strike | Striking dock workers: Working Class Heroes

Striking workers in the port of Piraeus during a 24-hour industrial dispute last week Photo: dpa/Thanassis Stavrakis Thank you! Thanks! Thanks!

To the workers who brought 113 ports around the world to a standstill the day before Halloween to demonstrate - of course for job security and better wages, but above all - against war. So not just to demonstrate, but to stop the machine directly. Because weapons don't get into war zones on their own. You have to load most of them onto ships. Or just not be loaded. Last Friday you stopped an estimated 50,000 containers. In US dollars: almost three billion.

And if Strike were a person, he would be a superhero.

He would wear a yellow high-visibility vest and a canvas cape. But it wouldn't be a he, but he and she and he and much more - a swarm that only manifests itself when thousands pursue the same goal. Leader of the pack, the super-superhero so to speak, would be the general strike. Superpower: non-violence.

Mithu Melanie Sanyal is a writer, journalist and cultural scientist, daughter of an Indian engineer and a secretary of Polish origin, grew up in Düsseldorf. In her non-fiction books and novels - her first: "Identitti" was a huge success, her second: "Antichristie" is about the armed struggle against the Empire - as well as in radio plays and essays she deals with questions of feminism, racism and sexual violence. What Mithu Sanyal publishes triggers debates, and productive ones at that. She will write for us about everything between everyday life, politics and literature.

Why is this important? Because when it comes to non-violence, we usually sit back and let the autocrats of this world do their thinking. Think! This column is slowly turning into a collection of studies that you should definitely know about. So here is my absolute favorite study: the Chenoweth study.

Political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria J Stephan examined 323 resistance movements between 1900 and 2006 and came to the conclusion that non-violent methods were almost twice as likely to be successful as armed ones. Not only was the number of deaths and injuries significantly lower, but the probability that the country would still be a democracy five years later was ten times as high if the approach was non-violent.

This is a study that should be taught in every school! As do non-violent methods, better known as social defense or civil resistance. Another superhero who only manifests himself when thousands pursue the same goal.

This may all work in your fantasy world - and in small skirmishes - but this is the real world and civil resistance has never... oh!

Correct! The fascists' first advance in Germany, the Kapp Putsch, was not prevented by the military in 1920, but by a general strike. The largest in German history. There was no train service, no newspapers, no mail, telephone connections were interrupted, all factories and even the authorities were closed. The entrepreneurs, on the other hand, were... hmm... open-minded about the Kapp Putsch and only switched to the victorious side at the last second.

Since the apocalyptic election results, no not in Berlin, but in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, I have been thinking a lot about the Kapp Putsch. What if the unions planned a general strike just in case? Just an idea.

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