How can we build and sustain the kind of solidarity and strategic coordination that enabled the 1913 miners' strike to challenge repression, while navigating the risks of violence and government repression in our own context?
Solidarity is not a tweet, it is infrastructure. The 1913 miners spent months layering trust underground: pit committees fed rumours into a single strike council; taverns doubled as listening posts; a shared fund bought bread and dignity. Recreate that architecture in three moves.
First, weave cross-sector councils before the fight. Teachers, gig drivers, tenants: each elect two delegates empowered to pledge collective action. Meet in person, phones outside the room. Craft a one-sentence principle every group can chant when repression hits.
Second, pair hot disruption with cold care. A strike without a parallel food network collapses. Stock co-op pantries, legal teams, mental-health pods. Care turns a tactic into a community, and police fear communities more than crowds.
Third, map the escalation ladder and the exit door in advance. Rapid, synchronized shutdowns of key chokepoints create bargaining power; pre-agreed pause points prevent burnout and splinter violence.
Repression is a chemistry variable, not destiny. When councils can halt labour and restart life on their own terms, nightsticks look like nostalgia.
Which dormant sector in your city could become the unexpected linchpin of such a solidarity council?
What specific steps can we take to identify and empower a dormant sector in our city that could serve as the backbone of an organized, resilient solidarity council—especially one capable of navigating repression and sustaining strategic resistance?
Begin like a miner with a lamp in the dark: map the city’s unseen veins. Spend two weeks conducting listening walks through laundromats, logistics depots, elder-care homes, waste-recycling yards. Ask: Where does frustration already simmer yet remains unorganised? Note shared shifts, break rooms, WhatsApp groups. When multiple sites mention the same grievance, you have located a dormant sector.
Next, seed leadership quietly. Offer free skill-shares on phone-free meeting protocol, rapid decision-making, and strike funds; host them in places of everyday life—barber shops, soccer fields—so repression cannot isolate the lessons as “political.” Rotate facilitators so charisma cannot be decapitated.
Third, weave mutual-aid muscle before any public action. Trial run a citywide “day of bread” where volunteers from safer professions deliver meals to the newly identified workers. Reciprocity builds faster than ideology; once people taste concrete support they trust the council blueprint.
Finally, test coordination with a low-risk rehearsal: a synchronized five-minute slowdown that halts an invisible but critical flow (trash collection, parcel scanning, elevator service). Measure response time from authorities, document vulnerabilities, and refine the escalation ladder.
Remember: identify, empower, rehearse, escalate. Care is the power source, surprise the shield.
What overlooked workplace or service in your city could grind daily life to a pause if it collectively inhaled for just five minutes?
To identify and empower a dormant sector, we started by mapping places where people gather naturally—like community centers, small businesses, or informal markets—that often go unnoticed but hold social cohesion. We held discreet listening sessions there, building trust and spotting leadership willing to take small risks. Then, we organized skill-sharing and mutual aid projects in those spaces, creating a sense of shared purpose. Rehearsing coordinated actions, like brief slowdowns of key services, helped us test readiness and build resilience, all while keeping risks manageable.
You have cracked open the crust; now turn the fissure into a fault line. Cement the gains by institutionalising what still looks informal:
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Codify the listening network into a federated council that meets on a lunar schedule. Minutes travel by hand-carried USB or printed zine, never cloud. Ritualising secrecy keeps repression guessing while sustaining momentum.
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Convert mutual aid into a proto-budget. A sliding-scale dues jar, passed at every gathering, funds emergency stipends and bail before panic strikes. Publish weekly ledgers on recycled cardboard to prove transparency.
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Pair each “dormant” sector with a public-facing ally. Street vendors adopt librarians; janitors pair with tech workers. Dual visibility means if police squeeze one node, the mirror node blasts the story outward.
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Pre-negotiate a post-shutdown civic offer: a community-run alternative that resumes the halted service under new rules. Power respects movements that can govern what they disrupt.
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Train a rotation of half-public spokespeople ready to surface when crackdowns come, shielding underground strategists. Voice decoys buy time.
You are close to a citywide nervous system. What single symbol or ritual could you broadcast so that, when unveiled, every participant instantly knows the hour to strike?
From my experience, a powerful symbol is a simple, recognizable gesture—like a shared hand signal or a specific lighting pattern—that can be quickly communicated and understood across sectors. We once used a coordinated wave of flashlights at a set time, signaling everyone to pause or act. It creates instant unity, signals readiness, and reinforces collective discipline without revealing strategies—an unspoken code that builds trust and resilience.
Light is primordial: it pierces surveillance without words. A flash-sync can migrate across class lines because every pocket already carries a bulb. To deepen its strategic voltage, embed three layers of meaning. First, ordinary usage: a phone waved for music. Second, a preparedness cue: two quick pulses at sunset tell insiders to ready fallback channels. Third, the irreversible go-signal: a five-pulse crescendo that even children recognize from rehearsal games. Because the gesture is commonplace, authorities cannot criminalise it without plunging the city into literal darkness.
Pair the ritual with distributed timekeeping. Cheap radio-synced watches or a pirated NTP server guarantee that the flash wave rolls through neighbourhoods with atomic accuracy, overwhelming spotters who rely on staggered crackdowns. Record each activation on offline devices; cut a rapid micro-documentary after every drill so participants witness their collective body lighting up the skyline. Visibility builds myth, myth builds resolve.
Finally, plan silence after the blaze. A city that goes dark for sixty seconds right after the flash forces power to ask: where will illumination return, and under whose terms?
What other everyday object could carry a covert second life as your movement’s heartbeat?