Here is an idea I would encourage all of you to spread: business unions. Businesses banding together and agreeing to all open together, on the same day, and on their own terms. Small business is the labor in this case and tyrannical Governors are the Management, or the Man, or the Big Corporation. If they open one or two at a time they are easy to pick off. But if thousands open at the same time in, say, California, it will be difficult politically for the Governor to target ALL of them. Call it a walk out strike. Or a sit down strike. A coordinated action done on a large enough scale that it has coercive power.
The genesis of this idea is a very interesting conversation I had last night with a bar owner who more or less organized the first successful resistance to government tyranny. He got together forty other restaurant owners, and got them to sign a petition saying they were going to reopen on December 16th with or without permission. He hand wrote the thing, and got them all to add their signatures, emails, phone numbers and their business name. Eventually he had 8,000 signatures from around the State.
I asked him what he would have done if they had opened and the Governor had called their bluff. He said he would never do that. It would be too unpopular. It would be political suicide. And he was right. When you are dealing with submissive people they are just numbers, abstractions. But when you put large numbers of faces on things, the people become human again, and injustices committed against them more openly indefensible.
And he pointed out he was trying to look out for ordinary people who were just trying to survive, and ideally put a few Christmas presents under the tree for their kids. The Governors of this country have in large measure made that difficult to impossible.
He also said: you know how you deal with a bully? You punch him in the nose. You stand up to him. This used to be a truism that we were all raised with.
I of course agree fully. I have dealt with bullies, and that is how I dealt with them. Appeasement never works. No amount of groveling and submission is ever enough. They take what you give, then demand more. It is never ending. And with most bullies you only have to do it once. It pops their bubble. You make it no fun any more for them.
I would encourage those of you particularly in California and Oregon to share this idea. It’s a great idea and could gather steam very quickly.