"Your #NoKings marches are cute, but nothing is going to change until we do something serious, like a general strike."

–Person posting on social media who is not active in organizing a general strike
@maxleibman fair point, but considering that No Kings has paid organizers, national infrastructure etc. maybe they could also help with that? Shouldn't we expect more from people who claim to be our leaders?
@mook Just for example, Indivisible is an umbrella organization for literally thousands of local political advocacy groups, all of whom operate independently with different focus and tactics. "General strike" isn't some abstract thing. It's a labor action. For that, you need experienced labor organizers in charge, which Indivisible (or any national group working on No Kings) most certainly is not.
@maxleibman
@mook I'm talking about Indivisible simply because I'm involved with my local group. Both the national org & local groups are very good at mobilizing phone/email pressure campaigns, showing up at electeds' offices, picketing at a moment's notice. But every time the national org has stepped out of that wheelhouse it's fallen flat. Asking why they're not working on a general strike is like asking a plumber why they aren't also fixing your roof.
@maxleibman
@liferstate @maxleibman i am not very smart, so i'm struggling to reconcile the first part of that paragraph with the second, you say first that Indivisible is an umbrella group made up of thousands of local groups ( many of them presumably unions ) and then you say in the end Indivisible "most certainly" doesn't have any experienced labor organizers, and so that's not their department, -- so which is it, an umbrella organization or a specialized PAC?

Isn't the whole purpose of such an umbrella organization to develop a coherent national strategy? To unite these disparate groups behind a plan? and why wouldn't that include a labour component?

I get what you mean about the logistical/technical problems involved in something like a general strike, you need a strong union movement first, and organizers dedicated to that task. But if No Kings, as a kind of vehicle for mass mobilization isn't assisting the labour movement, then what is the point? Just protesting for the sake of protesting?
@liferstate @maxleibman

this is what's frustrating is apparently everyone is supposed to come out to No Kings because it's a mass thing everyone gets behind, but actually there's this professional leadership ( are they even elected ) who already have a set agenda before you even get there, and we're just supposed to show up and leave... and when it comes to, in this case, labour organizing, that's something we're supposed to do somewhere else? like it's off topic?

I would think the point of these protests would be to get people into the streets, networking and meeting with local people, and using this as a means of organizing along various fronts, if it's not that, if it's just this astro-turfed single-issue thing to get establishment Dems elected, I wasted my best years doing that already. I'm not interested in helping Epstein Dems get elected if i'm not getting paid myself.

Like based on what I've heard, I'm seriously wondering if I'll get a stern talking to from a protest martial for talking about Israel who just dragged the US into a world war. And if that's the case it's really a controlled opposition, release valve type thing, which fills a void that would otherwise be filled by organic opposition and funnels it into the democratic party.

Now, even if it is a corpo psyop like that, masses of people are more powerful than careerist staffers, and so it might still be with it to participate in order to push working class interests. That No Kings Organizers seem to anticipate this left-opposition and pre-emptively act against it -- i.e. actual democracy and popular participation -- that's a bad sign

@mook Indivisible doesn't set any agenda. It's all local. Lots of orgs come out and table, or hand out literature, or circulate petitions. If you hate the Dems, I promise you will meet many other people who also hate the Dems. At least that's my experience in Detroit.

As for labor organizing, for that you need to be connected with a union. Some prominent ones are the Teamsters, UAW, SEIU, UFCW, AFT, SAG-AFTRA, WGA, UFW.

@maxleibman

@liferstate

i'll be out there, we'll see how it goes

i would I say in this context that I oppose the Democratic Establishment and it's corporate backers, and if we want to depose the trump regime and begin to undue the damage they've done, it's not enough to just vote dem, but to get democrats who are not beholden to lobbyists and are willing to fight for the working class. I think if that happened, the Dems would win big. I don't think this is a fringe perspective.

The union situation is the State of Florida is very very different from Michigan with it's long standing institutional unions. The old unions have had a very hard time gaining a foot-hold in the Deep South, and I think we need to be creative and form new orgs or adopt new strategies.

Again I see what you mean about unions having specific specialized tasks, I'm sure you're more knowledgeable about that, but I don't see the union struggle as strictly separate, when you have strong unions, that's also an electoral base, and narrowly 'political' mobilizations have a role to play in getting workers unionized.

@maxleibman