BradSpangler.com

Any one of these items would be bad enough, but taken as parts of the whole they present a “big picture” of grave concerns about the fascist direction of things in the US:

“Torture. Surveillance. Civil Rights & Habeus Corpus: Gone. Executive Privilege: No Accountability. 9/11 Questions? Corporate Media and a Corporate Government. Tyranny. Fascism. Lies.”

So reads the litany of issues hoped to galvanize people to action on a site where a nationwide general strike on 9/11/07 is advocated:

The time has come. To Say NO. While we still have a chance.

9/11/07 GENERAL STRIKE

This September 11th: No work. No school. No shopping. Hit the streets.

I’m entirely in favor of the notion itself, but my principal concern about this specific effort is that work to promote it apparently started rather late in comparison to the target date. Less than a month out, the site only lists local contacts for New York and Seattle. Unless a remarkable number of people embrace this approach extremely rapidly in the next couple of weeks or so, it will be a pathetic and futile exercise. That’s a pity, because that would bring discredit to a perfectly valid tactic in the minds of many.

Or, maybe I’m completely wrong. Maybe the time for this approach has arrived. My question is not whether it’s justified, of course, but whether the mass support exists for it to be more than a waste. Seems like a good time to try out the new polls feature I’ve set up on the blog…

[poll=2]

UPDATE: When asked for comment via email, Lew Rockwell’s response was

“What morons!“

UPDATE 2: Correspondent “Academician” had trouble posting a comment, so forwarded it to me via email instead:

“I’m afraid I’m inclined to agree with Rockwell, Brad. I have trouble seeing what a one-day general strike is going to accomplish. A strike’s purpose is to get someone to address a particular goal, and it’s not supposed to end until that goal has been accomplished. But even if many people participate in the strike, on September 12th they will just get back up and go about business as usual.

I understand the frustration, and the desire to just do SOMETHING - I just don’t see this as an effective means of changing anything. The Powers That Be already know that a significant number of the American people are pissed, and they’ve responded to that just about as much as they’re going to, as far as I’m concerned. The time now is for more targeted measures.”

Let me add, though, that my own reading of the promotional materials is that it’s kind of ambiguously left open as to whether or not they’re calling for a general strike only on 9/11 or, instead, a general strike beginning on 9/11. That seems flawed of the organizers, as Academician seems well justified in pointing out that usually a strike has demands — the point being that people who sign on to the effort have to believe the goal is capable of being accomplished before they are likely to choose to invest their own support and efforts in it.

UPDATE 3: Jesse Walker via email:

“A major action of a sort that hasn’t been popular in the US for decades, with no time to organize and hardly anyone to organize it, to be held on a date that will prompt most people to associate the act with a terrorist attack? Whose bright idea was this?”

UPDATE 4: See also: What would a legit general strike effort look like?

UPDATE 5: Rocky writes:

Lew Rockwell would do what? Sit on his butt, talk, and watch the disaster unfold? Why are so many who claim to care so ready to criticize any effort? Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.

I believe the general idea was the lack of representation in the House and the Senate, no to mention the White House. Basically it’s the refusal of those elected to respond to the will of the people. The beauty of this is anyone can latch onto it for numerous reasons. Doesn’t matter if you’re a member of either major party or whether your complaint is the war, immigration, north american union, etc…. I think anyone who would expect something like a total sustained strike is expecting too much. It isn’t going to happen, at least until it’s too late to help. We must start somewhere and though some of us wanted more days and sooner one day on 9/11 is a good start. We need the group awareness that a one day strike can generate and we need it soon. We needed it several years ago. So September 11, 2007 will do for now, not a day later. Any subsequent action can be more substantial and I believe more people will participate if they see any significant showing at all. It doesn’t take many missing workers in some operations to bring things to a halt. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.