For the last month* I've been pondering the optimal bet should a general strike interrupt transport into major urban centers.
Here's some background from In These Times:
Incredibly threatening to those in power, they rarely succeed. But they do build solidarity.
General strikes are rare in American social movements, because they are difficult to coordinate. On the other hand, few actions offer a more direct challenge to those in power. What can today’s protesters learn from their activist ancestors to help participants draw strength? How have general strikes affected long-term labor and social movements?
The two major general strikes in American history are the Seattle General Strike of 1919 and the Oakland General Strike of 1946. In 1919, the workers of Seattle engaged in a three-day mass action calling all city workers onto the streets. This was the first citywide collective action in American history known as a general strike.
The Pacific Northwest in the early 20th century was a center of radicalism. Horrible working conditions in the timber industry, already radicalized immigrants from Scandinavia, activist dockworkers and the popularity of the Industrial Workers of the World among the region’s thousands of transient workers made Seattle a fertile center of radical thought that even influenced labor organizations affiliated with the traditionally moderate American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The strike began with shipyard workers but was quickly joined by workers around the city. By February 6, over 60,000 workers were on the streets where they remained for four days. In an atmosphere fearful of radicalism after the Bolshevik Revolution, conservatives around the nation declared the strike the first step toward revolution.Seattle mayor OlĂ© Hanson took the lead in crushing the strike ordering the National Guard to take control of the city’s light company. Fearing long-term fallout, national AFL leaders denounced the strike and it quickly fell apart. After its defeat, the labor movement in Seattle fell apart, a victim of both internal fighting and the vicious Red Scare that followed World War I.
The Oakland general strike came out of the massive changes to the Bay Area during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Americans moved to San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, and other cities to work in wartime industries. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) had achieved major successes in organizing American workers during the late 1930s. Often using communist organizers, the CIO built on the militancy of American labor to become a powerful force in opposition to both the more traditional AFL and conservative business interests.
During World War II, the AFL and CIO turned their energies toward defeating the fascist menace of Germany and Japan. The administration of Franklin Roosevelt, wanting to avoid strikes that would undermine wartime production, brought both the AFL and CIO into wartime planning. But while consumer prices rose during the war, wages did not. The motivated and radicalized workers wanted to strike, but their leaders and the federal government urged them to work through it.
When the war ended however, the country was overtaken by a wave of strikes. In 1946, 4.5 million workers went on strike throughout the United States, the greatest number of strikers in one year in American history. Wages did not keep up with rapidly rising prices and higher wages were the core demand of almost all the strikers.
The situation in Oakland was especially volatile because of the city’s Retail Merchants Association, a powerful and deeply anti-union business organization. These department stores owners employed mostly women, who they believed would accept low wages. The Department and Specialty Store Employees Union Local 1265 organized workers at these downtown stores. Early in 1946, they won victories at smaller stores and decided to take on the biggest retailers, Kahn’s and Hastings. A month-long strike ensued in the late fall of 1946. Beginning mere blocks from Occupy Oakland’s encampment, this turned into one of the biggest challenges to corporate America in the postwar years.Although the CIO had the more radical agenda, it was actually the AFL who decided to call for a general strike on December 2, 1946 in support of the striking department store workers. AFL workers around Oakland walked off their jobs — bus drivers, teamsters, sailors, machinists, cannery workers, railroad porters, waiters, waitresses, cooks. For over two days, Oakland shut down. Over 100,000 workers participated in the strike....
....MUCH MORE
Sometimes people forget where their food comes from and who it is they should thank for their daily sustenance.
One of the things a risk manager is tasked with is catastrophizing possible futures and developing plans to either mitigate or hopefully, profit from the worst case scenario. Most of our readers are familiar with the more dramatic scenarios: Tokyo earthquake at magnitude 8.5 - 9.5. An electromagnetic pulse, whether caused by a coronal mass ejection or an airburst of a nuclear weapon, an underwater landslide on the order of the Storegga slide creating a megatsunami, etc. These are the better known risks.
But one of the more mundane risks is something like a general strike.
Here's a map used to make the political point that land doesn't vote, people vote:
December 17, 2020What the map also does is highlight the places, cities, that would be most at risk if the whole system came to a halt.
How long would it take for the food supply to run out in New York City or San Francisco or Atlanta or Philadelphia?
Here's the American Trucking Association with some answers:...
"South Korea To Airlift Strawberries To Singapore"
Since posting "Urban Complexity and Fragility" I've been thinking about getting food into cities in the event of a general strike. This scenario doesn't include sabotage and other violent acts, just the people who grow and trade and package and move the food going on strike. In most countries governments would be hard pressed to replace the numbers involved and attempting to force people to work has really bad optics, slavery and all, so I've been thinking about the logistical challenges in keeping the 50 most violent cities in America from going completely off the rails.
One example that came to mind was the Berlin Airlift, the Air Bridge.
But I promise you, strawberries were not on the menu.....
