So, you want to organize a #GeneralStrike in a major American city? You're trying to do something that's never been successfully done before, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.

Here are some thoughts on how you might accomplish it. https://twitter.com/ComradeTheD/status/1294287460726267905

For starters, don't declare a date for your general strike. You're just setting yourself a deadline you probably won't meet, and telling bosses and cops when to expect you even if it does work.

Instead, declare your intent to strike at *some* point, and start building for it.

You will need activists in every neighborhood, workspace, org, and union to start talking to their less radical neighbors about the necessity of organizing to deal with your city's problems. Make it clear you aren't just advocating a walk-out; you're preparing for a siege.

Each neighborhood and shop floor needs to start holding meetings to discuss grievances with the current system, propose changes, and discuss what can be done in the short term. As these meetings grow eventually you will form formal and informal committees.

Labor committee, made up of reps from each shop floor.

Mutual aid committee, to source and distribute food, water, medicine.

Defense committee, armed and unarmed community defense.

Groups representing the interests of BIPOC, queer, disabled, etc people across the city.

And finally a General Strike Committee, with reps from the smaller committees, for coordination.

The GSC should not be a hierarchical body to tell people what to do. The GSC does not decide when the strike happens. The GSC is a body for coordinating between groups doing the work

During all of this there must be continual action in the streets. The cops and the city government must not have a moment's rest. This is why Portland is an excellent candidate for a general strike; they are already used to going out every night and confronting the state.

Eventually, the nightly street protests will result in a police officer crossing the line and committing a heinous enough act to spark general anger. The feds snatching people into vans might have been a sufficient spark, had the organization been in place to back it up.

Once people are angry and already in the streets, that is when the GSC declares the general strike. Not to tell people what to do, but to declare to the city and the world what the people have already decided.

The GSC lays out demands and conditions to be met before the strike ends. By nature of the representational system this list will be less radical than the most radical supporters of the strike; but a strike committee can be pushed left much more easily than the DNC can. ;)

A #generalstrike is accomplished by the self organization of poor and working people. It's accomplished by people doing direct action, and then talking to other people doing direct action, to coordinate and cooperate and spread that action to more and more people.

Then, when the spark arrives, you have a pre-existing, organic organization that can act creatively and spontaneously without being directed by a leader or a party. And when that organic organization is large enough, and acts with enough ferocity, that is when you win.

Some direct action that will be required:

Mutual aid: community gardens; canned goods drives; grocery store workers opening the doors for expropriation; community cookouts; food delivery for the old, disabled, and immunocompromised; street medics; community ambulance

Defense: anti-eviction squads; protesters, black bloc, and shield walls; car barricades and spotters; individual concealed carry; open carry militias; souveillance -- police scanners, cop watchers, infiltrators in the PPB and union; community watch

@GrimKim @EmericanJohnson @IwriteOK @IGD_News @MattyBeRad @apeirophobic