General Strike with Kim Kelly

Planning for a general strike Robert sits down with labor journalist Kim Kelly to discuss UAW President Shawn Fain's plan for a 2028 General Strike.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media Welcome to it could Happen Here, a podcast
in which my friend Kim Kelly and I talk about
the fact that Zoom recently moved to the record button,
which most people will need at some point, given how

(00:22):
prominent this is with podcasting, to replace it with an
AI companion button, which I refuse to use and would
would would deploy violence against anyone who tried to make me.
How are you doing to day, Cam?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I am good, also hating our AI soon to be overlords.
Yeah yeah, doing my best out here in Philadelphia?

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah yeah, Philly? How is how is Philly? As the
as the fall comes in.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
It's it's a very sunny day. It's also getting chilly.
I'm into it. It's finally leather weather. I mean, I
guess it's always leather weather, depending on your level of commitment,
but I am, yeah, was and it's I tend to
wait for, you know, the weather to tell me when
it's time to break out my leather.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Hell yeah, you know, I feel like all all things
are fine personally. You should just assume listeners that I
am always head to toe leather. But anyway, Oh yeah,
Katy is on. He looks resplendent, yeah, Kim, you are
a labor journalist. You published a book what was it

(01:28):
last year, year before last, called fight Like Hell yea yeah,
about about the history of the labor movement and some
radical moments people ought to know more about. And you
and I are talking today about labor, particularly about the
possibility of a general strike. Now if you the listener

(01:48):
have somehow missed this discourse. In short, a general strike
is when instead of one union of workers from one
industry striking, everybody strikes at least, you know, a very
significant chunk of the labor force strikes. And this is
you know, it's the kind of thing people on the
left have dreamed about four years as like this is
what could you know, turn things around, reduce income inequality,

(02:11):
force action on climate change, the military industrial complex, and
kind of as a result, you've had feels like every
year for the last few years since people started reading
about general strikes, which have occurred in a number of
places and times, there's these like someone will get on
Twitter and be like, we're all doing a general strike
in two weeks, you know, everybody get ready, and folks

(02:32):
will be like, that's not really how you do a
general strike, and they'll go like, well, if you weren't
saying it's not, it could happen.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
You know, you've got to believe.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
In it first, which is all of this is wrong.
But the good news is there's an actual plan that
is cohesive and potentially achievable for a general strike that's
been put forward by someone who knows what he's talking about.
We're going to talk about that, but first, Kim, do
you want to talk about why trying to get everyone
on Twitter to launch a gineral strike in eight days

(03:02):
is a bad idea?

Speaker 2 (03:05):
This is such a pent peeve among well, I guess
a lot of folks in the labor world who are
also unfortunately on Twitter and social media that yeah, like
you said, every so often there'll be a general strike
hashtag or like a graphic on Twitter or on Instagram,
and it's like, are you taking part of the general strike?

(03:25):
Like are you striking on Friday or like tomorrow? Like no, what,
You're not even in a union? What are you talking about?
And it's like I love the energy, I love the vibe,
you know, I love the idea of a general strike.
I think it would be incredible if we actually pulled

(03:45):
it off. But the biggest thing in there is the
if followed by the pulled it off part. And one
of the biggest misconceptions I think is that a general
strike is akin to a big protest. Like you can
absolutely plan a big protest in a few days if
you really want to. I mean, look at the incredible

(04:06):
work that Jewish Force for Piece has been doing in
New York and other places. They're going to be doing
in Philly this week. I mean, it is possible to
build on existing relationships and networks to create a big
fucking deal of a protest. But a general strike is
a different beast. It is a specific thing. It has
a definition. A general strike, as you said, is when

(04:28):
workers across various industries go on strike at the same time,
and that is not the same as filling the streets
for a protest. It would be sick if we can
kind of meld those movements like the radical radical organizers
who are already in community, already building protests infrastructure, and

(04:48):
people in union labor world that are kind of beholden
to contracts and more legal constraints. But it's going to
take a little bit of time. It's going to take
some dialogue, maybe even some fruitful discourse to get on
the same page. Like they're like, there are laws. We
live in a society, unfortunately, and it's it's not quite

(05:09):
as simple as just declaring a general strike when you're like,
for your friends call out sick.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yeah, And it's also like, I think one thing that
gets lost is when you're going on strike. For a
lot of people, that's not just I have to figure
out what to do with money, and it's certainly not
you know, while I can just go and be on
unemployment or something, because you don't really get that when
you're striking. You've got a lot of people with like families,

(05:34):
and so the idea that like you get some podcaster
right being like everybody should just not show up, Well,
I don't know, man. There's people who got kids. They
have other responsibilities than being a part of your revolution.
Which is not to say that I don't think I Like, again,
we're about to talk about an achievable plan for a
general strike, but one of the reasons why you can't
can't pull it off in a couple of days is

(05:57):
that you have to set you have to have some
sort of plan for how you're going to take care
of the people striking, right, like so they don't starve
and shit.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, that is one of the biggest things, I would say,
arguably the biggest thing. But also if you're in a
union and you go on strike as part of you know,
broken down contract negotiations are part of the life cycle
of a union contract. You have legal protections. You can't
just be fired if you take part in one of
these kind of impromptu hashtag general strike actions. Your boss

(06:28):
is just gonna fire you, yeah, and then like you're done.
You don't have any protections there, Like one of the
reasons that and I know it's not as much fun.
It's just going out and saying fuck it and bring
it all down. Trust me, I would love to see
that type of shit, but unfortunately, again we live constrained
by laws and like logic when it comes like the

(06:51):
reason that you see big labor strikes and big picket
lines and all this cool stuff that's happening, like there
is part of a process. Those unions are negotiating contracts,
these legally binding documents. They're collective bargaining agreements that have
expiration dates. You know, the UAW didn't just pick you
didn't just say all right, right, now we're mad, we're

(07:12):
going to go on strike. Like no, their previous agreements
had expiration date. They hit the expiration date, so they
start bargaining again. Bargaining didn't go well, they went on strike.
That is how it works when you're in a union.
That's like just part and parcel of the push and
pool of leverage that workers have against the boss. And
it's like a century's old system, Like there's laws, there's protections,

(07:36):
there's a lot that goes into it. And I think
we're saying before we hopped on the call officially, like
I think a lot of people haven't had union jobs
or didn't don't have a deep understanding of unions and
how they work. So of course they wouldn't necessarily know
when the expiration dating is for this contract or what
goes into bargaining union contract. But there's there's a lot

(07:59):
of moving parts.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yes might they might not know that, as we're about
to talk about, you can't just have a bunch of
union leaders decide we're all going to go on strike
at once. Sympathy strikes are very much not legal. Now
there is a way to get multiple We should just
talk about like why we're doing this, which is that.
So there's this fella who so far has seems like

(08:21):
a pretty pretty head out screwed on straight solid dude,
Sean Fain, who is Big Sean, Yeah, Big Sean. And
he's like the he's the he's the head of the
u a W. Right or he's like the guy negotiating
for the ua W.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
No, he's the president, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
The president, and he is Sean Is. So he's you know,
the UAW is the big one of the big otto
like the largest of the auto worker like related unions,
and they have been in a strike I think primarily
General Motors.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
It's the big three General Motors, Ford as Stelanis which
makes Chrysler, and a couple of other brands.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah, and they they have gone on a very power
about six weeks or so, very significant strike. You can
read stuff like Toyota recently like put out a proposal
for like giving workers raises that's in line with like
the union of like they are scared and it looks
like like as I mean this is they haven't inked
anything yet, but as of us recording this, it looks

(09:18):
like they've won on a lot, which is great. And
Sean is is not just a you know, a union man,
but is very much a t talking blatantly about the
class war of the rich against everybody else that's occurring
in this country. And he made some statements about two
days before we recorded this where he was like, I think,

(09:40):
you know what, we need to be setting the date,
the expiration date for our contract in twenty twenty eight,
and I want to implore all other you know, unions
that are negotiating and can do this, to set that
with their next contract expiration date, so that in twenty
twenty eight we have the option to do a general
strike in order to redress some of this, to make
inequalities as a result of this war of the billionaires

(10:03):
against everybody else. Very much framed it in those kind
of stark terms, and you know, we're going to talk
about why. But I think that's a workable plan potentially.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
It really is. It's incredible. Honestly, this is kind of
I think this is one of the ballsiest things we've
heard from a mainstream labor leader since well since Sarah Nelson,
the president of the Flight Attendants Union, kind of soft
called for a general strike or at least brought up
the idea of a general strike in twenty nineteen, and

(10:35):
they're doing that.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
I've forgotten that stopped a government shutdown.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah, So, like, the general strike is a very powerful tool,
and we've done it before, you know. I think the
most recent true general strike we saw this country was
like nineteen nineteen in Seattle. Yea, so it's been a minute.
But the genius of this plan is the fact that
it's illegal. And I mean, of course, you know, laws

(11:01):
aren't real, but when you're doing this kind of thing
and operating within these constraints, it is helpful when you're
not actively breaking the law, because that helps you get
more shit done. Right, So what Sean is proposing is saying, Okay,
we're gonna set our contract to expire around this time,
and we want a whole bunch of other big ingers
to do the same thing. Now, if all of their

(11:23):
union contracts happen to expire around the same time, and
then their negotiations happen to break down and they happen
to go on strike at the same time, creating an
actual general strike, the government can't really do shit about it.
I mean, you mentioned before the sympathy strikes, solidarity strikes.
They are illegal because of this nineteen forty seven law

(11:47):
called out the taff Hartley Act. Essentially, that means if
say you're your warehouse, you're part of the teamsers, you
go on strike, and then the coffee shop next door
is like, oh, yeah, we support you, We're going to
go on strike too. They can't do that, that's breaking
the law. But in this different hypothetical, if they their
contract was up at the same time as your contract,

(12:09):
you both want to strike at the same time, that's legal,
and it's also very disruptive to that little corridor you're
working in. And imagine doing that on a national level.
Imagine if the flight attendants, the teamsters, the UAW, Starbucks
fucking the air traffic controllers, the longshoreman, like all of
these incredibly important infrastructure wise jobs happened to go on

(12:33):
strike at the same time. That would shut down the
whole fucking country. Yeah, and it would be legal, which
is so fun. I'd love to see it.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
You know. Obviously, when you are talking about radical social change,
illegality is always on the table, but it's not the
smartest place to start from when you're talking about something
like this where you have the option to get a
lot done, you know, within within the protection of the law,
which makes it easier to get more people on board.

(13:03):
It makes it easier to get critical mass. And if
at a later date, you know, the state were to
take a legal action that makes it impossible for you
to continue legally, well, then you've got that critical mass
behind you and potentially probably radicalized, you know.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Right, And you have resources, you have infrastructure, because big
unions have big striketh funds. Yes, this is the thing
that UAW has hundreds of millions of dollars in the
bank that they're saving for just this purpose when their
workers go on striketh, so they can continue to pay
them and cover their health insurance.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah, that's why you pay dues, right, Like.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, it's literally like strike insurance. And a lot of
the big unions have this set up. They have comms teams,
they have legal teams, they have experience like I known
as radicals, Like we tend to be perhaps a little
allergic to a lot of those things, especially if they're
not particularly in line with our specific vision of the few,

(14:00):
but they're really helpful to have, you know, Like, doing
crimes is fun and I support it pretty much at
all times. But getting shit done is way more fun
and way more satisfying.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
You know, it's nice to win.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
It's nice to win.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Unions are kind of on a role right now, right there.
We've all watched some really substantial gains for working people
just in the last six months, and it's worth paying
attention to why. And part of it is that, like,
you're not relying upon people risking everything, many of whom
can't write. You can't very easily ethically defend if you

(14:42):
are like a single parent who is responsible for multiple children.
You can't defend going out and busting a bunch of
windows and then getting locked up super easy, because you
do you have responsibilities. You've got people to care for, you.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Know, right you have elders at home, if you're or
if you're a disabled person, if you're meding a compromise,
you you can't go out there and get involved in
that type of situation.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
You can't risk being around that many people. Maybe, but
you can strike. Yeah, yeah, this is that.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
You can respect a picket line, You can help support,
you can help offer some of the resources we need
for folks to get out there, like utilizing this existing infrastructure,
in these existing resources. It just opens up the possibility
for more people to get involved in a way that's
less harmful to them, to the people like we want
to harm the bosses, and you know the status quote,

(15:28):
we don't want to hurt our people.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah. So I think there's a lot of wisdom in this. Now.
The question is when we say that this is workable,
does that mean that like it's a guarantee or it
would be easy? Of course not. No, like you're talking
you're still talking about a struggle against people who have
I don't know the majority of the resources the human
race has ever marshalled in like a financial form right

(16:03):
at their beck in call. So that's you know, this
is still a frightening and potentially pretty dangerous thing, but
it is a workable plan that has infrastructure behind it,
and that crucially, you know, the downside is that the
bosses know that people are talking about this and they
have time to prepare. But the nice side is that like,

(16:23):
well so do we, and that's generally positive.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
This is the thing I've seen again on social media
people saying like, oh, we have to wait five years,
we have to wait four and a half years. That's ridiculous.
Why don't we just do it now. You can do
a lot of planning and a lot of building in
four and a half years. You need that time to
actually pull something off of this magnitude. And also, I
mean a lot of unions that perhaps might be interested

(16:51):
in this, like they have contracts of their own that
we need. They need to sort of work out the
timing for you know, this plan only works if we
can actually maneuver away for a lot of these big
contracts that big powerful unions to expire at the same time,
if someone's contract, if the team SERTs, next contract expires
in twenty twenty seven, like okay, I think they're not

(17:14):
gonna be able to play ball, and you really want
the teamsters if you want to play this type of game.
And then another hurdle that I think it's it's unfortunate
is that you know Sean Fame, Big Sean A what
a man. He's very out there and very outspoken about
opposing capitalism, about this being class war. He's on the level,

(17:37):
but he is a rarity among major labor union leaders.
Like there are some leaders that would be down to clown,
you know, like Sarah Nelson's out here, like Mark Diamondstein
with the postal workers. Like there are some very cool,
very progressive, if not radical union leaders out there, but
there's also a lot of conservative or just of wishy

(18:00):
washy Democrats style union leaders too that would not want
to have any part of this, and a big part
of convincing them to get on the level and become
involved in this kind of effort that's going to come
down to what the rank and file have to say.
That's going to come that that pressure is going to
have to come up through the ranks. I mean, the

(18:20):
reason we have Sean Fain and we have Sean ol
brien and the Teamsters, and we have this kind of
newer wave of more progressive mills that union leadership is
because of what the rank and file have done, Like
Teamster's for Democratic Union organized for years to get that
reform slaid in, to get Sean O'Brien in there to
take on ups. Sean Fayne is the first ever democratically

(18:43):
elected union leader in uaw's history because of a lot
of organizing around reform that came from the rank and
file that took years to get him there. We would
not have Big Sean if people had not invested years
of their life towards organizing for this goal. And so
now we have this four to five year span where
we can push our own union leaders in that right

(19:06):
direction to plant those seeds, to try and really build
something that they can't refuse to get on board with.
But that's going to take time too. I think people
need to really recognize that, like, unions are not unfortunately
they're all like these magical progressive silver bullets, Like there
are no previ shitty people in union leadership across the country,

(19:27):
and we got to do something about if we really
want to get people on board.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
Yeah, there's there's you know, upsides and downsides when we
compare it to like sort of how radicals like to
particularly the anarchist radical organizing, where you know, the downside
is you do these are organizations that are hierarchical. They
can be stratified. It can make it very difficult to
push for change. It can make them Just as our

(19:53):
democracy is not super responsive to what the majority people want,
union leadership in a number of cases is not responsive
to what people want. They've also had, especially if you
go back to like you know, the mid century, last
century not short history of corruption, right, that's been a
problem you needs have dealt with in the past. Two

(20:14):
These are issues you don't have as much with autonomously
organized you know, small groups of activists on the street.
The thing that makes them a lot stronger in many
ways is the fact that they have more resources to marshall.
They have ways of addressing grievances other than like kind
of just personal conflicts that are built into the system,

(20:37):
and ways of kind of pushing for change that if
you get enough people on board with you can make
And then you have the weight of this organization with
a degree of power and social cachet behind it, And
so I think the ability it's much harder to steer
these things, but when you get them pointed in the

(20:57):
right direction, they have more daying power than kind of
small autonomous groups usually do. And I think there's a
lot of potential power in that, which is why I
think this is a workable plan.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
And this is why more anarchists and socialist and communists,
everybody who wants to really get out there and cause
some good trouble will say, like, you need to get
involved in your union, You need to organize your workplace.
If your job is not such that you can join
a traditional union. You need to get involved in your
local labor community anyway and try and connect with people

(21:34):
who are part of those unions and try and kind
of get them to see the light. You need to
talk to people not online in person. You got to
go talk to people who are different from me, who
might have different politics, and try and get them to
see why this is something that we could do that
could help them, that could help everyone. This is something

(21:54):
I emphasize a lot because I'm like, I'm an anarchist too,
even though i know it's not like a big old
Debbie downer right now talking about all this legal stuff.
But I'm also practical and I've also spent a lot
of time talking to union members who see the world
a lot differently from me. Like I think a lot
of my most recent impactful work is, you know, stuff
I've been doing in the Deep South and an Appalachia,

(22:16):
and no one there is impressed with my guillotine tattoos,
but they do see the need to deal with this
situation where all the rich people have all the stuff
and they're getting screwed. That is a good starting point
for a lot. Yeah, and it's yeah, it's easy to
say join a union, Like, not everyone can do that,
but everybody can find a way to talk to somebody

(22:38):
who's connected to a union, who's part of a labor movement,
part of a labor organization, Like we need everyone to
get involved however they can.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
I want to note it's significant potential for the radicals
are kind of radicals to be useful within this in
a direct way. From just a recent example. Right in Portland,
the teachers are going on strike. I believe that has
happened today, and they had a big march not too
long ago that some of my friends were at because

(23:19):
they're teachers. And one of the things that happened on
that march it was the same day as a Palestinian
solidarity march. And at both of these marches that had
large thousands of people, the corkers and the security were
all kind of the same folks, and they were all
folks that were like came out of the Portland radical scene.
We're there in the twenty twenty protests a huge because corking,

(23:40):
if you're not aware, is like going ahead of into
the sides of a protest, like close traffic briefly as
people walk by, so folks don't get hit by cars.
It's a safety thing, right, and so people were kind
of like the people who were doing that are radicals.
Our members of generally like these autonomously organized groups who
are very useful in helping these because you know, people

(24:04):
have experienced, you know, unions, there may be experience striking,
but a lot of unions haven't struck in a long time, right,
because it doesn't happen all that often. And even if
they have, most of these guys, especially these older guys
and ladies and other folks, these these older union members
probably have not participated in a large march in the
modern era of protests where there's dangers like getting rammed

(24:26):
by cars and stuff. And so the people who have
these the straight medics and stuff, who have that kind
of experience hugely useful. Not the only thing. People who
are striking often need stuff handwarmers or are always appreciated
water warm food, things that like keep people's morale up,
organizing like sympathy demonstrations like alongside strikers, and whatnot to

(24:47):
help them keep their numbers up. All of that stuff
can be really useful ways for these autonomously organized, kind
of smaller groups of radicals to participate in a meaningful
way in something like this. That's not the only degree
to which that's possible, but like, those are just the
examples that come to mind.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Absolutely, we've talked a lot about legality, and illegality is
also something that is very much a part of labor
history and it's present, and I would say it's future
folks who are perhaps more comfortable with getting into perhaps
more confrontational moments with cops who are trying to mess
with the picket line, or scabs who are trying to

(25:26):
be violent towards striking workers, or even just like you said,
like surveillance and safety and medic work like that is
all that is all important too. I mean not every
I've been on some pretty wild picket lines, and not
everyone there is really that concerned with what the law
has to say about certain things. Once things get a

(25:47):
little heated, I mean there are points, I mean and
things I've covered and we've seen this continue to happen
where people try and drive into the picket line and
or trying to attack people in the picket line. Yeah,
that is I mean, that deserves a variety of responses,
I think. And also something to note is that when
when these are strikes called by union leadership, they follow

(26:09):
They tend to follow a set of rules because predominantly,
like like generally speaking, union leadership doesn't want their members
to go to jail. They don't want them to get
in any kind of situations like that. So they'll say,
you know, okay, well you stay on the sidewalk, or
oh the cops said to move, so we move, or
this has to be non violent, or you know, there's
there's kind of a set of circumstances there that union

(26:31):
members are required to follow. But if you're there to
support and you're not a member of that union, as
long as you have the consent and support the people
there you're you're there trying to stick up for, then
you have a lot more leeway than someone that has,
you know, a union leader to answer to. Like, there's
a lot of creative ways you can get involved. And

(26:52):
one thing that I think hasn't really been discussed as
much in like the online discourse or whatever, but I
think it's important to think about even if you're not
a person who is able to participate in that on
the street type of way, if there's a huge strike
going on in your city and you're not part of
a union, but you want to get involved. Sickouts have

(27:14):
a very long, illustrious history in a labor movement. If
you happen to get sick that day, what's your boss
going to do? You know, assuming you have those kind
of protections. If you don't, then you have to make
your own you know, caveat, caveat, caveat. But if you're
in a position where you can take off work that
day or for a couple of days, and it just
happens to coincide with that massive strike that's shut down

(27:36):
everything else, And if you convince all your coworkers that
you're a shocked to do the same thing, you're not
breaking the law. You're protected, but you're also part of
the shutdown effort. Like sickouts. One of the reasons that
people were so spoofed around twenty nineteen when the government
shutdown was looming, before Sarah Nelson really brought out the
big Gs wars that we're seeing sickouts at airports and

(28:01):
flights are being canceled in New York and I think
la and that was starting to spook the people in
charge because if enough people don't show up for work
at the airport. Nothing's going to happen at that airport. Yeah,
And there are a lot of different workplaces where all
of their workers not showing up could be a potential problem.
So I just encourage people to think creatively about the

(28:21):
ways they can get involved, even if they can't necessarily
like get involved on the formal union side. Like, there's
so much we can do from each according to his
ability to each, courting to his means. You know that,
I'll chestnut.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
I love. It's so important to bring up airline workers
because one of the things they the things that they
have that other people don't, is they can't be replaced
in the same way. Right you can if all you, Maurice,
is go on strike, you can potentially bring in whoever
and they will not be nearly as good at it, right,
the company will not make nearly as much money. But

(28:57):
legally there's nothing stack them from doing that. If you
have a bunch of ground workers call in, right, or
a bunch of stewardesses, you have to replace them with
people who are qualified groundworkers. Like there's a whole process,
there's like a serial Like there's a lot that they
have to know how to do, a lot of compliance
that has to be done because thousands and thousands of

(29:17):
lives are at stake, right, same thing with medical workers.
Right when when you've got a job where like they
can't if like a bunch of nurses go on strike,
well you have to replace them with nurses, right, And
there's a very limited supply, so there's a lot of
leverage that these organizations have.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
The airline industry is incredibly densely unionized too, so if
all of the union flight antendants aren't available, then no
one's going to be available. Yeah, it's one of the
plus sizes of having a very densely organized industry, which
is why we need to keep organizing too in these
next four and a half years.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
Well, Kim, I think that's most of what I had
to say. Do you have anything else you wanted to
get into on this topic before we roll out?

Speaker 2 (30:00):
Hmmm, I think we've covered most things. I do want
to emphasize, Like I don't want to be a wet
blanket on people who are excited. I'm not so excited
and so heartened to see the amount of interest and
energy we're seeing around this general strike idea, because like
five years ago that would have I mean that would
not have escaped containment, right, we would have just been

(30:21):
talking amongst ourselves about it. But to have the head
of a union who has four hundred thousand members, who
just whipped the shit out of the Big three automakers,
who's getting all these headlines to talk about a general
strike in a meaningful way like, yes, maybe he's not
out here throwing Molotov cocktails the way we perhaps would

(30:42):
want to see someone doing that, But it still a
huge deal. And even if you know, the mainstream organized
labor movement isn't as radical as a lot of us
within it would like to see it, we have a
lot of time now to try and pull things in direction.
I feel like a damn has burst in a way.

(31:04):
And if anything, this is a moment of opportunity and
of working together and trying to see different perspectives in
a way that gets us all closer to the point
we really need to be. Absolutely we take all this
shit down, all right?

Speaker 1 (31:19):
I am in agreement, Kim. People should look up your
book Fight like, hell.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, at the untold history of American labor?

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Absolutely, and what else should they look up? R e U.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
I'm still unfortunately on Twitter, so I'm there, grim Kim.
I know, I'm a freelancer. I read a lot for
in these times. I have a column at teen Vogue,
I write for a fast company, and I'm kind of
all over the place so and I do a lot
of book talks and stuff. So I'm I'm around. If
you want to talk to your friendly neighborhood anarchist labor reporter,

(31:52):
just to google me. But don't believe everything you read,
because you know.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
She didn't kill that guy. He was dead when she
got there. Anyway, Kim, thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah yeah, thanks for being here, for showing up, and
thank you all for listening until next time. Uh, I
don't know. Yeah, yeah, that's that's a good that's a
good one. It could happen here as a production of
cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
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Speaker 1 (32:35):
You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,