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What happens to cops in a general strike?
A World Without Police February 17, 2017
Protesters shut down the port in the Port of Oakland during the Oakland General Strike, November 2011
Since the nationwide protests against Donald Trump’s Muslim ban, talk has circulated online about the possibility of mass strikes against the Trump regime. Activists, artists and academics have called for a variety of mobilizations, from the February 16th “day without an immigrant” to a February 17th general strike, to a national women’s strike on March 8th. The proposals have in turn prompted a debate over the meaning of the term “general strike,” and how one capable of halting Trump could be organized.
The AWWP editors have a range of feelings about the general strike idea. One thing we want to add to the discussion, however, is to pose the question: what happens to police when a general strike breaks out? If history is any guide, we can venture a guess. They start to disappear.
General strikes interrupt daily life and grind the machinery of capitalism and the state to a halt. In addition to taking the streets, general strikes also freeze production and profit-making, as workers cease to work across all workplaces in a given city or country, simultaneously. The result is more powerful than any boycott or demonstration: daily life is suspended in midair as factories, shops and transport shut down, and everything is up for grabs.
In this situation, police generally try to repress the strike and force crowds off the streets and back to work. They attack demonstrations and secure capitalist property, and coordinate closely with economic and political elites who are thrown into panic. But in many cases, police repression alone is not enough to quell such a massive mobilization. The longer the strike goes on, the more police control over territory and daily life begins to erode.
A General Strike Is Possible
Calls for general strikes reflect the extraordinary times we live in. The Left should join in organizing them, not dismiss them.
by Erik Forman
Protesters march past the Washington Monument during the Women's March on January 21.
Calls for general strikes began as soon as Trump was elected. They surfaced first on the traditional platforms of the labor left, and slowly crept toward the center, arriving eventually even in the Washington Post and Cosmopolitan.
For the radical left, this has been baffling — usually, the term “general strike” was only discussed on the fringe of the Left and labor movement. What could this mean, and what could it become?
So far, most commentators on the Left have been dismissive of calls for a general strike. This is the wrong orientation. A general strike is possible, but far from inevitable. The Left must do everything it can to make the move toward strike action successful.
The Moment and the Movement
To understand of the surge in interest in the general strike and its political potential, we have to understand what the term means to the millions of people who are likely hearing it for the first time in the pages of the corporate press or on a Facebook feed filled with anti-Trump messaging.
The call for a general strike has appeared because millions of people have lost faith in the political system. With a revanchist, reactionary, anti-democratic regime in power and moving fast, it’s clear to millions of people that disruptive mass protest — throwing sand in the gears of everything, as Frances Fox Piven advocates — is the only option left.
Three calls for general strikes have been made: a call for a national general strike today, one on March 8 for a Women’s Strike, and a May 1 call for an immigrant worker strike (after the smaller but very inspiring “Day Without an Immigrant” protests yesterday). Whether these calls will gain traction is hard to predict, but clearly thinking through of what is happening can take out some of the guesswork in our planning.
The calls for a general strike that are proliferating across the Internet are best understood as a move toward what Rosa Luxemburg once theorized as a “mass strike.” From her position in the revolutionary socialist movement in Germany, she wrote,
the mass strike is not artificially “made,” not “decided” at random, not “propagated”… it is a historical phenomenon which, at a given moment, results from social conditions with historical inevitability. It is not, therefore, by abstract speculations on the possibility or impossibility, the utility or the injuriousness of the mass strike, but only by an examination of those factors and social conditions out of which the mass strike grows in the present phase of the class struggle… that the problem can be grasped or even discussed.
Radicals often cite Luxemburg to argue that you can’t just conjure up a general strike. This is true. But they miss a more important point. In the current social conditions, we’re not calling for a mass strike– the mass strike is calling us.
The present moment is defined by a perfect storm of forces for escalating social conflict. The gerrymandered and intentionally undemocratic US electoral system has allowed a widely-hated demagogue to enter the presidency. Despite lacking popular legitimacy, Trump is launching rapid and extreme attacks on just about every group in society and has alienated a large segment of the US ruling class. He has broken with the bipartisan consensus on the role of the United States in maintaining the liberal postwar order, earning the enmity of the State Department, CIA, and most of the government agencies. Conflict is raging with the judicial branch. A campaign by the deep state claimed Michael Flynn as a victim this week.
In many state and local governments, liberal politicians are trying to at least appear to stand up to Trump (though their actual commitment to do so remains to be seen). In California, proposals for withholding income tax contributions are being seriously discussed, and a third of the state supports secession. In New York, Governor Cuomo overrodea dictate of the Port Authority to allow protesters to continue to access JFK airport to protest — an action that would have earned an arrest and potential terrorism charges in the Bush era.
Trump’s threats against immigrants have alienated a large section of corporate elites. Facing pressure from their employees, a slew of major corporations signed on to a lawsuit enjoining the federal courts to block his immigration order. In at least two cases, they seem to have condoned worker protest during work hours, with sanctioned walkouts at Google and Comcast.
The discontent of the ruling class is reflected in a media that is actively seeking to delegitimize Trump’s government. Never before has a president dealt with such a constant barrage of criticism. Despite the power of right-wing media, the result is plummeting approval ratings.
All of this has manifested in unprecedented levels of protest. The inauguration was overshadowed by rioting and civil disobedience, supplemented by a shutdown of the port of Oakland by the ILWU. The next day brought the record-shattering Women’s Marches across the US, followed soon after by spontaneous protests at airports, a taxi strike and bodega strike in New York, the tech worker walkouts, a smattering of student walkouts, and a prison uprising in Delaware. This week, a Day Without an Immigrant protests have spread to cities across the United States.
Protesters intuitively realize that the logic of protest is that of escalation. Millions realize a general strike is a next logical step after the largest mass protests in US history on January 21. The movement is looking for a way in to the workplace. But will the move toward mass strikes succeed?
Factors that contribute to the likelihood of successful strike mobilization are concentrations of angry people in economic centers who will reinforce and validate each others’ feelings and actions, local liberal politicians in those areas who will be reticent to unleash repression on their constituents for opposing right-wing national-level politicians, tacit or even explicit support for protests from certain corporate interests, a media environment which is actively encouraging mass protests and even strikes, and a feeling by many that they have nothing to lose.
The main limiting factor is the present level of organization. The decline in union density in the United States is well-known, and the general rise is atomization in US society has been decried for decades.
But organization is not synonymous with unionization, or even membership in a formal group. As any good organizer can tell you, every workplace and community is already organized, but not by us.
Many of the mobilizations since Trump’s election seem on the surface to be unorganized, or “spontaneous.” This label merely means that we don’t know who organized it. This is a hopeful sign of the mobilization of thousands of people outside of existing activist networks. In truth, the actions of the past three weeks were organized by a patchwork of existing activist, religious, and nongovernmental organizations and unions that activated their networks, paired with a strange alchemy of exhortations from the media, and a wildfire-like spread of self-organization outside of existing formal organizations.
The magnitude of mass strikes to come will be determined by the degree to which this movement can be extended into the workplace. This is no easy task. However, we can draw some lessons from previous mass strikes.
Women’s March Guiding Vision and Definition of Principles
We believe that Women’s Rights are Human Rights and Human Rights are Women’s Rights. This is the basic and original tenet from which all our values stem.
We believe Gender Justice is Racial Justice is Economic Justice. We must create a society in which women — in particular Black women, Native women, poor women, immigrant women, Muslim women, and queer and trans women — are free and able to care for and nurture their families, however they are formed, in safe and healthy environments free from structural impediments.
Women deserve to live full and healthy lives, free of violence against our bodies. One in three women have been victims of some form of physical violence by an intimate partner within their lifetime; and one in five women have been raped. Further, each year, thousands of women and girls, particularly Black, indigenous and transgender women and girls, are kidnapped, trafficked, or murdered. We honor the lives of those women who were taken before their time and we affirm that we work for a day when all forms of violence against women are eliminated.
We believe in accountability and justice for police brutality and ending racial profiling and targeting of communities of color. Women of color are killed in police custody at greater rates than white women, and are more likely to be sexually assaulted by police. We also call for an immediate end to arming police with the military grade weapons and military tactics that are wreaking havoc on communities of color. No woman or mother should have to fear that her loved ones will be harmed at the hands of those sworn to protect.
We believe it is our moral imperative to dismantle the gender and racial inequities within the criminal justice system. The rate of imprisonment has grown faster for women than men, increasing by 700% since 1980, and the majority of women in prison have a child under the age of 18. Incarcerated women also face a high rate of violence and sexual assault. We are committed to ensuring access to gender-responsive programming and dedicated healthcare including substance abuse treatment, mental and maternal health services for women in prison. We believe in the promise of restorative justice and alternatives to incarceration. We are also committed to disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline that prioritizes incarceration over education by systematically funneling our children — particularly children of color, queer and trans youth, foster care children, and girls — into the justice system.
We believe in Reproductive Freedom. We do not accept any federal, state or local rollbacks, cuts or restrictions on our ability to access quality reproductive healthcare services, birth control, HIV/AIDS care and prevention, or medically accurate sexuality education. This means open access to safe, legal, affordable abortion and birth control for all people, regardless of income, location or education. We understand that we can only have reproductive justice when reproductive health care is accessible to all people regardless of income, location or education.
We believe in Gender Justice. We must have the power to control our bodies and be free from gender norms, expectations and stereotypes. We must free ourselves and our society from the institution of awarding power, agency and resources disproportionately to masculinity to the exclusion of others.
We firmly declare that LGBTQIA Rights are Human Rights and that it is our obligation to uplift, expand and protect the rights of our gay, lesbian, bi, queer, trans or gender non-conforming brothers, sisters and siblings. This includes access to non-judgmental, comprehensive healthcare with no exceptions or limitations; access to name and gender changes on identity documents; full anti- discrimination protections; access to education, employment, housing and benefits; and an end to police and state violence.
We believe in an economy powered by transparency, accountability, security and equity. We believe that creating workforce opportunities that reduce discrimination against women and mothers allow economies to thrive. Nations and industries that support and invest in caregiving and basic workplace protections — including benefits like paid family leave, access to affordable childcare, sick days, healthcare, fair pay, vacation time, and healthy work environments — have shown growth and increased capacity.
We believe in equal pay for equal work and the right of all women to be paid equitably. We must end the pay and hiring discrimination that women, particularly mothers, women of color, lesbian, queer and trans women still face each day in our nation. Many mothers have always worked and are in our modern labor force; and women are now 50% of all family breadwinners. We stand for the 82% of women who become moms, particularly moms of color, being paid, judged, and treated fairly. Equal pay for equal work will lift families out of poverty and boost our nation’s economy.
We recognize that women of color carry the heaviest burden in the global and domestic economic landscape, particularly in the care economy. We further affirm that all care work — caring for the elderly, caring for the chronically ill, caring for children and supporting independence for people with disabilities — is work, and that the burden of care falls disproportionately on the shoulders of women, particularly women of color. We stand for the rights, dignity, and fair treatment of all unpaid and paid caregivers. We must repair and replace the systemic disparities that permeate caregiving at every level of society.
We believe that all workers — including domestic and farm workers — must have the right to organize and fight for a living minimum wage, and that unions and other labor associations are critical to a healthy and thriving economy for all. Undocumented and migrant workers must be included in our labor protections, and we stand in solidarity with sex workers’ rights movements.
We believe Civil Rights are our birthright. Our Constitutional government establishes a framework to provide and expand rights and freedom — not restrict them. To this end, we must protect and restore all the Constitutionally-mandated rights to all our citizens, including voting rights, freedom to worship without fear of intimidation or harassment, freedom of speech, and protections for all citizens regardless of race, gender, age or disability.
We believe it is time for an all-inclusive Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Most Americans believe the Constitution guarantees equal rights, but it does not. The 14th Amendment has been undermined by courts and cannot produce real equity on the basis of race and/or sex. And in a true democracy, each citizen’s vote should count equally. All Americans deserve equality guarantees in the Constitution that cannot be taken away or disregarded, recognizing the reality that inequalities intersect, interconnect and overlap.
Rooted in the promise of America’s call for huddled masses yearning to breathe free, we believe in immigrant and refugee rights regardless of status or country of origin. It is our moral duty to keep families together and empower all aspiring Americans to fully participate in, and contribute to, our economy and society. We reject mass deportation, family detention, violations of due process and violence against queer and trans migrants. Immigration reform must establish a roadmap to citizenship, and provide equal opportunities and workplace protections for all. We recognize that the call to action to love our neighbor is not limited to the United States, because there is a global migration crisis. We believe migration is a human right and that no human being is illegal.
We believe that every person and every community in our nation has the right to clean water, clean air, and access to and enjoyment of public lands. We believe that our environment and our climate must be protected, and that our land and natural resources cannot be exploited for corporate gain or greed — especially at the risk of public safety and health.
Striking for Ourselves
Liz Mason-Deese February 23, 2017
When women in Argentina, and across Latin America, decided to go on strike on October 19, 2016, the mobilization surpassed all expectations. Organized in only a matter of days, the call resonated across Latin America and hundreds of thousands of women across the continent went on strike, marched, and protested. The strike was an immediate response to the brutal rape and murder of sixteen year old Lucía Perez in Mar del Plata as well as a series of other femicides and violent repression at the National Women’s Meeting in Rosario.
With the slogans “not one less” and “we want ourselves alive,” they were striking not only for an end to violence against women, but also to highlight the connection between this violence and the economic violence of the devaluing of women’s labor. This insistence on the relationship between male violence and the devaluing of women’s labor was one of the strike’s central messages and organizing principles.
The strike thus served to make women’s labor visible: formal labor and informal labor, paid and unpaid, reproductive labor, emotional labor. Women not only walked out of their workplaces to march, but they also refused to cook, to clean, to take care of children, to smile, to care. No longer only seeing themselves as victims of male violence and patriarchal institutions, women were able to witness their immense political and economic power. And this power was not left at the march, but taken home, taken to work the next day, carried with them in the street, in women renegotiating the division of household labor, calling out sexism at home and at work, leaving abusive relationships, and solidifying networks of care and support among women.
The strike drew a clear connection between male violence and the restrictions to women’s economic and bodily autonomy. The call for the strike emphasized how women’s economic insecurity also makes them more vulnerable to male violence, how poor women are the ones who cannot access safe and legal abortion and thus suffer the most from its criminalization, how neoliberal restructuring leaves women with more of the burden for social reproduction. While still calling for legislative reforms and more funding for government programming addressing violence and poverty, the strike also made it clear that these women were not going to wait for the state to solve their problems.
“Now, let us move on to the general strike. As far as I am concerned, I accept the principle and promote it as much as I can, and have done so for several years. The general strike has always struck me as an excellent means to set off the social revolution. However, let us take care to avoid falling under the dangerous illusion that the general strike can make the revolution superfluous. We are expected to believe that by suddenly halting production the workers will starve the bourgeoisie into submission within a few days. Personally speaking, I can think of nothing more absurd. The first to starve to death during a general strike will not be the bourgeoisie who have all the accumulated produce at their disposal, but the workers, who only have their labour to live on.”
- Errico Malatesta
The art of refusal, on the other hand, acts against what everybody does but nobody once did, against work and submission to the state. The art of refusal is the art of living, which begins with the general strike that never ends.
- Bob Black
We seem to be entering a period similar to May 1968, which represents what Debord called “lived time,” stripping back space and time from the realm of spectacle and returning it to the world of human interaction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/opin ... tacle.html
SonicG » Sat May 27, 2017 7:18 am wrote:The art of refusal, on the other hand, acts against what everybody does but nobody once did, against work and submission to the state. The art of refusal is the art of living, which begins with the general strike that never ends.
- Bob Black
The permanent general strike...such a seductive proposal...I guess we are close:We seem to be entering a period similar to May 1968, which represents what Debord called “lived time,” stripping back space and time from the realm of spectacle and returning it to the world of human interaction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/opin ... tacle.html
France came quite close to a general strike back then...some accuse Debord of selling out the Sits to "council communism"...The Society of the Spectacle was great critique but Vaneigm offered praxis.
http://library.nothingness.org/articles ... contents/5
Yet, I am skeptical of any return to the fabled times of May '68 on the barricades in France....while "Under the paving stones, the beach" is still true, that beach is filled with plastic trash and poisoned fish...
SonicG » Sat May 27, 2017 8:18 am wrote:
Yet, I am skeptical of any return to the fabled times of May '68 on the barricades in France....while "Under the paving stones, the beach" is still true, that beach is filled with plastic trash and poisoned fish...
Through infrastructures of resistance, movements will build alternatives but, as importantly, have capacities to defend the new social formations. These infrastructures of resistance will directly confront state capitalist power. Thus, they will need to be defended from often savage attack. The key impulse is to shift the terrain of anti-capitalist struggle from a defensive position–reacting to elite policies and practices or merely offering dissent–to an offensive one–contesting ruling structures and offering workable alternatives. Movements need to shift from a position of resistance to one of active transformation.
This would serve to meet practical needs–of shelter, education, health, and well-being–while also raising visions for broader alternatives and stoking the capacity to imagine or see new possibilities.
Building infrastructures of resistance will directly affect movements in practical and visionary ways. It will also challenge ruling elites by pushing them into reactive, rather than purely offensive, and confident, positions.
Such infrastructures of resistance would shift possibilities for strategizing and mobilization. They might render demonstrations unnecessary by offering a base for refusing or countering institutions and practices of states and capital. At the same time, more than simply opposing authoritarian institutions we might develop our own means for living the lives we desire.
Transformation must focus on controlling means of reproduction as well as means of production. Focus on worker control alone leaves communities unable to allocate resources effectively and efficiently to meet broader needs (social or ecological).
At the same time, community control without control of means of production would be futile, a fantasy.
A new social world cannot be built from scratch. Nor does it need to be.
The mutual aid relationships and already existing associations that people have organized around work and personal interests (clubs, groups, informal workplace networks, even subcultures) can provide possible resources.
At the same time, many infrastructures are needed. Even today, in working class and poor neighborhoods and households, many workers have only loose informal connections in their workplaces. In apartment complexes, households can link up in direct assemblies to organize shared resources. Some might include cooking, maintenance, laundry, health care, education, birthing rooms, and recreational facilities.
Building infrastructures of resistance encourages novel ways of thinking about revolutionary transformation. Rather than the familiar form of street organization or protest action, within constructive anarchist approaches, the action is in the organizing. There needs to be already existing infrastructures or else a radical or revolutionary transformation will be impossible (or disastrous).
On the need for pre-existing revolutionary infrastructures, larger mobilizations such as general strikes cannot have a meaningful impact in the absence of infrastructures of resistance. Under general strike conditions essential goods and services would be absent. Water, energy, food, and medical services would not be available without alternative associations or capacities to occupy and run workplaces to meet human social needs. These sorts of takeover themselves require pre-existing infrastructures.
--Jeff Shantz, Taking it OFF the streets!
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