Town Hall Meeting

Yesterday, September 7, the French had a general strike and shutdown large parts of the French system. The result is the French President is now willing to concede to some of their demands and start to negotiate. Ironically, this occurred one day after America’s “Labor Day.” However, American labor is at the end of a 50 year decline and is in such a weak state that Wall Street can take all our private and public money and very little has been done. Although that one sit down strike at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago was a shining moment during the 2008 crash. Labor has been beaten down in America for a long time, perhaps getting its biggest defeat when the Taft-Hartley Act was passed in 1947 over Harry Truman’s veto, making among other things, general strikes like yesterday’s French one, illegal. The only way I see to balance the power in America is for workers to organize and coordinate. Workers have been thrown under the bus for 50+ years and today’s terrible wealth gap, shrinking middle class, and no power to stop it, is the result.

Check out this discussion on the American system and comments on the French strike. The segment is about 20 minutes.
Letters to Washington
September 8, 2010 at 10:00am

Click to listen or download

Here is one photo of the strike. From my brief research, size estimates of the protests range from a low of 800,000 (from police) to 2,500,000 (from organizers). This of course is on top of all those that participated in the general strike.