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By Joshua Scheer
As has been said by the sage of ScheerPost Chris Hedges “Effective resistance—or effective mass mobilization, as any effective union will tell you—requires months and months of preparation.
You can create flash mobs, but the state doesn’t care about flash mobs. It cares about the kind of resistance that took place in Italy, where dock workers refused to load weapons onto ships bound for Israel. That requires education. It requires continuity. It’s not just one action—it’s about mobilizing to disrupt the machinery, in this case of genocide, but ultimately the machinery of the state and the machinery of commerce.”
To that end, there has been a call for a statewide action on January 23 in Minnesota—described by Labor Notes as a moment where “Minnesota appears to be in gear for a mass uprising. Unions, community organizations, faith leaders, and small businesses there are calling for a statewide day of ‘no work (except emergency services), no school, and no shopping.’”
While several unions and community groups are backing the call for people to refuse work, school, and shopping on January 23, no union has yet officially voted to strike.
“We haven’t voted on a strike, but our union is urging people to support this action,” said Kieran Knutson president of the CWA 7250. “Some might say, ‘This isn’t a real general strike.’ But a mass mobilization, in the right conditions, can become something qualitatively new.”
There is a history of how protests can evolve into strikes. The 1934 San Francisco general strike erupted after longshore workers and their supporters shut down the city’s commercial district in a funeral procession following the deaths and beatings of strikers.
“The funeral march made the general strike—all but inevitable,” writes historian Nelson Lichtenstein in Why Labor Unions Matter, noting that seeing 40,000 workers and supporters paralyze the city gave the working class a surge of confidence. Six days later, backed by the San Francisco Labor Council, 150,000 workers walked off the job.
As Chris Hedges discusses and as anyone can see with their own eyes the union movement has been corrupted and battered by both the left and the right. This past election cycle, with Trump’s hold on a large swath of union members, has only made the stakes clearer: organizing from the ground up is urgent.
Hedges in a 2021 interview said of the union movement “If we all remember Reagan going after the Air Traffic Controllers Union but this has culminated with right to work laws. At this point about 6% of the labor force is unionized and then of course we’ve seen all of the policies deindustrialization turbocharged by NAFTA, the destruction of social programs such as welfare. Again, that was the Clinton administration, that was a Democratic administration. Welfare is in essence eradicated and 70% of the original recipients on welfare were children.” This discussion was part of a larger conversation hosted by the Institute for New Economic Thinking in 2021, titled Chris Hedges: How Republicans, Democrats, and the Media Have Weakened U.S. Democracy.
About that spilt among union members, as Politico reported in “Trump’s Grip on the Union Rank-and-File,” which captures the tension of the two party state in which we find ourselves: “I wouldn’t vote for her if she was the only one running,” said Bill, a 31-year UPS veteran, walking past Lexie’s modest table, which displayed a ‘Teamsters for Harris’ poster and flyers explaining why Local 623 endorsed the vice president. In the wake of the Teamsters’ refusal to endorse, along with the International Longshoremen’s Association and the International Association of Fire Fighters withholding support, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz admitted Monday that he was frustrated.
Ironically, Lexie isn’t a fan of either Harris or Trump. He says he’s backing Harris because of labor issues, pointing out that Trump refused to promise the Teamsters he would veto national right-to-work legislation—laws designed to weaken unions and make it harder for workers to organize and maintain membership.
For most Americans, this is where the real work begins. Millions have been sold the lie of the “lesser of two evils,” left to the whims of both parties, while workplaces and communities have been stripped of power. Now is the moment to reclaim the tradition of striking and walking out, to remind the powerful that labor—not empty promises—is what keeps this country moving.
One example of organizing leading to victory came in early December. With reporting from the Guardian “It was through good old-fashioned organizing,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, describing the fight against what she calls the biggest attack on unions in U.S. history—Trump’s attempt to strip federal workers of collective bargaining rights. Shuler noted that the federation is now gearing up to challenge the president’s “Billionaire First” agenda in 2026, supporting candidates who will fight for struggling Americans, while lawsuits and advocacy continue pushing to restore workers’ rights. After the House passed a bill in December to undo Trump’s executive orders affecting over a million federal employees, Shuler declared, “We’re organizing as we speak. We can move actual people—in workplaces, in every city, in every state, across the country.”
Now we have a chance on January 23 to take another action, and no matter your politics, fascism needs to be stopped—and that’s what’s happening here. Returning to both the threat of fascism and the strike planned for the 23rd, Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz—who, earlier in this article, expressed frustration with Harris’s failures on union issues while running for vice president—has a chance to demonstrate his support for organized action by walking out.
Especially after today, with the U.S. Department of Justice launching a criminal investigation into Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, examining whether their public statements opposing the massive federal immigration enforcement surge in the Twin Cities crossed a line into a conspiracy to impede Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents. The unusual inquiry focuses on whether their criticism of the deployment and calls for accountability could constitute obstruction of federal law enforcement—an allegation Walz and Frey have vigorously denied as politically motivated intimidation.
By the way, the right thing to do is for governors, mayors, and representatives to recognize their moral responsibility to push back against federal overreach when it affects their citizens. I could write more about earlier experiences here in California, where Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom talked a big game, yet local law enforcement under their control blocked streets and assisted ICE operations.
Here is Governor Waltz talking to the people of Minnesota
“This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.
Donald Trump wants this chaos. He wants confusion. And yes, he wants more violence on our streets. We cannot give him what he wants. We can—and we must—protest loudly, urgently, but also peacefully. Indeed, as hard as we will fight in the courts and at the ballot box, we cannot and will not let violence prevail. You’re angry. I’m angry. Angry is not a strong enough word, but we must remain peaceful.
Second, you are not powerless. You are not helpless. And you are certainly not alone. All across Minnesota, people are learning about opportunities not just to resist, but to help those in danger. Thousands upon thousands of our fellow Minnesotans are going to be relying on mutual aid in the days and weeks to come, and they need our support.
Tonight, I want to share another way you can help: witness. Help us establish a record of exactly what’s happening in our communities. You have an absolute right to peacefully film ICE agents as they conduct these activities. So, carry your phone with you at all times. If you see these ICE agents in your neighborhood, take out that phone and hit record. Help us create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans—not just to establish a record for posterity, but to bank evidence for future prosecution.
The third thing I want to say tonight is this: we will not have to live like this forever. Accountability is coming at the voting booth and in court. We will reclaim our communities from Donald Trump. We will reestablish a sense of safety for our neighbors. And we will bring an end to this moment of chaos, confusion, and trauma. We will find a way to move forward—and we’ll do it together.”
I loved that he emphasized we are not powerless and encouraged protesting loudly and peacefully. However, as Hedges reminds us, the ruling class does not respond to that alone. The government discussing accountability—through voting booths or lawsuits—goes back to the concept of democratic norms. We cannot rely on the courts to save us (see Supreme Court); action is necessary. We need to organize and stop proceeding as if the status quo will protect us. The date is set for January 23rd, and I hope the government will halt operations and encourage others to do the same.
And now back to another politician that thinks its all about the elections California governor Gavin Newsom, who continues to move toward the right in an effort to position himself for the presidency, said that he disagrees with abolishing ICE. “I disagree,” Newsom told conservative pundit Ben Shapiro on a Thursday episode of the This Is Gavin Newsom podcast. He was responding to a statement by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who earlier this week linked the expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies to a massive budget increase for ICE: “I want everybody to understand, the cuts to your health care are what’s paying for this…You get screwed over to pay a bunch of thugs in the street that are shooting mothers in the face.” There should be a longer thread about our dear governor—giving healthcare to undocumented people, then cutting it when it became politically expedient. More will also come about his relationship with billionaires and the upcoming billionaire tax, which has split the party here in California. Gavin Newsom expressed his concern, saying, “This is my fear. It’s just what I warned against. It’s happening.” And, of course, his passing of one of the most draconian attacks on academic freedom—legislation ostensibly aimed at fighting antisemitism—has really created a climate of fear in classrooms, adding the burden of being constantly monitored while teaching.
This is the frontrunner for 2028: Gavin Newsom is a living, breathing example of the failure of the two-party system and the archaic notion of choosing the “lesser of two evils.” He has his moments, like Waltz and Harris, but when your party is backed by billionaires, how much can you really accomplish? Of course, with Trump and the current fascist agenda, we might never have another election.
I’m deeply sorry for those who dislike this style of writing, but what started as a simple reminder to strike but yet obviously ended up longer. There is an action tomorrow in Los Angeles at one of the earliest epicenters of this current regime’s ICE brutality—at Home Depot in Cypress Park. I’m sharing this for those who feel the need to stand for those who cannot. Find other events in your area as well, and as Governor Waltz said: be a witness, be loud and then on January 23 remember the strike.
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