May Day general strike aims to ‘shift the flow of our money’

Presenter: History is in the making as activists prepare for a nationwide general strike Friday, May 1. To participate in the general strike, you are being asked to walk out of work, walk out of school, and don’t shop all day. From the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Thea Abbatoy: 

Thea Abbatoy (PSL): We’re going around talking to business owners and workers, letting them know about the day of action for May Day and trying to just gear everyone up towards that general strike readiness, reminding workers that it’s a day of no work, no school, and no shopping.

Because this is very much something that requires the workers’ participation as much as it requires the consent of the management, if you will—’no shopping’ being a really important part of that. 

People may be taking a really big risk or can’t walk out of work. Maybe they’re a really critical worker in a medical field or would really risk losing their job. So anyone who can make that risk, we’re asking them to walk out of work, walk out of school. We’re also asking them not to shop.

And that all goes hand-in-hand with the ask for businesses to close down if they can, and that collectively puts this stoppage on the day-to-day, on the status quo.

We need to use our power as workers, our strongest tool, to remind the administration that we stand in solidarity with our immigrant neighbors and we don’t support this continued campaign of violence against our neighbors here, our immigrant neighbors, as well as our own citizens, as well as abroad, the global force of people who are just trying to exist. 

The regime currently is putting an existential threat on all of us with its continued efforts towards war and towards caging humans in our own backyard. 

We as workers have the power to grind the gears of this system to a halt and very powerfully say: ‘We don’t support this,’ having those conversations with our neighbors, building this movement and those networks to support each other and to communicate with each other about this, to coordinate this strike and exercise our own power, because this is our labor.

So there’s street outreach, business outreach. Since the campaign is Oregonwide, at this point well over 700 businesses have been visited, and there’s a lot of ways for businesses as well as people to support.

You know, if they can’t close down, we’re also asking them to support in other ways: By doing a partial close if they can during critical hours, or if they’re not able to do that, they can donate to the actual actions that are happening around the state. They can donate food or they can donate whatever they’re able, coffees, things like that, water.

And they can also host fundraisers. This is something that we saw a lot of businesses do on Jan. 30 as part of the shutdown that happened in response to Minneapolis then. A lot of businesses held fundraisers that night or near that date to give a portion of the proceeds or all of the proceeds to immigrant defense organizations locally.

So we’re driving that call to support those organizations locally. And, we can also, if they can’t do any of that, they can at the very least hang the sign. We’ve got signs for everybody to put up in their window.

So we are really excited to see the responsiveness of so many people. It’s really easy outreach to do. Most people are very, very receptive to the idea of a general strike. They’re excited to hear that it’s happening.

And people are hungry for action. This is something that they can do that has an effect that goes beyond marching, that goes beyond waiting for the polls. This is something we can stand up and do now. 

There’s been a lot of really creative approaches to this: Made By You, a local pottery place in Springfield, is doing a partial close and they’re doing like cash-only sales, and then they’re also offering a bunch of free art activities for the community. And Perugino is wanting to donate to the actual march if they’re able and doing a partial close as well. 

There’s been lot of support and a lot of bravery, especially from immigrant-owned businesses in particular. You’re like asking them to impact their bottom line and to close for a whole day and some people sound really a little bit hesitant at the beginning, but as businesses talk to each other and as they post on social media, that really builds.

So, you know, Protect Oregon and PCUN are uplifting these businesses on social media. They have a running list of businesses and we’re trying to shop those businesses out as much as we can too, because this is a really powerful piece of all of this.

Yes, we’re asking people for one day to shut it down, to not go to work, not go to school, not shop, and close your business. But how we follow that up is really, really important.

Gearing people towards a mindset shift, this is a really key piece of the strike action. We don’t want to just have one day of this and then go back to Target and Amazon tomorrow.

It’s about changing the way that you shop and uplifting these businesses that we know stand in solidarity, that we know support us and that are making the sacrifice, is a really powerful way to just really dramatically shift the flow of our money and our power. 

Presenter: That is Thea Abbatoy from the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Activists hope to shut down the U.S. economy on Friday, and then, on Saturday, start changing the way that we shop.