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National Strike. Making sure y'all got the memo. (r.50501.chat)

submitted 5 days ago by FiftyFiftyOne@50501.chat to c/Mirror@50501.chat

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Originally Posted By u/TheRedMenaceOB At 2025-08-02 09:45:17 AM | Source

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[-] sulfidedisburseangledafternoontipper@piefed.blahaj.zone 45 points 5 days ago

For. The. Last. Time.

This. Is. Not. How. A. General. Strike. Works.

I'm convinced that these posts are false flags to give the idea of a general strike a bad name. A real general strike requires planning, coordination, saving for lack of income, commitment from individuals and communities. This would take a long fucking time, probably years, to put together. This shit ain't fucking it.

[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 24 points 5 days ago

This would take a long fucking time, probably years, to put together.

You're right in everything else, but not this. You need a certain amount of infrastructure to make it work, but nothing near years of planning. General strikes would be useless if they needed years of planning. The problem is the lack of infrastructure, but once you have that going it can literally just... happen.

[-] ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world 27 points 5 days ago

As long as 49 states have employment "at will" and health insurance is tied to employment, it's just not going to happen.

[-] A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 14 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Still gotta try.

Just like how we still gotta fight for the ecosystem even though climate change is a sure thing and we're locked into incoming horror.

You still gotta try.

We don't know what'll change in the next 10-20 years. But people win unwinnable fights, and even losers can leave a lasting mark. It's not pointless, even if it feels that way.

We owe it to the future, and they'll judge us kindlier for our efforts. May they be merciful on our souls, they were born into our sins.

[-] ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

You're right we have to try, but this method won't work. You can't ask people to sacrifice that much without more of a certainty of success.

[-] A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

What, im just being honest, not starting a movement. Im an anonymous anarchist, not a mouthpiece on a platform.

Just being real. It works for me, anyway. Grim determination is a vibe im here for.

[-] Maiq@lemy.lol 6 points 5 days ago

Then they have accepted their fate. No meaningful change has ever happened without sacrifice. At this point it's either strike or wait for civil war.

[-] ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

The first step is convincing enough people that those are our only options. We are nowhere near to having a critical mass for either of those options to work.

[-] Maiq@lemy.lol 1 points 4 days ago

I agree.

The longer we do nothing meaningful the closer to the later being the only option.

I don't fancy our chances against militarily armed domestic forces. Most on the left I'd wager never fired a rifle.

I want to end this shit with the least amount of bloodshed and the least amount of suffering as possible.

Protests are only a minor disturbance. A slight inconvenience that is easily ignored. A general strike on the other hand would cause major disruptions to the fascist class. If they loose billions in stock value in a week we show our real power.

Most ultra rich live borrowing against their assets. They aren't Scrooge McDuck diving into a pool of gold coins. Tank the market and you cut real deep.

Most of the fascist owner class have so much tied to the market, it's our best chance!

If other countries can do a general strike and win, so can we.

[-] ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

General strikes that involve the whole population are super rare. I could see something like the one in 1989 in Czechoslovakia where it was for two hours on one day only. The problem is that general strikes are usually organized through unions and there simply isn't that structure for most of the country.

[-] Maiq@lemy.lol 1 points 4 days ago

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250409-greek-general-strike-hits-transport-and-commerce

Unions are key for sure when you want coordination. That should not stop us thiugh.

[-] AlecSadler 1 points 4 days ago

I requested the day off from the jobs that matter.

[-] CentauriBeau@lemmy.world 19 points 5 days ago

So no one is going to work on a Saturday… I feel like there’s maybe 5 better days of the week which might make a bigger impact.

[-] AlecSadler 2 points 4 days ago

I can't tell if you're joking? Tens of millions of people work on Saturday.

Tens of millions of people spend money on Saturday.

Are you a bot?

[-] CentauriBeau@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Not a bot and not joking. While I agree a lot of people work weekends, you must admit those jobs also work weekdays when most everyone on the planet works. There’s a heck of a lot more people working Monday-Friday than Saturday (or even fewer, Sunday). Want to shut down the means of production, do it on a weekday. Want Retail and Food Service to lose a bit of money, do it on a weekend. On a weekday you shut down not only retail outlets and restaurants, but manufacturing, construction, government services and offices, etc.

[-] blah3166@piefed.social 15 points 5 days ago

The no internet doesn't make sense to me. We've already paid for the bandwidth, we'd just not be using it? May be better to advise people to switch to Firefox and install uBlock origin or ditch Whatsapp to hit Meta/Facebook where it really hurts. But I guess that's not as easy to communicate.

[-] rbn@sopuli.xyz 4 points 5 days ago

Or do the contrary and download all kind of stuff from websites that are target of the strike. So like a DDoS attack but without a centrally controlled botnet. Just thousands of regular people manually downloading the WhatsApp client for iOS, Windows and Android at the same time, people uploading their encrypted backups to Amazon Drive etc.

[-] blah3166@piefed.social 3 points 4 days ago

Just thousands of regular people manually downloading the WhatsApp client for iOS

Not trying to discourage people from doing this, but they likely have caches or rely on CDN's that wouldn't really show any impact of any kind. Even if they do, a single day of being "down" is not doing much. For it to be effective people would need to continue this for weeks, and I don't see anyone caring enough to do that— they're not even willing to ditch facebook/twitter/whatsapp, we think they're going to maintain a DDoS attack?

Same issue with uploading encrypted backups to Amazon Drive/Google Drive/OneDrive, etc; there's already built-in limits that protect them, and at the end of the day you're just using what you already paid for. If you fill up your storage you have to pay them more to use it. Not a good strategy IMHO. The only real way to hit their wallet is to leave their ecosystem.

[-] rbn@sopuli.xyz 1 points 4 days ago

Aren't they paying for storage and traffic independent of the availability of the service? So if 100,000 people uploaded 15 GB of encrypted backups to a free Gdrive, they pay for ~1.5 Petabyte of storage and traffic. I mean it's probably not significant for Google but it should cause at least a little costs without bringing any value (as long as you upload encrypted or bullshit data).

The main downside I see would be the negative impact on the environment. My example above would lead to plenty of additional hard drives and electricity that's just wasted for nothing.