I think it's worth introducing into global English a word that we Malayans (i use this specifically, though now it's become Malaysian) picked up from Indian colonial subjects: hartal (as per wiki: 'A hartal is a mass protest, often involving a total shutdown of workplaces, offices, shops, and courts of law, and a form of civil disobedience similar to a labour strike. In addition to being a general strike, it involves the voluntary closure of schools and places of business. It is a mode of appealing to the sympathies of a government to reverse an unpopular or unacceptable decision.'). It's a useful distinction because the current conversations are beholden to the framing of industrial labour action (and thus limiting the thinking that results in users also only seen as labour actors) when it's as much an expression of a populace about governance. #RedditMigration #Labor #Labour #Strike #Hartal
via @Chronotope
@gabriPardon my ignorance but I always thought that general strikes meant no schools as teachers are workers too and without public transit many people cannot physically go to schools.
So, is the only difference between a general strike and a hartal that businesspeople join in the strike thus making it a cross-class thing or am I missing some key detail?
@gabri
The main thing with hartals which i didn't communicate fully but came out in this other exchange (https://blahaj.zone/notes/9fz9jtv59s) is that it's less of a industrial action but outright political action, that's informed by the fact it was first done by colonial subjects who had no political rights as such to do this in the first place, so that's the cross-class part. Does that clarify? General strikes can be similar, but as in your example, the premise of protest is an injustice against labour rights (hence schools close because teachers aren't there). Hartals exist already in places the word isn't used, for example Greta Thunberg's school strikes. TLDR is the location of the grievance, which can be economic but fundamentally because lack of political representation in the first place.
My contention with the reddit blackouts is that it's more hartal than an economic strike (first hartals was protesting taxes etc that the colonial subjects had no influence to change in the first place)
@gabri@tech.lgbt@cendawanita
okay, now I got your point. thanks!