A-Infos (en) US, BRRB: It's Not a General Strike, but it's a Start by Cameron Pádraig (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

January 30th has been set as a nationwide day of action against the 
campaign of state terror carried out by ICE and other DHS agencies. Some 
have referred to the 30th as a 'general strike'. ---- In this article, 
Black Rose/Rosa Negra member Cameron Pádraig examines the prospects for 
a general strike on the 30th, offering a critical perspective while 
encouraging organizers and others to use it as a jumping off point to 
develop organization.
Intensifying class conflict here in the United States, now taking place 
in the context of a widening revulsion at racialized terror in the Twin 
Cities and other major metropolitan regions, has put the notion of the 
general strike back into circulation in a major way. January 30th has 
now emerged as the date on which a national general strike is set to 
take place. Lacking coordination, specific demands, and backing from 
unions, there's little chance that the 30th will see a general strike 
worthy of the name. How then, should we relate to or intervene in it?

General strikes loom large in the left's imagination. This is 
particularly true of a US left contending with decades of eroding union 
density and acquiescence by the labor movement to the inclusion of 
no-strike clauses in virtually all contracts. At the same time, the 
living historical memory of the (relatively) more common mass, militant, 
and rank-and-file led strike actions of the previous century is fading 
with the aging population who experienced or organized them.

It's no wonder that the general strike has taken on a mystical quality. 
This is true both in the sense that it's regularly invoked as a panacea 
for confronting a wide range of social problems, and in mystifications 
about what a general strike actually is, or what organizing one looks 
like. As Joe Burns notes, the last 15 years have seen calls for a 
general strike regularly proliferate across social media, but almost 
never undertaken as serious organizing efforts or involve participation 
from unions. Most are reduced to single day consumer boycotts, a noble 
effort, but one that pales when compared to the scale and type of 
activity called for by a general strike.

The most notable 21st century instance of a mass strike was the 'day 
without immigrants' in 2006, when organizers with deep roots in 
immigrant communities managed to galvanize a one-day work stoppage, 
bringing over five million people onto the streets of 160 US cities. 
Another can be found in the 2011 Oakland general strike initiated by the 
Occupy movement with at least some backing from local unions. Still, no 
serious general strike has happened in the US in nearly 100 years.

2006 "Day Without Immigrants" in Los Angeles

2011 Oakland General Strike
Despite widespread confusion around the specifics of what makes a 
general strike a strike-namely, the organized and sustained withdrawal 
of labor as a means to force concessions from an adversary-its staying 
power as a concept shows the widely held, even if often shallow, 
recognition of its potential as one of the few real ways to push against 
the state and capital. In other words, people reach for the strike 
weapon because we know intuitively that by collectively slowing or 
shutting down the economy, we are inflicting pain on those who occupy 
positions of power within capitalist society's structures of domination.

Strikes expose fundamental conflicts at the heart of capitalist social 
relations by interrupting the everyday processes through which 
exploitation is normalized and reproduced. By halting production, 
circulation, or service provision, strikes make visible the antagonistic 
relationship between labor and capital that is otherwise obscured by 
everyday routines, ideologies, and legal frameworks. For militants 
working to build an infrastructure for working-class radical politics, 
it is  important to be clear about the distinctions between different 
kinds of strikes, their aims, and their limits. This clarity matters 
even as we recognize that real struggles are often messy, uneven, and 
shaped by immediate conditions rather than theoretical purity.

Interest in the general strike as a serious social weapon has grown 
rapidly in recent weeks as a response to the escalating campaign of 
racialized state terror being exacted by the Department of Homeland 
Security and various agencies under its umbrella. The federal occupation 
of Minneapolis, and especially the ICE murder of Renée Nicole Good, 
pushed organized residents to think seriously about what an escalation 
of their own might look like. This manifested in January 23rd's 'ICE 
OUT: Day of Truth and Freedom' action.

Initially proposed by a coalition of religious, NGO, and community 
groups, unions eventually signed on to the call for a day of mass action 
on the 23rd, lending credence to claims ahead of the date that this had 
the makings of a general strike. But constrained by contracts bearing 
no-strike clauses, unions did not take strike votes or call for work 
stoppages, instead only indirectly suggesting that their members use PTO 
or call out for the day. This was a necessary-and seemingly 
successful-short-term workaround given the circumstances, but it also 
made clear that there was a line the union brass was not willing to step 
over. Until rank-and-file workers, including those already in unions, 
have the independent power to decide when it's time to strike, any 
attempt at something on the scale of a general strike will face serious 
obstacles.

With an estimated 50,000-100,000 people in the streets of Minneapolis on 
the 23rd, it's hard to argue that it was anything but a success-whether 
or not it met the specific criteria of a general strike. Only days after 
the mass action on the 23rd, however, federal agents murdered Alex 
Pretti in cold blood. With the shock of yet another execution by federal 
agents still fresh, student organizations at the University of Minnesota 
put out the call for a follow up mass action, this time on January 30th 
and on a national scale. Hundreds of community groups, NGOs, political 
organizations, and others have now signed on to the call for a 
"nationwide shutdown". We can take this as a positive sign, while still 
recognizing that it will fall short of achieving its stated aim of 
initiating a general strike.

At the same time, it's critical to understand that our first task isn't 
to dampen the embers of a genuine desire to fight back with pedantry 
about what a "true" general strike is. Instead, we should work to 
animate interest in the tactic and its history, while simultaneously 
encouraging reflection on the limitations and contradictions of the mass 
actions that are being called 'general strikes'. Finally, and most 
importantly, we need to be ready with suggestions for where organizing 
might go next.

The national day of action on January 30th won't be a general strike, 
but that shouldn't mean we have to write it off or deride it as 
pointless. It gives us an opportunity to invite our coworkers, 
neighbors, or classmates into the streets with us, opening the door to 
conversations about how we can bring the fight back into our workplaces, 
neighborhoods, and schools. Keeping those conversations going is a first 
step on the path toward organization-the prerequisite for anything as 
ambitious, and as necessary, as a general strike.

Cameron Pádraig is a rank-and-file member of UAW and a member of Black 
Rose/Rosa Negra's Bay Area Local.

https://www.blackrosefed.org/not-a-general-strike-but-a-start/
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