What is a Wildcat Strike?
Wildcat strike (n.)
: Work stoppage undertaken by employees without the consent of their respective unions... The name is based on the stereotypical characteristics associated with wildcats: unpredictability and uncontrollability. - Britannica
The idea is to instigate a nationwide general strike with the addition of wildcat strike tactics. The strike includes a typical work stoppage across all industries as well as more aggressive direct action tactics that would vary in intensity based on each participant’s comfort level with breaking the law. Once the strike begins, participation is completely decentralized making each action unpredictable and uncontrollable.
Key tenants:
There are clear demands. The demands are specific, measurable, unchangeable, and non-negotiable.
There are no rules. The only instruction is to stop the economy until every demand is met. If the demands are never met, then the strike never ends and the economy dies.
There are no leaders. An action with no leaders cannot be suppressed or called off.
A leaderless strike with non-negotiable demands and a commitment to never stop until those demands are met becomes an economic suicide pact. We are creating a conditional economic suicide pact today to escape from the unconditional extinction pact of unaddressed climate change.
I’ve heard that protest actions have a tipping point of about 3% of the population. If they pass that point then they are able to have significantly more impact. I don’t know if that’s true, but it seem like 10 million Americans actively working to grind the gears of the economic machine to a halt could have a pretty enormous impact.
The problem is getting that many people to join the strike. If the group is not big enough, then it’s only going to harm the participants without resulting in any actual change. I’m imagining this starting out as a pledge rather than a typical protest movement or political action campaign. That allows people to state their willingness to participate without putting themselves at risk for no reason. Once the pledge list hits 10 million people, the strike is called and then everyone can take on the risks of direct action simultaneously.
Possible tactics:
Stop working. Don’t quit, just tell them you are on strike. There can be a list of businesses that fire employees for striking. Everyone else striking commits to target those businesses for actions and to boycott them permanently, even when the strike is over. Make it painful to fire a striker. Make them want our demands met as much as we do.
Stop buying things. Stop going to restaurants. Just don’t spend any money that isn’t necessary for your survival.
Block highways and bridges. Use huge piles of dirt or concrete or garbage. Break the surface of the road so it requires a construction crew to repair it. Grind the wheels of commerce to a halt.
Block commerce. Place chain locks on business doors. Smash windows at the business entrance so they have to close to repair the glass… then do it again every single day. Just become a nuisance that slows things down and doesn’t stop.
Cut power lines to businesses. A corporate grocery store can only throw out its entire supply of refrigerated food so many times.
Block public transit. If the busses and the trains aren’t running, then no one is working.
Block the internet to businesses. Internet cables are just 15’ in the air, easy to cut, and completely unprotected. If a business does not have the internet, it can’t run a credit card. There are only a handful of people in any city capable of splicing fiberoptic cables and they are already busy. There is no way they could keep up with even a casual effort to keep businesses from being able to access the internet.
That list includes a lot more than just a work stoppage or civil disobedience, but then it also seems to be in proportion to the stakes of the situation. How far do we go to stop a species-wide extinction event? If we’re committing the economy to a suicide pact to prevent an climate apocalypse, broken windows and cut power lines seem pretty tame within that context.