Call for a February 17th, 2017 General Strike--your thoughts

I think it's good to try and

I think it's good to try and find ways to capitalize on the momentum coming out of the anti-Trump protests, but a general strike at this point is pie-in-the-sky.

As I think you probably agree, general strikes don't happen cause they're trending on social media. They happen when the class has the organization to, the experience of and the confidence to build strikes in their own workplaces, across workplaces, and across industries.

Right now, that just doesn't exist and any "general strike" will be at best symbolic and, most likely, a non-event embraced by well-intentioned, if slightly delusional, labor lefties. Neither are going to get us any closer to genuine workplace-based class resistance to the Trump regime.

That said, maybe something akin to May Day 2006 is possible, but I think the call would need to come from those particular communities and come out concrete struggles and relationships that already exist on the ground and in particular workplaces/industries. But, again, that shit has to exist to some degree before any strike callout, you can't will it into existence. It's a reflections of months and years of groundwork beforehand.

As for how we could really

As for how we could really capitalize on those protests, strike wise - find a group of workers locally who really can go out on strike. Have them tie their strike callout to the Trump regime somehow and try to get a mass number of those protesters out to support the strike. Show that strikes are possible and build relationships between the strikers and the supporters in such a way that the protesters are enthused and clued-up how to build strikes in their own workplaces.

Yeah I would have to agree

Yeah I would have to agree with Chilli Sauce. The signs of resistance so far are encouraging, but if people aren't well-organised and confident enough to strike over their own pay and conditions then I don't think there is any way they are going to strike for more abstract political ends.

There was a similar "general strike" call for 20 January which again came to nothing, similar to the attempt to call a general strike in Oakland during the Occupy movement.

I wouldn't take part in one

I wouldn't take part in one of these even if it had some kind of union backing, which it doesn't. A strike is supposed to be a show of strength and a confrontation with the bosses.
Unless your workplace has a reasonable number of people ready to go out then this is just losing you a day's pay and getting your card marked for no reason.

Who's calling for the general

Who's calling for the general strike?

FWIW, let's be clear the big demonstrations of Jan 21 were able to attract so many because the appeal was "non-ideological" and, sorry to say, non-class based. OK, that's the way life is, and how movements unfold.

But a general strike, to be anything more than a laughing stock has to have enough support in the working class to sustain itself without the "non-ideological" and non-class elements participating. I mean if a general strike with any substance is going to occur, we would already be much further along, and developed, in this struggle. We are not.

The "call" for a general strike has been pretty much mishandled throughout US history, the most recent example to my mind being the 2011 action in Madison, Wisconsin-- there a general strike was called for without clearly defining the goal, and without the organizations existing that could mobilize workers as a class throughout the state and the country. It's one thing if the cordones in Chile call for a general strike, or the Petrograd soviet calls for a general strike; or the CNT in Spain against the pop front government. But we are nowhere near a situation parallel to those prior struggle.

I wrote this three days after

I wrote this three days after the election and I think it still holds up:
To Escape Trump's America, We Need to Bring the Militant Labor Tactics of 1946 Back to the Future

And what about the ideas which have begun floating around about a general strike on January 20th to stop Trump’s inauguration? I would say that we in the IWW should be cautiously optimistic, but should wait and see whether this catches on more broadly before we consider officially engaging with it – in the meantime, we should emphasize our efforts to build a sustained, pro-strike culture and infrastructure along the lines of what I’ve written above. I want to be clear, that I think it is absolutely correct to promote as much unrest as possible (including industrial unrest) to prevent the inauguration. If there is a lot of excitement around the country for a day, or a week, or a month of “no work, no school” to prevent the inauguration, that would be a fantastic development. There are some who think that the IWW can just ignore Trump because we do not take a stand on politicians – this is missing the point of what is happening in this country and would be a disastrous mistake. The biggest challenge towards any industrial action will be the union bureaucracy. The AFL-CIO is “ready to work with Trump”, and would be incapable of calling for or organizing a general strike even if they wanted to. We need to build the kind of movements which can challenge the hegemony of the business unions and call for strikes over their heads. Maybe a starting point would be agitating hospitality and restaurant workers in DC to shut down all hotels and restaurants leading up to the inauguration, or agitating media workers to refuse to broadcast anything by Trump. The main point is that there won’t be one general strike that saves us and then we all go back to normal – our focus has to be recreating a culture of militant, production-stopping strikes which seek to spread through secondary strikes and mass pickets, and which take aim at all injustice in society, not just workplace issues.

Also, this

The "call" for a general strike has been pretty much mishandled throughout US history, the most recent example to my mind being the 2011 action in Madison, Wisconsin-- there a general strike was called for without clearly defining the goal, and without the organizations existing that could mobilize workers as a class throughout the state and the country.

is nonsense.

Re general strike and

Re general strike and Madison, Wi see this

Decide where the nonsense is for yourselves.

As for the "militant labor tactics of 1946"-- that didn't work out so well in 1946, and the stakes are much much greater now.

I don't think the call in

I don't think the call in Wisconsin and this call now are similar. In Wisconsin, the call began after the labor fed endorsed the idea and created committees charged with trying to get to some sort of vague threshold of being able to call one. This was followed by on the ground propaganda and a limited informal coordination between different union members and groups.

This recent call is entirely a internet thing with, to my knowledge, no on the ground work and mostly in the style of the Occupy protests rather than an actual strike.

S. Artesian wrote: Re general

S. Artesian

Re general strike and Madison, Wi see this

Decide where the nonsense is for yourselves.

As for the "militant labor tactics of 1946"-- that didn't work out so well in 1946, and the stakes are much much greater now.

Yes, I've read that, and it's also nonsense. It's a long theoretical article dedicated to critiquing a public-oriented pamphlet written by rank-and-file members on the ground 1 week into a struggle that happened 6 years ago - and the critique is actually very sloppy!

The "call" for a general strike in Wisconsin caught the popular imagination and echoed widely. Whether it was actually possible or not, a lot of people felt it to be a distinct possibility at the time, in the sense that they were actually talking with co-workers or fellow union members about how it might happen, not just sharing it on Facebook.

What imaginary institutions do we have to have before workers can wage militant strikes? Where will they come from?

1946 was the largest strike wave in US History. Yes, it ultimately failed, but so has every other strike wave. Are you seriously saying that we should not try to revive the militant labor tactics that were the norm prior to Taft Hartley?

any workplace action requires

any workplace action requires the ability to communicate with your coworkers, as well as some modicum of a plan. while i think this the right tactic, i can't imagine the coordination is in place to make this happen. instead of expending energy and furthering demoralization, laying the groundwork for future activity would be better - people should start forming workplace groups, create phone trees to be able to contact the whole of the their workplace, and take smaller actions to build confidence.

I am seriously stating that

I am seriously stating that the "militant labor tactics of 1946" as militant as they might have been were inadequate and insufficient to that era, and are doubly insufficient to this era, and that what has to be developed, facilitated, is the actual struggle for power-- for overthrowing the ruling class and the ruling "economics."

Are you seriously suggesting that the "militant labor tactics of 1946" can, if confined to the platforms and issues that were used to circumscribe the strikes of that time, can bring anything but failure in 2017?

Quote: Are you seriously

Are you seriously suggesting that the "militant labor tactics of 1946" can, if confined to the platforms and issues that were used to circumscribe the strikes of that time, can bring anything but failure in 2017?

That's a big "if" to throw in there. There's a big difference between tactics vs platforms and issues.

I do think that mass pickets, secondary strikes and boycotts, refusal to cross picket lines, readiness to spread strikes, common antagonism towards police - yes, those are all in urgent need of revival. And that such a revival is a necessary condition before we can realistically speak of general strikes.

Might be worth to have some

Might be worth to have some links on the whole initiative, for information purpose. This is the website: http://f17strike.com/ . This is the Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1756631744665376/ This is the facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1816330771961327/ This is an overview of where the idea comes from: https://mic.com/articles/167494/general-strike-feb-17-latest-updates-on-the-planned-nationalstrike-against-trump#.x6aF14F4z

I checked a bit here and there on Facebook, the prophiles of the initiators of the call, to see from what political direction the wind is blowing. Not much independent radicalism to be seen there. Mostly left liberal/ progressive Democrat/ local progressive alliances, stuff like that. The demands on the website are not bad, starting with "No ban, no wall" and going on to "No pipelines" and "healthcare for all".

I agree with the criticism above, that you can't expect to have a general strike without preparation, organisation, confidence, and that you do not build these things in two weeks through an internet call. So, no general strike on February 2017.

But that does not mean that this in itiative means nothing. A strike it will not be. A day of street action it may well become. It may tap into the mood already expressed on J20, on the Women's Marches, on the airport protests. That would not be a bad thing.

By the way, the comparison with the strike call of 20 January is not exact. On that day, the strike call was drowned among all the things going on under the #disruptJ20 label. On February 17, the thing stands on its own, for whatever it will be worth. While remaing sceptical about the perspective of the thing as a strike, I still think it will be interesting to see what other form of action may come out of it. Both the call and the Facebook group have been growing quite fast, though the event seems to be slowing.

So did anything happen? I didn't hear of anything, but I'm not really connected to stuff

I didn't hear anything either, but how did the Day Without Immigrants get called for the day before (Thursday, February 16) without any coordination between the two?

Anyone know?