Call for First National General Strike In U.S.

The preliminary steps for a National General Strike were made by one of radio’s most distinguished broadcasters. Speaking on the air in San Francisco, Ray Taliaferro, the late night news talk show host of KGO (810AM) asked his audience to turn themselves into a “think tank” for the evening and come up with intelligent suggestions that could help the Democrats retake the presidency and control of the House and Senate in 2004. The audience, which is now worldwide due to web broadcasting, responded quickly.

A call for a National Strike came almost immediately. Mr. Taliaferro, who is a long time political insider and past president of San Francisco’s NAACP stated, “I will put my energy into this,” and agreed to lead and organize what will be the first national strike in the history of the United States. Mr. Taliaferro said, “I have contacts in Congress and I know labor leaders. I’ll call them to come on my show and we’ll make our plans together.” Mr. Taliaferro estimated that 50 to 60 million Americans would participate in a one day strike. “It’s very easy to do and very easy to pull it off,” he said. “Folks will just call in sick that day.” He said that he wanted several writers to outline the principles and goals of the strike and to email a short paragraph to his show. “People have to know why we are doing this.” Mr. Taliaferro suggested that the National Strike be scheduled in September of 2004, “sometime around 9/11.”

The sentiment of his audience was singular though expressed differently by different callers, the implication was that the Bush administration marks a sea change in the politics of America; that a battle for the very heart and soul of the democratic constitutional system is at stake. Slogans from emails around the world expressed the concept, “It’s a battle over which shall prevail, ‘We the people’ or ‘We the oligarchy.’”

A second major suggestion was to stop the GOP from rigging the computer voting machines. A caller said, “It’s a well known fact that the head of the leading touch system voting machine is a Republican who has vowed to win Ohio’s election for George W. Bush at any cost.” Mr. Taliaferro responded. “It is absolutely essential that we do everything in our power to make the 2004 election fair and honest. You know that a desperate opposition will do every dirty trick and fraud in the book. We’ve got to develop a bullet proof safe voting procedure.” He said that voting fraud strikes at the very heart of a democratic system. “You don’t have a democracy when voting fraud is acceptable to those in power.”

© Scoop Media