Donald Trump’s attacks on working people — threats to send troops into major US cities, ripping collective bargaining rights from a million federal workers, an immigration enforcement terror campaign that borders on unconstitutional — have been so extreme that many people are talking about a general strike. These calls are coming not just from the usual suspects, but even from my own mayor, former Chicago Teachers Union leader and organizer Brandon Johnson.
We’ve all heard calls for a general strike before — usually not as a serious proposal or strategy, but as a reaction to the attacks that working people face on a regular basis from existing political and economic power. Such calls are easy to dismiss, because they tend to come from well-meaning people without the knowledge of how difficult a strike is to launch and win in a single shop, let alone across a country of 330 million people that hasn’t seen anything approaching a national general strike in almost 150 years.
Those of us who have done the hard work of organizing our coworkers, winning union recognition, and negotiating with recalcitrant employers have frequently dismissed the idea out of hand. But two years ago, in the wake of the “Stand-Up Strike” at the Big Three US automakers, United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain put the idea on the table when he called on the labor movement to prepare to strike together on May 1, 2028.
At first glance it sounds impossible — but a strategic look back at the coordinated strikes and militancy of the past two decades shows we might be much closer than we think. We’ve laid the groundwork. Now we have to harness the lessons from those fights and “speed run” to much larger, more disruptive actions.
The preconditions for large-scale coordinated actions are being laid out in plain view. Draconian, racist attacks on entire communities with the veneer of immigration enforcement. Gigantic tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations — which, along…
Auteur: Alex Han
