[[link removed]]
HOW TO BUILD A REAL GENERAL STRIKE AGAINST ICE
[[link removed]]
Eric Blanc
February 2, 2026
Labor Politics
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_ Minnesota shows what’s possible—here’s how we turn that spark
into the kind of disruptive power that can actually stop ICE _
January 23 in downtown Minneapolis,
What will it take to stop ICE and Donald Trump? More and more
Americans are coming around to the following answer: a general strike.
They’re right to move in that direction. General strikes are a
powerful tactic that have defeated corrupt and authoritarian rulers
across the world, most recently in Egypt and Tunisia in 2011, Puerto
Rico in 2019, and Sri Lanka in 2022. As the union anthem “Solidarity
Forever” puts it, “without our brain and muscle not a single wheel
can turn.”
Unfortunately, last Friday’s national call for “no work, no
school, no shopping,” billed widely
[[link removed]] as an anti-ICE general
strike over social media, came nowhere close to the projections of its
most vocal advocates. Economic disruption was minimal, though workers
from _Grey’s Anatomy_ did force production to shut down for the day
[[link removed]].
In contrast, Minnesota’s Day of Truth and Freedom one week earlier
on January 23 _did _give a glimpse of the power of everyday people to
make the system tremble. Many (though not most) businesses were
shuttered. And over 75,000 people poured into downtown Minneapolis in
the middle of the workday, braving -20°F chills. As SEIU Local 26
president Greg Nammacher put it on the _Dig_’s excellent new episode
[[link removed]]
on Minneapolis,
We achieved things [on January 23] that were not imaginable two weeks
before. … It really did feel like history to our members. I know
many Uber and Lyft drivers just started crying when we were checking
in with them that day about seeing [roughly one hundred] pastors
getting arrested at the airport, seeing all those people pouring
downtown to defend them.
How did Minneapolis achieve such a widespread work stoppage on January
23? What do the limitations of that day and the January 30 actions
suggest about the path ahead? And what can the history of general
strikes tell us about how to make the system’s wheels finally stop
turning in the US?
REAL GENERAL STRIKES
Before we can answer those questions, let me briefly clarify what I
mean by “general strike,” a term whose meaning has gotten twisted
by overuse in recent years.
Academics and activists can endlessly quibble over definitions, but a
general strike is basically a work stoppage that paralyzes multiple
major industries._ _Such actions can be primarily _political —
_demanding changes from the government — or _economic, _demanding_
_changes from employers.
In that light, it’s not hard to assess whether recent anti-ICE
actions in Minnesota and nationwide were real general strikes. On
January 30, high school students walked out across the country, there
were various sizable marches across the US, numerous small businesses
closed for the day in solidarity, and a significant but unmeasurable
number of people probably called in sick or didn’t shop. That’s
great. But definitely not a general strike.
January 23 in the Twin Cities saw much more widespread workplace
disruption. Schools were closed (though this was partly due to the
extreme cold). Multiple cultural institutions like museums were
shuttered. Organizers estimate that roughly 1,000 businesses,
overwhelmingly small proprietors, participated and that roughly a
million Minnesotans supported the action in some form that day.
This was a monumental achievement, further evidence of the state’s
grassroots heroism and the strategic savvy of its progressive unions
and community organizations. As Minneapolis Sunrise Movement organizer
Aru Shiney-Ajay explained to me in an interview
[[link removed]]
last week, January 23 “was a fantastic start.” But she’s also
right that “we have a lot further to go to actually flex our muscles
by shutting down the economy” and that “it’s going to take a lot
more work” to build “real general strikes.”
This isn’t an abstract debate over semantics. There is a “boy who
cries wolf” danger if too many calls for general strikes don’t
materialize: when the possibility for one actually becomes real, too
many Americans may tune out the message. (In fairness, the community
organizations that initiated January 23 and the student groups that
initiated January 30 did not project these as “general strikes.”
That framing was subsequently pushed by influencers, celebrities
[[link removed]], and left
activists [[link removed]] online
[[link removed]].)
And it’s crucial to acknowledge _the_ major limitation of both
January 23 and January 30: neither seriously disrupted the major
corporations that prop up ICE and the Trump administration. This is a
sobering fact, especially since popular organization, ambitious
union-community leadership, and grassroots momentum is stronger in
Minneapolis than anywhere else in America. Minneapolis’ movement
surged ahead after Renée Good’s murder — nevertheless, it still
came up short of the type of disruptive economic power that can scare
corporate America into breaking from ICE and the Trump regime.
But popular opinion is changing very quickly in our country. Trump and
ICE’s brutal, unpopular actions are not likely to stop anytime soon.
Organizing initiatives that might seem impossible today can suddenly
become feasible in whirlwind moments of mass outrage and
effervescence. Making the most of those openings will depend above all
on what we do in the meantime. If we take a lead from Minnesota and
pivot nationwide to involve millions of people via winnable
fight-backs against ICE, a real general strike _can _become a reality
in the US.
MOMENTUM
Organizing a general strike requires some combination of three
ingredients: _momentum, organization, _and _militant, risk-tolerant
leaders. _The proportions can vary — if you have more momentum, you
can succeed with less organization and so on. But until we have a
sufficient combination of these factors, a general strike will remain
a wish rather than a reality.
It takes much more than a viral social media post to shut down the
economy. This doesn’t mean celebrities, influencers, and social
media agitation don’t have a role to play: in the 2019 general
strike that eventually brought down Puerto Rico’s embattled head of
state, Bad Bunny, Residente, and Ricky Martin spread the action far
beyond longtime activists. And radio DJs were central to generating
awareness and energy for 2006’s “day without an immigrant” mass
protests in the United States.
But conditions have to be ripe for a general strike to catch on. Of
these external factors, the most important is momentum: a struggle’s
propulsive forward motion, which leads large numbers of people to pay
attention and consider joining.
The need for strong momentum cuts against the suggestion
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of some seasoned US labor organizers
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you can bring about a general strike simply by scaling up traditional
strike preparation tactics like having one-on-one conversations with
all your co-workers and launching escalating super-majority
“structure tests” to measure support. Almost every general strike
in US history has been sparked by a much smaller labor struggle whose
dynamism, popularity, and confrontations with authorities generate
enough momentum for large numbers of other workers to suddenly jump in
to show solidarity (see table below).
The 1934 San Francisco general strike, for instance, erupted as a
response to the “Bloody Thursday” police murder of a striking
longshore worker, Howard Sperry, and a volunteer from the cook’s
union, Nick Bordoise. Bay Area politics was upended overnight. Tens of
thousands of workers poured into the streets of downtown San Francisco
that Sunday for the funeral march
[[link removed]]:
Faces were hard and serious. Hats were held proudly across chests.
Slow-pouring like thick liquid, the great mass flowed out onto Market
Street. … Not one smile in the endless blocks of marching men.
Crowds on the sidewalk, for the most part, stood with heads erect and
hats removed. Others watched the procession with fear and alarm. Here
and there well-dressed businessmen from Montgomery Street stood amazed
and impressed, but with their hats still on their heads. Sharp voices
shot out of the line of march: “Take off your hat!” The tone of
voice was extraordinary. The reaction was immediate. With quick,
nervous gestures, the businessmen obeyed.
The employer’s association subsequent account of the strike noted
that this funeral procession “was one of the strangest and most
dramatic spectacles that has ever moved along Market Street,” and
that by the end the march, “the certainty of a general strike, which
up to this time had appeared to many to be a visionary dream of a
small group of the most radical workers, became for the first time a
practical and realizable objective.”
July 9, 1934 funeral procession in San Francisco after “Bloody
Thursday”
We saw a similar dynamic in Minnesota in response to ICE’s surge and
especially after Good and Pretti’s murders. Mass consciousness
advanced quicker in a few weeks than over two decades of ambitious,
deep organizing for change.
Greg Nammacher from SEIU Local 26, which represents over 8,000
janitors and other property service workers, notes that their
victorious struggles in years prior for progressive policy changes —
including the 2023 “Minnesota Miracle
[[link removed]]” — “did not trigger the
imagination of the broader community … it was not this level of
being on top of a wave.” In contrast, most strikers in the January
23 Day of Truth and Freedom were not union members
[[link removed]].
Here’s how he describes
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the impact of the Twin Cities’ recent momentum surge on the _Dig_:
There are so many players in motion right now—organized on their
blocks, organized through signals. Groups and structures that didn’t
exist, or didn’t exist at an organizational level, just weeks ago
are now playing key roles. So from my perspective, this is an
incredibly hopeful story about combining systematic, intentional,
self-conscious organizing with … understanding that in a movement
moment when the entire community is provoked, things will move far
beyond your organizational control.
This community outpouring, Nammacher notes, has required adopting a
different approach to building disruptive actions:
Usually, when a union gets ready to strike — or when we’re trying
to do turnout to an action — every single person we’re engaging
has been carefully, relationally propositioned to step into action,
supported in a very intentional, systematic way. And in this moment,
there’s a surge of momentum that is just breathtaking and comes from
every direction. It’s that heroism — and the risks that people,
even outside of organization, are willing to take — that has
combined to make this so powerful.
Minnesota shows that you can’t organize an ambitious mass strike
like January 23, 2026 or May Day 2006 — let alone a real general
strike — until the iron is hot enough. That’s one of the main
reasons why all the recent online-based calls for nationwide general
strikes have fallen flat. As angry as so many people are at ICE, fears
about getting fired as well as day-to-day affordability concerns are
still front and center for most working people, especially those
without college education.
This dynamic also puts a question mark over the US Left’s over-focus
on May Day 2028 as a projected general strike. While it’s great that
the United Auto Workers’ initial call for this action has raised the
discussion of general strikes, it was originally imagined as an action
built by unions lining up their collective bargaining contracts with
employers (something that _does _require years of preparation) — not
as _the _North Star disruptive mass action aiming to save US democracy
from Trumpism and the billionaires. There’s a danger that in the
name of building towards May Day 2028, union and movement leaders
could fail to seize the openings for disruptive action that may
rapidly emerge over the coming weeks and months.
Moments have to be seized, as Minnesota’s January 23 action
positively demonstrated. If Trump attempts to invoke the Insurrection
Act or overturn midterm election results, we’ll need to act quickly.
Some have pointed to the 1886 May Day strikes — the call for which
came two years earlier, in 1884 — as an example showing that
projecting a general strike date way ahead of time can inspire people
and give enough time to build up. But there are two major reasons this
analogy is off. First, strike momentum was much, much_ _higher in 1884
than it is today, as you can see in the following graph.
Author’s calculation based on US federal government data
And, second, it was possible to lean on escalating economic strikes in
1884 and 1885 to generate momentum for May Day 1886, since the latter
was also a strike for an economic demand on bosses, the eight-hour
day. But as important as economic strikes are for empowering workers
and raising wages today, they won’t generate momentum directly
against ICE or Trumpism. And the experience of the past few weeks
shows that the vast majority of workers, especially in the private
sector, are not yet ready for the far riskier (and far more
controversial) task of participating in a political strike. Easier
onramps to fight Trumpism are needed — but ideally ones with more of
a punch than one-off rallies.
So while it’s good to have May Day 2026 and 2028 as projected dates
for joint action, the much more urgent and strategic question is how
to start seizing openings and launching campaigns in the meantime that
can generate enough momentum and mass involvement to make feasible
widespread economic disruption and eventually even a general strike.
Otherwise these planned-for dates, and the trainings to support them,
will continue to mobilize mostly existing progressive and radical
activists, not the tens of millions we need to win against ICE and
Trump.
In Minnesota, grassroots momentum was sparked by _external _forces_:
_the ICE siege begun in December 2025 and two murders of citizens by
ICE and Border Patrol agents. Top-down horrors and bottom-up heroism
in Minneapolis, in turn, has boosted anti-Trump momentum nationally.
But we should expect Trump, Miller, and Homan to do everything in
their power to control their thugs enough to avoid more viral killings
of innocent white people, since all that bad publicity has clearly
been counterproductive for their agenda. A sad reality of US politics
is that the killings
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of immigrants like Silverio Villegas González, Jaime Alanis, Roberto
Carlos Montoya Valdez, and Josué Castro Rivera did not spark anything
like the widespread response to the deaths of Good and Pretti.
While ICE’s deportations and jackboot tactics _will_ very likely
continue to spark outrage over the coming months, we can’t rely on
the regime to provide organizing energy for us. Nor should we put out
calls for general strikes that have no realistic chance of becoming
real. What we need instead is an orientation to seizing whirlwind
moments and launching escalating fights for winnable demands like the
successful effort that forced
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Avelo Airlines to break from ICE and Sunrise Movement’s push for
Hilton
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now to do the same. Such efforts can sustain, accelerate, and
_organize_ the forward momentum sparked by courageous mass resistance
in Minneapolis.
ORGANIZATION
Stopping and eventually abolishing ICE depends on involving and
developing the millions of Americans who are not coming to our
meetings or protests. In other words, it depends on organizing_.
_Without such a relentless outward-facing focus — especially on
strategic industries and occupations where our side is weak —
we’ll never have sufficient reach and legitimacy to turn
high-momentum moments into real general strikes.
Emilia González Avalos, executive director of the Minneapolis-based
community group Unidos, put it well
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on the _Dig_: “Participation needs to feel collective, not heroic.
There is a plan to win and a path forward for a bigger we: lower the
cost of participation and normalize resistance to millions of ordinary
people. Our safety is in numbers.”
At a moment of upheaval like our own, organizing doesn’t require
people first join democratic membership organizations like unions or
the Democratic Socialists of America [[link removed]] —
though as a member of both, I would definitely recommend you join
both, since powerful membership organizations are essential for our
movement’s long-term success.
The first mass-scale step towards involvement in Minneapolis was for
people to get trained to legally observe and record ICE’s actions.
From the outside, this proliferation of observers might seem like
something that just “spontaneously” happened, but in fact it
required that the community organization Unidos
[[link removed]] prioritize this as an onramp into the moment
— a mass recruitment and training process sometimes referred
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“absorption.” Unidos has now trained an astounding 30,000 people
in response to ICE’s surge. And this orientation to scaling up
reflected their strategic understanding of the importance of building
a _majoritarian_ movement.
As González Avalos explains:
What we had to ponder as organizers was “How do we stop being a
specialty group?” … What is the on-ramp for a popular front? And
so that’s how we thought about this constitutional observer on-ramp.
… Movements are early, brave, and clear. But they are not
majorities.
Though legal observation was a relatively easy and simple task, the
process of doing it — especially in the face of ICE’s increased
belligerence — became a transformational experience for countless
Minneapolis residents. “It changes people,” notes González
Avalos. “Now, all of these constitutional observers are wanting to
do more.”
Indeed, Nammacher observes that those neighborhood signal groups were
“absolutely decisive in being able to move in this moment” to make
the January 23 strike a success. An astounding
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4 percent of all residents in every neighborhood are now members of
one of those chats.
Though much of this explosive movement now lies outside of formal
organizations, Minnesota’s longstanding progressive unions and
organizations have left a strong imprint on the broader fightback.
“Organizing capacity has played a large role because what we’re
seeing is that folks are mirroring where the center of gravity is,”
notes Minister JaNaé Bates Imari, Co-Executive Director of ISAIAH, a
faith-based, Black-led community group central to the statewide
anti-ICE fightback. Concretely, she emphasized
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in her interview on the _Dig _the important role Minnesota’s leading
progressive organization played in helping the movement remain
remarkably non-violent even in the face of the most horrific
provocations:
Part of what is happening in Minnesota is a needling by the federal
government to try to get us to respond in a particular way. And
Minnesotans across the [political] spectrum have said we will not take
the bait. … No one [is] confused about who the peacekeepers are in
the midst of what’s taking place.
Taking a cue from González Avalos, the key question all of us outside
of Minnesota should be asking ourselves is: What are the key on-ramps
to actively involve as many Americans in sustained struggle against
ICE and Trump?
As important as events like No Kings have been and will continue to be
for displaying mass opposition to Trump, big weekend rallies without
clear next steps or easy on-ramps for deeper involvement won’t be
enough to overcome Trump’s masked goon squad. Nor will the
proliferation of anti-MAGA “tables” (coalitions) for progressive
non-profits and unions to talk to each other. We need to pivot to
talking to and involving the vast majority of Americans who are not on
our email lists or membership rolls.
In towns faced with ICE surges, the first step is mass trainings for
legal observers. Elsewhere, we should focus on winnable campaigns that
raise anti-ICE demands on companies and local governments, not
still-abstract calls for general strikes. Because so many people in
our country feel like nothing they could do could ever make a
difference, we need easy on-ramps that give people a sense of purpose
and power.
Our side’s weak base among working-class people is _the _single most
central obstacle to forward progress. There are deep structural
reasons
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for this limitation. A century ago, even non-organized workers had far
stronger ties to each other because they tended to live next to their
co-workers, attend the same churches, and drink at the same bars. But
economic decentralization, urban sprawl, suburbanization, and
neoliberalism have dramatically eroded those organic working-class
cultures. Consciously fostering widespread organization is both much
harder and much more urgent than ever.
In our atomized country, it should come as no surprise that January
30’s “general strike” never materialized nationwide, especially
since the action was called by [[link removed]] small
left-leaning student groups. Compare that with the January 23 Day of
Truth and Freedom, which was called by
[[link removed]]
influential organizations like Unidos, ISAIAH, SEIU Local 26, the St.
Paul Federation of Educators, and the Minneapolis Federation of
Educators. The legitimating strength of these organizations ultimately
mattered more than the increase in momentum that emerged the next day
when Alex Pretti was murdered on January 24.
But given that union density, the percentage of workers in unions, in
the private sector is only 8.6% in Minnesota and only 5.9% nationwide,
it’s not surprising that even January 23’s otherwise powerful
action was weakest precisely in the places we need to be strongest:
the corporations like Target, Hilton, Enterprise, and Home Depot that
ICE depends on to function as well as all the other big companies
whose CEOs have real leverage over the White House.
Whereas companies can’t make profits when their employees don’t
show up to work, the titans of industry — and the White House —
face no direct costs when local teachers and students walk out. School
walkouts have an essential role to play in inspiring broader workplace
and social disruption, but they’re not a substitute for it.
Recent experience abroad shows how crucial the private sector —
especially its most central nodes — can be for defeating
authoritarianism. Late on December 3, 2024, South Korea’s right-wing
president Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law. The militant KCTU union
confederation threatened a general strike to save democracy and began
immediately organizing rolling strikes in the most economically
central metal and auto factories like Kia and Hyundai. This push,
together with the broader pro-democracy movement of which it was part,
forced the president out of office on December 14, 2024. (Yoon has
since been indicted for leading an insurrection and is imprisoned —
a fate that hopefully awaits America’s would-be dictator and his
henchmen.)
To paralyze ICE and stop Trump, we urgently need far more private
sector worker organizing. Non-union employees inside the belly of the
corporate beast are no less courageous, but views towards Trump are
far more uneven among blue-collar workers of all races and the
organizing conditions facing blue-collar, white-collar, and tech
workers alike are far more challenging. Whereas public sector workers
and union members have more job protections, and college-educated
professionals tend to have some financial cushion and autonomy, the
norm for non-union workers in the private sector is
paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyles, at-will employment, and fear of the
boss.
Faced with this challenging context, we need far more campaigns like
that of ICEOut.tech [[link removed]], [[link removed]] an
organizing initiative that in less than a week has already collected
over 1,000 public signatures by tech workers and professionals
demanding that their companies break from ICE. Couldn’t similar
public petitions from workers of all skills and statuses be launched
within Amazon, Target, Enterprise, Home Depot, and other ICE
collaborating corporations?
Anybody at such companies should reach out to the Emergency Workplace
Organizing Committee [[link removed]] to get support
launching such initiatives — but to get to scale, they’ll probably
need the backing of big unions and progressive organizations. Without
a serious investment in resources, it’s hard to imagine how we could
make possible campaigns along the lines laid out to me by union
strategist Chris Brooks:
Imagine all these groups canvassing Target stores across Minnesota
(and then later across the country) inviting workers to come to a
meeting where they get grounded in the campaign to fight ICE by
building a committee in their store, using the meeting to map all
their coworkers, and setting the goal of having all of them sign an
anti-ICE petition in twenty-four hours and then organizing a massive
community supported march on the boss to deliver that in the store.
Film it and put it out there. Have all Target workers wear ICE Out
buttons. Build to a one day Target strike.
At Target, Hilton, Enterprise, Delta, and beyond, mass organizing
trainings tailored for specific company campaigns can give fired-up
workplace activists the tools and encouragement they need to break
beyond the already-convinced. Deep organizing techniques like
systematic one-on-one conversations and escalating build-up actions
— buttons, petitions, rallies, and the rest — have lost none of
their relevancy for building power and overcoming fear in these
challenging private-sector workplaces, where you can’t assume that
fighting ICE and Trump is already widely or deeply felt enough to
overcome prevailing moods of fear and resignation.
Parallel mass campaigns by consumers demanding that these companies
and others break from ICE can create the momentum and permission
structure for more employees to take the risk of joining the fight, as
we’ve begun to see in Sunrise’s
[[link removed]] Hilton campaign of
escalating sit-ins and noisy late-night rallies
[[link removed]]
to pressure the company to stop housing ICE agents. Community members
can also directly engage workers at these companies by passing out QR
codes with links to sign petitions as well as information about
upcoming actions. And radical organizations like DSA can start
encouraging members to get jobs and organize at companies that are
strategically central for the fight against ICE and Trumpism, as well
as public sector workplaces that have huge disruptive power like city
transportation and airports.
We also need far more education and educational materials about the
ties of these companies to ICE, much of which is hardly common
knowledge internally, let alone among the broader public. But it’s
important to keep in mind that the most important lesson workers and
community members can learn — _that they have tremendous collective
power _— can only be taught and learned through the process of
struggle itself.
WHO WILL LEAD?
We got lucky that Trump chose to pick on a city and state with
movement leaders like Emilia González Avalos, JaNaé Bates Imari, and
Greg Nammacher. Without their strategic thinking, bold initiatives for
mass participation, and push for organizational alignment
[[link removed]]
instead of turf wars and shallow coalitions, Trump’s provocation in
Minnesota may well have succeeded in achieving its ugly goals.
Unfortunately, this type of labor-community leadership is the
exception, not the norm. One key reason that organization and momentum
among working people is still much lower than it needs to be is that
most US union and non-profit leaders have continued with business as
usual since November 2024.
Mass movements don’t just happen. Someone has to take the
initiative. This doesn’t mean those of us in the ranks have to wait
for a green light from above. The impetus for almost every general
strike in US history has come from below — only once the grassroots
got the ball rolling did top leaders eventually (usually at the last
possible minute) jump on board. As one San Francisco union leader in
1934 put it, “It was an avalanche. I saw it coming so I ran ahead
before it crushed me.”
But in today’s atomized context, when feelings of powerlessness are
still so pervasive, it’ll likely take a combination of grassroots
initiative and serious organizational resources to scale up. On this
question, like so many others, Minneapolis has pointed the way
forward. “There’s nothing we’re doing that’s rocket
science,” insists Nammacher from SEIU Local 26. “This can be
replicated anywhere.”
Whether you’re a rank-and-file activist or the head of an
organization with deep pockets, there’s no time to lose. The public
is with us. We have the power — and a moral responsibility — to_
_defeat ICE, Trump, and their billionaire enablers.
So let’s get to work. Do it right, and we might be taking work off
together sooner than you think.
MORE
* Work at a company collaborating with ICE? Reach out
[[link removed]] to EWOC to immediately get support
organizing campaigns against ICE at your job.
* Unsure if your company — or a company in your town — is
working with ICE? Here’s a great research resource
[[link removed]]
to find out.
* Sign up here [[link removed]] to get
involved in Sunrise’s anti-ICE Hilton campaign.
_ERIC BLANC's substack is laborpolitics.com. Author of "We Are the
Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and
Winning Big"; organizer trainer in the Emergency Workplace Organizing
Committee._
_Subscribe to laborpolitics.com_
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