No class consciousness, and americans are cowards. Next question
Only 10% of the US is in a union. Who’s going to lead it?
The biggest of those unions I’d guess would be AFL-CIO, which I suppose did a okay job leading the Minnesota strike
Roughly one in four Minnesota voters either participated in the January 23 day of shutdown and protest against ICE, or have a loved one who did…Of those participants, 38% percent stayed off the job, either because they did not go to work, or because their employer closed for the day of action… 45% of voters “generally support the call for no work, no school, no shopping as a form of protest.” https://inthesetimes.com/article/labor-general-strike-minnesotans-ice-protest-trump-cbp
Keep in mind those numbers are voters in minnesota, not super great for a bunch of “progressive” people.
Even the national strike on the 30th wasn’t terrible, but neither had any economic effect. There just isn’t enough organization, especially in key industries. People aren’t educated on unions, even in communist circles a ton of us are running around without a clue what good union organizing looks like.
Lack of class consciousness and education in general
Keep the serfs destutute so they can’t organize against the rich, disgustingly lavish aristocracy is a tale as old as time. We’re literally seeing ruling philosophies Medieval kings used and people say this is the best system.
The other half of it is conditioning a society to be so dependent on convenience and little luxuries (yes, even poor people in US have luxuries compared to other parts of the world) that they technically could strike, but doing so would be so below their standard of living that it would not be sustainable.
This is why my advice to everyone who is like "But what should I actually DO!’ is “get to know your neighbors.” Community together strong
get to know your neighbors AND learn how to trust and be trusted.
get to know your neighbors AND learn how to trust and be trusted.
My strategy is to just dump my nuts on the table and tell you my whole deal, with many death to Americas sprinkled throughout, and if you don’t find me trustworthy or are mean to me then well f you i’ll go rant at someone else
Oh I see you don’t spend time on NextDoor.
I know my neighbors.
- One of them went no contact when my wife asked how they could possibly support trump when he is so clearly against their religious ideals.
- A fraction I would rely on for general help but nothing major.
- Half I would rely on to shoot me for inconveniencing them.
- The rest won’t answer the door if I knock.
your reply says a lot more about you than it does about your neighbors
👍
The internet caused us to forgo our tight communities in exchange for being acquaintances with millions of people.
it was not the internet that did that
how do 3 men in their 30’s not have $500 between them?
Not hungry enough
nearly a century of coordinated, targeted anti-union operations by corporations and the federal government will do that.
It’s really cool learning about stuff like the Mohawk Valley Formula and how it’s been known about as an overtly articulated strategy for like a hundred years now and they still do the exact same shit to discredit and disperse movements against their interests
and even knowing their fucking playbook doesn’t help us simply because a solid majority of the population is conditioned to have their eyes glaze over, seeing nothing, when told about the tactics that are literally at that moment being used on them
More than a century honestly, that shit goes as far back as the 1800s
That’s fair. I was mostly thinking about how coordination between the federal government and corporations really ramped up in response to the NLRA
Lack of worker solidarity. We’re too atomized and stressed to support each other through a GS. Hopefully that is beginning to change. I just hope its not too late.
Lack of worker solidarity
In theory, the problem of “two paychecks” is solved (at least in part) by working people seizing certain critical means of production for the purposes of mutual aid. So, grocers strike not by closing the front doors but by shutting down the cash registers and handing out food for free. Landlord admins strike by refusing to collect rents. Teachers strike not by refusing to teach but by refusing to grade. Etc.
And if everyone knows this arrangement will be in effect, they can act together as a bargaining unit to threaten the control of the landlord class.
But if they aren’t in close communication, because the public forms of media are censored and strictly controlled, then individuals can’t express solidarity prior to the strike. And if they aren’t in alignment, then you end up with the same “haves” and “have-nots” reproduced across the striking cohort, creating contradictions that landlords can exploit. And if they can’t repeat this experiment of communication, trust building, strike, reap concessions, then they can’t build momentum of numbers or expand the demands.
Hopefully that is beginning to change
I haven’t seen much to suggest it has. Perhaps the soul is willing, but the body public remains weak and emaciated. We still don’t have avenues of communication independent of the capitalist class. We haven’t built trust between industrial sectors. There’s little we can point to that’s been successful, much less reproducible.
I just hope its not too late.
It’s never “too late”. All that changes is the players and the stakes at play.
But whatever comes next, you’d be foolish to believe you’ll see both the beginning of it and the end. You’ll be lucky to know what you’re in the middle of.
Fear and propaganda.
Join your local chapter. Volunteer for mutual aid groups. Help establish a strike fund for your local chapter. Get. Involved.
Two paychecks seems optimistic.
Agreed. 2-3 paychecks for the union workers and skilled trades. 0-1 for most others.
Also, the average American barely knowing what a union is, much less being a member of one.
And too many of the ones who do and are have accepted the paradigm of unions as a consumer service, rather than a place for rank-and-file organization. Union dues for collaborator leadership makes a union into a sort of absurdly cheap, shitty lawyer with whom you get what you’re paying for, when it’s not actively betraying you.
Americans have had every participatory inclination beaten out of them (metaphorically speaking). Their political parties have no participation beyond asking for money and their unions are the same. They’ve been fed a steady drip of 24/7 news designed to keep them afraid of everyone they don’t already know, and that’s by design. Things are going to have to get a lot worse for the average American before they’ll be willing to organize in any meaningful way. I hope this changes, don’t get me wrong, but I expect that it’ll have to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Enough unions to organize it.
Haha. Joke’s on you!
It’s the start of the month, so I have three paychecks to live. I’m going to celebrate with drive-thru coffee and avocado bread.
I’m in a good union and people would actively die if my power plant went down.
