We Need To Consider A General Strike If Trump Doesn't Leave Office By January 20th.

If you have been celebrating the clear victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the Presidential election, good for you—and now you can stop—and get ready to fight to make sure that they start their jobs on January 20th.  

 

This is no time to be naive:  Donald Trump, the current Republican Party, its far-Right corporate and religious funders, media organizations, their base of street-level militants, and armed groups (including current and ex members and organizations of law enforcement and the military) constitute the biggest threat to the experiment of American democracy in our lifetimes.  If there is anything that four years under this regime has taught us, it’s that they will go to any lengths, lawful or unlawful, to “win” and maintain their grip on power—particularly now that Trump is President.  Don’t forget the “election” of George W. Bush in 2000 when, “coincidentally,” the state that turned the tide for then-candidate Bush just happened to be the one governed by his brother Jeb.  

 

Trump, and the latest incarnation of his G.O.P. backers, has left their turn-of-the-century Neo-Conservative predecessors in the dust by moving even further to the authoritarian Right with such strategies and tactics as:  

1) continually declaring the U.S. election system “rigged,” with no evidence, 2)  attacking mail-in voting as un-secure and unfair, with no evidence,

3) literally sabotaging the U.S. postal service to disrupt mail-in voting, 

4) working in the courts in an attempt to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters, 

5) specifically calling for white supremacist/nationalist/militia armed groups with a history of violence to activate if he lost (See coverage of the recent election results protests in D.C. attended by hundreds of Proud Boys, during which 4 people were stabbed, and many others assaulted.), 

5) calling for supporters, many armed, to “monitor” polling locations for voter fraud, 

6) using weaponized language to target state and local elections officials and workers, resulting in scores of death threats to the latter group, and mobs attempting to disrupt ballot counting, 

7) mounting scores of legal suits alleging widespread voter fraud at all levels of government with no evidence to support it, and costing tax payers hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process, 

8) attempting to influence state and local election results by contacting and/or threatening electors, election, and state and local elected officials and representatives, 

and 9) actually investigating “legal” routes to institute martial law in order to stay in power.  

 

PEOPLE:  THIS IS CLASSIC FASCISM AND WE CANNOT LET IT STAND.  If Trump, the Republican Party, and the Far Right attempt to steal the election, we must be ready to fight it on every front:  legislatively, in the courts, in the media, militantly in the street, and in our communities.  This election, and this President and party, still have the potential to fundamentally damage—if not break--American democracy for decades to come.  Because of this and, in addition to the afore-mentioned strategies, we need to consider the general strike as a way to disrupt part of the nation’s dark turn toward authoritarianism and fascism.  As the old Industrial Workers Of The World—one of the founding unions of the American labor movement-- saying goes, “An injury to one is an injury to all.”  

If Trump and the Republicans try to defy the clear will of a majority of the American people by refusing to leave a position he/they lost to a democratically-elected successor, we need to seriously consider shutting this country down with a general strike.  No one goes to work, no business as usual, and everyone who believes in democracy goes into the streets of this country to protest and commit acts of nonviolent civil disobedience until Trump and his ilk leave their then-unelected positions of power.  There are more of us than Trump, the crooked and greedy government officials, their funders, their enforcers, and the cowardly politicians—on all sides—that are enabling and perpetuating his regime.  These people are supposed to work for us, and, together, we can stop this mad rush toward fascism, but only if the majority of Americans who believe this is wrong take a risk and, if needed, act. 

Let's Take Advantage Of This Political And Cultural Moment To Critically Examine Policing In America.

     It’s essential that we take advantage of this political and cultural moment to critically ask ourselves:  “What is the role of the police and 'law enforcement' in American society?”  We are so far beyond the old, tired trope of “a few bad apples” when it comes to police violence—just look at the widespread brutality against peaceful protesters around the country, ironically in response to a movement calling for an end to it.  I became a political organizer and activist in the late 90s and, in almost all of the major protests (and many of the “minor”) that I’ve attended over 20 years on both U.S. coasts, and in eastern and eastern-central Canada, the police response has been largely the same as it is today:  they pepper spray, club, and tear gas peaceful protesters, shoot them with rubber bullets, beanbag rounds, charge them with dogs, horses, bicycles, and their own vehicles, throw concussion and flash-bang grenades at them, arrest them, and violate their civil rights.  The reality is that, nationally, there are a lot of violent and/or racist cops and departments—just like there are a lot of violent and/or racist people, because the system is violent and racist, and it’s time for it to go.  

     The idea of de-funding the police and fundamentally restructuring “law enforcement” as we know it is not an idea new to the city of Minneapolis, but has been worked on for decades, largely led by people of color-led organizations at the community and national level.  It gained a lot of momentum in the early 2000s, when, post-9/11, we saw an unprecedented power-grab by the Bush administration, which took advantage of the crisis to create scores of new law enforcement agencies, restructuring the entire apparatus of law enforcement, notably via the USA Patriot Act, and including the Office Of Homeland Security, and the militarization of police forces.  Now, the U.S. is one of the most heavily policed, surveilled, and jailed industrialized “democratic” countries in the world, including our schools, and it’s getting worse.

     I had four students of color begin writing their Scholarly Papers on institutionalized racism this year—months before these most recent killings and protests.  Among other topics, their papers focused on biased policing and violence targeting communities of color, as well as an enormous amount of the 2.6 million incarcerated people in this country being black and brown.  One of them focused on the school-to-prison pipeline, and included research about the psychological and emotional effects on students of color of having police officers stationed in schools, which these researchers found was overwhelmingly negative.  From my first day working as a paraeducator, and then student teacher, in Bellevue and Seattle, respectively, until now I have worked with uniformed, armed police officers and been fundamentally uncomfortable with it, seeing their presence largely intimidate students--especially when other kids watched one of their peers get taken out of school in handcuffs.  I know there are good cops working in our schools (and communities), but I just don’t feel that they are needed daily as a member of our school staffs.  Ultimately, though, our students of color (and all of our students), their families, and our staff need to make this call.  

     In the meantime, as community members and as Americans, let’s start asking ourselves what the city of Minneapolis is asking:  “Do we need a cop for that?  Do we need someone who is armed and trained to harm, detain, and/or kill (to be fair, only a few of the duties of police) for this role?  Can we find someone else, create a position, or city department, and/or reprioritize our budget so we can take care of this need with a trained professional that isn’t a police officer?”  Now these are powerful, critical questions—and we need to figure out answers for them soon if we want to keep calling this country a democracy.