I was reading this diary on the rec list, and noticed that a lot of the commenters were lamenting about our forms of organization being taken from us.
But there's one form of organized protest we haven't tried yet, that WILL work.
More below the fold if you'd like to know more.
This is a simple solution that will force our corporate owners to pay attention to us, that will draw massive media attention, and will inevitably result in more policies favorable to us. The solution?
Nobody come to work for a day.
Let's say, hypothetically, that on 2/22, we all collectively decided to call in to work, wherever work may be for those of us still employed. We instead spend the time we would have spent at work on street corners, assembled in small groups, talking to anybody willing to listen for a moment, but mainly to speak out, be seen, and be heard.
Those who don't have work to call into can join with us and call for things like progressive taxation; a single-payer health care system; an end to not just the Afghanistan war, but foreign occupation; fairer education policy that leaves educators free to teach what matters instead of teach what's on the standardized test to get more money.
At first, the results of our protest will be predictable and intangible. We'll all be one day of wages shorter at the end of the month. We will be spit on and called names by passers by. But we will have made our voices heard through the collective loss in economic activity.
Us not coming to work means our corporate owners don't get to benefit from our productivity, and that will get them to notice. Perhaps the media coverage that spurs from it will be to the narrative of the unappreciated, unspoken value of the American worker. Labor might enter the national discourse again as not a dirty word, but as one that unites all of us who are sick of working like dogs for lower wages, longer hours and reduced benefits.
We have the organizing tools at hand. Twitter, facebook, the blogosphere. We all communicate with each other digitally on a consistent basis. All this movement needs is people willing to spend one day not working, but speaking out in their hometowns. If our message isn't heard the first time, we'll do it again until they let us have our say.
We're being robbed blind in this class war by the right on everything from social security, medicare and medicaid, and the media has so far bought into their deficit hawk narrative and defended their egregious actions while ignoring their blatant hypocrisy about things like the cost of billionaire tax bailouts and unfunded wars. Soon we won't have anything left. We're already losing our voices in the media, and folks in the so-called "liberal class" or "political class" have abandoned the cause of liberalism for centrist (re: corporate) ways of thought.
The hour is at hand for us to act. What will you do about it? Will you be willing to not work for a day to speak out for working families that are being walked on by their employers and their government?
Let's start by not working for a day and speaking out instead. Who's with me?