A General Strike Might Be Closer Than You Think Pt. 2

mass plantation strike during the American Civil War. We spoke with labor historian Robert Ovetts about the revolutionary and bloody history of general strikes in the United States, and we also looked at the immigrant general strike in two thousand and six that successfully beat back drough Conian legislation that sought to further militarize the border and attack and documented people. On today's show, we're going to be looking at a general strike that was called for by Occupy Oakland, which

took place on November two. Occupy Oakland was part of the much larger occupy movement that beginning New York with the occupation of Zukkati Park, but was seen as a radical focal point for the growing struggle. Starting as an occupation on October tent in front of Oakland City Hall named Oscar Grant Plaza. On October, IRAQ war veteran Scott Olsen was nearly killed after being shot with a police projectile during clashes between police and demonstrators as law enforcement

attempted to evict the growing Oakland commune. Following the Olsen shooting, thousands reoccupied Oscar Grant Plaza and the general strike was called for A week later. Upwards of one hundred thousand people took part in the strikes associated actions, which included mass marches, a large anti capitalist black block which broke bank windows, and the shutting down of the Port of

Oakland with upwards of one hundred thousand people participating. But before we hear from our guests on the subject, I wanted to talk a little bit about the occupy movement and Occupy Oakland and why it was so important. The occupy movement itself grew amidst this growing anger over the economic crisis, but also this fading belief in the hope and change promised by Obama. While not see it seemed to kind of sort of come out of nowhere, there

were certainly things that really helped influence it. Naturally, there was the occupation by Chicago workers at the Republic Windows and Doors factory, which signaled a real turning point, as well as the occupation of the Wisconsin State Capital in two thousand eleven against anti union legislation, and all this was happened against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, and then in the Bay Area the Oscar Grant rebellion and riots in two thousand and nine and two thousand ten

kicked off and had a massive impact, centering discussions around police race and white supremacy, as well as the role of rioting and social movements. At the same time, students and graduate workers occupied college campus buildings in New York and across California, which really spread the concept of occupying across the social terrain, as well as slogans like strike, occupied, takeover,

and occupy everything. Now, the explosion of the occupy movement in the fall of two thousand eleven cannot be overstated. Occupying cam It's became a focal point for people angry at the general state of the world to gather discuss an act and they became a real focal point for encounter. While some cities saw these encampments come and go pretty quickly. Then he saw concrete projects and organizing come out of them.

People were fighting to resist foreclosures, for instance, of a lot of cities, and for many people this was where they were introduced to anarchist concepts such as direct action, horizontal organizing, and consensus decision making, which really brought these ideas front and center to hundreds of thousands of people

in a real and tangible way. And while a lot of people on the left from a variety of backgrounds took part, the real backbone of those involved and Occupy were just everyday people who were new to social movements and became activated by material conditions and just the zeitgeist of what was happening at the time. Occupy was fascinating for me, Like I was in the rest belt at the time. Still at the occupy, I was a part

of the first march of five thousand people there. There may be like two or three hundred people at the general assemble the night before, So most of the people that showed up were not people currently connected at that

point to any kind of political organizing. They were just people that showed up because they heard about it on the internet and they showed up to do the thing, and that camp a lot lasted nine months, but we can start to see the impacts that that kind of breakdown of that division between people who declare themselves political and quote everybody else. We start to move forward past Occupy, we start to see that manifest during my Ground Uprising

and Ferguson. We start to see that manifest during the George Floyd Rebellion, where this kind of division between those that declare themselves to be political agents and those that have not declared themselves to be so just ceases to really exist. And it's in those moments where we really

actually see uprisings occur. Occupied pointed out an important thing which is a fallacy in the way that we think, and that we think that radicals make revolts happen, when in reality, people make revolts happen, and our job is to antagonize circumstances. And it's only at the point in which that division breaks down between quote us and everybody else,

that revolts actually occur. And Occupy it was a really important point in a trajectory of I think a sector of the American anarchist movement and a sector of the American political scene starting to really internalize that understanding, starting to really grasp how different that is from the way that we have been taught to organize. And we're still seeing the ramifications of a lot of that work today, many many many years later, looking at like occupy are

looking at any of these big moments. When we look back, we can see all these things that like contribute to it, you know. And I think that this thing that you're spoking to Tom of like the kind of losing that thing of like professional activists or like the political actor in a situation is like so important, and I think that that is something that can really inspire us in terms of what's happening in this moment too, or like how general strikes happen, or how something that occupy happens.

Is that things happen, like there are sort of moments that are kind of outside of our control. It's not something that can be like planned for, and if you do all the right things, then you get a general strike. But you can kind of like be related to circumstances

and to each other and then different things happen. Um Like thinking about the George flood uprising in twenty like none of us predicted COVID, you know, and like how that might have contributed to what happened in that or just like all these different circumstances that come together to make these moments um and I think that you know, something like what's going on now we could look back and look at all these different things that are happening

that then make something big happen and we never really know or can control that. A lot of the striking and occupy it serves the purpose of not us just coming together collectively, but it also serves as purpose of propaganda. And it just reminds me of this idea important idea of us occupying public spaces and the reason why we're not allowed to occupy public spaces because it's like sort of taking the power. And when there's lots of us occupied in public spaces, the media covers it and then

it's like, well, what are these people talking about? What

are they doing? And that would then itself also serves like as a propaganda mechanism to like spread so like I like just like listening to and I remember when again, like occupy was one of the moments that I was one of the people who viewed myself as not political but I cared about what was happening in the movement because that was the first time I heard we are I think about moments of radicalization that I think of this one as being one of them as a person

who's just like recently and as a five years ago recently awoke, Like these are moments that I remember, like had an impact on me seeing people on the street taking public spaces, and I think that perhaps that's something that we should continue to do. And maybe it's not one of those things where it's like maybe not as large as occupy, maybe it's not consistently large, but like maybe we as civilians to just take over public spaces all the time, just as a reminder to ourselves that

we do have the power to do that. Like we can't have a free store here because we want to. We don't have to ask the government for permission to do anything, Like I think it's a huge first step of becoming ungovernable and speaking of things that belong in a free store. We're now going to hear from our sponsors for us understand how the Oakland General strike of took place. We first have to go back to what made Occupy Oakland so important to so many people just

a few short weeks in October. In the following interview, you speak with It's Going Down contributor, author and translator based in Mexico, Scott Campbell about his memories of occupy and what set the stage for a massive strike on November two. We didn't speak with Tova, who was involved in the Occupy Oakland Labor Solidarity Committee, about Bay Area

labor unions becoming involved in the strike. So to kick things off, Scott tell us about Occupy Oakland, what it looked like, how life and Oscar Grand Plaza was organized, and about this living, breathing thing many came to call the Oakland Commune. If you were to walk into Occupy Oakland, I think you'd be overwhelmed. Um. It was an amazing, vibrant, self managed, auto jestive community where you had folks living

there in in Oscar Grant Plaza. You had food, childcare, medical care, libraries, UM, all sorts of projects UM in a self run sort of directly democratic assembly based, communally organized space. And it was open to anyone except for police and politicians who wanted to come and participate in this sort of radical experiment, this radical form of being with one another outside the constraints of how society normally

constructs us to perform and interact with one another. And I think what really stuck out to me the most during this time period was just the the welcoming atmosphere, the sense of potential that the camp um and the activities based around the camp held, the openness of people, and really the wide range of individuals who were participating in collectives who were participating, which certainly, of course led to differences of opinions at times that made that created

some dynamics that were a struggle to work through and navigate, but at the same time really added to a sense of a space that went beyond a single project, that went beyond a single vision, but that was horizontal, communal, and open in a way that I had never experienced

before and that I have yet to experience again. It definitely had an organic feel to it of of sort of people coming together, lending what skills they had, lending what resources they had across a variety of positions um that may be broadly categorized on the left or or post left spectrum, a spectrum of folks with a spectrum

of capacities of needs um. I mean a large number of unhoused neighbors who were there, who brought their own life experiences and their own knowledge and their own skills to bear on the project, which I think was a really, I guess, a powerful learning opportunity for a lot of people who hadn't really been in direct contact with unhoused folks UM, and who were unfamiliar with really perhaps the impetus beyond Occupy Oakland and beyond Occupant, the impetus behind

Occupy Oakland, and the impetus behind Occupy Wall Street in general, which was of course the two thousand and eight financial crash and the Great Depression and the bailout of the banks while people got fore clothes on their homes, especially people of color and black folks, which which hit particularly hard in England. And so we see all these dynamics coming together and trying to work themselves out organically without being mediated by any one organization or any particular ideology.

And it was a powerful, confusing, messy, lively beautiful experience. How to categorize the general assembly is a is a great question, I think for me, how I interpreted it is it added a structural framework for how to navigate issues that would arise within the camp within the sort of occupation, for lack of a better word, of Oscar grand Plaza, facilitating the day to day functionings of things. In a lot of it was a decision making body.

I wouldn't call it a government as such, because it tried to run on consensus or modified consensus, and anyone was free to bring proposals to the General Assembly that were free to bring their ideas for and promote their events and promote their actions and activities. A lot of decisions were also being made by people who just showed up to do the work without necessarily consulting the General Assembly, So you almost had different tiers of activity and different

tiers of organization occurring in the same space. That seemed, again I go back to this word, that seemed to organically work itself out most of the time, and within the General Assembly that was the more formal structure where people came together at times nightly to discuss issues facing the camp, to discuss issues with in terms of um dealing with the police and the city government and eventually the state and federal government as they showed up to

determine how to respond to various acts of aggression and attacks on the camp and attacks on the space, to figure out how to better run the space. Even to figure out how to better run the General Assembly itself was a big question within the General Assembly, and these were general assemblies that anyone could participate and you didn't have to show qualifications or necessarily be living in the space. Anyone was free except for the police and politicians, to

come and speak to the General Assembly. I remember one time Gene Klon, then mayor of Oakland, wanted to come and speak to the General Assembly, and she was told she could, but she had to wait her turn, and so she decided to leave because she didn't want to wait. She didn't feel like she had to wait. It was really a space of encounter for people to bring up different aspects that there were concerning them, that they were working on, that they wanted to see flourish in the space.

The biggest general assembly was happened around when to move forward with the general strike, but there were also general assemblies on on things like issues around smoking and people's health and well being in the space, issues around cleanliness, issues around safety, how to interact with the police, how to interact with the government, do we put forward demands? What should the name of it be? Is occupied Oakland the problematic name? Should we change it to occupied to

colonize Oakland? These were all sorts of issues that were brought forward to the General Assembly, along with like how do we meet the material needs of the space, and how do we handle the supplies that are being brought in and make sure that they're equally equitably distributed. Who can do what for whom within the space. How do people's skills get the most use out of them. It was a very much a lively atmosphere. It felt like, I don't know, I I know the word democracy is contentious.

It felt like a directly democratic process um. But there were also you know, it's important to recognize that there were some people who were more skilled and more familiar with how consensus works, who are more familiar with the process that was behind the running of the General Assembly, which which has its roots and anarchist practice and anarchist forms of decision making, and so those folks definitely had a hand up when it came to making decisions, when

it came to presenting proposals, when it came to even administering and running the General Assembly itself, those tasks often fell into the lapse of anarchists, who I think did a good job of making sure that these general assemblies ran smoothly and that they were inclusive and open to all who wanted to participate, and people could bring their ideas and sometimes they got approved, sometimes they got rejected.

Even if they got rejected, some some folks decided they would implement them anyways, and and that also worked out as well as sometimes creating conflicts. The city grew increasingly frustrated with the encampment as they were, they found themselves unable to make any progress in trying to recuperate, in trying to gain favor sort of make the encampment their own and extension of the electoral body right of the

electoral body politic. Ultimately, that's what moved Kwon, the supposedly progressive mayor more to the side of the police way of seeing things as force was the only option to deal with these people who are you know, being unrealistic, were being naive, who are being entrenched in and transigent, and you know, at the same time, the police, along with the city eventually started building up this narrative of the camp as a violent and unsafe space where people

were being harmed in a variety of ways, and it was necessary for for public safety's sake to move against the encampment. I was there the night the encampment was evicted. I think it was October or early morning October twenty five, around three am in the morning, three thirty four am, and I was actually arrested. I was one of I believe eighty eight plus people were arrested. UM. During the process of the camps eviction UM, the police came in force.

They massed up outside of Oracle Arena and the A Stadium. It was a massive operation that came in from all sides. People upon hearing word that the camp was going to be evicted, UM set up barricades. They laced the entire area with string, trying to impede the possibility of the

police getting injured. Quickly, there were battles with the police as they tried to make their way into the encampment, and eventually UM they came in from all sides and until they took over the encampment and encircled the people who remained in the camp. I was in jail when

Scott Olsen was shot. But I do recall the prison guards or the Almeda County sheriffs who were making these comments as we were being released finally after about twenty four plus hours of being held, saying things like, oh,

go have fun rioting and that sort of thing. And and we get out there and then hear about all the events that had happened over the course of the day that we had been locked up, of these people, of folks in the thousands, just like you said, coming out to try and retake the space of running battles in the streets. I have so many friends and comrades who were telling stories about getting tear gas, of getting shot at with pepper balls, of Scott Wilson's devastating injury,

of getting shot in the head. It was violence that occurred outside the normal narrative of violence deployed by the police in Oakland, right, and so it made it exceptional, even though much more brutal violence occurs daily by the police in Oakland against primary the black black population in

Oakland and of people of color um. But we see a huge upswelling of outrage at the rate of the camp Um outrage at the injury against Scott Wilson, and this ultimately the attempt to use force to quash a movement tremendously backfired against both the police and the city government in terms in terms of it building up even

more support for Occupy Oakland and its efforts. I recall going to the General Assembly when the general strike was decided to be moved forward, when the proposal was made to have a general strike in a week, which was just seemed like a completely impossible notion and completely impractical, but also within the realm of the possible at the same time, because what had been going on, especially the response to people in terms of fighting against the police,

in terms of taking back Nancamin, of basically winning against the government, winning against the police forces, reclaiming the space, um taking injuries, supporting one another through the process, it seems possible that we could pull up a general strike within a week. When it came around, it was clear that the word had been spread, that that energy that brought on that impulse to move forward with the general strike was still there a week later, and I would

say that that day itself was a tremendous success. We had a hundred thousand people marching on the Port of Oakland, shutting it down. We had a day's worth of activities, everything that encapsulated Occupy Oakland. I feel like I found a home UM in particular on that day on November two. Again, we've been listening to Scott Campbell. Next we'll hear from Tovah, who was involved in the Labor Solidarity Committee of Occupy Oakland, which worked to bring in labor unions into the organizing

of the general strike. There were just masses of people down there at Oscar Grant Plaza. Some of them were working on maintaining or re re establishing the different services that they had set up. I had been involved in labor struggles the past, back in Detroit when I was in the U a w. So UM volunteered to work on the Labor Solidary Committee to do the outreach to get support and participation of various unions, teamsters where it played a very big role in in support UM for

that general strike as well. And that I think it's the o e A, the Oakland Education Association as a teachers union, and they were very much involved, and so was the s c IU, particularly the SCIU, the City Workers so the city workers were down there every day and saw what was going on. UM, and we're you know, very much involved and affected by it. You know, the teachers Union had, like you said, been involved with in support work before all the attacks by the police happened. UH,

there was a lot of involvement beforehand as well. UM one or two Teamsters locals that were you know, supporting officially. They you know, it wasn't just their rank and file members, which had been great also, but you know, the we had support from one or two Teamsters locals, and the i LW is primarily Local ten. The longshoreman whole proposal was to march down to the port UH and shut down the Port of Oakland. We had people involved from

my LW. You although, I'm pretty sure that the i LW Local ten officially was not involved in calling for that strike, but there were members who were involved in the i LW organization who were definitely involved in helping to plan it and organize it as well. The Teamsters added some logistical support in terms of trucking and supplies

and things like that. I think that the o e A. The teachers also, in addition to participation, donated applies and things like that, So there was a lot of donations from the locals as well. We've been listening to TOVA from the Occupy Oakland Labor Solidarity Committee. We're now going to take a short break and be right back. As the Oakland Commune and the Occupy movement faded into history, it helped inspire and inform a new generation of activists.

As under Obama, we saw continued explosions on Ferguson, Baltimore, Minneapolis, and later at Standing Rock. By the time that Trump took office, autonomous resistance movements were bubbling beneath every surface, as airports were shut down against the Muslim band, riots broke out against the ault right, and thousands of teachers

started striking across Appalachia. Donny Red, Ben Dennis and omage of the so called Redneck War of when striking coal miners engage and grow a warfare with government troops and the air Force dropped actual bombs on strikers. With the current uptick and strikes under Biden continuing into and the economic conditions of porn working people continuing to worsen, we asked labor reporter and author a fight like hell Kim Kelly, just what are the possibilities of mass strike action in

the coming year. You know, I think we're in this really interesting moment where labor and workers and unions in general are getting a lot more attention than we're used to, and a lot of that attention is positive, and we have a lot of these big wins that we get to celebrate. We get to celebrate, you know, the workers at Staten Island Amazon go on toe to toe of Jeff Bezos and the union election winning. We get to celebrate this ongoing wave of unionization efforts at Starbucks across

the country, hundreds of Starbucks and unionized. We get to celebrate a lot of big wins. And there are also a lot of struggles that have been kind of set to this side, or not gotten as much attention as they deserve, or kind of written off. I think that's always the dichotomy of the labor movement in general, right because it's so big, almost everyone is a part of it, whether or not they like to think of themselves that way. You know, I've been covering this coal minor strike in

Alabama since April one. They're still out there. They have not gotten very much attention. They're kind of stuck in a stalemate at the bargaining table because the bosses want to starve them out. And this is Alabama, where workers in or outside the prison walls do not have very many rights, do not have any politicians on their side.

They're struggling and they're still out there. And that's kind of the flip side of these big, energetic, inspiring moments in labor right where we have these winds, and we also have folks that are being left a slog or being ignored entirely, like the folks that we're going to see very soon in Pennsylvania who are going be launching a strike and sound the Department of Corrections. I hope

that gets a lot of attention. I mean, we saw a similar effort by a carcerated workers in Alabama a couple of months ago, and that got a lot of attention. And I'm really hoping that this kind of renewed interest in labor and workers rights and then discussing even topics like prison slavery, in topics like forced labor, incarcerated work,

and different types of work. I really hope that benefits these workers as they embark on their action but we'll see, you know, like I am very interested to see perhaps the limits of this public support for labor actions. Is it easier to support a barista than it is to support a coal miner and acarcerated worker. There's all these different pieces that go into this moment. And I love

being possy. I love seeing workers win and workers organized and strike and protest, and I also like keeping an eye out for the folks who aren't getting as much attention, are getting much support and thinking about why that is.

So it's kind of a long, rambly answer to say, I am cautiously optimistic, and I really hope that all of the people who have thankfully and you know, I'm glad they're here, who have showed up in the past year, in the media, the political class, whoever, regular regular people who have been paying attention to these these worker actions. I hope they keep that energy for this year, because we're going to need it, you know. Started we we've had a pretty good We're in a decent spot, and

I really don't want to see a squander that. See. I think this moment with the railroad workers, I think that is something that's going to continue to resonate and reverberate out, And I think that's going to have an impact the next time the Democratic Party says, hey, where the Workers Party like, you need to come vote for us and keep us in power because well, we're the only ones who will protect you. Well will you did you? Were you there for us when we needed you or

when we needed your help? No? You know, it just makes one wonder how much of the pro union uh sloganeering that that this administration loves to do, how much of it is pure public relations, how much of it is actually attached to whatever personal beliefs that Biden has, or if they just think it's politically expedient to, you know, act as though we're the we're pro union, we're pro worker.

We're not going to pass any laws, we're not going to investigate any worker death at Amazon facilities are helped elsewhere, we're not going to use our power to help you. But we're not Republicans, So you know, it's um. I think it's going to be interesting to see how much the railroad strike impacts people, because I think that the political calculus that the Biden administration did in choosing to

crush the strike inside with the railroad bosses. I guess they figured, oh, well, it's not that big of a you know, maybe not that many people are paying attention. We've got to make sure people get their Christmas presents on time. But a lot of folks were watching that. A lot of regular workers were watching that and thinking, oh, so, if we were in that position at my job, the

government would help us either. I think, you know, a lot of the chatter I saw from railroad workers, from other workers, just from people in general, it is like, oh, so, okay, this was the big moment where Biden could have proved he cared about us, and instead he threw us under the bus, straight onto the railroad tracks. And I don't think that's a surprise to people that are sort of paying more close attention to the way the state operates.

But I think it was maybe a revelatory moment for folks who just sort of assumed, okay, like there's at least a little bit of benevolence at least, you know, the Democrats are in power. This guy says, it alls unions that should help us out a little bit. But seeing what happened there, I think it's going to be a profoundly disillusioning moment for a lot of people that maybe had a little bit more faith in the state or at least assumed it was sort of looking out

for us. And I think that's gonna have an impact when you know, the Democratic Party comes back knocking on our doors and mostly asking for a vote in our support, because I mean, you, we had a classic which side are you on moment and we saw which way they chose to go. We're gonna see more prolonged strikes, We're going to see more unfair labor practices, are going to see more organizing. I think that it is impossible to

put this lightning back into a bottle. Right Like, activity and interest in unions and organizing is, if not skyrocketing, it's had a really nice little bump over the past few years, a noticeable improvement and a noticeable amount of new worker workplaces being organized and going on strike and fighting for their rights. Like, I don't think that's going away. And two of the aspects of this, this entire scenario

that really interests me. First, the fact that we're seeing so many workers who some my categories as quote unquote white collar whatever, folks who work in nonprofits or at book publishers, or journalism, other types of media, kind of all of these other types of jobs that don't fit into that traditional manufacturing or extractive focused of many more manual labor oriented jobs that I think a lot of

people associate with the labor movement. They've been going on strike and they've been making big waves, whether it's the forty eight thousand grad student workers at the University of California or hardpwerk HarperCollins Publishing workers currently still on strike in New York City. I think there's been kind of the shift and understanding of oh, Okay, you don't need to be a certain type of worker or certain type of person, or come from a specific background in order

to organize to join a union. Unions aren't just for the classic white guy in a hard hat trope like my dad, right Like, they're accessible to so many more of us than perhaps we thought, and I think that's going to be big because work has shifted. Work looks different than it did thirty years ago. There's a lot of different ways to be exploited, and we know the employers have definitely looked into each and everyone and taken notes. So we have that happening. I think that's gonna continue

propelling the energy behind this movement. And secondly, I'm really intrigued by the rise, and that's as it's a smaller phenomenon, but it is very much happening, and it is kind of increasing slowly the exist this existence of independent unions, because we saw, of course the Amazon Labor Union. They're the big ones, They've gotten tons of attention, deservedly so, but there are also efforts Trader Joe's Trade Joe's United as an independent union. Chipotle workers formed an independent union.

There was an effort here in Philadelphia to form a Home Depot workers independent union, and that one wasn't successful, but I'm certain that that organizer has not given up, but they're still gonna keep working on that. Like and I think seeing these independent unions which are not affiliated with other internationals, are not part of the afl CE. Oh there literally just d I y you know. Thence

the fact that we're seeing this happen. I think it just shows the cracks in the current labor movement as it stands, and especially in the way that power is concentrated, in the way that resources are organized, in the way that the movements. Priorities in terms of public statements and political power are kind of dictated by folks who tend to be more conservative. And I mean that in like a Democrat way and not like you know, Republican chaos, but just more conservative compared to a lot of the

rank and file. Like we see with the railroad workers that rejected rejected that deal that so many of their leaders agreed on. You know, I think there's more radicalism brewing in the rank and file and more militancy that and it's it's manifesting in different ways. It's manifesting and wildcatch strikes or an independent unions, or in organizing outside of the traditional organized labor structure and gender like what sex workers and incarcerated workers are doing and have been doing.

I think ultimately the bottom line is that a lot of workers, a lot of people have realized that they have options, and they're exercising their rights to organize and to work collectively and to stand with their fellow workers against the bosses and against capital in ways that you know, perhaps I wouldn't have felt disavailable or seemed as possible a few years ago, but now there's so many examples

of other workers doing it. Of course, have been there throughout history too, like I read about my book, but I think we're at this moment where people realize, Okay, there are a lot of different ways to do this. I have people with me, we have problems we need to address. Let's see what works. You know, it's not just picking up the phone and calling a union organizer,

though that works for some folks. Too, is recognizing the problems we face in our workplace, in our experience, and deciding together what we want to do, how we want to go forward, and how we're going to win. Once again, that was Kim Kelly, author of phil Hell. Over the past two episodes, we've taken a deep dive into the history of general strikes in the United States, looking at everything from the mass strike of Enslave plantation workers during the Civil War all the way up to current examples

during Occupy Oakland. I think one of the things history has to offer us as a guide for the present is that these upheavals are made possible not only by people responding to material conditions, but also learning from struggle. In the instance of the Great Upheaval, that general strike came after a series of other smaller strikes. This fall, thousands of prisoners across Alabama organized a general strike of incarcerated workers, downing their tools and refusing to work their jobs,

bringing the prisons to a grinding halt. This historic strike comes on the heels of many other prisoner led strike

actions in two thousand ten, two thousand sixteen. In two thousand eighteen, non to mention the fact that many Alabama prisoners saw themselves as acting in the spirit of the Great Plantation Strike during the Civil War, as epitomized by the strike slogan let the crops rot in the field in my final thoughts, instead of putting our hopes in a call for a general strike going viral, As the saying goes, we have to walk before we can run.

So strengthening our ability to engage in collective direct action and active refusal, as well as building our capacity for community self defense and mobilizing against state violence and repression and whatever form will ultimately allow us to expand and grow our ability to do these things in the future. A lot of times we're told that like we're powerless and were these passive beings and creatures and we have

to wait for somebody to organize us. But every single day we wake up in the morning and we make capitalism happen, like we do it, like all of us, every single one of us does it. Like this is not like oh, like this is just something that's happening to us, we're doing to ourselves. We're doing it to each other. Like these little things that we can do, like little acts of resistance. And I'm all about petty resistance because I do realize that a lot of people

don't have time for the large resistances. So this is for anybody who's like, yeah, I hate capitalism, but I just don't have the breath on the space and the time to necessarily like go out and do things. If you can't, please do it. You can't like walk the funk out do But if you can't, like there's still stuff you can do. That's it for me. By you know, what strikes me often about general strikes are two things. First is that general strikes actually function very differently than

they do in leftist discourse. Like in leftist discourse it's workers do general strikes. But in reality, if we really look at general strikes, there are these moments of convergence, right, There's these these sort of points in which distinctions break down, right, the distinction between like organizers and everyone else, or the

distinction between workers and non workers completely break down. Right, It's not just railroad workers don't strike in eighteen seventy seven, is also their families, their neighbors, their whole communities on strike. And this the second thing that that raises often for me, is again this kind of long term cultural implications of

that sort of form of action. So growing up in a place where you know, strike culture is a thing, um still where there's still actual union density and people do walk off the job, um, you grow up with that as an idea, right that you don't just walk

off the job. But like the restaurant around the corner also gives out free food, and people bring coffee down to the picket line, and you know, workers from other unions show up the block entrances because the judge said you can, you know so and so on, and it becomes this huge community initiative of autonomy and self defense. And what that creates is a sense in which class

struggle is perpetual. Like you understand always when you grow up in a place like that, but when you go to work you're making somebody else money because you've been told that your whole life right and that if you get angry about that, that what you're supposed to do is organize and go on strike. And that's a very normal sort of narrative that was because we all up in families where we were taught to do that. That if the wealthy we're taking advantage of you, you just leave. Right.

That is not a normal thing outside of the rest of America, right, Like people don't get brought up with that. But I think as we're starting to see this kind of rise of the idea of the general strike, and we're starting to understand that is something that's not just connected to employment, but we can start to think of general strikes as social strikes and not just economic strikes.

We can start to understand like, even if those may immediately not succeed, the long term impacts of those over time really create the conditions for them to succeed later. And if it hadn't been for that flame staying alive, I think in parts of America, this wave of worker

action wouldn't be happening. There wouldn't be a foundation for it, there wouldn't be a way to understand it, right, um, And that's what's so critical about this moment is I think in some ways we're almost reviving a thing that my grandparents lived in the midst of just as a very normal part of their lives. I think that's like

a really important piece about this survival. And I think think that something that feels really important about general strikes is the idea of like solidarity and that our liberation

is collective, you know, that it involves each other. And I think that, Um, I feel like what happened between like what you're saying to about you, like your grandparents generation and now is like near liberalism in a lot of ways, and just like this really strong promotion of the idea of like individualism and that if you want to make your life better you have to do it yourself,

and like it's down to you as an individual. That I think it was pretty effective at decimating a lot of ideas of like solidarity or the idea that I like, freedom is with each other. Um. And I think that that is starting to fall apart, Like people are realizing however much they hustle or like have side hustles or whatever, they're still fucked and just like I think that we're seeing like a resurgence of this idea of like solidarity and that we have to do together, that is going

to do it for us this week. Thank you so much for tuning in. Check us out on macodon at I g D Underscore News and be sure or to tune in as the workers that it could Happen here into their two day strike and return to the job. But stay tuned. We'll be back next week for even more episodes. Until then, It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media or more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening