The General Strike

Part 3: “This isn’t enough.”

This is part three of my “THE” series. Read part one about “THE HARDWARE STORE” and part two “THE GROCERY STORE.” These loosely compose a trilogy, so I recommend starting with the first to get the full arc.

---

Woke up to a very vivid dream, but it evaporated instantly leaving me only with a small puddle of a memory about childproofing a home.

Outside, car wheels screamed like jaguars as they searched the icy snow for traction.

Got out of bed to feed Chicken, boiled water and ground coffee beans. As I waited for the espresso to percolate, I washed dishes from last night’s dinner and then poured bulgur wheat into a pot, filled it with water to rinse and swirled the wheat with my knuckles before draining it. Did this twice and set it to boil. The wheat would accompany a Mediterranean salad of sorts I made the night prior—kalamata olives, chickpeas, very out of season vine tomatoes, red onion, and a narrow English cucumber over which I poured a marinade of red wine vinegar, olive oil, lemon juice, oregano, salt, and pepper. I sliced a thick pad of butter and put it on the wheat, along with salt. The butter was freshly purchased after we gave a neighbor the last of ours. This neighbor and I got to know each other during my double knee surgery because he also had a bad knee. His, however, was permanently damaged by a botched surgery that he never fully recovered from. Now, marooned in his wheelchair, he hung out in and around the building. He was in the lobby when he waved me down to ask if we had any butter he could use. It was around 1am, and we had just come in from dancing at a new club in East Williamsburg. It was a peculiar thing to request so late in the night, but it seemed urgent so I said sure, of course. Then he held up his hand to gesture how much, stretching his thumb and pointer as wide as he could. He needed an entire stick, perhaps more. I checked the fridge and the freezer. All we had was a small knob, but I took it down anyway because he was expecting me. He laughed at how little it was, and I fumbled the clever response I had prepared on the elevator down. With a quick “good luck,” I bounded back up the four flights of stairs where C and I started a new show that opens with a navy ship being struck by a missile, which sets off a global diplomatic crisis that the protagonist is dispatched to resolve as a test for higher office. Miraculously, the ship didn’t sink.

I wrote through the morning until it was time for couples therapy. We talked about the crises unfolding across the country and said things we’d never said to one another. C told me she was disappointed she didn’t see her anger and alarm over ICE and Gaza reflected in me. I told her I sometimes didn’t trust my own political views because they were so flimsy compared to hers. She had a strong moral compass and only had to look inward to know what was right. I was deeply unsure and easily persuadable, wary of anything that sounded too absolute or alarmist, which left me in the herd of public opinion, perpetually late to arrive at what history would later deem obvious.

The sun was now high overhead and at 18 degrees it was as warm as it was going to get. I grabbed the brand-new shovel and walked to the end of the block where our car was pinned in by an embankment of thigh-high snow whose topmost layer was dirtied by the street and hardened with ice. I put on a podcast about Tucker Carlson’s rise in media and got to work, stabbing through the hard outer layer until it gave way to a soft and powdery inner layer. Eventually I figured out that I could cleave away large chunks by stabbing from above and below until a big block broke loose, bringing to mind the massive walls of blue ice a warming Antarctica shedded into the rising ocean. Using my gloved hands, I picked up the mini iceberg and waddled it over to a large pile of snow across the street, feeling simultaneously like a penguin late to the party and an amateur contestant on World’s Strongest Man. Using this method, I cleaved several small bergs loose at a time and, bending down, chucked the smallest blocks over my shoulder and bear-hugged the largest to add them to the pile. This manner of working, alternating between tool and hand with a fevered desperation, made me feel like a miner on a rescue team in a collapsed cave working furiously to free any survivors.

When my arms began to whimper, I stopped to catch my breath. Someone walking by called out, “I wish I could help.” I’m not done, I thought to myself, and went back to work.

With the front and the side of the car cleared, I turned my attention to the rear. We needed a few feet of clearance to accelerate over a stubborn ridge of compact ice. I had my method and worked quickly, hurling chunks of snow over my shoulder and onto the sidewalk behind me until I saw the dark road beneath me. With about 95% of the work done, I called it good and walked home.

Inside, I drank a full glass of water in one go and then laid down flat on the floor. I was waiting for pain to knit through my lower back, but it wouldn’t arrive until the following morning. I stared at the ceiling while C created protest signs using cardboard she found in the basement of the building. She modified a poster intended for me to say: Call your representatives. Admittedly, this felt quaint and old-fashioned, but I still believed it could actually be effective, in part because it was a page out of the far-right playbook. Showing up at town halls, calling the DC and field offices—these local, targeted actions seemed to have a real impact when deployed by right-wing activists. Leftists meanwhile took to the streets or social media to bemoan Trump’s latest actions, diffusing their energy into vacuous public squares rather than channeling their outrage toward levers of power.

With temperatures approaching the single digits, we wore two of everything knowing we’d be in the streets for hours protesting: double socks, long underwear plus thick pants, long sleeves under warm sweaters. En route to the subway and enlivened by what was to come, C walked fast, weaving through embankments of snow and overtaking slower walkers by skipping ahead a few steps before the path once again narrowed. I followed a half step behind, carrying our signs under one arm, observing whoever noticed the signs and read their reaction. I had no idea what these strangers were thinking, but I tended to imagine they felt a pang of guilt for going about their business as usual and not getting off at City Hall and that this inward guilt was outwardly manifested in looks of derision, as in: how dare you remind us of the many ills and injustices of the world on a Friday.

We exited in a sea of people who trudged up the salted stairs for air. Stately white columns greeted us and we followed the swell of people toward Foley Square where the crowd was at least four times the size of the previous protest we went to. I turned my phone onto airplane mode and C called Cat and then Becky, and coordinated for us all to meet under a street sign away from the growing crowd.

Cat emerged wearing a mask and red puffer with Mike behind her, and Becky joined a few minutes after. Together we slipped into the crowd to get closer to the action. We found ourselves at the mouth of a subway entrance that no one exited from but several entered having wormed their way through the crowd. We strained to listen to the speakers, but the cold swallowed up all speech and only a few key phrases were telegraphed back in a call and response. The speech portion soon concluded, perhaps due to the freezing temperatures, but it was another 30 minutes before the ranks thinned out enough for us to begin our march through snowbanked streets.

Spirits seemed high, especially among a young group of high schoolers near us carrying a banner and leading chants. Perhaps it was because they skipped school in solidarity, or because they screamed Fuck ICE and the crowd answered back in kind. Perhaps they liked the edge of dissent, and the allure of command. Their eagerness found an acceleration in the chants, pressing the words closer and closer until they became a hurried mash. There was no song in their smiling mouths, no rhythm in their young hearts. I slowed my pace, let them walk past me.

But the chants didn’t change in this new part of the crowd. For the entirety of the march, there were only two thrown back and forth: “Fuck ICE” and “No KKK, No Fascist USA, No ICE.” I preferred other chants, but I couldn’t remember any of them. One person tried to start a Palestine chant but no one followed suit. He kept at it anyway, his voice growing louder with each cry, until he stopped altogether after a respectable six rounds of soloing.

We walked up Lafayette, turned west down Canal. At the end of Canal, lies the Hudson River which has been jigsawed into plates of ice that don’t fit perfectly but nevertheless belong together. Over this tectonic puzzle, the horizon was ablaze in a warm flash of orange embers. It was late January, when the wick of the day grew minute by minute until nighttime was scarce once again.

We turned up Sixth Avenue. The buildings looming overhead become shadows of steel and concrete. Inside some are squares of light with darkened figures looking down at us. “It’s weird there’s no cops out,” said Becky. I hadn’t noticed until then, but it was true. There were no police whatsoever, not even barricades. The streets were all but empty and the only faces we saw were those from the lighted windows peering down.

The protest concluded in Washington Square Park, as it had the previously three times we marched. As the crowd began to disband, C looked around in dismay. “This isn’t enough,” she said. “I’m sick of ending up in the park. None of this is actually disrupting anything, it’s too convenient - for us, for the cops, for observers. We need direct action, we need a sustained general strike to force any actual change. That obviously requires a lot more preparation, but that’s what we should be called to do here, not just put a neat little bow on the end of a protest. It might be uncomfortable, and would take real commitment, but I think the discomfort of living under fascism outweighs the effort required to overthrow it.”

She was right, of course. Cops didn’t need to be in the streets monitoring the protest because there was nothing unruly about it and nothing that couldn’t be easily contained. The route we marched was planned with and approved by the city. There had been dozens and dozens of protests in recent weeks and all went according to plan, except for one.

At the end of the last protest C and I went to, a group of people shouted, “Fuck Washington Square Park! And fuck ICE!” before doubling back to the federal building that ICE was allegedly operating out of. Their leaders skipped ahead in all-black, lifting their signs high and proud. It was only a small group of a dozen protestors initially, but it still triggered panic among the police, who scrambled to maintain control of the situation.

The offshoot’s declaration was met with mixed reactions from the other protesters. Some responded with a “Fuck, yeah,” and joined their swelling contingent as they snaked southwest back toward 6th Avenue. Others seemed to flinch at this call to further action, either from fear of what a true confrontation might entail or from offense at the suggestion that the protest they had just participated in wasn’t enough.

At C’s insistence, we followed the offshoot of protestors as they exited the park, amused by the cops collecting easy overtime who suddenly had to exert themselves. They shuffled ahead in a half-jog while holding their belts up to get eyes on the developing situation. The offshoot protestors marched against the flow of traffic, which was genuinely disrupted now that the cops had removed the barricades. It was the cops who disrupted traffic most though, as they took up an entire car lane. The protestors, suddenly more fluid than the sleepy herd of before, weaved in and out of moving traffic and parked cars, switching between sidewalk, bike lane, and car lane. The chants picked up again, the loudest voices beginning to sound hoarse but more animated than before.

Several protestors were arrested that night. I wasn’t there to witness it because I convinced C we should stop for dinner.

In hindsight, and following long conversations with my brother and with Celina, this type of dissent is what is needed at this moment, along with all the rest. If that sounds overwhelming, that’s because it is. It is an all hands on deck operation and I realize now I’ve had my hands clasped behind my back whistling to myself as I go about my life as if nothing has changed. And in truth, not much has changed for me, which only speaks to how shielded I am from the devastating White House policies and Supreme Court rulings. Meanwhile, the lives of countless people living in the United States have been completely upended. Whether disappeared into an ICE facility or deported to somewhere they’ve never set foot, their individuality has been obliterated in a statistic, blurred by headlines. It’s embarrassing now to consider the discomfort I sometimes felt while at protests or during political conversations. It is infinitesimally small compared to the harm actually inflicted on those I’m purporting to protest on behalf of. It is embarrassing the extent to which I have agonized over these internal feelings when that energy would be better spent contributing toward a cause. Instead of being ready to critique an activist’s plan for change, I should think critically about what tactics or strategies might be more effective. Instead of quietly muttering a chant I don’t care for, I should learn a new one and share it. Instead of fretting over what to say or not to say in a political conversation, I should acknowledge I don’t have all the answers, and don’t need to. There are plenty of people who have thought long and hard about these issues, and been fighting all kinds of injustices for centuries that have crucial lessons to share. All I have to do is show up, and keep showing up, even when it’s uncomfortable.