Occupy Oakland's "General Strike" Opens New Front on Corporate Power
The citywide "general strike" today organized by Occupy Oakland activists is significant on at least three levels. It 1) represents the first large-scale labor action in the U.S. sparked by Occupy Wall Street; 2) serves as a measure of union support for the movement; 3) visibly and dramatically demonstrates the possibilities of mass protest.
That last point is less obvious or trivial than it may seem. Social and political movements are fundamentally about opening people's eyes and giving them the confidence to confront perceived injustice. The Occupy campaign can (and must) identify its goals, but nothing is so effective in galvanizing support as the sight of folks physically convening in service of a common cause.
To that end, hundreds of protesters converged on downtown Oakland to support the strike. That number is expected to grow over the course of the day. Local school officials also said that some 360 teachers, out of 2,000 in the district, skipped work. Reports the Oakland Tribune:
Several businesses, including the Men's Wearhouse and the Grand Lake Theater closed their doors Wednesday in support of today's planned General Strike as thousands of people are expected to join the Occupy Oakland movement to protest the inequality of wealth and power. The UC office of the President is also closed today over concerns that BART might be shut down at some point and more than 1,000 people who work in the building wouldn't be able to get to or from work.Support from organized labor
Occupy Oakland is encouraging all employees to go on strike, call in sick, take a vacation day or otherwise stop working. The group is also planning marches set for this evening aimed at disrupting the city's large commercial port. Activists chose the site because the International Longshore and Warehouse Union allows workers to respect community picket lines.
Although unionized employees are restricted by federal law and work contracts from participating in the strike, local labor groups are expressing support. Oakland's largest union, SEIU Local 1021, this week clarified to members that striking isn't permitted, but it urged them to join the "Peaceful day of action" during their time off:
"We're the one's losing our homes and having city services cut because of what bankers and Wall Street have done," said Dwight McElroy, President of 1021's Oakland chapter. "Occupy Oakland is out there taking baton blows and tear gas to protest what has been happening, so it is incumbent on the labor movement to protect them."
The Oakland Education Association is taking stronger measures. The group, which represents some 2,700 city teachers, is calling on members to take personal leave to join the protests and to picket at school sites, among other things. The Alameda Labor Council is encouraging unspecified "work-site actions" and for employees to join a rally in front of Oakland's City Hall planned for tonight. Other labor groups backing strike include city workers, University of California-Berkeley teaching assistants and community college instructors.
Stepping out
Such institutional support is clearly vital for a movement aimed at mobilizing the "99 percent" against economic inequality, corporate oligarchy and the depredations of Wall Street. There is also historical precedent for such an alliance -- one that let to momentous change in the U.S.
In the mid-1880s, mostly southern and western farmers gathered in the tens of thousands, forming miles-long wagon trains, to hear speakers railing against the harshly exploitative "crop-lien" system that had emerged after the Civil War. A political culture was born, leading to the largest economic protests this country has ever seen. The "Farmers Alliance" would later align with industrial workers agitating for their rights and eventually give rise to Populism, which reshaped the early 20th century political landscape. The civil rights and anti-war movements in the '60s saw similar mass protests.
As anthropologist David Graeber, one of the founders of OWS, tells Reuters in highlighting the importance of pubic rallies in helping to win hearts and minds:
It is almost impossible to convince the average American that a truly democratic society would be possible. One can only show them. But the experience of actually watching a group of a thousand, or two thousand, people making collective decisions without a leadership structure, let alone that of thousands of people in the streets linking arms to holding their ground against a phalanx of armored riot cops, motivated only by principle and solidarity, can change one's most fundamental assumptions about what politics, or for that matter, human life, could actually be like.Consciousness may be raised online, but it still puts its body on the line out in the streets.
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