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SOCIAL STRIKES  
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JEREMY BRECHER
December 25, 2025
Labor Network for Sustainability
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_ Can General Strikes, Mass Strikes, and People Power Uprisings
Provide A Last Defense Against MAGA Tyranny? _

, Labor Network for Sustainability

 

Click here to download the full report.
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Forword: Mass Non-Cooperation

by Alex Caputo-Pearl and Jackson Potter
Alex Caputo-Pearl is former
president of United Teachers Los Angeles. Jackson Potter is vice
president of
the Chicago Teachers Union.
Jeremy Brecher’s report
on social strikes is a timely contribution to the urgent conversations
we must be
having in the movement regarding the probability that, to
defeat MAGA authoritarianism, we will need these
kinds of mass
actions that exert power through withdrawing cooperation and creating
major disruptions.
Brecher draws from international experience and
US history, and helpfully discusses laying groundwork,
goals,
tactics, organization, timelines, and endgames of such mass
actions.
There is no doubt that, as MAGA’s authoritarianism and
military invasions accelerate, we need a strategy to
push back. We
face a context in which Trump’s team will continue to threaten to
undermine our elections,
warmonger, cause a recession, and attempt
to federalize the national guard and enact martial law. There is
a
high probability that one, if not all, of these things will happen. We
must combine continued organizing
at the electoral and judicial
levels with strikes, boycotts, sick outs, and mass non-violent direct
action and
non-cooperation. This mass non-cooperation should target
MAGA-aligned entities, build to majority and
super-majority
participation, fight for an affordability agenda that helps the many
not the few and, in the
South African tradition, make society
“ungovernable.”


Labor must be key to this. We have been part of transforming our
locals, in which we have made strikes,
structured super-majority
organizing, bargaining for the common good, coalitions with community,
synthesis
with electoral work, and broader state-wide and national
coordination the norm. We need to support more
locals in developing
these habits to push our county federations of labor and
state/national unions in the
same direction.


At the same time, given conditions, it is urgent that all of our
unions, with community allies, take leaps,
throwing ourselves into
broad networks like May Day Strong. It is networks like these that
give us a container
within which to learn about and drive towards
the kinds of social strikes that Brecher discusses and we may
need,
drawing upon lessons from US history, South Africa, the Philippines,
South America, and more. We must
experiment with fusing the best of
structure-based organizing with the best of momentum-based
strategy,
remaining society-facing and super-majority-focused,
organizing with union and non-union workers and
community
organizations, and with as much coordination of contract and political
demands as possible. The
broad networks we build must have the
capacity for strategic deliberation and the ability to sustain
through
repressive counter-attacks, again raising the importance of
having unions as part of its core. This core must
drive a politics
that can meet the moment in fighting for regime change, but that is
not satisfied with simply
deposing an autocrat, also bringing
concrete demands, in the South Korean tradition of “Beyond Yoon,”
to
shape a non-neoliberal future.


Donald Trump and his accomplices are conducting an attack not only
on democracy but on society.
This is manifested in their executive
usurpation, aka creeping coup, which is seizing all the powers of
the
government and concentrating them in the personal will of the
President. It involves the elimination of
all bases of opposition,
not only in the agencies of government but in civil society, including
universities,
trade unions, and media. It is revealed in storm
trooper violence, with unidentified armed masked men
invading
communities and workplaces and seizing people with no legal
justification. And it is seen in government
actions that punish
opponents and provide billions of dollars of benefits to supporters.


A movement-based opposition to the MAGA assault on society is
growing. It is developing in the electoral
system, as illustrated by
the rise of Zohran Mamdani. It is developing in the streets, for
example the massive
nonviolent direct action to protect immigrant
neighborhoods from ICE attacks and the seven million people
who
turned out for No Kings Day. This opposition, if it continues to grow,
may undermine MAGA power and
ultimately remove Trump and his
associates from office.


But what about a worst-case scenario where neither electoral nor
non-electoral opposition forestalls a MAGA
tyranny? Where democratic
procedures and the right to vote have been so denied that it is
impossible to defeat
MAGA at the polls? Where both official and
vigilante violence are unrestrained by law? Where a substantial
part
of the population has been bamboozled by lies and distraction? Where
all dissent has been effectively
branded as treason? Where those who
don’t go along with the program are subject to harassment,
beating,
jailing, and death? And where much of the population has
been driven by fear into silence and acquiescence?
How is it
possible to resist the MAGA juggernaut under such conditions?


Tyrannical regimes from Serbia to the Philippines to Brazil and
many other places have been brought down
by “people power” —
large-scale nonviolent direct action that made society ungovernable
and led to regime
change. While the U.S. has a tradition of social
and labor movements using mass action and local general
strikes, it
does not have a tradition of using people power for the defense of
democracy. However, in other
countries where democratic institutions
have been so weakened or eliminated that they are unable to
halt
tyranny, such methods have emerged and been used effectively.
They go by such names as nonviolent
uprisings, people power, general
strikes, political strikes, and, as I will call them here, social
strikes.
Social strike is a broad term that encompasses a wide range
of activities that use the withdrawal of cooperation
and mass
disruption to affect governments and social structures. In many
countries, where democratic
institutions have been so weakened or
eliminated that they are unable to disempower tyranny, such
methods
have been used effectively.


I use the term “social strikes” to describe mass actions that
exercise power by withdrawing cooperation from
and disrupting the
operation of society. The goal of a social strike is to affect not
just the immediate employer,
but a political regime or social
structure. Such forms of mass direct action provide a possible
alternative
when institutional means of action prove ineffective. In
all their varied forms they are based on Gandhi’s
fundamental
perception that “even the most powerful cannot rule without the
cooperation of the ruled.”
Social strikes represent the withdrawal
of cooperation and acquiescence by a whole society, manifested
for
example in general strikes and mass popular “people power”
uprisings. This Report draws on the history
of social strikes in the
US and around the world to illuminate the problems and possibilities
of using social
strikes as a way to overcome the emerging MAGA
tyranny. It is based on the premise that the power of the
powerful
ultimately depends on the acquiescence and cooperation of those they
rule. Social strikes have
been one way that people have developed
the power to withdraw that acquiescence and cooperation.
A social
strike to make the US a democracy will depend on the courage, wisdom,
and vision of millions of
people. The purpose of this report is to
provide knowledge of how people have used social strikes in the
past
and inspiration from that knowledge about self-liberation from
tyranny in the future.


Chapter 1, “How People Power Has Defeated Authoritarian Regimes
Around the World,” presents examples of
social strikes that have
defeated dictators or coups in other countries. Chapter 2, “Social
Strikes in American
History,” recounts the story of mass strikes,
social strikes, and political strikes in the US. Chapter 3,
“Social
Strikes vs. MAGA Tyranny,” describes how social strikes
might serve as a means for removing Trump from
office and
establishing government of the people, by the people, and for the
people. Chapter 4, “Laying
the Groundwork for Social Strikes,”
tells what we can start doing right now to make social strikes
against
authoritarian rule more likely and more likely to succeed.
Chapter 5, “Timelines,” describes how social strikes
are likely
to unfold. Chapter 6, “Organization,” describes various ways that
social strikes have been organized.
Chapter 7, “Goals,” explores
the process by which social strikes develop common objectives. Chapter
8, “Tactics,”
reviews the ways social strikes select and use
their means of action. Chapter 9, “Endgames,” explores what
is
necessary to bring a social strike to a successful conclusion.


There are no guarantees about either the occurrence or the success
of future social strikes. But they are
more likely to happen – and
to succeed– if they are informed by reflection on the history of
social strikes
in the past.   

* Fascism
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