Jack Lindstrom - Stay focused on the target: a lesson learned from "Shut Down the Corporations"
March 13, 2012 An incident with a truck driver stopped by our F29 action made me realize that during the May 1st General Strike and any other actions, we must let workers of non-targeted companies do their job and get paid--for both strategic and moral reasons.
During the "Shut Down the Corporations" F29 action near Riverside, CA, Occupiers completely blocked the intersection leading into Schneider Logistics, a Walmart distribution center, to prevent trucks from going in or out.
I and a girl I'd been talking to, Bethany, went over to the driver of one such stopped truck--a diminutive Latino guy, maybe about 40 years old, with striking, dark-lined eyes (I feel the need to describe him because when I hear "truck driver," the image that comes to mind is a 300-lbs white dude)--who had come out of the cab to reason with us. We filled him in on why we were there and showed him a couple pieces of propaganda. He insisted that he worked for a company called Ferguson, not Schneider Logistics. His plain truck--unemblazoned with any logo, unlike the Walmart trucks a block over--seemed to confirm that. Nevertheless, our goal was to "Shut Down the Corporations"--not just Walmart, even though that was our target. I looked up Ferguson on my iPhone and found that it was a major plumbing supply company.
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