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Some leftists talk about a general strike like its the rapture. You need the ground work done. We've done none of the work broadly to make something like that feasible. Strikers need economic and legal leverage, they'd have basically none if they tried.
You have to walk before you run.
Anytime I see posts talking about a general strike I equate to "thoughts and prayers".
Yes, but also its worse. They are demanding people shoot themselves in the crotch and saying we're cowards for not shooting ourselves in the crotch.
A general strike would need to be huge to work. And yet we see folk bitching that the No Kings rallies "did nothing", as if.just getting America to stand up wasn't an accomplishment.
It may have been a accomplishment, but it was not even nearly enough. Nobody was impressed, least of all the fascists. If you want to hurt trump, hurt the moneys
And it's sentiment like this that makes it clear that the people clambering for people to "just do a general strike" or "just take up arms" have given no thoughts to how to do that without wasting the resources or lives of the people they demand take action. If you take part in union organizing, you learn that you have to make all of your attempts count, otherwise you're blowing your chances and making it harder in the future by alerting the bosses. Yes, you have to impact their money, but just like "vote with your wallet" is an empty phrase if there's no mass movement around a specific product/company, to actually deal with the structural issues that billionaires and the companies they represent present, individuals have to band together to create structures that can contend with them. Otherwise, it's just proposing individual actions to address structural problems, and that plays enough into the hands of these tyrants that they'll say that's the "right" way to deal with the problems they cause.
In the USA health insurance is tied to work; if you're fired "with cause" (like from general strike) you don't have health insurance or any "unemployment".
They don't make these laws without reason, they know what they're doing. The USA is a plutocracy designed to squash unions, and does a pretty good job of it
So this means you need to go all-in or simply watch it all burn from your couch. No in-betweens
As you look outside in the US on the first Monday after a holiday and see the countless millions of people driving to work, going grocery shopping, dropping off and picking up their kids, you need to ask yourself if you really think the bulk of the money-spending, child-feeding, bill-paying population of the US is ready to sacrifice weeks of services and food for an outcome that they don't actually want or understand.
You know it's not going to happen, but the next best thing is political organizing and getting social and making people more aware in REAL LIFE about issues in their community that impact them, and the people who represent them. Volunteer to get petitions, sign up for Progressive Victory, use that energy to help the systems already working to mitigate or even reverse damage being done to our nation.
We can still turn this boat around with traditional politics, but it takes actual humans getting involved with other actual humans. Since capital has successfully turned most of our socialization muscles to mush, it will be uncomfortable at first, but far easier to pull off than trying to get several hundred million comfortable people to break their own system.
They've cultivated this culture where nobody can afford to do any kind of direct action like a general strike. There's a reason why nearly everyone in America works paycheck to paycheck and has essentially zero savings.
But that's exactly the point, isn't it? If people are struggling to get by and have no time for anything outside of work, sounds like ripe grounds of radicalization if only someone else were to reach out. If the system is directly failing someone, it wouldn't take much to energize them to join a movement to enact change.
A general strike requires organization, but US society is completely atomized.
I'm gonna end up committing sui before the general American populace does a gen strike.
No one should be buying from Amazon. Start with one big company, simple yeah? No, because post Christmas season now, the amount of people who still use amazon has not changed at all. For me sure, the general populace? They're fucking morons. Consume consume consume. I'm gonna consume myself from the inside out. These rat bitches only care about themselves. American individualism is a cancer.
I'm struggling to exist in this. I cannot tell you how much these assholes don't care.
This isn't corporate social media, you can say suicide there's no algorithm to punish you.
Fair. I didn't write it like that for algorithm sake or whatever. I'm just so familiar with the term I shortened it lol "to commit the sui". It's just dark humor/play on words. Fuck the algorithm
I'm struggling with the same type of thoughts and feel suicidal every day now. Every headline I read is another reason I dont want to live anymore. You're not going crazy, the world is. I know it might seem counter productive to not stay in the loop of things, but I try to take a break from all social media and news every once in awhile to keep my sanity. I love lemmy and the progressive ideas that are shared on here on a daily basis, but the news you read can make you feel powerless and over these big societal issues that don't have an immediate solution.
I really hope you feel better soon, your hearts in the right place. The fediverse is the only real place where I can reliably find empathic people looking out for one another. I wish I could have offered more sound advice as I can barely keep it together myself too, but make sure you have people you can talk about this in your life. Unfortunately I can't afford meds or therapy so I've been depending on my friends and family to help keep me sane. Stay safe!
This is beautiful, the wave of dread has past, at least for now. It is tough to keep sane, but it is important to remember there are empathic people out there who care, who try, and even folks who we can rely on for our support systems. I hope you are feeling okay too, stay strong dear
It's classic prisoner's dilemma from game theory. Will my participation matter against the millions of people who won't ever care? Realistically no. But participating will hurt me financially because it takes away a low-cost alternative. There's a ton of stuff I can't buy locally at any cost, or can but at a much higher cost. If I go buy these things on individual websites, I'll pay shipping, negating savings. So, why would I hurt myself financially to affect no change, when others will take advantage of the system without ever caring? It just gives them an advantage over me on an individual level. Even if I convinced 1,000 people to act like me, meaningful change to the system isn't affected, only weakening of our group. And honestly that means 1,000 people who have less resources to affect OTHER change with.
Prisoner's dilemma doesn't mean that the prisoners are bad or evil, it just means there are too many individuals acting in self-interest. We are too big a country. Too big a world population.
The solution is top-down, we have to elect leaders who then make rules we ALL abide by for our own benefit at the macro level. That's the only way problems of this scale can be changed anymore. And the systems themselves know this and factor it in, locking us out. Late stage capitalism is called "late stage" for a reason, it's too late for a cure.
Target's last several quarterly earnings reports say otherwise.
You don't need amazon. You can go without. A conversation I heard in a waiting room this morning between two women sharing what they did for thier holiday, "oh we bought this 25 day activity book thing off amazon, we did most of them but some days we just did our own thing". You don't need that. You don't need these things.
You need food, shelter, and love.
All I hear when people say "but there's no cheap alternative" is "I care about my comfort more than anyone else's."
Brick by brick it get's built. It would make a difference if we all participated. Fuck prisoners dilemma, your comment reads of learned helplessness and it's exactly why the states won't see a general strike. It's frankly pathetic and why I feel so helpless/hopeless for the future. Just say you don't care the oligarchs rule the world and you like the hierarchy. It's much more concise. "Be a good consumer and do nothing to help".
Just want to pop in and thank all the trolls in this thread for pushing to the #1 active post three days after I created it. Give yourselves a hand 👏 👏👏 👏👏 👏👏 👏
Do a working class revolution
I’m all for it but I feel that a large population of the country is just not gonna care enough to get activated. I would love to be proven wrong, this needs to be massive to the point it makes the no kings protest look like a farmer market.
If anyone thinks a strike is actually happening with the state of things then they are incredibly naive and do not understand just how much foundational effort and structuring needs to be in place first for that to even be considered a possibility, much less actualized.
"The most vulnerable should pay for the revolution." People aren't just stupid, liberals have spent the last century implementing anti-popular-labour-action measures. A general strike would require people who cannot afford to survive to risk what little they have, mutual aid networks and consequences for those in positions of power must exist in order for that risk to be minimized.
If I "strike" i.e. don't go to work today, I won't get paid and I won't be able to buy food or pay my bills or survive, and I will die. And I suspect many other people have the exact same conundrum.
I work in the care industry, my clients need support 24/7 and there are only so much staff around. Should I leave my clients to their own designs‽
These kinds of things tend not to happen until people are starving and have nothing left to lose.
