General Strike?

Union men (and a boy) pick up their supplies of groceries for the Seattle
General Strike. During the five-day strike in February 1919, Seattle workers
walked out of all jobs (except hospital and electric-supply related work), in
the city. Washington, USA (February 1919). Image: © PEMCO - Webster
& Stevens Collection; Museum of History and Industry, Seattle/CORBIS.

Several years ago I noted an essay in Harpers extolling the possibilities a general strike; that was under the Bush administration. Desperate times seemed to call for radical measures. Well, now under a Democratic administration - one that has basically abdicated a role in leadership just as under BushCo the Democrats abdicated the role of opposition - the idea is being floated again. You can find reports here and here and here. Given that the putative progressives in the Democratic party have fallen down on the job (actually they don't think of implementing worker friendly policies as their job in the first place), something like this might get their attention. And it might well demonstrate that reactionary politics of the sort Scott Walker and other Republicans are purveying are not popular.

Promise Unfulfilled

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

~ Emily Dickinson

This is just another in a line of poems that capture something we've been promised but which remains undelivered. What is the phrase? "The check is in the mail ..."

Rebecca Solnit on "the Eeyore chorus"

I'll admit to being susceptible to the sort of over-privileged cynicism at which Solnit takes aim in this essay over at The Nation. Among the reasons I most like Solnit is that her writings provide a strong antidote.