I’m glad that after Minnesota general strikes are on the table again. Especially now that we’re bringing May Day back.
We need to shut it all down for weeks before they realize we’re serious. But to foster change we’d have to shut it down for months.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. It’s cliché, but true and applies here.
“One day at a time” works for people who are recovering from addiction to substances. Why couldn’t it help people recover from addiction to capitalism? Consumption is consumption.
“Just for today, I won’t drink alcohol” can easily become “Just for today, I won’t consume corporate products”, “Just for today, I’ll hold the picket line”, “Just for today, I’ll tighten my belt and live off bare essentials.”
One day gives people a taste of what’s possible without being a major deterrent or barrier to folks who can’t afford to miss work for a week or a month. If it’s successful, it demonstrates proof of concept and makes similar future actions more likely. It also shows the structures of power what we’re capable of, puts them off balance a bit, and builds worker power.
People saying “what we really need is ______” are a bane to the movement that’s happening. I’m not saying you’re doing it on purpose, but don’t fall for that rhetoric. A lot of it is coming from plants attempting to discredit and derail the movement.
Actions being done now are always more effective than hypothetical actions that “should be done,” and they build towards greater action. Don’t expect immediate perfection, because you’ll always be disappointed. It’s necessary to start somewhere, and this is a great place to start. If you want to be part of it, grab ahold and run with it. Otherwise, stay out of the way, and above all don’t cross the picket line.
“Just for today, I won’t drink alcohol” can easily become “Just for today, I won’t consume corporate products”,
One-day boycotts don’t work. The corporate world knows it and completely ignores them.
You’re completely misunderstanding “just for today…”
It doesn’t mean “I’ll have a drink tomorrow.”
It’s about atomizing the process of sobriety. “Today, I won’t have a drink.” That’s all you need to focus on, because tomorrow is tomorrow.
Then tomorrow comes, and you tell yourself “Today, I won’t have a drink.” Repeat…
Eventually it becomes second nature. But when you’re first starting sobriety “Never drink again for the rest of my life” sounds like a huge hurdle. “Go a whole year without drinking” sounds like a huge hurdle. “Go a month without drinking” or even “Go a week without drinking” sound like huge hurdles.
Even “Go a day without drinking” is a huge hurdle for someone who’s been drinking every day for years. But it’s more manageable. And at the end of each day, you can say you accomplished your goal. Every day, it gets a little easier.
That’s what I meant when I said we can apply it to overcoming our addictions to capitalist consumption habits. And I stand by it.
Ok let’s try one day first. You know, get our legs under us.
Beautifully coincides with May Day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workers'_Day
They are trying to co-opt May Day and neuter it
That’s what Labor Day was for. You seem very confused. Did you get hit in the head recently?
May Day is for recognizing labor. The US oligarchy is using that date to redefine what that day was designed for by using terms that are gaining reactions in the US, coopting them so they can neutralize the impact. They are doing to labor what MAGA communists are doing to neuter communism with disenfranchised conservatives.
So what do you propose people do then?
Nationwide protests
Tankies on lemmy: “That’s performative! They need to do a general strike!”
Protest organizers organize a general strike on international labour day
Tankies on lemmy: “they’re co-opting and neutering international labour day!!1!”
What the fuck do you think they should do on may day, twiddle their dicks and doompost about capitalism?
It’s a fucking general strike, organized by a decentralized movement of civil sector and labour organizations! How in that twisted and dissonant mind of yours do you justify calling that “co-opting” and “neutering” the labour movement?!?
It is not a general strike, it’s another meaningless, no demands, liberal circle jerk. BlueMAGA is as worthless as MAGA and both defend their own oppression
FYI to others: I have this tankie from Lemmy.ml tagged as believing China doesn’t ban images of Xi as Winnie the Pooh, lol.
All I ever see them be is antagonistic, sowing apathy, defeatism, or trying to egg people with stochastic rhetoric (but never themselves, of course).
There’s more than a few of these around. They start shit on otherwise seemingly normal posts for no reason, and often have a couple (friends? Alts?) to give them a couple upvotes to keep them afloat. IDK why they seem more prevalent lately and they’re only there to be dicks and not actually engage.
Because foreign adversarial governments who want to see the demise of the west have access to the internet too.
Seriously, to think the FSB and the CCP’s CPD aren’t on lemmy is to delude oneself…
It gives me hope others recognize this. All we can do is call attention to it.
Some people still tell me to take my tinfoil hat off. Like, how ignorant can one be at this point?
Unless those people are state actors, of course…
Guess I’m surprised that any of them would waste time on Lemmy/the fediverse. It doesn’t have enough clout to seem to be worth the effort.
We absolutely have trolls and there was pretty much no possibility at all that there wasn’t some kind of State monitoring going on, but active organized State Trolls seemed a stretch. There are far more popular platforms to manipulate the denizens of.
Waste time? It’s not the oligarchs in those countries doing it. They siphon the wealth of their nations like parasites. They can afford to pay a few peasants to operate their troll farms, where one person can direct thousands of bots at a time.
There’s an entire office building in Petersburg devoted to cyber/psyops. True, they probably focus most of their effort on more popular platforms like reddit, xitter, tiktok, facebook, and instagram. They’re definitely on telegram, maybe even whatsapp and discord. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re even on irrelevant artifacts like quora and yelp.
But to think they’re not on the fediverse, just because it isn’t as popular as other platforms? Please. They’ll leave no stone unturned.
I just moved from mainland and Xi definitely banned pictures of Winnie the Pooh and squashes pretty much all protest. Not sure why he would think different.
Maybe your time would be better spent worrying about your own country?
Traveler threatened with jail or fine had phone forcefully searched and was denied entry after bald photo of JD Vance found.
Only state approved journalists allowed in White House press pool.
Pentagon removes internal press media offices.
Protestors charged with terrorism for wearing black clothing and handing out pamphlets.
US builds concentration camps for those disappeared by masked secret police, after killing citizens in street.
Masked secret police collecting DNA, face scans, license plates from peaceful protestors, for use in creating a database of “domestic terrorists”.
Trump wishes to imprison additional US citizens in El Salvadoran gulag after sending 280 immigrants.
Police arrest and attack citizens with chemical weapons, batons, and projectiles, injuring over 300,000 people per year.
US bankrolls, supplies, and provides troops to apartheid state conducting genocide.
But China (7000km away) is big meanie and if I can’t have pooh photo (if I ever travel 7000km to China (which I hate because pooh photo)), I will literally die.
Are you assuming that commenter is american?
Also, nobody here is claiming that america is good. We’re literally here to discuss how drastically things in the US need to change.
The comment you’re replying to was calling out the hypocrisy of someone trying to detract from the protests going on. Denying the authoritarianism of one country doesn’t help oppose authoritarianism in another. Two mutually antagonistic governments can be authoritarians at the same time, and it’s perfectly valid to criticize both.
So your long list of facts, while they would be relevant as a top-level comment had you framed them as “reasons why we’re protesting,” are really just a thinly-veiled red herring that you’re attempting to use to defend someone who’s attempting to derail conversation about the protest movement.
Are you in, or in the way?
Its the fragile little bird again. Hows that boot taste?
Explain why you think a general strike is neutering workers?
A 1 day event is not a general strike, it’s a performance
Damn dude, you ever reconsider a position after being ratio-ed that hard?
As if I care what BlueMAGA thinks
Now you’re talking
The general strike will be May 1 between the hours of 12-230pm. Be sure to bring signs and do not inconvenience anyone/anything. This will show them who’s in charge.
You are not doing anything, you can’t even get something simple like a protest right
“No, not like that!”
Tankies will always oppose any movement that takes away their ability to talk shit about it.
They don’t care about progress or tangible action. They only talk about those things to take steam out of any momentum that’s building, but when tangible action comes they talk shit about that too because now they can’t talk shit about it, and that’s unacceptable to them!
Some people just want to complain. It’s like the people who say Disney isn’t making original movies and then shit on original movies before they’re even released
Ml user here, I think it’s rad. Gonna radicalize the libs at my local protest with May Day history ¯_( ツ)_/¯
Like, I think the No Kings protests, for instance, while great at getting people out, struggle to give those people direction, beyond the big protest.
But any good Socialist, Communist, Anarchist, [insert preferred flavour of leftist] will know that you go where the masses are. And if the masses are at a big protest, then you go to the big protest to recruit, educate, and even just network with cool people and orgs.
Great idea, honestly
There are certainly some .ml users that are genuine, thinking beings who actually care about leftism and progress.
That doesn’t change the fact that the majority of .ml users we encounter on the rest of the fediverse are unthinking, uncritical, insufferable, sealioning hypocrites, edgelords, and keyboard warriors, who do more damage to leftism as a whole than anything else.
Many of them I’m tempted to believe are corpo-fascist plants attempting to derail and discredit leftism as a whole. Some of them may even conceivably be bots from troll farms in other authoritarian surveillance states who just happen to be anti-west without actually being any better than western nations or even leftist in anything but name (and sometimes not even that!)
So yes, you’re a counterexample, and thank you for being a reasonable person and contributing to the leftist cause. But that doesn’t change anybody’s opinion about .ml as a whole, and there are plenty of other leftist instances you might consider switching to if you ever get tired of the association.
Like, I think the No Kings protests, for instance, while great at getting people out, struggle to give those people direction, beyond the big protest.
This post is literally about the No Kings protest movement organizing a general strike. That wouldn’t have been possible without the widely successful protests. How is that not “giving people direction beyond the protest”?
How is that not “giving people direction beyond the protest”?
Its definitely a good step in the right direction, don’t get me wrong.
But it’s not like the No Kings organizers are seeding Amazon warehouses, embedding themselves into the existing labor movement, mobilizing the people going to these protests to join, start, or get active in their own unions. They’re not training disciplined activist cadre.
All things which would bolster the goal of a general strike, and allow something like that to be sustained for a longer period of time.
Without that stuff, it’s just turning the masses out for a big one day March around the block. Which is fine, and I’m not ragging on it, but there needs to be more, and I just think that more is going to come from the more radical groups attending these protests who have deeper organizational ties and skills, as opposed go the No Kings organizers themselves.
How do you know they’re not doing those things? I’m sure anyone who’s engaging in those activities is doing it on the DL. At this point in time, too much publicity on that front can do more harm than good. You don’t want to alert your foreman that you’re seeding the warehouse with a pro-union movement until you’re ready to act decisively.
One of the best ways to think about No Kings is as a networking event. If your org isn’t showing up and taking names and numbers, you can’t complain that it’s not benefiting you.
and I just think that more is going to come from the more radical groups attending these protests
Then tell those radical groups to quit complaining on the internet about how it doesn’t do anything, get off their asses, and go to the protests to network and recruit.
But make sure they don’t co-opt it to taint its public image; its strength is in its widespread support. Keep adjacent and tangential activities on the DL, and maintain plausible deniability vis a vie any connection between your group and the larger movement.
who have deeper organizational ties and skills, as opposed go the No Kings organizers themselves.
If they have deeper organizational ties and skills, then why aren’t they doing anything, while No Kings mobilizes millions of people nationwide?
The “No Kings organizers” is a misnomer, because it’s not a centrally organized movement. It doesn’t have an established hierarchy or leadership structure. It’s a quiltwork of civil sector orgs and labor orgs. It’s the very people and groups who you’re saying should be involved. Is someone missing? That’s on them for not showing up.
There was lots of organizing going on at the NK protest I was at yesterday. People need to get off the Internet and go actually do stuff and interact with others.
Yeah, I’m tired of all these defeatist scabs in the comments trying to detract and derail. It’s giving me a headache. Time to take a break from the internet for a while…
I bet this influx of plants and trolls is specifically timed to coincide with the No Kings protests…
Isn’t a general strike literally to be an inconvenience? Mostly for the capitalists, but still.
It’ll just remind them to spend billions doubling down on AI and robots so they don’t need fickle human labour.
Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen though.
They’re being a sarcastic asshole
Ahh, thanks, missed that. I’ve seen a bit too many people insisting that a good protest doesn’t inconvenience anyone.
I wonder how many of those people are actually just tankies masquerading in order to manufacture reasons to complain about people actually doing the work…
You’re not doing work. You are not a threat to the system that created this mess, just useful tools to them to stay in power
Wow, you’re sure trying really hard to derail the movement that’s actually happening.
Take it easy, sweaty. The people are laying the groundwork to reclaim their power. Whoever you’re serving by posing as a leftist to try to derail any momentum is going to be very displeased with your failure, so you’d better wipe that worried look off your face before they see you and smell your weakness.
How about we don’t plan them and just do them? Hold out for weeks, don’t buy anything and if anybody hasn’t filed taxes at this point, don’t file them?
Seems like planning protests just gives the opposition time to prepare and counteract protests.
and if anybody hasn’t filed taxes at this point, don’t file them
Oh shit, are the american people about to go there?
Because that is some rad 1773 shit lol
Not filing taxes isn’t the way to do it. They’d have to request that their employers stop withholding taxes on their paychecks. Filing taxes is just how they get their excess tax withholdings refunded.
So… your idea is to have an organized general strike that includes everyone while not informing anyone ahead of time?
A disorganized strike, if you will.
Yeah, it’s called doing real work.
Something no American wants to do or is intelligent enough in how to orchestrate. You all sit there in your little armchairs talking about revolution this and revolution that. Tell me, has anyone of you ever thought of the aftermath of said revolution? Like, how do we go about it if its achieved?
You’re not one to talk.
Whoosh.
it’s called doing real work.
No, the subject of this post is doing real work. All you’re doing is detracting from the work being done while wishing for some magical solution.
Something no American wants to do or is intelligent enough in how to orchestrate.
Some americans are currently orchestrating it intelligently, and your complaint is that they “shouldn’t plan, just do.” So much for intelligent orchestration…
You all sit there in your little armchairs talking about revolution this and revolution that.
That’s just the stupid fucking tankies, who also complain about any real work being done, just like you’re doing.
Tell me, has anyone of you ever thought of the aftermath of said revolution?
Yes, that’s why most of us tell tankies to fuck off when they talk about that shit.
You’re not one to talk.
Mirror, mirror…
Doing real work would be going to Washington D.C in collective mass and occupying the white house (which is funny that conservative nutjobs did it before any leftist group ever could. funny that). Or you know, doing real work would involve actually tracking, following and routing every corrupt politician. Doing real work would involve getting up in Trump’s face personally, as he is too powerless to stop millions that’d theoretically approach him.
No american has the balls to, they just do whatever is convenient for them. The real work is stop supporting the regime that this country has once again, put itself in. No american wants to upset their life to do that, no, they’ll want to be cute and plan on an off-day to go out and raise a sign up and down. It is vibes of Occupy Wall-Street, that protest did nothing.
No, it isn’t just tankies. It is by observation, as to how many people I see online talking big and boldly about their revolutionist dreams, but keeping them as just that - revolutionist dreams. Keep assuming blindly.
I asked for a full plan, not a witty retort. You’ve demonstrated as to how little you’ve thought of actually running a country post-revolution would take. Proves me right.
You seem to resort to just spamming that word ‘tankie’ but I don’t think you absolutely realize what is being said to you. Man, you’re a lost cause. Fucking moron.
Yesterday was the largest protest in US history. Shut the fuck up you pompous counterproductive troll.
Well have fun with that. Now run along and play, the grown ups are demonstrating.
It is by observation, as to how many people I see online talking big and boldly about their revolutionist dreams, but keeping them as just that - revolutionist dreams. Keep assuming blindly.
How is that not exactly what you’re doing?
I asked for a full plan, not a witty retort. You’ve demonstrated as to how little you’ve thought of actually running a country post-revolution would take. Proves me right.
More projection. Is that your only card? I’ve offered plenty of intelligent input on this thread and others, but your comments aren’t worth the effort because they don’t stimulate productive discussion. Don’t blame me that the only valid response to you is to point out how unhelpful you’re being.
You seem to resort to just spamming that word ‘tankie’ but I don’t think you absolutely realize what is being said to you. Man, you’re a lost cause. Fucking moron.
No, I understand exactly what’s being said. And I only use the word “tankie” to refer to “tankies.” You’re complaining about keyboard warriors who advocate for their revolution fantasies. Those are literally tankies. Are you offended by the word ‘tankie’? What’s a matter, are you a tankie or something?
So far in this thread you’ve called people ‘retards’ and ‘morons’, so don’t accuse me of spamming words without understanding the conversation being held. You’re the lost cause here, not I.
This is something that I always think about when people mention guillotines and why the example is so stupid to me. The aftermath of the French Revolution was bad for the Feudal Monarchy, but also wasn’t good for Robespierre and the Jacobins. If you recall, he was also beheaded by the guillotine after shooting off his own jaw and the sans-culottes were repressed by the bourgeoisie after the revolution “stabilized”. It’s critical to have a well-developed plan in any power vacuum or there will be far more bloodshed, instability and other bad guys will just take over.
I think their idea is that the protest doesn’t end Monday as everyone goes back to work, which is why this didn’t even worry Trump and his group.
I feel like planning is less the problem moreso the length. A day is basically nothing. We’d have to go back to Covid length shutdowns for even the smallest impacts to happen.
It demonstrates proof of concept, knocks the owner-caste off balance, and encourages future action. It’s not a wasted effort. It’s strategic.
Organized resistance is a muscle. The reason you see so much shit like this in France is because they exercise theirs regularly. The US does not. You can’t go from years of a desk job straight to running a marathon. You need to build up. Get people used to doing this stuff.
No Kings started by getting people to show up to protests. Lots of people. More than ever before in US history in fact. Now they’re just asking those people to go one step further. You manage a one day general strike, maybe you can do two. If you can do two, maybe four. If four, maybe a week. Build those muscles. Build people’s confidence. Build the movement.
This is what resistance looks like. It’s not some happy little fantasy where everyone just spontaneously rises up and removes all the bad people from power. It’s not Hollywood. It’s slow, and it’s hard work, but it’s real.
This is one of the biggest problems with a general strike these days. The wealth inequality between them and us is such that even a year long strike will only ruin most of us, meanwhile they’ll get a government bailout even though they never missed a payment on their yacht. You might be able to destroy a MAGA supporting small business, but you’ll wreck yourself and your like-minded neighborhood small businesses along the way. I don’t have a solid solution, just throwing this out as food for thought.
My solution would be a mix a ethanol and Styrofoam in a glass bottle, applied to any business that you think should be participating in the strike.
That’s cool as long as you make sure you’ve cleared the building of any non-human persons prior. Start lighting up pets or livestock willy-nilly and I’ll give you a taste of your own medicine, personally. ✊🐾
Whatever you do, just don’t draw any association between your kristallnacht and the movement, because it doesn’t need that baggage.
Its strength is in widespread public support, and all you would accomplish is taking the wind out of its sails.
Thing is there are no like-minded small businesses around me. Pretty much all of them either openly support Trump or try to hide their beliefs until you walk in when the right customer is chatting up the manager. If they all went down, I wouldn’t shed a single tear.
Well you’ll still need to organize mutual aid networks and logistical infrastructure to produce and distribute food year-round, every single day. Because if all the grocery stores shut their doors and all the shelves are bare, what are people going to eat?
That’s not so easy, is it?
What do you do when the majority of farmers in the US are trump supporters and corporate conglomerates who won’t donate crops even when they have a surplus that they can’t sell?
Even if you have the crops, how do you process them and package them large-scale without industrial facilities and labor? How do you transport them without vehicles, fuel, and drivers/conductors?
In order for the movement to achieve a complete and total success, without resulting in a complete and total disaster, you need to have these details hashed out. And that means getting everybody onboard: the farmers, the millers, the packers, the drivers and the conductors, the warehouse operators, the grocers, and the clerks.
And that’s just for food. What about medicine? What about education? What about mechanics, manufacturers, tech support, social work? It all needs to be in place, and that means everybody needs to be onboard. Without that, you have an immanent failure.
Small steps build the momentum. Every step in the right direction is a net positive.
The hell does this have to do with small businesses run by MAGAts in my area of Missouri?
Are your grocery stores run by maga small business owners, or by corpos?
Either way, if you want to run them out of business, something needs to replace them.
If you can’t see the connection, then you’re too shortsighted and ignorant to be allowed anywhere near the decision-making levels of any movement underway.
I’m not signing up for anything you’re promoting, if you’re that hostile towards the mere suggestion that we need to exercise foresight and think about what comes next.
Something tells me if that actually happened, you’d complain about how impromptu protests don’t work because people need time to prepare and they’re too disruptive.
It’s something, but more importantly, they’re actually doing it. If you wanna do better, do it. Don’t just bitch on here about how they’re doing it wrong
I was gonna say the first couple no kings protests people complained that they couldn’t go because they weren’t communicating ahead of time.
Now they communicate ahead of time and people complain that it’s too far out. They can’t win.
Actually, no.
Yeah I would do better, I advocate in protesting smarter, too bad nobody listens because everyone like you, seems to have it alllll figured out, don’t you?
Fucking retard. I’m going to have a good laugh once this protest does, oh, absolutely fuck-all.
I advocate in protesting smarter
No you fucking don’t! You advocate for no planning and some spontaneous, disorganized, and magical “just do.”
How about we don’t plan them and just do them?
This you?
too bad nobody listens because everyone like you, seems to have it alllll figured out, don’t you?
You’re the one who seems to think you have it all figured out, so quit projecting. Why should anyone listen to you when you’re only point is “everyone’s wrong but me, everything the organizers are saying during the ‘planning’ stage is invalid, people shouldn’t listen to them, they should listen to me!”
Well, unlike you, the protest organizers are actually creating and maintaining a movement and taking tangible actions. So I’m not surprised no one listens to you when you’re trying to detract from that.
Fucking retard
I’m sure this will make more people listen to someone like you lol
Nobody listens to anybody anyways unless it’s a stupid echo chamber followed by a vague message for everyone to get cozy with. Because Americans don’t know how to protest, they’ll only do whatever is most convenient and comfortable.
🤦♂️
What if I am due a refund. Should I file my taxes to get money from them?
You’re an idiot.
You’re the idiot. The IRS already has the money. It gets withheld from every paycheck. Filing taxes is just how to get the excess money refunded.
The only people who owe money from tax refunds are the ones who opt out of tax withholding, and people whose primary source of income is investment interest.
That’d be ideal, but Americans don’t have the organizational infrastructure to go on strike on a moment’s notice. Building that would be step 0.
This. The infrastructure to take large scale labor action has been systemically dismantled over the past 50 years. We need to focus on networking and building up institutional infrastructure for large scale collective action. It’s not a fast process, and you can’t coordinate the logistics for this kind of collective action in a year or two.
The civil rights movement took decades to achive anything. The union labour movement took generations to build enough legitimacy to have an impact. Organizing on that scale is not something you can do in weeks or months.
collective action in a year or two.
By the time that happens democrats will be back in control and liberals can go back to ignoring the fascism that keeps building
So what’s your plan? Do nothing? Okay, then stop being a scab and go complain about it on .ml where the adults in the room don’t have to listen to your brainrot.
Liberals love to infantilize, your plan is doing nothing. If civil rights activists in the 60s took the same approach we wouldnt have civil rights laws yet. But instead of listening to people that have experience in organizing and protest liberals would rather listen to the people neutering their power.
This is the big one. It wouldn’t surprise me if a majority of these people are only upset cause Trump is the one doing this shit. If Kamala had won, they couldn’t care less that we’d still be murdering people overseas, deporting innocent people, and sending weapons to Israel. Where were these parades when Biden was doing this shit? Best you had was colleges attacking students who said anything and Biden siding with the colleges while all the shitlibs agreed with him and wanted another president just like him.
Stop pretending things would be just as bad under Kamala Harris, or that things were just as bad under Biden.
Were either of them perfect? No, of course not, and no one here is arguing that they were. But to pretend they’re just as bad as trump is as asinine as it is destructive.
They would be just as bad but you would be ignoring it because the blue fascists would be the ones in control
It’s the only way to wake libshits up to how awful these fucks have destroyed everything for decades. Every single time a Dem takes office, all these people just shut down and ignore everything until they lose the next election. Until we start seeing this pressure applied to them also, I’m gonna keep calling people out on their BS.
Nobody is “waking up” because of your hyperboles mistakenly equating Biden and Harris to trump. The only thing you’re making anyone do is roll their eyes at you and stop listening.
There are plenty of legitimate criticisms to make about the DNC establishment. Now is the time to do it, with primaries around the corner, if you’re willing to engage productively.
But saying they’re just as bad as the RNC is not it. It’s not a productive conversation, and it sets us back more than you realize.
Counting on politicians to fix this, regardless of party is an exercise in futility. We need to be building community organizations whether it’s Trump in power, Kamala, or Bernie. The Dems can’t fix this, the best you can expect from them is the bleeding slows down. We won’t get something better until we build it ourselves, with or without liberal permission or approval.
