New York Times columnist David Brooks has called for a “comprehensive national civic uprising” against Donald Trump.
This public call from a media title on the ideological left against a US President perceived as being on the right is further fuel to America’s polarised public discourse, where playground insults crowd out useful dialogue.
Calls for a movement
This week host of The Ink show – including Anand Giridharadas, former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich and labour leader Sara Nelson – discussed what it would take to defeat what they see as US administration intent on bullying the public into submission, dismantling the institutions that protect health and safety, and eroding personal freedoms.
Reich recommends people coming together to show they’re ready to take to the streets consistently, rekindling a sense of solidarity that has been missing from American life and transforming it into a movement.
The New Republic
In The New Republic, correspondent Susan Milligan asked the question “Is America Pissed Off Enough at Trump and Musk for a General Strike?” She wrote: “The United States hasn’t seen such a massive labour action in 78 years. But the oligarchic wreckage of this administration is fuelling multiple movements toward that goal.”
Today, she said, fewer than 10 percent of American workers belong to a union – and that number drops to under 6 percent when public-sector unions are excluded. Yet, despite the downward trend in membership, public support for unions is at a nearly 60-year high. According to Gallup, 70 percent of Americans expressed approval of labour unions last year.
In recent years, a wide range of unions — from autoworkers and dockworkers to Southern communications workers and Hollywood’s actors and writers — have led successful strikes, signalling a renewed spirit of labour activism.
Discontent in America
In the UK we can often lose sight of the social unease the Trump administration is fomenting.
The increasing tension over the bin strikes in Birmingham is a reminder of union power and an unwillingness to play along with official plans.
British voters will perhaps today exercise their frustrations at the ballot box in the UK’s various local and mayoral elections – while our American cousins weigh up whether to take to the streets.
