GSUS & May Day

Clarifying our stance, highlighting our organizing strategy, and providing some actionable ways to plug into revolutionary work.

May Day is not the end goal and should be treated as an organizing opportunity. As May 1st approaches, many groups are calling for a “general strike” or national day of action. GSUS supports people taking action against this system, but we must be clear that participating in a single day of protest is only valuable if it is used to build lasting infrastructure. Actions should strengthen mutual aid networks, grow survival programs, deepen political education, recruit into long term organizing, and increase people’s power in their communities.

Understanding the stakes means looking beyond the surface. Trump is not the root, he is a symptom. The crisis we face in the U.S. is bigger than one administration or one party. The primary contradiction is not “bad leadership,” it is a system. The U.S. is a colonial state and a capitalist empire built on displacement, extraction, imprisonment and exploitation.

Recognizing this helps us target our efforts at structural change rather than temporary fixes.

If we are serious about lasting change, we must ask: who is shaping this movement? Too often, the managerial class, the NGOs, nonprofits, liberal institutions, career activists and political professionals have led, controlling messaging and strategy while leaving the people most harmed at the margins. A revolutionary movement must instead be rooted in and shaped by the most oppressed, including:

• Black communities

• Brown, migrant, and displaced communities

• Indigenous nations and communities

• the unhoused

• the unemployed

• disabled people

• incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people

• the non unionized and lumpenproletariat

With this principle in mind, we see why deep community organizing is essential. Our struggle is beyond symbolic protest. Survival must come first. We build power with the people the system uses to control the rest of us, rather than around them. Any effort to organize a revolutionary general strike must be grounded in decolonial, abolitionist and revolutionary frameworks, combining political education, mutual aid, community defense and collective self determination.

From these foundations, we can act in a way that truly transforms society. When we strike, we strike to create new systems in the image of the people and not asking the empire for better management. We do not negotiate human rights, and we do not separate our struggles. Each fight strengthens the others. Locally, nationally, and globally, we are building toward Intercommunalism, the interconnected liberation of all oppressed communities.

GSUS is organizing for revolutionary struggle, and there are concrete ways to get involved:

• Attend the next General Strike U.S. Teach-In (Onboarding), every other Sunday at 5:30 pm PT / 8:30 pm ET. Watch the 30-minute live reading of our Welcome Packet or read it independently (available in Espanol).

• Support or join your local or regional General Strike U.S. chapter or start one with our support.

• Connect with our national Discord to engage in ongoing planning and mutual aid.

Our work follows our strategy of building the political and material infrastructure needed to sustain a real mass strike. Once 3.5% participation is reached on our digital strike card, a strike date will be set. Until then, we will not be pressured into premature action for the sake of optics or performance. We support action, but a revolutionary general strike cannot be declared into existence, it must be built.

All Power to The People!