By Jeremy Brecher
Distributed by Portside
[Based on a talk by Jeremy Brecher to Occupy
University, Zuccotti Park.]
Last December, Occupy Los Angeles proposed a General
Strike on May 1 “for migrant rights, jobs for all, a
moratorium on foreclosures, and peace – and to
recognize housing, education and health care as human
rights.” The idea has spread through the Occupy
movement. Occupy Wall Street in New York recently
expressed solidarity with the proposal and called for
“a day without the 99%, general strike, and more!” with
“no work, no school, no housework, no shopping, take
the streets!” Reactions are ranging from enthusiastic
support to outraged skepticism. What form might such
an action take, and what if anything might it achieve?
General Strikes and Mass Strikes
One thing is for sure: Such a May Day action is
unlikely to be very much like the general strikes that
have cropped up occasionally in US labor history in
cities like Seattle, Oakland, and Stamford, Ct., or the
ones that are a staple of political protest in Europe.
These are typically conducted by unions whose action is
called for and coordinated by central labor councils or
national labor federations. But barely twelve percent
of American workers are even members of unions, and
American unions and their leaders risk management
reprisals and even criminal charges for simply
endorsing such a strike.
Most Occupy May Day advocates understand that a
conventional general strike is not in the cards. What
they are advocating instead is a day in which members
of the “99%” take whatever actions they can to withdraw
from participation in the normal workings of the
economic system — by not working if that is an option,
but also by not shopping, not banking, and not engaging
in other “normal” everyday activities, and by joining
demonstrations, marches, disruptions, occupations, and
other mass actions.
This is the pattern that was followed by the Oakland
General Strike last November. Those who wanted to and
could – a small minority – didn’t go to work. There
was mass participation in rallies, marches,
educational, and artistic events and a free lunch for
all. At the end of the day a march, combined with some
walkouts, closed the Port of Oakland. The mostly
peaceful “general strike,” in contrast to later violent
Oakland confrontations, won wide participation and
support.
To understand what the significance of such an event
might be, it helps to look at what Rosa Luxemburg
called periods of “mass strike.” These were not single
events, but rather whole periods of intensified class
conflict in which working people began to see and act
on their common interests through a great variety of
activities, including strikes, general strikes,
occupations, and militant confrontations.
Such periods of mass strike have occurred repeatedly in
US labor history. For example:
. In 1877, in the midst of deep depression and a
near-obliteration of trade unions, workers shut down
the country’s dominant industry, the railroads, shut
down most factories in dozens of cities, battled police
and state militias, and only were suppressed when the
US Army and other armed forces killed more than a
hundred participants and onlookers.
. In the two years from 1884 to 1886, workers
swelled the Knights of Labor ten-fold from 70,000
members to 700,000 members. In 1886, more than
half-a-million workers in scores of cities joined a May
1st strike for the eight-hour day. The movement was
broken by a reign of terror that followed a police
attack that is usually but perversely referred to as
the “Haymarket Riot.” May Day became a global labor
holiday in honor of the “Haymarket Martyrs” who were
tried by a judge so prejudiced against them that their
execution has often been referred to as “judicial
murder.”
. In 1937, hundreds of thousands of workers
occupied their factories and other workplaces in
“sitdown strikes” and housewives, students, and many
other people applied the same tactic to address their
own grievances.
. In 1970, in the midst of national upheavals
around the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, and
a widespread youth revolt, postal workers, teamsters,
and others took part in an unprecedented wave of
wildcat strikes, while miners held a month-long
political strike in West Virginia to successfully
demand justice for victims of black lung disease.
Such periods of mass strike present what Rosa Luxemburg
called “A perpetually moving and changing sea of
phenomena.” Each is unique in its events and its
unfolding. But they are all marked by an expanding
challenge to established authority, a widening
solidarity among different groups of working people,
and a growing assertion by workers of control over
their own activity.
In periods of mass strike working people become
increasingly aware of themselves as a group with a
common situation, common problems, and common
opponents. They organize themselves in a great variety
of ways. They become aware of their capacity to act
collectively. They become aware of their potential
power. And they opt to act collectively.
However much it may chagrin organizers and radicals, it
is not possible to call or instigate a mass strike. It
is something that must gestate in workplaces and
communities (now including virtual communities). But
it is possible to nurture and influence the emergence
of mass strikes through discussion and above all
through exemplary action. Provoking discussion and
showing the possibilities of collective action is what
Occupy Wall Street has done so well. That is what its
May Day action can potentially do.
What Occupy May Day Could Achieve
The Occupy May Day event is first of all a great chance
for 99% to show itself, see itself, and express itself
– to represent itself to itself and to others. The
kinds of plans that are being made by OWS in New York,
with a wide variety of ways in which people are being
invited to participate, can encourage multiple levels
of sympathy, response, connection, and mobilization
among the 99%. The result can be a percolation of the
ideas OWS has been promoting through workplaces,
communities, and other milieus.
May Day can provide a teachable moment. It is an
opportunity for millions of people to contemplate the
power that arises from collectively withdrawing
cooperation and consent. It can propagate the idea of
self-organization, for example through general
assemblies. If it truly draws together a wide range of
working people, ranging from the most impoverished to
professionals, from urban to suburban to rural, and
including African Americans, Latinos, whites, and
immigrants, it can embody the ability of the 99% to act
as a group. It can demonstrate the idea of solidarity,
for example by the movement as a whole supporting the
needs of some particular groups. And because May Day
is a global working class holiday which will be
celebrated all over the world, it can reveal a rarely
seen vision of a global working class of which we are
as individuals and as members of diverse groups are
part.
Given these possibilities, what would constitute
success for May Day? Here are some examples of
desirable outcomes:
. Reveal that there is a 99% movement that is far
wider than the subset of its members who can confront
the police and sleep in downtown parks.
. Encourage a large number of people who have not
done so before to identify with and participate in some
way with the “99% movement.”
. Project core issues of the 99% — like the list
above from Occupy LA -into the pubic arena.
. Raise issues that are crucial for the future of
the 99% — notably the climate crisis and the
destruction of the Earth’s environment – that have not
yet been recognized as part of the Occupy critique of
financial institutions and corporate capitalism.
. Evoke self-organization in workplaces, for
example general assemblies among workmates, on the job
if possible, in the parking lot or another venue if
not.
. Create a self-awareness of the global 99% —
possible because May Day is celebrated globally.
Unions and May Day
American unions are bound by laws specifically designed
to prevent them from taking part in strikes about
issues outside their own workplace, such as sympathetic
strikes and political strikes. In most cases they are
also banned from participating in strikes while they
have a contract. Unions that violate these
prohibitions are subject to crushing fines and loss of
bargaining rights. Their leaders can be packed off to
jail. While unions have at times struck anyway, they
are unlikely to do so for something like the May Day
general strike until the level of class conflict has
risen so high that workers are willing to face such
consequences.
Historically, American unions have also opposed their
members’ participation in strikes union officials have
not authorized because they wished to exercise a
monopoly of authority over their members’ collective
action. In labor movement parlance, such unauthorized
actions were condemned as “dual unionism.” US unions
have often disciplined and sometimes supported the
firing and blacklisting of workers who struck without
official authorization. As a result, unions have often
deterred their members from participating in mass
strike actions even when the rank and file wanted to.
The Occupy movement, however, should not be seen as a
competitor to existing unions. It is not about
relations between a group of workers and their
employer. It does not engage or wish to engage in
collective bargaining. Although it supports the right
of workers to organize themselves, it is not a union.
It focuses on broader social issues. It is a class
movement of the 99%, not a labor or trade union
movement.
Unions in New York and elsewhere are eager to
participate in coalition actions with the Occupy
movement – and they are planning to do so on May Day.
But to ask them to instruct their members to strike may
be to ask them to commit institutional suicide.
One approach to this dilemma may be for unions to say
they will abide by the law and not order their members
to strike, but that as human beings and as people
living under the US Constitution their members are not
slaves and cannot be compelled to work against their
will. Where union members want to participate in May
Day by not going to work, unions can say, we did not
tell them to strike, but we do not have the right to
force anyone to work against their will. A historical
precedent: When Illinois miners repeatedly went on
extended wildcat strikes and Mineworker leader
Alexander Howat was commanded to order them back to
work, he would simply reply that since he had not
ordered the strikers out, he could not order them back.
Organized labor has to change, and activities like
Occupy’s May Day can contribute to that change. But
they can do so at this point not by making impossible
demands on union leaders but by inspiration, example,
solidarity, and providing alternative experiences for
union members.
Global Mass Strike
We are today in the midst of an unrecognized global
mass strike – witness the mass upheavals reported in
the news almost daily from countries around the world.
Wisconsin and Occupy Wall Street represent the first
stirrings of American workers to join this global
movement. May Day 2012 will be a global event, and it
presents an opportunity to create a new self-awareness
of the global 99% and its ability to act collectively.
While the Occupy movement has focused on the issues of
economic injustice, it is increasingly addressing
another issue that is central to the well being of the
99% — indeed of all people – nationally and globally.
In January a resolution passed by consensus at the
Occupy Wall Street General Assembly stated, “We are at
a dangerous tipping point in history. The destruction
of our planet and climate change are almost at a point
of no return.”
While climate denialism is still rife in the US, the
rest of the world recognizes the existential threat of
catastrophic climate change and the necessity of
converting the world’s economy to a climate-safe basis.
The labor movement in the rest of the world is
committed to the economic transformation necessary to
save the Earth’s climate. That transformation can be
the core of an emerging global program to create a
secure economic and environmental future for all by
putting the world’s people to work transforming the
world’s economy to a low-pollution, climate-friendly,
sustainable basis.
May Day has been an international labor holiday for
more than a century. But for millennia it has been a
day for the celebration of nature. This May Day can be
an opportunity to draw the two together to represent
the common global interest in creating work for all
reconstructing the global economy to protect rather
than destroy the Earth.
The Dissenting Democrat 