Getting ready by Ruth Neuwald Falcon

I was excited to get an email invitation late last week from May Day Strong. How we build a general strike, read the headline. Join us on a mass call on Sunday, February 1. Great, I thought. Let’s get on with it.

Here’s my first takeaway. It’s going to be a long haul. The “hunger for effectiveness,” referred to by Aru Shiney-Ajay, Minneapolis-based executive director of the Sunrise Movement, a climate and economic justice organization, will not be immediately satisfied. We have to “pick fights that we know are winnable and really public,” she continued, using the Minneapolis protests at Hilton Hotels that house ICE agents as an example.

“We can mistake noise for power,” said Daniel Hunter, an activist trainer and strategist. Hunter is now working with Freedom Trainers, “experienced educators and organizers… equipping people with the skills and strategies of strategic noncooperation.” (I just registered for their free Noncooperation 101 online training on February 25.)

“Movements can’t just will themselves into power,” he went on. “They have to organize into it. Timing is critical; an issue has to be blazing hot,” for there to be a successful general strike. (It seems that the first recorded one happened in Egypt in 1156 BCE when workers protested late payment from the pharaoh. Who knew?) Hunter likened it to gathering kindling. “How do we build some of the conditions to create the kindling so when the match does appear, we are ready?”

Robert Hubbell wrote last night about where we were one year ago, quoting extensively from his newsletter from February 1, 2025, Call It By Its Name: A Coup. I’m sharing just a bit of it, but it’s well worth your time to read it all and remember what was happening then—and how powerless we felt.

Trump’s rolling coup is (mistakenly) predicated on his belief that the American people are sheep. He believes that we will sit still while he does whatever he wants.

He is wrong.

America is based on the consent of the governed, and its economic health requires the cooperation of the participants in the economy. If Americans withhold their political consent and economic cooperation, both the political and financial systems in America will grind to a halt.

Soon, very soon, Americans will be called upon to leave the comfort of their homes and the anonymity of their computer screens to engage in massive, coordinated action to remind Trump and Musk that they are servants of the people, not vice versa.

It occurs to me now that this regime is doing us the favor of doling out huge amounts of kindling. It does so with every video the American people see in which ICE agents tear gas children, or drag people out of their cars, or pull and point their weapons at observers.

My other big takeaway is that I am grateful for the number of astute and competent people working, for the most part, behind the scenes, to strategically ensure that we are ready when the “blazing hot” issue appears. And we know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it will.