Resistance: Elements of a Strike

(Originally written on July 14, 2025 in preparation for the Good Trouble Lives On rallies on July 17.)

All,

Why A Strike?

I’ve written in the past about the need for a general strike. Here’s why our resistance has to culminate in a strike.

Donald Trump doesn’t stock a grocery. Donald Trump doesn’t drive trains. Donald Trump doesn’t load cargo, deliver cancer treatments, cut grass, install phone lines, inspect bridges, pack Amazon boxes, or a thousand other things. No dictator does. Neither do his cronies. The only reason an economy continues to function under a dictator is because the people cooperate. They continue to work. They continue to shop. They continue to produce goods, provide services, harvest food, and drive trucks. They decline to disrupt the autocratic society.

The lesson of history is that dictatorships are brittle. If we stop providing support, if we stop cooperating, they crumble.

Our job is to stop cooperating on a wide enough scale that oligarchs panic, cowardly politicians cave, and Donald Trump is removed from office.

What about elections, you ask?

Republicans are already corrupting our election processes and mechanisms at every level. Last week, the Department of Justice announced a new initiative to investigate and charge local election officials who they believe are corrupted and who oppose Donald Trump. They are looking for them in the swing states. You don’t have to be Machiavelli to see where this goes. 

So it’s got to be a strike.

What Will A Strike Look Like?

A general strike is not just everyone walking off the job one day. This is never effective. It never produces enough pain to motivate the moneyed billionaires behind the dictator.

A general strike is a coordinated, prolonged refusal to keep society running for the benefit of the ruling class. You don't need every worker to strike at once, that's a myth. You need strategic disruption and sustained refusal across enough pressure points to hurt profits and control.

So, a general strike will include:

·       Work stoppages across multiple industries;

·       Consumer boycotts of non-essential spending;

·       Mutual aid networks to keep people fed, housed, and supported;

·       Rolling strikes or sector-specific walkouts;

·       Public disruption such as marches, occupations, etc.

Basically, it is mass refusal to participate in capitalism as usual.

To circle back to my earlier point, this is profoundly inconvenient. But also absolutely necessary if you want your country back, if you want the rule of law. If you want a government that serves the people instead of milking them, a general strike is necessary. 

I will propose some specifics at a later date. But the time to start envisioning what this will mean to you is now. And the time to commit to the inconvenience is now. History is calling us, friends. And history will judge us. 

And our inconvenience doesn’t enter the equation.

Thanks for reading.

See you in the streets.

 Paul