated by hundreds of tho perhaps

798
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:04,160
Speaker 1: millions of workers, including truck drivers, who shut down the

799
00:43:04,239 --> 00:43:07,240
Speaker 1: port of Los Angeles. Despite a series of large scale

800
00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:10,759
Speaker 1: immigration raids aimed at derailing the movement, millions took the

801
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:13,520
Speaker 1: streets and carried out strikes, all outside of the direction

802
00:43:13,560 --> 00:43:16,719
Speaker 1: of union in Democratic Party leadership. The mass protests and

803
00:43:16,800 --> 00:43:19,520
Speaker 1: strikes helped revive May Day as a day of labor

804
00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:22,880
Speaker 1: and worker action in the United States. Installed for over

805
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:26,399
Speaker 1: a decade. Right wing attacks on immigrants HR four fourth

806
00:43:26,480 --> 00:43:29,279
Speaker 1: three seven failed to pass, in large part due to

807
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:32,040
Speaker 1: the mass opposition it faced on the streets in the

808
00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:35,080
Speaker 1: spring of two thousand six. Direct action, as they say,

809
00:43:35,360 --> 00:43:38,240
Speaker 1: gets the goods. And what's fascinating about the two thousand

810
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:41,880
Speaker 1: six strike is that it was organized outside of established

811
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:45,279
Speaker 1: unions and political parties, especially the Democratic Party, had a

812
00:43:45,400 --> 00:43:49,239
Speaker 1: key youth wing to it. We saw lots of student walkouts.

813
00:43:49,600 --> 00:43:52,960
Speaker 1: It was able to seriously push back against this draconian

814
00:43:53,040 --> 00:43:56,600
Speaker 1: wave of anti immigrant legislation, and that worked for around

815
00:43:56,680 --> 00:43:59,840
Speaker 1: ten years. And it seems like we don't reference this

816
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:03,279
Speaker 1: strike enough and talk about how important it was. I

817
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:05,520
Speaker 1: was in a junior in high school when kids were

818
00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:07,719
Speaker 1: walking out, but this is how I sleep. I was.

819
00:44:07,840 --> 00:44:10,560
Speaker 1: I didn't walk out, and I just remember thinking, Oh

820
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:14,640
Speaker 1: my god, those kids are so courageous and they're such badasses,

821
00:44:15,040 --> 00:44:16,680
Speaker 1: and it's so cool that they're doing that, and I

822
00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:19,440
Speaker 1: wish that I could well. That law was like Fugitive

823
00:44:19,560 --> 00:44:22,400
Speaker 1: Slave Law Act, Like straight up, they were just trying

824
00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 1: to like re install slavery among people who were not

825
00:44:25,840 --> 00:44:27,839
Speaker 1: here documented like you know what I mean. They were

826
00:44:27,880 --> 00:44:30,280
Speaker 1: trying to create a situation where people were still working despread,

827
00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:31,920
Speaker 1: they were going to work for slave wages. And I'll

828
00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:34,040
Speaker 1: say this about New York City, there's a huge like

829
00:44:34,160 --> 00:44:37,279
Speaker 1: immigrant population, a huge undocumented work of population that we

830
00:44:37,320 --> 00:44:39,319
Speaker 1: didn't even I mean, I didn't know about until COVID hit.

831
00:44:39,719 --> 00:44:41,600
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of people who were keeping the

832
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:44,759
Speaker 1: economy alive that are not even counted, and they pay

833
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:47,399
Speaker 1: for our existence. As we're talking about those two things

834
00:44:47,440 --> 00:44:50,080
Speaker 1: that always come up for me when talking about these strikes.

835
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:54,320
Speaker 1: First is, you know, the entire concept of quote immigration

836
00:44:54,360 --> 00:44:56,640
Speaker 1: reform as it was being talked about by Republicans at

837
00:44:56,680 --> 00:44:59,799
Speaker 1: the time and then later accelerated under Trump. This idea

838
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:03,360
Speaker 1: of order walls started with the American Nazi Party, right, Like,

839
00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:06,520
Speaker 1: this was an American Nazi Party policy proposal in the

840
00:45:06,640 --> 00:45:10,359
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties and sixties that got picked up through white

841
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:13,560
Speaker 1: supremacist movements, through people like George Wallace and sort of

842
00:45:13,640 --> 00:45:19,400
Speaker 1: imported into the Republican Party. Yeah, because it's Nazis. I

843
00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:22,840
Speaker 1: think the other thing that was really inspiring about that movement.

844
00:45:22,920 --> 00:45:25,239
Speaker 1: I was, you know, out of college at that point

845
00:45:25,719 --> 00:45:27,920
Speaker 1: watching this happen. It was one of the first times

846
00:45:28,040 --> 00:45:33,480
Speaker 1: I saw mass decentralized action happened across the entire country

847
00:45:34,040 --> 00:45:37,040
Speaker 1: at that scale that sort of hit and apex like

848
00:45:37,160 --> 00:45:40,120
Speaker 1: during these days, right, the sort of period of time

849
00:45:40,160 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 1: in which people kind of took it upon themselves to

850
00:45:42,160 --> 00:45:44,000
Speaker 1: shut the whole country down. And it just shows what

851
00:45:44,160 --> 00:45:46,960
Speaker 1: can happen when community is organized as communities of people

852
00:45:47,520 --> 00:45:50,720
Speaker 1: and not as spectators in some sort of removed symbolic

853
00:45:50,760 --> 00:45:54,359
Speaker 1: political action, but actually become immediate protagonists and what's going

854
00:45:54,400 --> 00:45:55,600
Speaker 1: on in front of them. And the other thing I

855
00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:57,920
Speaker 1: think is like really interesting about this is that it

856
00:45:58,040 --> 00:46:01,520
Speaker 1: was such a massive response and the of what the

857
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:05,480
Speaker 1: Act was saying was that you could be like prosecutor

858
00:46:05,719 --> 00:46:09,080
Speaker 1: for assisting someone who's undocumented. That I think it goes

859
00:46:09,120 --> 00:46:10,200
Speaker 1: back to what we've been talking about with the other

860
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:12,719
Speaker 1: strikes stuff, is like the government is very aware that

861
00:46:12,880 --> 00:46:16,840
Speaker 1: like solidarity between people is dangerous basically and tries to

862
00:46:16,920 --> 00:46:18,840
Speaker 1: letistate it. And we see, you know, after that strike

863
00:46:18,920 --> 00:46:21,239
Speaker 1: in you know, the Strikebay in event seven, you start

864
00:46:21,280 --> 00:46:23,680
Speaker 1: to get all those anti conspiracy laws and stuff because

865
00:46:23,760 --> 00:46:26,000
Speaker 1: that's a threat. And I love that in this sense.

866
00:46:26,080 --> 00:46:28,359
Speaker 1: It's like they put that out and it gets like, um,

867
00:46:28,920 --> 00:46:31,520
Speaker 1: such a massive response against it that people really like

868
00:46:31,680 --> 00:46:34,480
Speaker 1: win basically and that last for like a decade. Yeah.

869
00:46:34,520 --> 00:46:37,279
Speaker 1: I think that goes back to the idea of white

870
00:46:37,280 --> 00:46:40,960
Speaker 1: supremacy historically in the United States, being this system of

871
00:46:41,280 --> 00:46:44,640
Speaker 1: how people described it, of carrots and sticks, of offering

872
00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:49,759
Speaker 1: incentives to be included in this bracket of whiteness. That

873
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:52,879
Speaker 1: also saying if you help that kid at school, we're

874
00:46:52,880 --> 00:46:55,600
Speaker 1: gonna throw you in jail along with them, which again

875
00:46:55,760 --> 00:46:59,239
Speaker 1: is a good reason to celebrate these strikes because they

876
00:46:59,280 --> 00:47:02,560
Speaker 1: were effective and beating back this legislation, but also pointing

877
00:47:02,600 --> 00:47:07,680
Speaker 1: out that everyone should have been taking part in these actions. Well, hey,

878
00:47:07,760 --> 00:47:10,680
Speaker 1: thanks for tuning in. That's gonna wrap up the first episode.

879
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 1: We encourage you to follow us going down on masses

880
00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:18,879
Speaker 1: on at I g D Underscore News and we hope

881
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:21,480
Speaker 1: you enjoyed us taking over It could Happen here. We're

882
00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:23,960
Speaker 1: gonna be back tomorrow. We're going to continue to look

883
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:26,439
Speaker 1: at general strikes. We're gonna do a deep dive into

884
00:47:26,760 --> 00:47:30,480
Speaker 1: Occupy Oakland that kicked off in two thousand eleven, and

885
00:47:30,640 --> 00:47:33,759
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at how a citywide general strike grew

886
00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:38,320
Speaker 1: out of the Oakland Commune after the police nearly murdered

887
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:46,120
Speaker 1: in Iraq War veteran and thanks for tuning in. It

888
00:47:46,200 --> 00:47:48,440
Speaker 1: could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.

889
00:47:48,680 --> 00:47:51,320
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website

890
00:47:51,360 --> 00:47:53,480
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com, or check us out on

891
00:47:53,560 --> 00:47:56,040
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

892
00:47:56,160 --> 00:47:58,879
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could

893
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:01,600
Speaker 1: Happen Here. Updated month Lee at cool zone Media dot

894
00:48:01,680 --> 00:48:03,840
Speaker 1: com slash sources. Thanks for listening.