Unemployed Protesters In Occupy Wall Street Movement Announce “General Strike”
How do people without jobs strike? Do they stop using their food stamps for a while?
Occupy Wall Street, largely forgotten over the last few months, aims to make a comeback from this winter’s hibernation with an ambitious plan: a crippling May Day “general strike” in the tradition of 1930s radicalism.
The grand promise is what one occupier, Brendan Burke, described to BuzzFeed as “a day without the 99%.” But in the city where the movement was born, it’s already suffering from what has emerged as one of Occupy’s signal weaknesses, the lack of ability or interest to make alliances with liberal institutions. Despite public solidarity, there’s little relationship between the Occupy movement and organized labor. And as a result, even the most progressive New York labor leaders say their members will not participate in the May 1 strike.
It’s interesting to me that they picked May 1st to strike. All the Occupy movement faithful I’ve spoken to deny that they’re socialists, and yet here they pick the international day of socialist solidarity for their “general strike.”
Both the Soviet Communists and the Nazi Socialists held national celebrations on May Day.
The symbolism shouldn’t be lost on the public at large.
Tags: communism, occupy wall street, socialism
