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Ever since Occupy Oakland achieved the effective shutdown of the port of Oakland last Wednesday along with its call for a general strike of the city (that same day) which was partially successful i.e. 18% of the city's teachers didn't report to work that day, city workers (5%) took leave, while some businesses did close in solidarity with the call for a general strike, this writer wondered about the feasibility of calling for a nationwide general strike.
Well this morning I came across a group called, "Citizens for Legitimate Government" (www.legit.org) that is calling for just that type of action for Monday, November 28, immediately following the Thanksgiving weekend.
CLG's rationale in calling for the strike is the Congressional "super committee" is due to make its budget recommendations on Wednesday, November 23, the day prior to Thanksgiving. It is expected to offer deep cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security as part of the austerity package which will undoubtedly be passed by Republicans in House and the Senate, as well as Democrats in both Houses and then sent to the president.
As the group states in its call for a general strike, "The austerity package will be forthcoming and that the vast majority will now pay an additional price for the criminality of the corporate, military and financial oligarchy" as well as "being attacked by the corporate, military and financial oligarchy and its representatives in the White House and both Houses of Congress. We are being forced to pay for the failures of the capitalist class and the precariousness of the profit system. We are no longer represented by the U.S. government. Instead the government is an instrument of the capitalist class and this class has nothing but its own interests at heart"the two political parties are simply two levers by which the capitalist class controls the political processes in the U.S.
For reader's familiar with this site, the aforementioned above has been a persistent theme that goes to the heart of our system being hi-jacked and corrupted by, as "Citizens for Legitimate Government" say is "the corporate, military and financial oligarchy and its representatives in the White House and both Houses of Congress."
CLG's call for a general strike across the nation would seem, at first blush, to be a logistical nightmare. But with the modern social networks of Twitter, Facebook and the like, the idea could catch fire, just as the entire occupy movement itself has spread coast to coast in little more than a month from its inception on Occupy Wall Street on September 17.
The powers that control our system must be challenged with actions that rock the underpinning of the house of cards they have constructed. A national general strike may be just the beginning to do just that.
