HelloThere

I don’t think you can blame literal children for this, cmon.

Sure, I don’t disagree with that.

What I’m saying is you’ve structured this like an instruction manual, but have the steps in the wrong order.

In my experience with local organising (I’m a trustee of the local foodbank) doing the actions in the order you’ve laid out would cause the vast majority to disengage immediately, and I live in an area with higher than average unionisation and left wing tendencies.

You know that for a general strike to be successful it has to be massive - 10s of millions of workers - and in effect for a very long time. For that to be possible, people need to be secure in their housing, their access to food, and to heat. If any of those fail, the strike fails.

For those to be a success, parallel power structures - mutual aid, etc - need to already be in place.

So, if you want to structure this as a 3 step instruction manual, my recommendation is that it’s

• Create local security for food and housing
• Join One Big Union
• Strike until you win

If the intent is to get people started down a good path, then it should focus on first steps, which is community organising.

The people who are already open to unions are already in them. Because of 50 years of neo-liberal shite people do not understand class consciousness and view themselves simply as isolated, powerless, consumers.

You can break that view of themselves through community efforts - like gardens, allotments, etc - because they demonstrate their own abilities to themselves, and how working together benefits us all.

And then, you can start pushing for more official efforts and organisation.

“How to win” is not “Just Do The Thing”.

Building community and local organising is a pre-requisite to any sort of collective action. The idea that that somehow comes after a general strike is mad.

All resistance starts between people who know each other. Talking to your neighbours, helping each other out, sharing tools and skills, etc, are all required before you can be all “join the one big union and go on perpetual strike”.

If you, as a person, cannot organise a community garden, you cannot organise a general strike.