Ok, listen, if we want to accomplish anything from a grassroots perspective, we need to start thinking like engineers. Good engineers don’t just look at a problem and say “It’s impossible,” and throw their hands up. You define the problem, research solutions, come up with potential actionable strategies that can be broken down into discrete logistics.

So we’re gonna have a general strike in America the week before the midterms, or else an asteroid will destroy all life on earth except for Kid Rock. We have to figure out how to make this happen no matter what. The future of humanity is at stake.

OK, so we know that general strikes have worked in the past in other countries. What were the conditions which allowed them to succeed? How did the people not go hungry and lose their houses? What were their demands and how long did it take their government to acquiesce? What percentage of the population striked? (Struck? Whatever.) Identify common factors in successful general strikes. Never mind about unsuccessful ones for now.

Start there. Don’t tell me why it can’t happen in America, tell me how it did happen elsewhere.

Once we understand that, we can start to reverse engineer from the outcome we want. People needed X, Y and Z to get by and their system allowed A, B and C that ours doesn’t; OK, so how do we enable A, B and C and get X, Y and Z for people so they are equipped to carry out a general strike. What precisely would satisfy us to end the strike? Not “Stop fucked up shit from happening”, or “end racism and bigotry” because these are not discrete, defined goals that are achievable by the people we mean to oppose with this. “Create a nonpartisan regulatory body to control the use of AI in the workplace” is a better example. “Do not allow Donald Trump to use ICE as his own Praetorian Guard to interfere with the midterms” is another. These are Boolean conditions that can be objectively met or not.

(Here’s the really important part: some of you are already itching to explain to me why this can’t work or my examples are bad or how I’ve missed a crucial step. If you are one of these people, sit this one out. I want to hear from people about how something could be accomplished and absolutely no one else. If you ignore this, I will be angry, because it’s not helpful or useful in any way. I know you think it is, and that’s why you need to not get into this conversation. You are not a problem solver, you are a problem definer, and we all know what the problems are and it’s not helpful to redefine them yet again.)

So who wants to start? Some quick research, maybe?