As authoritarian politics harden in the United States, familiar channels of resistance are proving dangerously inadequate. Elections are constrained, courts are under siege, and dissent is increasingly met with repression in the streets. In this moment, questions of power — who has it, how it is exercised, and how it can be withdrawn — are no longer abstract. They are immediate and practical.
Labor historian and longtime organizer Jeremy Brecher has spent decades grappling with these questions, and in a recent series of reports, culminating in “Social Strikes: Can General Strikes, Mass Strikes, and People Power Uprisings Provide a Last Defense Against MAGA Tyranny?,” he argues that large-scale noncooperation may be one of the few strategies capable of halting an authoritarian slide.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: How People Power Has Defeated Authoritarian Regimes Around the World
– South Korea: “Our citizens, armed with nothing but conviction . . .”
– Serbia: Otpor
– Philippines: People power
– Puerto Rico: Rickyleaks
Chapter 2: Social Strikes in American History
– Social Strikes, Mass Strikes, and General Strikes
– General “Strikes”
“Imagine the Power of Working People…”
Chapter 3: Social Strikes vs. MAGA Tyranny
Chapter 4: Laying the Groundwork for Social Strikes
Chapter 5: Timelines
Chapter 6: Organization
Chapter 7: Goals
Chapter 8: Tactics
Chapter 9: Endgames
Conclusion: “The power is in our solidarity”
Read the full guide online. Download the full report PDF here: https://tinyurl.com/pa4hj6e2
CREDITS:
Author:
Jeremy Brecher is a co-founder and senior strategic advisor for the Labor Network for Sustainability. He is the author of more than fifteen books on labor and social movements, including Strike! Common Preservation in a Time of Mutual Destruction, and The Green New Deal from Below.
Video production & narration:
Dominick Conidi is a recent graduate from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is a contributor at ZNetwork.org. He has organized previously with the Sunrise Movement and is a current member of North Jersey DSA.
Publishers:
The mission of the Labor Network for Sustainability is to be a relentless force for urgent, science-based climate action by building a powerful labor-climate movement to secure an ecologically sustainable and economically just future where everyone can make a living on a living planet.
ZNetwork.org is an independent media platform dedicated to advancing vision and strategy for a better world. Since 1977, we’ve produced a series of projects that go beyond critique to explore and organize alternatives, including: ZMagazine, Z Media Institute, ZNetwork.org, & the AllofUSDirectory.org.