Bryan Zepp Jamieson
April 22nd, 2025
New York Times columnist David Brooks has called for a “comprehensive national civic uprising” to protest the Trump administration. Brooks, who has been with the Times since the invention of dirt, is the ultimate establishment ‘button-down’ conservative. When HE calls for a “comprehensive national civic uprising,” you know we’re well out of normal times.
I was at the local demonstration Saturday, and while the crowd was enthusiastic, it was about two-thirds the size of the rally held two weeks earlier. Part of that was because it was cooler and windier, and because it was on Easter weekend.
But it got me thinking. The 50501 “Hands Off” rallies, while terrific at galvanizing public opinion, aren’t going to be enough. Interest will wane, especially since it would become obvious it wasn’t slowing Trump’s fascist coup against America in the slightest.
Brooks is right; a civic uprising is needed. I’m not thinking peasants with pitchforks and blood in the streets; with a half-billion guns loose in the country, that’s the last thing we need. What we do need are national strikes. Yes, plural. Rolling strikes, areas hit once per week.
When you hear the word ‘strike’ you may think of workers walking off the job in protest. But this is America: only 3% of workers have union protection, and most unions are barred by law from having ‘wildcat’ strikes. And most states have what is laughingly referred to as “right-to-work” laws which generally translates to “at will” employment. You only have a job until the boss gets a bug up his ass, and you’re out the door, usually without so much as a day’s warning.
The fact is most American workers don’t have much more in the way of job security and rights than your typical wage slave in Bangladesh. Most people live paycheck to paycheck, and are perhaps two months away from homelessness. It’s a shit work culture, but it’s the result of 45 years of Reaganomics.
So a strike has to be something much more than workplace actions.
They may have coercive power over you on the job, but they can’t make you buy stuff. There have already been embargoes ranging from one day to one week against major retailers such as Amazon and Nestle, and boycotts against Target and similar outfits that have been ongoing, and they’ve been effective enough to cause worry in the right quarters. The Trump admin already floated the idea of a 5 year prison sentence for anyone demonstrating in front of a Tesla dealership. Elon Musk has already figured out that the widespread hatred caused by his rampage through most government programs isn’t going away, and he has already lost hundreds of billions and risks losing it all. He announced he’s getting out of politics by the end of May. Hopefully he’ll get the fuck out of the country.
But picture this: the manager at the local fast-food joint has already told his employees that if they so much as call in sick on the day of a scheduled strike, he’ll fire them. Yes, in much of the county, a shit boss like him can get away with that crap. Because we still have full employment, jobs are scarce, and he holds the whip.
But come the day of the strike, all the employees he coerced into showing up are standing around idle, because walk-in business has dropped 70%. He’ll send some of them home, of course, and if he’s a big enough a bastard, he might try telling them not to join any protests that might be going on.
If this happens once a week, he’s going to see that his profit margins—which in the fast-food industry are pretty thin—are vanishing. He can’t take a 10% overall loss in business.
And if he starts firing people, he may find he no longer has any control over them, and they may well be standing across the street from his business on days of the strike, adding to the pressure for people to stay away and urging employees to engage in malicious compliance.
What we need to do is set up five zones across the country, one for each workday, Monday through Friday. One day per week, we get as many people as possible to buy nothing (currently such actions exempt small, locally-owned businesses, and that’s a wise distinction to make). Nothing purchased on line, and skip lunch at the chain eatery. Don’t buy groceries that day. (It’s ok to stock up the day before if needed—the bosses will notice the one day slump a lot more than a smaller one-day bump in sales.)
And on those Zone days, everyone who can, protest. It can be as small as a bumper sticker, or a small flag, or even a prearranged dress code (for instance, everyone wear something red on the Zone Action Day.) If you can march and chant and ring cow bells, do so. Just…don’t let up.
And keep the pressure on elected officials. Republicans are already running scared, and they need to realize that Trump and his MAGAts are the lesser of two factions. They are between a rock and a hard place, and you are the hard place.
And talk to people. Persuade them that this is no longer just “politics”; it’s the survival of a free and open America. These aren’t disagreements over policy; this is a fight to stop a fascist coup against the United States, and if we don’t stop them now, then we may face a very bloody war as the final option. And nobody with any sense of decency or intelligence wants to go there.
We fight hard now, or we fight for our very lives later. There’s no point in asking nicely. The fascists aren’t going to simply go away.
