It Could Happen Here - A General Strike Might Be Closer Than You Think Pt. 2

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

Part Two: The Road Ahead Calls for a general strike go viral all the time - but what would it take for one to actually get organized? It's Going Down takes over It Could Happen Here in a special two-episode dive into the history of general strikes in the United States - from the Civil War to modern day. This episode includes an interview with activist and translator, Scott Campbell about Occupy Oakland and author and journalist, Kim Kelly about the potential for labor insurgency in 2023.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle.

Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. Once again, you're listening to It Could Happen Here, with the crew from It's Going Down taking over. This is our second show, and we'll be doing a total of five episodes throughout the month of January. So if you like what you hear, please let the amazing folks at Cool Zone Media know. Yesterday, we began by looking at general strikes in U.S. history, starting with the mass plantation strike during the American Civil War. We spoke with labor historian Robert Ovets about the revolutionary and bloody history of general strikes in the United States, and we also looked at the immigrant

general strike in 2006 that successfully beat back draconian legislation that sought to further militarize the border and attack undocumented 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 2, 2011. Occupy Oakland was part of the much larger Occupy movement that began in New York with the occupation of Zuccotti Park, but was seen as the radical focal point for the growing struggle. Starting as an occupation on October 10 in front of Oakland City Hall, named Oscar Grant Plaza, on October 25th, 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 a general strike was called for a week later. Upwards of 100,000 people took part in the strike's 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 100,000 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 nationally, it seemed to kind of sort of come out of nowhere, there were certainly things that really helped influence it. Nationally, 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 Capitol in 2011 against anti-union legislation, and all of this was happening against the backdrop of the Arab Spring. And then in the Bay Area, the Oscar Grant

Rebellion and riots in 2009 and 2010 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, Occupy, Take Over, and Occupy Everything. The explosion of the Occupy movement in the fall of 2011 cannot be overstated. Occupy encampments became a focal point for people angry at the general state of the world to gather, discuss, and act, and they became a real focal point for

encounter. While some cities saw these encampments come and go pretty quickly, many saw concrete projects and organizing come out of them. People were fighting to resist foreclosures, for instance, in 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 in 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 Rust Belt at the time, still am. At the Occupy, I was part of the first march of 5,000 people there. There were maybe like 200 or 300 people at the General Assembly 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 lasted nine months. But we can start to see the impacts of that kind of breakdown of that division between people who declare themselves political and, quote, everybody else. When we start to move forward past Occupy, we start to see that manifest during the Mike Brown uprising in 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. Occupy pointed out an important thing, which is a fallacy in the way that we think, in 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 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 Occupy, looking at any of these big moments, when we look back, we can see all these things that um like contribute to it you know and i think that this thing that you're talking to you tom of um like the kind of losing that thing of like professional activist or like actor in a situation is like so important and i think that that is something that can like really

inspire us in terms of what's happening in this moment too or like how general strikes happen or how something like 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 relating to circumstances and to each other and then different things happen um Like thinking about the George Floyd uprising in 2020, like none of us predicted COVID, you know, and like how that might have contributed to like what happened in that or just like all these different circumstances that come together

to make these moments. And I think that, you know, something like what's going on now, we could look back and like 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 within itself also serves like as a propaganda mechanism to like spread so like i like just like listening to that 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 the 99%. I think about moments of radicalization and I think of this one as being one of them as a person who just recently, and as of five years ago, recently awoke. These are moments that I remember 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 should 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. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron,

host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, and digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge, and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry, and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts.

Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace,

the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For us to understand how the Oakland general strike of 2011 took place, we first have to go back to what made Occupy Oakland so important to so many people in just a few short weeks in October. In the following interview, we speak with its 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 2nd. We then 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 in Oscar Grant 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. It was an amazing, vibrant, self-managed, autogestive community where you had folks living there in Oscar Grant Plaza. You had food, child care, medical care, libraries, food, child care, medical care, libraries, all sorts of projects 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,

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 welcoming atmosphere, the sense of potential that the camp and the activities based around the camp held, the openness of people and really the wide range of individuals who were participating and collectives who were participating, which certainly, of course, led to differences of opinions at times 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'd never experienced before and that I have yet to experience again. It definitely had an organic feel to it of sort of people coming together, lending what skills they had, lending what resources they had across a variety of positions that may be broadly categorized on the left or post-left spectrum. A spectrum of folks with a spectrum of capacities, of needs. 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 and who were unfamiliar with really perhaps the

and who were unfamiliar with really perhaps the impetus behind Occupy Oakland and the impetus behind Occupy Wall Street in general, which was, of course, the 2008 financial crash and the Great Depression and the bailout of the banks while people got foreclosed on their homes, especially people of color and black folks, which hit particularly hard in Oakland. 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 a general assembly 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.

It, in a lot of ways, 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. They were free to bring their ideas 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 in terms of 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 in. 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 Jean Kwan, then mayor of Oakland, wanted to come and speak to the General Assembly, and she was told she could, but she'd 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 were concerning them, that they were working on, that they wanted to see flourish in the space. The biggest General Assembly happened around when to move forward with the general strike, but there were also General Assemblies 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 Occupy Oakland a problematic name? Should we change it to Occupy Decolonize Oakland? These were all sorts of issues that were brought forward to the General Assembly, along with 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 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 know the word democracy is contentious. It felt like a directly democratic process. 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 has its roots in 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 laps 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 folks decided they would implement them anyways. And that also worked out as well as sometimes creating conflict. The city grew increasingly frustrated with the encampment as they found themselves unable to make any progress in trying to recuperate and trying to gain favor, sort of make the encampment their own, an extension of the electoral body, right, or the electoral body politic. Ultimately, that's what moved Kwan, 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, who are being naive, who are being entrenched in and intransigent. 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 24th or early morning, October 25th, around 3 a.m. in the morning, 3.30, 4 a.m. And I was actually arrested. I was one of, I believe, 80,th, around 3 a.m. in the morning, 3.30, 4 a.m., and I was actually arrested. I was one of, I believe, 80-plus people were arrested

during the process of the camp's eviction. The police came in force. They masked up outside of Oracle Arena and the AIDS Stadium. It was a massive operation. They came in from all sides. People, upon hearing word that the camp was going to be evicted, set up barricades. They laced the entire area with string, trying to impede the possibility of the police getting into it quickly. There were battles with the police as they tried to make their way into the encampment.

And eventually they came in from all sides until they took over the encampment and encircled the people who remained in the camp. I was in jail when Scott Olson was shot. But I do recall the prison guards or the Alameda County sheriffs who were making these comments as we were being released finally after about 24 plus hours of being held saying things like, oh, go have fun riding and that sort of thing. of being held, saying things like, oh, go have fun rioting and that sort of thing. 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 gassed, of getting shot at with pepper balls, of Scott Olson's devastating injury of getting shot

in the head. It was violence that occurred outside the 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 primarily the Black population in Oakland and other people of color. But we see a huge upswelling of outrage at the raid of the camp, outrage at the injury against Scott Olson. And this ultimately, the attempt to use force to quash a movement tremendously backfired against both the police and the city government 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 the encampment, of basically winning against the government, winning against the police forces, reclaiming the space, taking injuries, supporting one another through that process. It seemed 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 the 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 100,000 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 found a home in particular on that day on November 2nd. Again, we've been listening to Scott Campbell. Next, we'll hear from Tova, 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 reestablishing the different services that they had set up. I had been involved in labor struggles in the past back in Detroit when I was in the UAW, so I volunteered to work on the Labor Solidarity

Committee to do the outreach to get support and participation of various unions. Teamsters played a very big role in support for that general strike as well, and I think it's the OEA, the Oakland Education Association, was the teachers' union, and they were very much involved, and so was the SEIU, particularly the SEIU, the city workers. So the city workers were down there every day and saw what was going on and were, you know, very much involved and affected by it. You know, the teachers' union had, like 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. There was

a lot of involvement beforehand as well. One or two Teamsters locals that were, you know, supporting officially, they, you know, it wasn't just their rank and file members which would have been great also but you know they we had support from one or two teamsters locals and the ILWU is primarily local 10 the Longshoremen whole proposal was to march down to the port uh and shut down the Port of Oakland. We had people involved from ILWU, although I'm pretty sure that the ILWU Local 10 officially was not involved in calling for that strike. But there were members who were involved in the ILWU 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 OEA, the teachers also, in addition to participation, donated supplies and things like that. So there was a lot of donations from the locals as well. 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. Welcome, I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged

look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them

to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban

I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 in 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 ban, riots broke out against the alt-right, and thousands of teachers started striking across Appalachia, donning red bandanas, in homage to the so-called Redneck War of 1921, when striking coal miners engaged in guerrilla warfare with government troops, and the Air Force dropped actual bombs on strikers. With the current uptick in strikes under Biden continuing into 2023, and the economic conditions of poor and working people continuing to worsen, we asked labor reporter and author of Fight Like Hell, Kim Kelly, just what are the possibilities of mass strike action in the coming year? 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, going toe to toe with Jeff Bezos in the union election winning. We get to celebrate this ongoing wave of unionization efforts at Starbucks across the country. Hundreds of Starbucks have unionized. We get to celebrate a lot of struggles that have been kind of set to the 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 miner strike in Alabama since April 1st, 2021.

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 wins and we also have folks that are being left to slog or being ignored entirely, like the folks that we're going to see very soon in Pennsylvania who are going to be launching a strike inside the Department

of Corrections. I hope that gets a lot of attention. I mean, we saw a similar effort by incarcerated workers in Alabama a couple 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 in discussing even topics like prison slavery, in topics like forced labor and 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 or an incarcerated worker? There's all these different pieces that go into this moment. And I love being posi. I love seeing workers win and workers

organize and strike and protest. And I also like keeping an eye out for the folks who aren't getting as much attention and aren't getting as much support and thinking about why that is. So it's kind of a long rambly answer to say i'm 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 degular 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. We've had a pretty good, really decent spot,

and I really don't want to see us 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, we're the workers party, like you need to come vote for us and keep us in power because 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. It just makes one wonder how much of the pro-union sloganeering 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 act as though we're pro-union, we're pro pro worker, we're not going to pass any laws, we're not going to investigate any worker deaths at Amazon facilities or 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. I think that the political calculus that the Biden administration did in choosing to crush the strike and side with the railroad bosses, I guess they figured, oh, well, it's not that big of a deal. Maybe not that many people are paying attention.

We 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 wouldn't 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 was like, oh, so, OK, 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, OK, like there's at least a little bit of benevolence, at least, you know, Democrats are in power, this guy says he owns 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 going to have an impact when, you know, the Democratic Party comes back knocking on our doors endlessly asking for our votes and 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 going to see more prolonged strikes, we're going to see more unfair labor practices, we're going to see more organizing labor practices we're 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 has if not skyrocketed 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 the aspects of this this entire scenario that really interests me first the fact that we're seeing so many workers who some might categorize as quote-unquote white collar whatever folks who work in non-profits or at book publishers or in journalism other types of media kind of all 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, 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 48,000 grad student workers at the University of California or Harper Collins publishing workers currently still on strike in New York City I think there's been kind of this shift in understanding of oh okay you don't need to be a certain type of worker or a 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 30 years ago.

There's a lot of different ways to be exploited. And we know that employers have definitely looked into each and every one and taken notes. So we have that happening. I think that's going to continue propelling the energy behind this movement. And secondly, I'm really intrigued by the rise. And it's a smaller phenomenon, but it is very much happening. And it is kind of increasing slowly, 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, certainly so. But there are also efforts, Trader Joe's, Trader Joe's United is 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 and they're still going to keep working on that. And I think seeing these independent unions, which are not affiliated with other internationals, they're not part of the AFL-CIO, they're literally just DIY in a sense. The fact that we're seeing this happen,

I think it just shows the cracks in the current labor movement as it stands, especially in the way that power is concentrated, and the way that resources are organized, and the way that the movement's 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 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 in wildcat strikes or in independent unions or in organizing outside of the traditional organized labor structure in general 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 wouldn't have felt as available or seemed as possible a few years ago. But now there's so many examples of other workers doing it. Of course, they've been there throughout history, too, like I read about in 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. It's 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 Fight Like 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 enslaved 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 2010, 2016, and 2018.

Not 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 acts of refusal, as well as building our capacity for community self-defense and mobilizing against state violence and repression in 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 we're 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. We do it, all of us. Every single one of us does it. This is not like, oh, this is just something that's happening to us. We're doing to ourselves. We're doing it to each other. These are little things that we can do, 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 and the space and the time to necessarily like go out and do things if you can't please do it you can like walk the fuck out do but if you can't like there's still stuff you can do that's it for me bye 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. There's these sort of points in which distinctions break down.

The distinction between organizers and everyone else or the distinction between workers and non-workers. convergence, right? There's 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 on strike in 1877, it's also their families, their neighbors, their whole communities on strike. And 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 to block entrances because the judge said you can't, you know, so on 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 that 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 the way 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 grew up in families where we were taught to do that, that if the wealthy were taking advantage of you, you just leave, right? That is not a normal thing outside of the Rust Belt 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 as 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, 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. 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 the survival. And I 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 tom about you like your grandparents generation and now is like neoliberalism 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 like do it yourself like, it's down to you as an individual, but I think it was pretty effective at decimating a lot of ideas of like solidarity or the idea that

our 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 just like i think that we're seeing like a resurgence of this idea of like solidarity um and that we have to do it together that is gonna do it for us this week thank you so much for tuning in check us out on massadon at igg underscore news and be sure to tune in as the workers that 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.

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