Germany, Argentina, Greece, Libya, Guandong Province [China], Haiti, Kashmir Province [India] ... these are just some of the places where massive strikes or general strikes are taking place.
In the US: zero.
In Panama, organizers sent out the message: "We are producers of your wealth and we are stronger than you when we unite and strike."
The 24-hour general strike in Buenos Aires involved 1,000,000 people and shut down public transportation and air traffic.
In the US: we keep showing up for our crappy jobs where we're treated worse than farm animals and prodded and tested like any prized pig.
In the US we keep saying how lucky we are to have a job.
In Haiti, workers are staging a two-day general strike to force the government to address lowering quality of life, rising costs of living, and worsening services.
In the US we face the same elements by getting second jobs where we are abused by two employers and have less leisure and recreation time.
In the US, we allow our Patrones [Fucking Bosses] to check our finances, look into our backgrounds - "have you met with anyone from a foreign government?" - test our blood for drugs and alcohol, administer "qualifying" and "certification" exams on a regular and harassing basis - exams, by the way, which often began as a means to keep Africans, various American Indians, and women out of employ.
These Patrones do this while paying us little, never adjusting it to ebbs and flows of the Wall Street bankers (inflation), and demanding things like: we be more professional [i.e., kiss more asses and don't answer back] or do-more-with-less [i.e., doing the job of the three other workers who've been laid off].
This doesn't look promising, and it's not meant to.
When I read what is flaring up and going ablaze in other countries, some economically on par with the US and many not, I wonder how did we here get so docile and dull.
The government and the 1% it really works for will not bend to our will and our interests based on letter-writing campaigns or online petitions asking for donations. These things are interesting for some of the issues they bring up, but they bring about as much social change/revolution as a Dear Abby column.
The intrusions into our lives [credit checks, what I smoke or drink, etc], the "high standards" met with low wages and zero benefits, the arbitrary firing won't begin to come to an end until workers in the US digest the principle that we have a right to withhold our labor from our employers.
In other words: STRIKE.
We do it small; we can do it big, but it's got to be done. Like a Radical Faerie solstice party, the more the sexier.
The United States is not only unique in the Western world for its abysmal health care system but also the steps it has taken in law to keep workers from really organizing effectively.
Strikes are prohibited for all federal workers and most state and city workers.
Almost half of our states have laws which prohibit a union from organizing a workplace. These are so-called right-to-work states.
Unions are restricted from sympathetic strikes - that is, solidarity with other workers.
Since the 1940's federal laws have curbed unions, when it should have been unions that curbed the United States government.
Faced with a weakened labor movement, may local unions, like for school teachers, have been forced to accept No-Strike clauses to their contracts. These clauses further restrict employees from discussing any kind of work stoppage or slowdown.
In the US, the Patron is a king, and the government arms and supports them just as it arms and supports other two-bit global South thug dictators against the masses of workers who want to organize their societies better.
And this is what we have to gain and what the Patron and the US government have to lose: a better society.
George Bernard Shaw wrote "You see things and say 'Why?' But I dream of things that never were, and I say 'Why not?"
So it's time we put the ownership of our labor back on the table. It's ours. It belongs to us. It is not lent with a blank check to the thugs of management and Wall Street to do whatever they want for their quarterly profit while more of us have to stand in food lines.
Remember what the organizers in Panama declared: "We are producers of your wealth and we are stronger than you when we unite and strike."
It's time for a GENERAL STRIKE.
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