by Lorenzo Canizares 3/14/25
Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, CWA-AFL-CIO, has made the call for American workers to join forces in a general strike.
Joe Maniscalco in an article posted in Portside 3/12/25 quotes Ms. Nelson, “We have very few options but to join together to organize for a General Strike.” Maniscalco states, “Arguably the most potent and powerful figure in the labor movement today (Ms. Nelson) has just declared that American workers—no matter what you do or what sector you’re in—now have “very few options but to join together to organize for a general strike.”
Ms. Nelson is absolutely right. The Trump administration through DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) is busy dismantling in days the many years of organizing that took place to provide government workers a decent standard of living and job security through a Collective Bargaining Agreement. Ms. Nelson continues, “What we have to understand is the people in charge, the people doing this, are doing this to make the federal workforce miserable—to make us all miserable and demoralized and shrink into our own space—to inspire scarcity and competition among workers so that we don’t rise up together to stop them.”
The time is ripe. We can no longer wait. We can’t wait until most of America’s labor unions are destroyed by people that fervently want to destroy them.
Some well-meaning people trying to avoid a major conflict with the Trump administration will point to the fact that the Courts are taking action to prevent the firing of federal workers. As per Julia Reinstein in a 2/24/25 article for ABC News estimates that more than 200,000 federal workers at more than a dozen agencies have had their roles eliminated. And already the Trump administration has been filing lawsuits requesting permission to be able to follow through on the layoffs. Plus let’s not forget that the United States Supreme Court has basically stated that the power of the Executive is vast and broad. The likelihood of these dismissals being prevented is still very much unknown.
What Sara Nelson is proposing is a commonsense recommendation. Waiting for the Courts to decide might have made sense in normal times, but we are no longer living in normal times. Not many Americans trust that the Trump administration will obey the law, and by the time a decision is arrived at, there will be no labor movement standing with the capacity to fight back.
President Trump has been found to backtrack when confronted with determined opposition. He has done so with the tariffs, with Gaza, federal freeze spending, etc. The point is that Trump is no idiot and if he perceives a fight that could jeopardize his agenda, he will wait for another day to fight.
The Labor-Community Alliance of South Florida has as its motto, “Labor issues are community issues, and community issues are labor issues”. The fate of labor is intertwined with the fate of the community and if we accept that, then it is in everybody’s interest that we fight simultaneously for both alliance partners’ issues… Issues like healthcare, housing, climate change, immigration, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, higher education tuition, etc.
But of all the organizations that are involved on the side of the common folk, Labor is the one with the most resources and the ability to be able to mount an offensive or a defense to lead a winning fight. But Labor can’t do it by itself. In a multi-faceted struggle, all those affected need to participate to guarantee a win.
We need to unite all the different forces affected by the Trump administration’s desire to maximize profits. We need to realize that at present, there is no organized political force equipped to lead the fight for the well-being of the American people. We have to rely on ourselves. The Democratic Party is useless. Most of its leadership are also, like most Republicans, on the take from corporate donors. Look at what happened to progressives Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, both defeated by substantial AIPAC donations to their Democratic Party primary opponents. All because of their opposition to the genocide. But not a peep from the Democratic Party to warn against AIPAC, an organization that openly funds political candidates according to their stand on Israel.
We are living in very difficult times. But common folk are at a very distinct advantage. We have the numbers, and we do the work. When a powerful Labor leader like Sara Nelson calls for a General Strike, it is not empty boasting. If most labor unions and community organizations pull together, we can change the direction of the country.
Immediate Steps to be taken:
– No cuts to the public sector nor cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
– Tax the Rich properly and cut 20% of the military budget to finance people’s many essential needs.
– Stop the deportations! Stop the attacks on trans people!
– Raise the minimum wage to $25/hr.
We can win this fight if we unite to win! Heed Nelson’s Call!
The Call Has Been Made
Posted in Pulse Line 1.