notes on the general strike in spain

General Strike. Imagine! At midnight last night, in every modestly-working-class neighborhood in the country picket lines closing the few bars and shops that remained open. and picket lines camped out in the industrial zones and in the bus lots and in the train lots and at the airports to ensure that at dawn no factories would ignite, no buses would pull out of the lots, no trains or planes would move. almost every single rural worker in andalusia simply staying home.
the radio says everything is normal and that -- never fear! -- the police have guaranteed order but: look! step out the door and the street is empty, there are no trucks delivering, there are no buses, the intimidated employees of big stores open and then are shut down by neighborhood pickets. the cotidian is interrupted. today is different.

many go to work. we spent all day today interviewing women: housewives, domestic workers, shop girls, waitresses, prostitutes, artists, small-businesswomen etc. women who were and who were not participating in the strike about how those of us who do not fit into the classic masculine fordist image of the worker and the union -- because our work is part-time or precarious or immaterial or reproductive or affective or illegal -- how we live the situation of a general strike.
there is so much fear. so much isolation and fear, so little capacity see present reality as an accumulation of history and not as simply 'the way things are.' daily lives spent in fear are revealed by shopgirls who confess thier terror of walking out as soon as the manager turns his back.

but the genius of a strike is that -- whereas in so many other things one can sit comfortably on the democratic fence -- in a stike there is no middle ground. you are working or you are not. it is a moment of crystalization, decision, risk. the leap of faith that if you walk out you will not be alone. the challenge of being able to imagine a community, imagine a multitude to which your risk is relevant when daily life seldom affords any sense of such a community, especially in these post-factory days of decentralized and non-contracted work.

and it is a moment in which consumer-democracy's articulation of the 'individual vs. collective problem' is brought into crisis. the picket lines are closing bars. you are there having a drink and argue, 'its my choice. i respect your choice to be on strike, you should respect mine to not be.' (more often than not this sort of argumentation is accompanied by a reference to that panacea-word 'democracy': i.e. 'thats how democracy works') but there is a point at which the i'm-ok-youre-ok equality ideology doesn't work. first of all, your individual choice fucks up a big project that a whole lot of people are trying to move. their big project simply is more important than your drink. second, it is a strike, a day in which the cotidian is explicitly politicized, like it or not; you don't have a drink in a bar (or go to work, or join the skinheads) 'because you feel like it.' and let us not be naive with respect to intimidation. it is not like everyone does exactly what they feel like and therefore reality reflects a democratic consensus of the greatest good. people are constantly intimidated into obeying and into conforming in all manner of systems: work, family, state. some counterintimidation seems justified.
and, moreover, the strikers are right and the strikebreakers are wrong, and its not a matter of miscommunication, its simply and frankly a matter of difference. a tough nut for those of us raised on friendly relativism and deeply appalled by the rather maoist sound of this. but i challenge you to come to a different conclusion.

which leads to the questions (infinate) about tactics, about violence, about the possibilities and limits of dialog. none of which is merely abstract because there we are, in the street, feeling the strength of ourselves, debating our own ethics and tactics, inventing new ones on the spot.

i still have no idea to what extent the strike stopped the country. the national radio and tv, controlled almost entirely by the ruling PP, say that tout va bien and that the strike was a nothing thing, but from all over the country the independent media wires are hot with reports to the contrary. whether anyone at a decision-making level gives a shit is another question entirely: this fall 90% of professors and students walked out of the universties and they passed the education reform law anyway.

what i do know is that it was thrilling. the streets ours, the city a carnival of pickets and picnics, no one at work except the police, multiple demonstrations of hundreds of thousands in various parts of the city. old folks dumping buckets of water from balconies onto sun-baked demonstrators, groups of migrants without papers cheering and banging pots and pans from their balconies (out of reach of the police). bewildered tourists. and our little tribe of tough girls, so smart, so wild, there singing our (very clever) songs to the astonishment and delight of the (otherwise rather uncreative) crowds.
a very different thing from these massive global resistance demonstrations (Sevilla, tomorrow) simply because it is the city we live in, and because it is a strike.

anyway. some reflections, far from complete, on a very full, very singular day. its not all the time one experiences a general strike. news and photos (poor ones, alas) available in spanish on
http://acp.sindominio.net