United States | News & Politics

It's really cool learning about stuff like the Mohawk Valley Formula and how it's been known about as an overtly articulated strategy for like a hundred years now and they still do the exact same shit to discredit and disperse movements against their interests

and even knowing their fucking playbook doesn't help us simply because a solid majority of the population is conditioned to have their eyes glaze over, seeing nothing, when told about the tactics that are literally at that moment being used on them

More than a century honestly, that shit goes as far back as the 1800s

The American system rewards cowardice

This is why my advice to everyone who is like "But what should I actually DO!' is "get to know your neighbors." Community together strong

The internet caused us to forgo our tight communities in exchange for being acquaintances with millions of people.

Lack of worker solidarity

In theory, the problem of "two paychecks" is solved (at least in part) by working people seizing certain critical means of production for the purposes of mutual aid. So, grocers strike not by closing the front doors but by shutting down the cash registers and handing out food for free. Landlord admins strike by refusing to collect rents. Teachers strike not by refusing to teach but by refusing to grade. Etc.

And if everyone knows this arrangement will be in effect, they can act together as a bargaining unit to threaten the control of the landlord class.

But if they aren't in close communication, because the public forms of media are censored and strictly controlled, then individuals can't express solidarity prior to the strike. And if they aren't in alignment, then you end up with the same "haves" and "have-nots" reproduced across the striking cohort, creating contradictions that landlords can exploit. And if they can't repeat this experiment of communication, trust building, strike, reap concessions, then they can't build momentum of numbers or expand the demands.

Hopefully that is beginning to change

I haven't seen much to suggest it has. Perhaps the soul is willing, but the body public remains weak and emaciated. We still don't have avenues of communication independent of the capitalist class. We haven't built trust between industrial sectors. There's little we can point to that's been successful, much less reproducible.

I just hope its not too late.

It's never "too late". All that changes is the players and the stakes at play.

But whatever comes next, you'd be foolish to believe you'll see both the beginning of it and the end. You'll be lucky to know what you're in the middle of.

Agreed. 2-3 paychecks for the union workers and skilled trades. 0-1 for most others.

And too many of the ones who do and are have accepted the paradigm of unions as a consumer service, rather than a place for rank-and-file organization. Union dues for collaborator leadership makes a union into a sort of absurdly cheap, shitty lawyer with whom you get what you're paying for, when it's not actively betraying you.

Don't forget that unions and strikes are unamerikkkan commie inventions that takes away our freedom.

People in more precarious positions than now organized and that's how they got every concession ever. The conditions may be different, but it will only get worse without organizing and striking.