Will you General Strike with me?

The Los Angeles General Assembly, along with occupations across the country, has called for a general strike by the ninety-nine percent on May 1st, 2012. Participate not in the toilsome hamster wheel of wage-slavery but instead in a vibrant exercise of your human and Constitutional rights. Buy nothing and reject the oppressive system for a day in favor of taking the streets to assert the collective people’s power.

May Day is an international workers’ day celebrated in more than eighty countries to honor labor and left-wing movements. Originally organized to commemorate the Haymarket Massacre, the day has broadened to include workers’ rights, immigrant rights, and anti-war efforts. The occupy movement is calling on the ninety-nine percent to no longer stand idly by and remain complacent. May Day is an opportunity to flex our collective power to show the plutocracy that their time is over, that profits over people will no longer be the modus operandi.

The first general strike may have been the secessio plebis in ancient Rome. H.G. Wells wrote that the plebeians’ first strike occurred because they “saw with indignation their friends, who had often served the state bravely in the legions, thrown into chains and reduced to slavery at the demand of patrician creditors.”

Creditors. In our current state of affairs, creditors, money-lenders, banks, and corporations reside around every corner. They lay claim to our homes, our vehicles, our health and medicine, our energy production, our education costs, our very futures.

Much like Rome, the streets today have a similar clarion call. An occupy protester yells in front of riot cops, “We have nothing to lose but our chains!” and is met with an echo of voices in solidarity. How much has changed? Students are emerging from school with useless pieces of paper, painfully hunched over under a mountain of debt. Military veterans and first-responders are thrown into the cold with untreated wounds and ailments received while on duty. Workers are either being laid off in droves or asked to sacrifice wages and benefits while the ruling elites take ever-larger bonuses. Homeowners are finding themselves locked out of their houses as greedy vultures in suits provide fraudulent documents and measure for remodeling. Just like Rome, actual debtor prisons are popping up as the recession marches on.

And Washington D.C. worries itself over arbitrary debt ceilings, golden parachutes and bailouts, austerity measures, and arcane sideshow debates to determine who will be the next puppet in the Oval Office. It is becoming abundantly clear that We the People must finally rely on We the People. A general strike is an absolute necessity if Americans hold any realistic hope of changing the tide. In 1966, the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace identified five types of general strikes:

• “the political mass strike, a general strike for political rights (such as the right to vote)

• the general strike as a revolutionary act that would transform society

• the general strike as a “revolutionary exercise” which would eventually lead to a transformation of society

• a one day demonstration general strike on May Day (International Workers’ Day), aimed at identifying a “worldwide proletariat”

• commencing in 1891, a theoretical mechanism by which to stop wars between nation states”

In reading through that short list, the title of this plea bears repeating. Will you general strike with me?

Our right to vote is being attacked at the polls while also being made more and more obsolete with each election. Voter registration laws are marginalizing the voices that are already least-represented in our government. Half of our Congress fits the qualifications of a “1%’er” and President Obama is set to raise $1 billion this election. He’s been the biggest recipient of Wall Street donations in history.

A general strike as a “revolutionary exercise” is another reason to participate in this general strike on May Day. For too long Americans have felt powerless to change the system. Though as one writer put it, the occupations across the country have changed that sentiment. No longer are we dejected into thinking, “We’re screwed”. A righteous indignation has replaced that with, “We’re being screwed (and let’s stop it!)”.

Now more than ever, “worldwide proletariat” conditions are apparent. Students have more in common with other students across borders than the patriarchs telling them to continue to work hard despite the implosion of social security and job opportunities. Workers are being exploited in Nigeria, China, Indonesia, and here at home by the same criminal corporations that are tossing aside worker rights and benefits for the sake of the dollar. The Internet and social networking has made this awareness possible and connected each person in a revolutionary way that has never before been possible.

The last reason that the Hoover Institution highlighted is an especially poignant one. However, to just stop wars between nation-states is missing the point of power and control. The class war is the real battleground this May Day. As Mario Savio said, “And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop”. May Day is an opportunity to declare to the oligarchic 1% that we are here. We will not let the oppressive structures continue. We will hold a general strike to yank our lives, and the lives of our children, back from the yawning abyss of unfettered greed and subjugation.

So will you call out of work for the sons and daughters fighting an illegitimate war, endangering themselves to enrich CEOs? Will you buy nothing in support of the ten million foreclosed homes expected in 2012? Will you march out of classes for the millions of uninsured children in this country?

Will you general strike with me?

by Ryan Rice