Speaker 1: We live in a period of increasing class conflict. During
Speaker 1: the Trump years, strike action reached the seventeen year high.
Speaker 1: Strikes surged, increasing almost as workers fought back against rising
Speaker 1: inflation and the cost of living. Fights over unionization hit
Speaker 1: sectors previously thought to be un organizable, as workers declared
Speaker 1: victory across fast food chains, Starbucks, and Amazon. And this
Speaker 1: increased strike activity is taking place against the rising course
Speaker 1: of revolt. Tenants are forming unions and launching rent strikes.
Speaker 1: Riots kick off in the face of police murdering on
Speaker 1: average over three people per day, and kids walk out
Speaker 1: of school demanding everything from access to ppe to an
Speaker 1: end to attacks on queer and trans youth. It's not
Speaker 1: just that strikes are increasing, but the logic of the
Speaker 1: strike to strike a blow against one's class enemies, to
Speaker 1: enact a cost and generalize collective refusal, is spreading. As
Speaker 1: comes to a close, the largest strike by education workers
Speaker 1: across the University of California system has seen barricades, occupied buildings,
Speaker 1: and strikers even liberating dining halls to feed themselves. Members
Speaker 1: of the United Mine Workers have been on the picket
Speaker 1: lines for almost two years, and this holiday season, over
Speaker 1: one thousand rail workers stunned the brink of crippling the
Speaker 1: US economy and an effort to win sickly as the
Speaker 1: government rushed to enforce a contract and break the strike.
Speaker 1: With so many people on the verge of striking, it's
Speaker 1: easy to wonder what would happen if a strike across
Speaker 1: industries could be organized, a general strike. It's this very
Speaker 1: subject that we tackle in today's show. And speaking of strikes,
Speaker 1: the producers of it could happen here have walked off
Speaker 1: the job that it's going down. It's taken over, that's right.
Speaker 1: I g D will be occupying the means of this
Speaker 1: production for five shows throughout the month of January as
Speaker 1: we address some of the major issues of today while
Speaker 1: looking back at recent examples in history about how the
Speaker 1: exploiting excluded have attempted to meet the conditions which miserate
Speaker 1: our lives head on. Each episode, of course, is going
Speaker 1: to have special guests and a deep die from us.
Speaker 1: Launching the summer of two thousands fifteen, It's Going Down
Speaker 1: as a media platform, radio show and podcast. It covers
Speaker 1: a ton of a social movements from an anarchist perspective.
Speaker 1: As a group we represent folks from across the US.
Speaker 1: Tom and myself have been involved in covering and participating
Speaker 1: in social struggles for over twenty years. Sophie's a long
Speaker 1: time educator and community organizer across multiple continents. Marcella is
Speaker 1: a writer and comedian. This is Mike Andrews. Happy to
Speaker 1: be here. I'm Sophie Marcella and I'm Tom. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is really cool. Thanks to all that it can happen
Speaker 1: here people. That's awesome. Yeah, I'm excited to be here
Speaker 1: and talk about strikes. It's gonna be a fun time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm excited about today's topic very much. So, just art off.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. It seems like every few weeks on social media,
Speaker 1: every couple of months, whenever there's like a big issue
Speaker 1: that comes up or something's going on in the news cycle,
Speaker 1: the idea of a general strike will trend or sort
Speaker 1: of kind of get out in the ether as this
Speaker 1: zeit guys that becomes really popular, and you know, we
Speaker 1: live in this time and increasing protests and strikes and riots.
Speaker 1: But it also seems like the possibility of a general
Speaker 1: strike seems like very far off, or the idea of
Speaker 1: it even being this like trending thing on social media
Speaker 1: is sort of like passe or silly. And also it
Speaker 1: happens so often and we don't see it materialized, it
Speaker 1: can be easy to sort of write it off. Or
Speaker 1: on the other hand, a lot of people will say, well,
Speaker 1: if you want that to happen instead of just like
Speaker 1: wishing it to be on social media, you should just
Speaker 1: join a union and get involved that way. It seems
Speaker 1: that this drive to constantly declared general strikes, though ambitious,
Speaker 1: sometimes to the point of, you know, people being able
Speaker 1: to sort of make fun of it, the reality is
Speaker 1: is that the repeated sort of call for that has
Speaker 1: normalized that idea. And what we're seeing a lot in
Speaker 1: specifically in the US, but we're seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: people at their workplaces recognized that the business unions have failed, right,
Speaker 1: It's how we got here. You know, I live in
Speaker 1: the rest belt. I live in the midst of the
Speaker 1: failure of business unions every single day in my life.
Speaker 1: And that they've also come to understand something that the
Speaker 1: autonomous in Italy were talking about the seventies, which is
Speaker 1: that workers already control the means of production. They're already there.
Speaker 1: They already run the coffee shop, run the restaurant, run
Speaker 1: the warehouse, run the tech company, whatever, and if they
Speaker 1: just stop, nobody makes any money. And you don't need
Speaker 1: a union in a formal sense to do that. And
Speaker 1: so I think a lot of workers that traditionally fell
Speaker 1: outside of unions are starting to understand their powers workers
Speaker 1: outside of that structure, and that is incredibly important for
Speaker 1: us going forward. Yeah, I mean, I think you're totally right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think quiet quitting came out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: And I know it's just like an idea. I like
Speaker 1: loud quating more like I prefer that. But I do
Speaker 1: think this culture, we're creating a culture where it is
Speaker 1: okay to be anti work. It is okay for you
Speaker 1: to say I hate my job and I actually don't
Speaker 1: do anything and I steal for my boss, and we
Speaker 1: should normalize that, right, Like, I don't think striking is
Speaker 1: just this whole thing, and I do want to say
Speaker 1: this before I move into that. Every single time I
Speaker 1: posted TikTok video, somebody's always like general strike July. So
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, it's definitely on the internet a lot.
Speaker 1: But I do think even people saying that I'm not
Speaker 1: doing it has an impact because it's like, what is
Speaker 1: that Martin Soustri said, you have to fight the culture,
Speaker 1: and the culture that we live in now is a
Speaker 1: culture that's like obsessed with work for work sake, and
Speaker 1: so like maybe part of it is like, yeah, workers
Speaker 1: already owns the means of production. Yeah, just don't work
Speaker 1: as hard on your job, you know, and if your
Speaker 1: work steal from your boss. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: like this organizational thing. Because one thing is that, like
Speaker 1: you have to realize is that sometimes union work unions
Speaker 1: work with management. So it's like even if you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I want to wait for my union, it's like
Speaker 1: what if your union is like the fertila union that
Speaker 1: will go behind your back and like make this. Um.
Speaker 1: I guess all this to say is that I think
Speaker 1: changing the culture is important. Um, And I think that's
Speaker 1: happening now. I think yeah, like you said at the
Speaker 1: end of that, just like how something that I think
Speaker 1: we'll get into a lot more in this episode is
Speaker 1: looking at how this life claims to join the union
Speaker 1: being the practical thing to do towards a general strike
Speaker 1: just isn't accurate at all, and that when you look
Speaker 1: back in history at kind of any of the exciting
Speaker 1: moments of UM general strikes are uprising and stuff. It
Speaker 1: doesn't come from those official channels UM, and so I'm
Speaker 1: excited to get into that more. And I think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like we're saying like this thing where it's just
Speaker 1: become this thing that people will like say and talk about,
Speaker 1: even if there's not that cultural memory of like exactly
Speaker 1: what a general strike means or what what what's going
Speaker 1: to happen. There's this idea of like refusal and of
Speaker 1: solidarity that is captured just in the world and just
Speaker 1: in saying it. But I think it's really like showing
Speaker 1: that energy up and speaking of cultural memory. Fact, you're
Speaker 1: dynamite in your pitchforks because it's time for a trip
Speaker 1: down memory lane. In the early ninety hundreds of the
Speaker 1: United States, groups like the Industrial Workers of the World
Speaker 1: of the IWW, which advocated for the abolition of the
Speaker 1: wage system and capitalism, rejected racist exclusions of non white
Speaker 1: workers in the labor movement and even engaged in shootouts
Speaker 1: with the k KK, popularized the idea of the general
Speaker 1: strike in the United States on a large scale, with
Speaker 1: the idea itself and its application in US history it's
Speaker 1: much older. Throughout the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, anarchists, socialists,
Speaker 1: and everyday members of the working class all promoted and
Speaker 1: carried out multiple general strikes as a means to win
Speaker 1: political and economic concessions. For some, the general strike was
Speaker 1: also a launchpad for revolution, in which workers could, in theory,
Speaker 1: seize the means of existence out of the hands of
Speaker 1: the capitalist class and run society on its own terms.
Speaker 1: And it's this battle that thrust millions of everyday working
Speaker 1: class people directly into conflict with the American state and
Speaker 1: its military. In US history, the first large scale example
Speaker 1: of a general strike occurred in the midst of the
Speaker 1: American Civil War and W. E. B. Du Bois famous
Speaker 1: book Black Reconstruction, he explains how it was the general
Speaker 1: strike of the enslaved black proletariat that brought down the
Speaker 1: plantation system, not President Lincoln er union bullets. The boys
Speaker 1: argues that just like the black lead insurrections of today
Speaker 1: and ferguson him Minneapolis, this strike took bourgeois white society
Speaker 1: by total surprise, he writes it. In the South, newspapers
Speaker 1: denied the very idea that slaves could ever free themselves
Speaker 1: and even claim that they quote did not want to
Speaker 1: be free. He writes of white society in the North.
Speaker 1: The North shrank at the very thought of encouraging servile
Speaker 1: insurrection against the whites. Above all, it did not propose
Speaker 1: to interfere with property. Black people on the whole were
Speaker 1: considered cowards, inferior beings whose very presence in America was unfortunate.
Speaker 1: Only John Brown knew that revolt would come, and he
Speaker 1: was dead. So the boys really painted this picture of
Speaker 1: this mass care and society in which slavery is seen
Speaker 1: as very sad. More terrifying is the idea of mass
Speaker 1: black insurrection, which of course and mirrors today's situation. I
Speaker 1: mean the suburbs are, I mean right like that someburbs are.
Speaker 1: It's like for you to like pretend like all the
Speaker 1: things that you have are not built on blood. It's
Speaker 1: for you to like segment yourself away from the people
Speaker 1: in society that give you everything you have, yet you
Speaker 1: deny them everything. See you going you a little home
Speaker 1: and like drinking a little tea and like watch a
Speaker 1: little movies and just like ignore the fact that you're
Speaker 1: an apphle. You know what I mean? Like just like
Speaker 1: and even not even more more than an apple. I
Speaker 1: was going as far as saying, I used to say
Speaker 1: that they're not good or bad people, but like you're
Speaker 1: acting like a bad person, like you don't care about
Speaker 1: other people because you've been tricked to think that, like
Speaker 1: you're getting a good deal. And it's an interesting point
Speaker 1: that the Boys makes about just like. It was only
Speaker 1: kind of the radical wing of the abolishness movement that
Speaker 1: was talking about open revolt. There's this early anarchist A
Speaker 1: lot of people don't reference a lot but why is
Speaker 1: under Spooner. He conspired with John Brown various plots, and
Speaker 1: he later became a member of the First International and
Speaker 1: a contributor to early anarchist publications like Liberty. He produced
Speaker 1: this really early text which is just fantastic. It's called
Speaker 1: A Plan for the Abolish of Slavery, published in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight. It's a couple of years before the Civil War.
Speaker 1: He writes, our plan then is to make our war
Speaker 1: openly or secretly. A circumstances may dictate upon the property
Speaker 1: of the slaveholders, burn the master's buildings, kill their cattle
Speaker 1: and horses, conceal or destroy farming utensils, abandoned labor and
Speaker 1: seed time and harvest and let the crops perish, make
Speaker 1: slavery unprofitable. I love the line conceal or destroys. Like
Speaker 1: you can destroy them, you can also hide them. This
Speaker 1: is like a parallel that we can drawn out to.
Speaker 1: Like if you want to like have solidarity with like
Speaker 1: like other wage slaves, is that like do accommodate them
Speaker 1: and help them steal from their I mean from their jobs.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like these things happened in the past,
Speaker 1: but these are tactics that we can still use in
Speaker 1: the present. There's echoes of this quote later with Lucy Parsons, Right,
Speaker 1: you see this during the Structure in our work at
Speaker 1: Chicago where she gives a speech where she's talking about
Speaker 1: grabbing knives and going to the doors of the rent
Speaker 1: as a way to make it very very very clear
Speaker 1: that they weren't going to be able to live off
Speaker 1: the backs of the working class anymore. Right, Um. And
Speaker 1: it's the sort of idea of direct action, which now,
Speaker 1: I mean, if we think about now, what are politicians doing.
Speaker 1: They're trying to pass laws to make it a felony
Speaker 1: to have home demonstrations, right, to like do exactly these
Speaker 1: kinds of things, but in much more passive ways. So
Speaker 1: if we can really think back, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a tried and true technique that people used in the
Speaker 1: United States for a very very long time, and we
Speaker 1: can see still how much that terrifies people with power.
Speaker 1: There's another awesome quote from Spooner I just want to
Speaker 1: read as well, and this I find this one really
Speaker 1: interesting because he's speaking actually to white people in the South,
Speaker 1: especially people that work in the slave patrols. He says,
Speaker 1: white rascals of the South, willing tools of the slaveholders.
Speaker 1: You who drive slaves to do their labor, hunt them
Speaker 1: with dogs, and flog them for pay without asking any questions.
Speaker 1: You are the main pillars of the slave system. That
Speaker 1: is the most eloquent way to say exactly, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what I was thinking. I think it's interesting to
Speaker 1: point out, as do boys Rights. And as Frederick Douglas
Speaker 1: said of the Civil War, it was started quote in
Speaker 1: the interests of slavery on both sides. The South was
Speaker 1: fighting to take slavery out of the Union and the
Speaker 1: North was fighting to keep it in. And the mass
Speaker 1: black exodus did not kick off at the start of
Speaker 1: the war. He makes the really important point that union
Speaker 1: leaders made it clear that they did not want to
Speaker 1: disrupt the plantation system. At times, generals even offered to
Speaker 1: put down slave rebellions, and he says that they even forbade,
Speaker 1: at least in some instances, union soldiers from singing the
Speaker 1: song John Brown's Body. But as the North pushed into
Speaker 1: the South, the flood of former slaves escaping into Union
Speaker 1: hands grew and grew. By eighteen sixty two, is the
Speaker 1: Boys rights, This was the beginning of the swarming of
Speaker 1: increasing numbers no longer to work on Confederate plantations, a
Speaker 1: movement that became a general strike against the slave system.
Speaker 1: This was not merely the desire to stop work. It
Speaker 1: was a strike on a wide basis against the conditions
Speaker 1: of work. It was a general strike that evolved directly
Speaker 1: in the end, perhaps half a million people. They wanted
Speaker 1: to stop the economy of the plantation system, and to
Speaker 1: do that they left the plantations. It's interesting too, and
Speaker 1: The Boys makes this point the general strike also encouraged
Speaker 1: and took place alongside many poor whites deserting the Confederate army.
Speaker 1: One thing that's interesting about the Confederate side of the
Speaker 1: Civil War, you could get out of fighting if you
Speaker 1: own slaves, And a lot of poor whites deserted the
Speaker 1: Confederate army, which further crippled it. As the Boys noted,
Speaker 1: the poor white not only began to desert and run away,
Speaker 1: but thousands followed black people into the northern camps. And
Speaker 1: just some key takeaways to like launching the discussion side
Speaker 1: of this, It's interesting that the wider society, as the
Speaker 1: Boys notes, before the Civil War disparaged the possibility of
Speaker 1: mass collective action. And I think this really mirrors contemporary
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories and narratives around black rebellion today that happened
Speaker 1: often either in the midst of the George Floyd Uprising
Speaker 1: or afterwards. And also the mass strike and refusal that
Speaker 1: happened during the Civil War, which disrupted the economy and
Speaker 1: made things like the slave patrols, the policing of the
Speaker 1: plantation system impossible. That helped bring down the Confederacy, obviously,
Speaker 1: and I think it's important to ask, as our contemporary
Speaker 1: society remains structured around racial capitalism, what might be done
Speaker 1: in the current system in terms of mass refusal and
Speaker 1: desertion that would cause a similar effect. The idea of
Speaker 1: the wider society and disparaging mass collective action is because
Speaker 1: that the fear is letting us know that we do
Speaker 1: have mass power, you know what I mean. It's like
Speaker 1: it's not a surprise that people always say that Lincoln
Speaker 1: freed the slaves, and Lincoln literally said, if I had
Speaker 1: to end slavery to save the Union, I would have
Speaker 1: ended slavery. And if I have to keep slavery to
Speaker 1: save the Union, I would have kept a slavery you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So just like this whole idea
Speaker 1: of like letting black people know you can't do shi it,
Speaker 1: don't even bother is the they know that we can't
Speaker 1: do ship, and we are doing ship because black people
Speaker 1: are always rebelling. Um, if you come to flop push,
Speaker 1: you see it in full color. They realize the government
Speaker 1: isn't give a funk about them, and they've created their
Speaker 1: own institutions to support themselves. Um. Yeah, So it's like
Speaker 1: this whole idea to let us tell us don't even
Speaker 1: bother and and and like criminalizing like the informal sector
Speaker 1: because it's like that's a way for us like gain
Speaker 1: power outside of like the formal sector, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, and things like that. So I just think
Speaker 1: it's like it's like when they tell us, don't bother
Speaker 1: trying to fight back, like everybody has to suffer, Like
Speaker 1: that's what they always think. Everybody suffered, and we all
Speaker 1: just suffer and it's like, no, we don't want to suffer,
Speaker 1: and we're actually doing things to ease our suffering. And um,
Speaker 1: I think this is just like all this is to
Speaker 1: say that people who are out there doing stuff keep
Speaker 1: doing stuff, and like, if you want to do stuff,
Speaker 1: do it. You don't have to be brought of reunion.
Speaker 1: You don't have to put your job and be an activist.
Speaker 1: By the way, paid activists not really activists. You can
Speaker 1: do regular ship and you hold that. You can do
Speaker 1: a free stool in the corner on the street so
Speaker 1: people can have clothes. It's like you could striking from
Speaker 1: the economy means like divesting your time and resources, and
Speaker 1: you can do it. We can all do it in
Speaker 1: some shape or form well, And I think it becomes
Speaker 1: a lot more possible today to think about that than
Speaker 1: it did, say before. Right, So we had this kind
Speaker 1: of collapse of the legitimacy of the American political projects,
Speaker 1: sort of with the Iraq War, right, we all kind
Speaker 1: of saw how badly that can turn out. But what
Speaker 1: was left in America to uphold the entire edifice was
Speaker 1: the idea that even though things politically were kind of
Speaker 1: screwed up, at least there's economic success. And then that
Speaker 1: failed to right. And so this sort of idea that
Speaker 1: built up after World War Two, this kind of concept
Speaker 1: of you know, the labor corpor compromise, the loyal worker
Speaker 1: that's going to get provided for for the rest of
Speaker 1: their life. Not only did our parents generation find out
Speaker 1: that that was a lie, but younger generations don't really
Speaker 1: buy it at all. And so what you're really seeing is,
Speaker 1: I think this kind of breakdown socially of the legitimacy
Speaker 1: of the idea of the American dream because of all
Speaker 1: of its problematic elements and it's impossibility and its absurdity,
Speaker 1: and kind of this revival of an idea which existed
Speaker 1: prior to World War Two, which was an idea of
Speaker 1: social revolt, right, and it was something we saw manifest
Speaker 1: during the Great Depression, and it's part of the reason
Speaker 1: why the New Deal exists. Was a way to put
Speaker 1: that down was a way to prevent workers from feeling
Speaker 1: like the only thing that they had in front of
Speaker 1: them was to take over their factories and show up
Speaker 1: at the doors of the rich and so on, so
Speaker 1: and so on. Right. But that whole idea of the
Speaker 1: New Deal, that concept that the government was going to
Speaker 1: take care of you and the company was going to
Speaker 1: take care of you, collapsed in the nineties seventies, but
Speaker 1: the idea that it existed still holds on in some
Speaker 1: sectors of the of America today. I mean, you see
Speaker 1: this with the magacrat out really heavily, the idea that
Speaker 1: like nothing systematically needs change, really we just need better outcomes,
Speaker 1: and we just need, you know, in their case, Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: to pay attention to us and give us the things
Speaker 1: that we want. But really, outside of that almost comical patriotism, um,
Speaker 1: you don't really see a lot of adherence to that
Speaker 1: vision any further. And that makes the idea of mass
Speaker 1: refusal not only a lot more possible, but something that's
Speaker 1: actively happening currently. Yeah, And the other parts who I
Speaker 1: want to bring in is that when the New Deal
Speaker 1: is caused, it excluded like black people, right, And so
Speaker 1: that's one way It's like it's like this constants, like
Speaker 1: how white people are like tricked into like submitting to
Speaker 1: the system, and it happens so many times, and they
Speaker 1: still keep saying, took us again, took us again. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're gonna give you ship so you're not upset, and
Speaker 1: then they're going to exclude black people because at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, black people do all the work
Speaker 1: that we need to survive as a society. Do we
Speaker 1: not remember who the essential workers were? Like who does
Speaker 1: the jobs that we need to like live, like, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? So yeah, you could like be
Speaker 1: out of work and get your little thing, But as
Speaker 1: long as we keep inslating and treating the people who
Speaker 1: make this aciet any run, it's fine. Um. And now
Speaker 1: that's happening to white people too, and they're like, oh no,
Speaker 1: this is not cute, like it's not fun and quiet quitting,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Because like there we are,
Speaker 1: like the way black people have been treated is certing
Speaker 1: to happen to white people. And it's just like I
Speaker 1: hope this is what I was going to ask you.
Speaker 1: How do we prevent another New Deal situation from happening
Speaker 1: where white workers are tricked again, Like because I feel
Speaker 1: it's coming. I feel like they're going to find a
Speaker 1: way out of this, and like how do we know
Speaker 1: what if it's like bullshit? And like how do we
Speaker 1: call it out? And how do we call it out?
Speaker 1: That's what student unforgiveness was, right. I mean, like, if
Speaker 1: we really think about it, the Democratic parties been built
Speaker 1: recently since the Obama era on this idea of reinstituting
Speaker 1: elements of the New Deal without threatening the existence of capitalism. Um,
Speaker 1: very intentionally right. We saw that the Affordable Care Act
Speaker 1: as version of that. Right. So, I mean they are
Speaker 1: doing this and I think what's fascinating about this, And
Speaker 1: this is something that radicals in the late sixties pointed
Speaker 1: out often about Lyndon Johnson is they said, you know,
Speaker 1: liberals voted for Lyndon Johnson and they put all their
Speaker 1: hopes in him, so when he failed them, it didn't
Speaker 1: have anything left to do except hit the streets, right,
Speaker 1: Like there was no other option. And I think what
Speaker 1: we've really seen since the Obama era is the collapse
Speaker 1: of the idea that the way that the Democrats do
Speaker 1: social assistances in any way going to solve anything. Um,
Speaker 1: that's just going to continue to perpetuate the situation of
Speaker 1: which we need social assistance, right, as opposed to fundamentally
Speaker 1: ending that, which is you know, the language that they
Speaker 1: put forward when they talked about things like justice, which
Speaker 1: we all know that they don't really have much adherence to. Right.
Speaker 1: But I think until the until the Democratic Party gains
Speaker 1: legitimacy again, if they ever do, which hopefully they don't,
Speaker 1: but if they ever do, yeah, we might be able
Speaker 1: to see this kind of use of reformedism, this counterinsurgency again, right,
Speaker 1: which is really what the New Deal was. But really
Speaker 1: until that, I mean we saw in twenty you know,
Speaker 1: when the legitimacy of the group of people who often
Speaker 1: relies on that technique falls apart, you get uprisings in
Speaker 1: the streets, right. And so we're at kind of a
Speaker 1: different point, I think than than maybe just before the
Speaker 1: new kind of came into effect. Something I want to
Speaker 1: go back to too, that I think it's relevant to
Speaker 1: this is the piece where the quote um is talking
Speaker 1: about concealing or like in secret or in public or whatever.
Speaker 1: How there's like a lot of power in terms of
Speaker 1: like things like general strikes in that sort of like
Speaker 1: invisibility or whatever in the unpredictability in like not going
Speaker 1: for like building movements based on like visibility or public
Speaker 1: perception or like the media or whatever, but actually building
Speaker 1: them in these ways that can't be seen as much
Speaker 1: and might be concealed. Um. And also this thing where
Speaker 1: people are underestimated, Like it makes me think about the
Speaker 1: revolution in Haiti in the late seventeen hundreds, which is
Speaker 1: you know, a long time ago but still very relevant, um.
Speaker 1: And just thinking about how the kind of like colonizes
Speaker 1: in Paris, like couldn't believe the reports that were coming
Speaker 1: out of uprising in Haiti at the time because they
Speaker 1: were so racist basically that they didn't believe that black
Speaker 1: people there who were they could rise up and could
Speaker 1: have that like no awareness gump or whatever. Um. And
Speaker 1: that gave them a lot of room, you know, that
Speaker 1: was like a position of power for them that like, um,
Speaker 1: they were being underestimated like that much. And I think
Speaker 1: that's something we see with like even though like the
Speaker 1: idea that's gone on from that time really of like
Speaker 1: outside agitator and stuff like in any uprising that we
Speaker 1: see um involved. Yeah, that both part people is that
Speaker 1: there's something in that that is also powerful and it
Speaker 1: gives possibility. Well, speaking of outside agitators, we're going to
Speaker 1: take a break and hear from some of our sponsors
Speaker 1: right now. In eighteen sixty five, on paper, the Civil
Speaker 1: War ended and the Union was saved. A decade later,
Speaker 1: the North began pointing out of the cell, marking me
Speaker 1: into reconstruction efforts in the beginning of both jem Crow
Speaker 1: and a reign of terror and white vigilaneism in the
Speaker 1: form of the ku Klux Klan. The eighteen seventies was
Speaker 1: also a period of increasing poverty, declaiming wages, rising homelessness,
Speaker 1: economic depression, and exploding class conflict, as the stage was
Speaker 1: said for the Great Upheaval of eighteen seventy seven, a
Speaker 1: general strike that rocked multiple states as workers across lines
Speaker 1: of color, gender, profession, and age threatened the very core
Speaker 1: of the capitalist state. As the decades were on, multiple
Speaker 1: general strikes followed, as did a heavy handed government response
Speaker 1: that evolved to police and repressed the broader population. Wanting
Speaker 1: to know more about this history of these general strikes
Speaker 1: in their importance, we caught up with labor historian and
Speaker 1: author Robert Ovett's, author of one workers shot back, and
Speaker 1: we the elites. Ovetts argues that the often violent general
Speaker 1: strikes of the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds
Speaker 1: showcase the ability of working people. It's not only confront
Speaker 1: the state and capitalism, but also organized society on their
Speaker 1: own terms. Well. General strikes have been a rare occurrence,
Speaker 1: but a very powerful example of the way that organized
Speaker 1: workers and communities can transform society and hopefully transcend capitalism.
Speaker 1: I think we have in the examples of general strikes
Speaker 1: in US history an example of the potential for getting
Speaker 1: beyond capitalism, and so that's what makes them really exciting
Speaker 1: to to study and to write about. At A general
Speaker 1: strike doesn't just happen, and we don't actually know exactly
Speaker 1: why general strikes happen, but we know that they don't
Speaker 1: just happen. They're not spontaneous. There has to be a
Speaker 1: groundwork of organizing and engaged activists and organizers who are
Speaker 1: working quietly, sometimes for months or years, to to work
Speaker 1: and organizing their fellow workers and to build community connections
Speaker 1: to support their strike actions. And there also has to
Speaker 1: be a good communication of what what the strike is about,
Speaker 1: what their demands are, and the ability to communicate and
Speaker 1: spread information about that strike. Probably the two most important
Speaker 1: general strikes in US history were the one in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven and the one in nine in Seattle. And
Speaker 1: the one in eighteen seventy seven was a general strike
Speaker 1: throughout the railroad industry, but it also had extraordinary um microcosmic,
Speaker 1: if you will, a general strike that was happening in St.
Speaker 1: Louis and East St. Louis. But what was fascinating about
Speaker 1: that was that the groundwork had been laid in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, not by a union actually, because the workers
Speaker 1: had tried to form a union, but it was sabotaged,
Speaker 1: it was infiltrated, and they tried to the the organizers
Speaker 1: tried to call off the set date to start the
Speaker 1: general strike and the railroad industry, but the workers went
Speaker 1: on strike anyways, and they built their own organization across
Speaker 1: dozens of different railroad come panies on their own. In St. Louis, however,
Speaker 1: there was a new left wing party called the Working
Speaker 1: Men's Party that was formed by various socialists and communists
Speaker 1: and anarchists who had taken over the city and for
Speaker 1: a few days tried to run it and that was.
Speaker 1: That was probably closer to what happened in Seattle in
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, where over a hundred local unions actually pressured
Speaker 1: the Labor Council to call a general strike, and so
Speaker 1: that was kind of built up from below through formal unions.
Speaker 1: But then it went far beyond anything that those AFL
Speaker 1: affiliated unions were willing to really do. The St. Louis
Speaker 1: General Strike in eighteen seventy seven that I was just mentioning. Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a multi racial coalition of worker organizers who
Speaker 1: literally took charge of the strike. There had been a
Speaker 1: strike committee form and those that strike committee was dominated
Speaker 1: by the Working Men's Party activists, but the workers themselves
Speaker 1: started to organize outside the confines of the strike coordinating committee,
Speaker 1: and it was very multiracial. They started marching on one
Speaker 1: workplace and another. Uh. There was some evidence that there
Speaker 1: were some women that were involved in it. So there
Speaker 1: were strong ties to the community and various households and neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: But they marched on one workplace to another and spread
Speaker 1: the strike, and within a couple of days much of
Speaker 1: the city had been shut down. And the irony of
Speaker 1: this was that the strike coordinating council actually freaked out
Speaker 1: about how multi racial of the crowds were that were
Speaker 1: shutting down these workplaces and leaving and leaving work um
Speaker 1: and internally they became very divided based on their their racism,
Speaker 1: and there were some members of the coordinating committee that
Speaker 1: were extreme racial supremacists and didn't want the strike to continue,
Speaker 1: and they debated how to stop the strike, how to
Speaker 1: call it off, and but the reality was that they
Speaker 1: had lost control of it to the workers outside of
Speaker 1: the committee. And when it became clear that the militias
Speaker 1: were being called into St. Louis to attack the city,
Speaker 1: the workers marched on the Medium Hall where the strike
Speaker 1: coordinating council was and demanded that they appropriate money to
Speaker 1: acquire arms to defend the city. But they refused to
Speaker 1: do that, and they eventually tried to call off the strike.
Speaker 1: Uh So that lasted a few days, and race was
Speaker 1: a huge factor in why the strikes spread and how
Speaker 1: the workers took over the city, But it was also
Speaker 1: a factor and how it was actually killed by those
Speaker 1: who were supposedly quote unquote running the actual general strike.
Speaker 1: In the case of Seattle, we don't know as much
Speaker 1: about the racial composition of the workers. UM. But we
Speaker 1: do know that it was very generalized throughout the entire city. UM.
Speaker 1: And the reason we know this is because the the
Speaker 1: General Strike Committee, which was formed by the Labor count
Speaker 1: soul I, had representatives of every union and they took
Speaker 1: care of many of the reproductive needs of the population.
Speaker 1: For example, they kept the hospital running. UH. They set
Speaker 1: up free kitchens where people could eat UM. They as
Speaker 1: well as setting up and publishing a newspaper that came
Speaker 1: out every day during the five days of the strike,
Speaker 1: so they took care of also of public safety. UM.
Speaker 1: So what was extraordinary about the Seattle General Strike is
Speaker 1: how it incorporated many of these issues that we would
Speaker 1: say is about gender and reproductive needs of the population.
Speaker 1: They didn't just shut down the workplace. They actually took
Speaker 1: over the city and reorganized society to meet the needs
Speaker 1: of humanity. The seven strike actually resulted in what I
Speaker 1: show in a lot of detail in my first book,
Speaker 1: when workers shot back, how the state and capital reorganized
Speaker 1: themselves in order to u be able to respond a
Speaker 1: lot quicker to self organized workers and strikes and especially
Speaker 1: general strikes. For example, the modern police came into being
Speaker 1: in many cities as a result of the eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven strike because up until that point, the police were um,
Speaker 1: if you will, they were kind of like gig workers.
Speaker 1: They worked on quote unquote tips or bribes. UH. There
Speaker 1: were very few cities that had any municipal police, and
Speaker 1: if they did, they had very small forces. And so
Speaker 1: that was one reason why the strikes spread so quickly
Speaker 1: around the country over that that ten day or so
Speaker 1: period in July of eighteen seventy seven. UH, So modern
Speaker 1: policing really came into being. Also, as you mentioned, the
Speaker 1: militias were transformed into what became the National Guard. The
Speaker 1: militias also proved to be undependable because they were mostly
Speaker 1: composed of working men, and if they were called out locally,
Speaker 1: they knew the strikers, and in fact, some of them
Speaker 1: were strikers and didn't even show up for their militia duty.
Speaker 1: So militias were essentially de emphasized and they were replaced
Speaker 1: by a state controlled National Guard. UM. As a result
Speaker 1: of the passage of a new federal law. UH, the
Speaker 1: military was also funded on a permanent basis. One reason
Speaker 1: why the military was so slow to be UH to
Speaker 1: be deployed to put down the strike in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven was most of the soldiers were out in the
Speaker 1: West fighting essentially a genocidal war against the Plans native peoples,
Speaker 1: and so there weren't enough military around. And also Congress
Speaker 1: hadn't funded the military that year, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: and so the military was unfunded and undersized. Another consequence
Speaker 1: of this was that many corporations started to work together
Speaker 1: to create their own you could say, mutual aid to
Speaker 1: protect one another. They started forming employer groups in order
Speaker 1: to be able to respond to a more coordinated method.
Speaker 1: Um So you started to see corporations cooperated result of this.
Speaker 1: In fact, many of the technologies that we take for
Speaker 1: granted today were a result of the eighteen seventy seven
Speaker 1: railroad strike. For example, UH, the telegraph was installed in
Speaker 1: many rich people's homes as a way to be able
Speaker 1: to contact the police directly. Those lines went directly to
Speaker 1: the police. UH. The so called pattiwagon was also invented
Speaker 1: as a result of the eighteen seventy seven strike as
Speaker 1: a weapon against large crowds. Um So, there were a
Speaker 1: number of m of new technologies that were implemented UH
Speaker 1: and became more widespread as a results of that strike
Speaker 1: in Seattle. Also, the workers were prepared, they had known
Speaker 1: their history, and they formed a self defense group UH
Speaker 1: composed primarily of World War One veterans who had just
Speaker 1: come back from more or one UM and they patrolled
Speaker 1: the city and they did things like shut down bars
Speaker 1: because they didn't want UH people to get drawnk and
Speaker 1: start fighting and that would be a justification for the
Speaker 1: the National Guard to be called in. But the police
Speaker 1: started to essentially line up outside the boundaries of the
Speaker 1: city and they waited for reinforcements threatenings essentially to invade
Speaker 1: Seattle before the general strike was called off. But the
Speaker 1: workers were prepared. They did carry out and organized self
Speaker 1: defense against that eventuality. The Oakland general strike was part
Speaker 1: of an extraordinary wave of post War two strikes that
Speaker 1: were happening just like after Word one and actually during
Speaker 1: Worldar one there was a wave of strikes UH. The
Speaker 1: same thing happened when a lot of soldiers started coming
Speaker 1: back from War two. Unemployment shot up, women were sent
Speaker 1: as sent packing. UH prices exploded, there was a shortage
Speaker 1: of housing UH and workers started to organize and UH.
Speaker 1: During that few year period, UH there was a general
Speaker 1: strike in the steel sector, and Truman threatened to take
Speaker 1: over some of the larger companies, and he was repelled
Speaker 1: by the Supreme Court. But as a consequence of this
Speaker 1: uh this upsurge of class struggle, the Congress paths to
Speaker 1: Taff Hardly Act, which still governs US today. For workers
Speaker 1: who try to organize in the private sector where they're
Speaker 1: under the National Labor Relations Act, the Taff Hardley Act
Speaker 1: was an amendment to that law. One of the most
Speaker 1: important things it did was a banned so called secondary strikes,
Speaker 1: which means that if workers go on strike somewhere, workers
Speaker 1: can't strike in solidarity um and particularly if they have
Speaker 1: a union contract with their employer, it would be illegal. Now,
Speaker 1: there are some workers that are exempted from that, for
Speaker 1: example transport workers because they're under a different federal law.
Speaker 1: They're under the Railway Labor Act, which is part of
Speaker 1: the reason why we almost just saw rail railroad general
Speaker 1: strike before the Democrats killed it a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1: But the tapped Hartley Act continues to serve as a
Speaker 1: means of suppressing and repressing the ability not only of
Speaker 1: workers but organized unions in their local workplaces, but to
Speaker 1: actually engage in a general strike. So again we've been
Speaker 1: listening to Robert Ovette's author of One Workers Shot Back
Speaker 1: and We the Elites. Just a few key takeaways from
Speaker 1: that discussion. We see various examples in these general strikes
Speaker 1: of tensions developing between more radical elements and reformist ones
Speaker 1: that want to contain revolutionary expressions and also stop workers
Speaker 1: from really taking over society. We also see positive examples
Speaker 1: of these strikes spilling out across lines of race, gender,
Speaker 1: and age and profession. One thing we see, of course,
Speaker 1: again and again is the state responding to these strikes
Speaker 1: with the combination of militia's police and of course the
Speaker 1: National Guard. And finally, many of these strikes lead to
Speaker 1: the passing of legislation, which is interesting because far are
Speaker 1: from this sort of progressive arc towards justice. Instead, we
Speaker 1: see constantly, again and again the state either reforming itself
Speaker 1: to become more oppressive, engage in surveillance, reconstitute the police
Speaker 1: in a certain way, reconstitute the military, or sometimes bring
Speaker 1: the workers into the superstructure of the state and roorge
Speaker 1: to better manage them. Yeah, I totally agree. It's not
Speaker 1: getting better. They're just being smart about it. They're like
Speaker 1: like little like slimy balls. They're just like reshaping as
Speaker 1: they need to shape and form to like get workers.
Speaker 1: So like when you were reading that, it felt like
Speaker 1: a writer's were It felt like a movie of like
Speaker 1: how do we control these people? You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: It felt like it was like this like checker but
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, they make their move, we make their move.
Speaker 1: And it's like it's like the state as a tool
Speaker 1: and like you see that because it's like it's a
Speaker 1: tool of the elite, and you see that through the
Speaker 1: laws that are passed, and like when they're passed, like
Speaker 1: because when black and white people form them, this violence
Speaker 1: like a lot of state violence, like extreme state violence,
Speaker 1: because it's like they want to remind us like that's bad,
Speaker 1: you don't do that, and then they'll do stuff to
Speaker 1: play get worker like white workers too, like with a
Speaker 1: Wagoner Act, like with unionization, like a lot of black
Speaker 1: people were excluded from that. Maybe just maybe things aren't
Speaker 1: getting better like they're telling you they are. Things are
Speaker 1: just reshaving. That's something else I'm thinking about as you're talking.
Speaker 1: And just like from from that history that it is
Speaker 1: like we hear that like the creativity of the state
Speaker 1: with their oppression or whatever that's going on, but also
Speaker 1: how people keep coming back with like new and different things,
Speaker 1: you know, like it actually takes a lot of repression
Speaker 1: to stop these things. Like if you look at what
Speaker 1: happened Stubben or whatever, it's like they killed quite a
Speaker 1: lot of people to stop that strike wave and stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's really heavy handed. And then but
Speaker 1: still a lot of strikes happen after that, and it
Speaker 1: leads up to Haymarket in age six or whatever. And
Speaker 1: I just think, again, again, we seem like repression, but
Speaker 1: then we see it flowering again. And I think that
Speaker 1: what we're seeing like right now maybe is like a
Speaker 1: sort of creative non union. And when we're talking at
Speaker 1: the beginning about people just saying general strike, general strike,
Speaker 1: it's like whatever happens next will be something different. What
Speaker 1: we're seeing is we're seeing over this time the mechanism
Speaker 1: of counterinsurgency get a lot more complex. Right, So in
Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies, it's let's get some guns and force
Speaker 1: everyone to come back to work. But now it's why
Speaker 1: don't we get nonprofits to fund these you know, public programs.
Speaker 1: Why don't we have community policing and coffee with cops,
Speaker 1: and and so you saw during the George Floyd uprising,
Speaker 1: as he saw a lot of this like, well, I
Speaker 1: know that y'all want to cut funding from police departments,
Speaker 1: but really what you should do is you should come
Speaker 1: to our budget meeting and we could put it in
Speaker 1: the city budget and we should talk about it that way.
Speaker 1: And that was the way to force there in the
Speaker 1: streets back into a mechanism that's able to be more
Speaker 1: easily controlled. Um. But we see in like rust belt
Speaker 1: cities Pittsburgh, Cleveland, places like this, the way that the
Speaker 1: wealthy at this period of time, the late nineteenth and
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, we're already talking about trying to change
Speaker 1: entire environments, right, So like surveillance, nonprofit activity like that
Speaker 1: changes the whole environments. It's not just about a single
Speaker 1: individual objective, but it shapes an entire reality. In these
Speaker 1: rust belt cities during that period of time, I mean,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of like free art museums and
Speaker 1: stuff like this that are world class institutions, but if
Speaker 1: you look at their charters and actually look at them closely,
Speaker 1: the reason those institutions exist was, to quote inculturate the
Speaker 1: working class, and it was all about like Rockefeller very
Speaker 1: specifically Cleveland money to these institutions so the working class
Speaker 1: wouldn't kill them, like wouldn't murder them. And it was
Speaker 1: in the middle of really intense anti capitalist activity in
Speaker 1: those cities, right and so we can watch the development
Speaker 1: of those techniques right now. It takes the form of
Speaker 1: defunding the police campaigns and things like that as opposed
Speaker 1: to abolitionism. Um It takes the form of trying to
Speaker 1: find softer means of policing, like surveillance as opposed to
Speaker 1: just happen clubs and guns and stuff um. Or, in
Speaker 1: the case of the Democratic Party, of the smart Border,
Speaker 1: when they talk about the smart Border, which is essentially
Speaker 1: putting a bunch of sensors and cameras in the desert
Speaker 1: to try and catch people crossing the border, that somehow
Speaker 1: less repressive by shaping the entire space around surveillance, that
Speaker 1: somehow less repressive than just having police. And they use
Speaker 1: that idea that if they're not in a uniform, and
Speaker 1: they don't have a weapon right in front of them,
Speaker 1: or aren't human, that somehow there's some benefit that emerges
Speaker 1: and somehow the state is retreating a little bit when
Speaker 1: in actuality thinks like body cameras, stuff like that just
Speaker 1: increase the ability of the state to have visibility, just
Speaker 1: increases the number of cameras on the street and increases
Speaker 1: the ability of the state to control information and decide
Speaker 1: what information gets out. Um. These are all things which
Speaker 1: have reinforced the power of the state, but they get
Speaker 1: portrayed as you know, forms of as reforms that are
Speaker 1: supposed to solve these huge social problems that people keep
Speaker 1: raising up. Well, speaking of things rich people give us
Speaker 1: so we won't kill them, We're going to know here
Speaker 1: for some from some of our sponsors. So far, we've
Speaker 1: talked about general strikes that are largely over a hundred
Speaker 1: years old. But now we're going to turn and look
Speaker 1: at two examples of general strikes that took place within
Speaker 1: the last twenty years. In December of two thousand five,
Speaker 1: Republicans passed in the House of Representatives Hr four four
Speaker 1: three seven, also known as the Border Protection, Anti Terrorism
Speaker 1: and a Legal Immigration Control Act of two thousand five,
Speaker 1: a proposed piece of legislation that's as jaconian as it sounds.
Speaker 1: The bill as the A C. L You wrote, pushed
Speaker 1: to quote militarize the border, give extraordinary powers to low
Speaker 1: level immigration officials, allowing law enforcement to expel without hearing
Speaker 1: anyone believed to be undocumented and detained non citizens and
Speaker 1: definitely without meaningful review. The bill also sought to levy
Speaker 1: criminal penalties against anyone that engage in assisting someone that
Speaker 1: was undocumented, which threatened both employers of undocumented workers, as
Speaker 1: well as union organizers, teachers, clergy, and beyond, foreshadowing the
Speaker 1: Trump presidency. It also called for hundreds of miles of
Speaker 1: border fence and authorized state and local law enforcement to
Speaker 1: enforce federal immigration law. As George Kemphas wrote in the
Speaker 1: See Say Poity Insurrection, the bill would transform almost every
Speaker 1: person in the United States into either undocumented violators, police enforcers,
Speaker 1: or classify them as criminally complicit. The authoritarian nature of
Speaker 1: the legislation in the existential threat it represented, pushed many
Speaker 1: a document of workers to take action and organize on
Speaker 1: a mass scale. As Kemphis wrote, starting in March of
Speaker 1: two thousand, six marches and more than half a million
Speaker 1: people overwhelmed the centers of major cities like Los Angeles, Chicago,
Speaker 1: New York, and Dallas halteen business, while there were literally
Speaker 1: hundreds of smaller gatherings and many other smaller cities. There
Speaker 1: were dozens of student walkouts and high schools around the country,
Speaker 1: as well as a nationwide immigrant general strike called for
Speaker 1: on Maybia that was heated by hundreds of tho perhaps
Speaker 1: millions of workers, including truck drivers, who shut down the
Speaker 1: port of Los Angeles. Despite a series of large scale
Speaker 1: immigration raids aimed at derailing the movement, millions took the
Speaker 1: streets and carried out strikes, all outside of the direction
Speaker 1: of union in Democratic Party leadership. The mass protests and
Speaker 1: strikes helped revive May Day as a day of labor
Speaker 1: and worker action in the United States. Installed for over
Speaker 1: a decade. Right wing attacks on immigrants HR four fourth
Speaker 1: three seven failed to pass, in large part due to
Speaker 1: the mass opposition it faced on the streets in the
Speaker 1: spring of two thousand six. Direct action, as they say,
Speaker 1: gets the goods. And what's fascinating about the two thousand
Speaker 1: six strike is that it was organized outside of established
Speaker 1: unions and political parties, especially the Democratic Party, had a
Speaker 1: key youth wing to it. We saw lots of student walkouts.
Speaker 1: It was able to seriously push back against this draconian
Speaker 1: wave of anti immigrant legislation, and that worked for around
Speaker 1: ten years. And it seems like we don't reference this
Speaker 1: strike enough and talk about how important it was. I
Speaker 1: was in a junior in high school when kids were
Speaker 1: walking out, but this is how I sleep. I was.
Speaker 1: I didn't walk out, and I just remember thinking, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, those kids are so courageous and they're such badasses,
Speaker 1: and it's so cool that they're doing that, and I
Speaker 1: wish that I could well. That law was like Fugitive
Speaker 1: Slave Law Act, Like straight up, they were just trying
Speaker 1: to like re install slavery among people who were not
Speaker 1: here documented like you know what I mean. They were
Speaker 1: trying to create a situation where people were still working despread,
Speaker 1: they were going to work for slave wages. And I'll
Speaker 1: say this about New York City, there's a huge like
Speaker 1: immigrant population, a huge undocumented work of population that we
Speaker 1: didn't even I mean, I didn't know about until COVID hit.
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of people who were keeping the
Speaker 1: economy alive that are not even counted, and they pay
Speaker 1: for our existence. As we're talking about those two things
Speaker 1: that always come up for me when talking about these strikes.
Speaker 1: First is, you know, the entire concept of quote immigration
Speaker 1: reform as it was being talked about by Republicans at
Speaker 1: the time and then later accelerated under Trump. This idea
Speaker 1: of order walls started with the American Nazi Party, right, Like,
Speaker 1: this was an American Nazi Party policy proposal in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties and sixties that got picked up through white
Speaker 1: supremacist movements, through people like George Wallace and sort of
Speaker 1: imported into the Republican Party. Yeah, because it's Nazis. I
Speaker 1: think the other thing that was really inspiring about that movement.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, out of college at that point
Speaker 1: watching this happen. It was one of the first times
Speaker 1: I saw mass decentralized action happened across the entire country
Speaker 1: at that scale that sort of hit and apex like
Speaker 1: during these days, right, the sort of period of time
Speaker 1: in which people kind of took it upon themselves to
Speaker 1: shut the whole country down. And it just shows what
Speaker 1: can happen when community is organized as communities of people
Speaker 1: and not as spectators in some sort of removed symbolic
Speaker 1: political action, but actually become immediate protagonists and what's going
Speaker 1: on in front of them. And the other thing I
Speaker 1: think is like really interesting about this is that it
Speaker 1: was such a massive response and the of what the
Speaker 1: Act was saying was that you could be like prosecutor
Speaker 1: for assisting someone who's undocumented. That I think it goes
Speaker 1: back to what we've been talking about with the other
Speaker 1: strikes stuff, is like the government is very aware that
Speaker 1: like solidarity between people is dangerous basically and tries to
Speaker 1: letistate it. And we see, you know, after that strike
Speaker 1: in you know, the Strikebay in event seven, you start
Speaker 1: to get all those anti conspiracy laws and stuff because
Speaker 1: that's a threat. And I love that in this sense.
Speaker 1: It's like they put that out and it gets like, um,
Speaker 1: such a massive response against it that people really like
Speaker 1: win basically and that last for like a decade. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that goes back to the idea of white
Speaker 1: supremacy historically in the United States, being this system of
Speaker 1: how people described it, of carrots and sticks, of offering
Speaker 1: incentives to be included in this bracket of whiteness. That
Speaker 1: also saying if you help that kid at school, we're
Speaker 1: gonna throw you in jail along with them, which again
Speaker 1: is a good reason to celebrate these strikes because they
Speaker 1: were effective and beating back this legislation, but also pointing
Speaker 1: out that everyone should have been taking part in these actions. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: thanks for tuning in. That's gonna wrap up the first episode.
Speaker 1: We encourage you to follow us going down on masses
Speaker 1: on at I g D Underscore News and we hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed us taking over It could Happen here. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be back tomorrow. We're going to continue to look
Speaker 1: at general strikes. We're gonna do a deep dive into
Speaker 1: Occupy Oakland that kicked off in two thousand eleven, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at how a citywide general strike grew
Speaker 1: out of the Oakland Commune after the police nearly murdered
Speaker 1: in Iraq War veteran and thanks for tuning in. It
Speaker 1: could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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