In wake of Donald Trump’s call for Republicans to ‘take over’ voting, senator Ruben Gallego urges citizens to take a stand and give the ‘ultimate response’
The Democratic senator Ruben Gallego has proposed that, should Donald Trump try to sabotage the midterm elections, Americans should respond with a general strike that would “grind the country to a halt”.
Earlier this week the US president called for Republicans to “take over” and “nationalise” voting in at least 15 unspecified locations, repeating his false claims that elections are plagued by widespread fraud.
On Thursday Gallego, a senator for Arizona and an Iraq war veteran, warned that Trump could seek to interfere with the November midterms that will determine control of Congress – and urged citizens to fight fire with fire.
Why wait?
This is something that needs to be done. Sadly, this country is so hell-bent on screwing over real Americans that most of us can’t afford to be on strike more than a day or two without severe financial ramifications or outright losing our employment. The best alternative is to also vote with your wallet do not buy do not shop anywhere that supports this administration.
“if” x event happens in 9 months.
My friend, I am starting to worry about the next 9 months all even happening.
So, start stocking up on food and water and harden your physical defenses against desperate looting.
And try to build support coalitions in your neighborhood and social circles.
Note to self: establish a “social circle.”
We need to put in the groundwork to prepare for our most powerful means of non-violent offense: a proper, long-term, Nation Wide General Strike.
The country would be brought to its knees if suddenly deprived of profit and labor, allowing us to simply ignore the democrats and their lack of spine, and instead demand real changes (abolishing ICE should be towards the top of the list).
That tactic was extremely effective in Chile in 2019, and had they not fallen for the trick of liberal reform, they would’ve had a successful revolution on their hands with virtually no bloodshed.
There are some concrete steps all of us can take toward enacting that hard-core general strike to make it more viable and bearable for us all. (the titles below expand if you click them).
Learn First Aid! ⛑️
As we’re seeing, deadly violence is being used against us and it will only continue. It extremely important to have the skills to be able to keep yourself and others alive if they get hurt.
Tacticool Girlfriend provides a great introduction to building a personal first aid kit, called an IFAK, which can deal with things like bullet wounds and other serious bleeding wounds. I also want to emphasize her recommendation of only buying medical gear from reputable sources (not Amazon!), such as North American Rescue to avoid fakes that could cost you your life.
But you’ll need to learn how to use that equipment, too. The best resource for that is to take a local Stop The Bleed class, which are pretty widely available in most places. They may cost a small fee, but can also sometimes be free. Alternatively, if you cannot access a local class, this video by PrepMedic will give you a solid understanding of how to use Tourniquets and Gauze for wound packing.
Injuries are less harmful if they are tended to early. Learning first aid can help conserve resources when healthcare becomes unaffordable. Having several medics in case of harm by police is an extremely powerful morale booster during a protest that may become a police riot. When you become comfortable with the basics of first aid, riot medicine is the next suggested step.
Establish or join local Mutual Aid networks ✊
If you haven’t already, get to know your neighbors. Mutual aid is a willingness to support and grow your community. This can include informal networks through friends, tenant/renter organizations, solidarity groups, and industrial unions.
These are groups using direct action to solve each other’s problems. Building strong communities makes it difficult for fascism to take root. The actions of the government are going to hit every community hard, and the ones who build trust in each other and work together are most likely to survive. We’ve been building a list of resources in [email protected] to help you on your way. Also check out this handy guide to find existing groups in your area.
This isn’t only for your own community protection. Your ability to organize today will change the political landscape tomorrow. When revolution occurs, the social organizations that show the greatest resilience through the regime are the ones typically calling the shots when the dust settles. When it comes to elections, get out the vote drives are useless if most of the voters are fascists. At some point, you have to do grassroots political education if you don’t want fascist candidates winning elections. Mutual aid networks are excellent forums not only for teaching each other good political ideas, but demonstrating them in practice.
Join a Union and Prepare for an even longer General Strike! 💪
If you aren’t in a union (or even if you are, it’s worth dual-carding), consider joining the IWW to unionize your workplace (bonus: you’ll get higher wages, better benefits, and more time off if you succeed!) to strengthen a general strike if we manage to enact one, as most unions have a strike fund that can supplement your income during a general strike to make it more financially bearable (you should also save as much money as you can reasonably do, so it can also be used to keep yourself afloat during a strike). A General Strike is officially planned by the UAW for May 1st 2028, but it was planned before Trump was elected, and by then may be too late, so prepare now for one that may start sooner.
And for our international friends, you should join one as well, as fascism is gaining momentum globally. If your country isn’t listed below, just contact the IWW directly in the link above, and they’ll help you set up a new local branch.
Adopt Security Culture and Digital Camouflage 🛡️
Sometimes benign seeming efforts can turn into unexpected personal data collecting traps. Like an obscure website for exchanging contact info with other students turning into a global ad-tech surveillance network (Facebook), or innocent seeming online personality tests being use to harvest character profiles. Even Etsy, Reddit, Tinder, and Duolingo are feeding information to US Government Agencies like ICE.
Security culture is commonly used to describe the general awareness of such potential traps and how it can affect groups or entire communities. This goes beyond mere individual privacy efforts, as without joint efforts these often fail to work.
Especially in activist circles, security culture is paramount. For opsec reasons not everyone in the group might be aware of what clandestine efforts others are involved in, but with a general security culture many potential data leaks can be avoided.
Movements are made by the volume of their participants, and the easier and less dangerous it is to participate, the more people will get involved. As more people get involved, individual involvement becomes even less dangerous, creating a virtuous cycle.
We’ll start it off with some General Advice:
- Mentally wall off personal uniquely identifying info from your online presence, actively build a habit of opsec so that withholding information is your default mental state
- Be careful about who you meet online
- Use different, unrelated usernames, passwords & emails for every account. And try not to connect to those accounts with your real IP address (use Tor or a VPN)
- Be mindful that anything done online leaves a trail
- agents provocateurs may seek to find patsies willing to perform an ill-advised illegal activity in order to legitimize police repression. If someone is trying to pressure you, especially if you don’t have a long and proven history with them, be extremely wary.
For a full guide on what encrypted communications platforms to use, and how to stay off the radar, read the Digital Camouflage section within the Monthly Meta post here (you’ll need to scroll down. I’d add it here, but it won’t fit in this comment).
I’d also highly recommend Full Spectrum Resistance to anyone who wants further info on how to resist (audiobook version here).
Fuck I’ve been saying this since last January.
Just imagine if every GOOD citizen out there spent the last 13 months building their social circles, learning to grow and preserve food, rejecting super-consunerism and using the money they save to build a reserve fund.
I think a few more people would be totally prepared for a general strike.
But no, everyone is still in “head down, go to work, stick to the routine” mode, and I see no reason to expect anything different no matter how bad things get.
When asked for comment, Chuck Shumer condescendingly retorted “the Ultimate Response we have here is to give more weapons to Israel”
General strikes are effective…
But if they cancel/rig elections then it’s not gonna be enough. If that happens, we really only have one box left.
The sad thing is that they’re at the point of general, heck National, level of strikes to bring this whole thing to a halt. But no now it’s ’if they meddle with midterms’. The cans been kicked so far down the road it’s probably not worth recycling.
People keep moving the goalposts “if they do this, it’ll be the last straw. If they do that, it’ll be the last straw” then they do it and nothing happens
There should have been strikes after citizens united. I don’t think it’s too late, but now it feels like a scramble to organize.
The Dems starting a strike fund or going to distribute food while we strike?
We should use this getting into the news as an opportunity to discuss a general strike for something more important that his job, like abolishing ICE and freeing ppl from detention. We need to be strengthening mutual aid and helping everyone get a couple weeks worth of dry food so that ppl have the means to strike
Nah their millions go their wealthy siblings to consult on how to better reach poor people they have studied from a book on it written by another friend who is 80 now.
You know… Good use of the millions donated by the average people.
And armed uprising
Fishermen getting bombed, civilians getting kidnapped, civilians getting executed, foreign leaders getting abducted, rapists getting protected. None of these things were apparently bad enough to call for a general strike. But now that their elections and their power is at risk, all of a sudden they really want a general strike. Dems are just a different side of the same coin, a bunch of power greedy rich fucks who are happy with all the fascism.
Yes, lesser of two evils. It’s a shitty choice, but there’s still a right answer.
If you’re charismatic, energetic, influential, and invincible enough, please create and push for a better third option.
Yeah but making a third option viable is something that will take way too long, unless one of the parties completely implodes.
Our electoral process itself only allows for two viable and diametrically opposed parties.
Any third party who even gets on the board in a general election will, most likely, ensure that they and the major party they are most closely aligned with, will lose, due to the spoiler effect.
If anything, a “successful” third party (that is, one that gets more than single digits in a general election" may help to shift the closest-aligned major parties direction…but that will only result in the opposing party moving further in the opposite direction to maintain equilibrium.
Without a good spoiler though…the loser moves closer towards the winner, and the winner still moves further away.
And here’s the kicker…the way to change it is through the elected officials, who are incentivized to keep the system (which works in their favor) as-is.
You’re part of them problem
Is Gallego outlining any concepts of a plan for how to go about doing this safely? Some places can get pretty cold in November and people might need money, typically earned via labor, to stay warm and alive.
