Party Like It’s 1946
  January 29, 2026 Salutations, Meteor readers, I’m in my nerd-girl history bag today—let’s get to it! Ahead of a planned general strike tomorrow, we take a look at civic actions of yesteryear and what we can learn from them now. Plus, Rebecca Carroll on Broadway’s “Liberation.” On the picket line, Shannon Melero  WHAT’S GOING ONShut it down: Tomorrow, activist groups, student associations, labor unions, businesses, and regular people across the country will be protesting ICE by staging a national shutdown via a general strike: “no school, no work, and no shopping.” Leftists and even some establishment Democrats have long yearned for a sweeping general strike, and the impact of Minneapolis’s version last week has made the prospect seem more possible. But many who’ve lost hope may be wondering: How can anyone pull this off? Do these things even work? You don’t have to look too far back to answer those questions. We saw the power of a general strike in Puerto Rico in 2019 when the people ousted a corrupt governor. In 2024, South Koreans held a general strike as a direct response to President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law. But the last time the U.S. mainland truly saw general strikes grind businesses to a screeching halt was in 1946. It was known as the greatest wave of strikes in American history, with over 4 million workers withholding labor in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Texas, New Jersey, and California. The workers demanded better pay, safer working conditions, and an end to unfavorable union deals that came as a result of post-war economic policies. Entire industries were brought to their knees.  THE YEAR OF THE STRIKE, WHICH FIRST CAME TO LIFE AT THE END OF 1945, IMPACTED WORKERS ACROSS INDUSTRIES. IN NEW YORK, WORKERS WENT ON STRIKE IN JANUARY FOR FAIR WAGES FROM WESTERN UNION. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) The largest general strike that year happened in Oakland, California—and it was kicked off by a small group of determined women. During World War II, to replace men who had been enlisted, women took union jobs in shipyards and factories. But when the war ended in 1945, they had to give up those jobs for returning soldiers. Women who wanted or needed to continue working ended up in retail, where there were no unions and few labor protections. At Kahn’s Department store, workers were forced to endure a demoralizing “Ready Room,” where on-call workers would spend unpaid hours waiting for work that sometimes never came. In October of that year, women (and some men) retail workers organized a strike that was 400 strong. After violent face-offs with the police, the strike ballooned to more than 100,000 workers from various industries, effectively shutting down a major city for two days. The bars were allowed to stay open, on the condition that they put their juke boxes on the sidewalk to play for no charge; the hit song “Pistol Packin’ Mama, Lay That Pistol Down” filled the streets. “People who worked throughout the War had been taking all this crap from employers in the name of the war effort,” Stan Weir, who was an organizer for the United Auto Workers at the time and joined the strike in Oakland, recalled in a 1990 interview. It was “that kind of phony patriotism, instead of real patriotism.” (It’s a distinction worth revisiting in an era when some people define “patriotism” as weaponizing fear, white nationalism, and violence.) The government was so shaken by the events of 1946 that the following year, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which severely limited unions’ abilities to authorize general strikes. Meanwhile, the Oakland women were beaten, mocked, and ignored. But they kept going, and in May 1947, after what probably felt like months of hopelessness, Retail Clerks Local 1265 was recognized. The general strike they inspired in their city changed the course of history. So, could a mass shutdown on Friday really change anything? The proof is in the past. AND:
  What If We Centered Black Women in the Story of “Liberation”?A conversation with the women behind the Broadway playBY REBECCA CARROLL  CARROLL IN CONVERSATION WITH THE STARS OF “LIBERATION” AND GLORIA STEINEM. (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR) Bess Wohl’s critically acclaimed play “Liberation” will take its final bow this Sunday. The Broadway show is a nuanced retelling of the feminist movement through the lens of an unnamed adult daughter seeking to understand her late mother, Lizzie, a journalist in 1970s Ohio. Lizzie (Susannah Flood plays both mother and daughter) is white, of course; stories from the feminist movement seem to almost always center white women. To Wohl’s credit, the play includes a few clear nods to the historical exclusion of Black women from the movement. There are two Black characters: Celeste (Kristolyn Lloyd), a book editor who is part of Lizzie’s consciousness-raising group, and Joanne (Kayla Davion), a working mother who is very much not part of the group. Still, these two Black women are pitted against each other in a key moment, wherein Joanne questions Celeste’s motivations for being part of the all-white women’s group. The scene concludes with Lizzie bringing it back to herself. I wanted to talk about it all, so, along with my colleagues at The Meteor and the extraordinary support of feminist icon Gloria Steinem, I moderated a talkback with Lloyd, Davion, Wohl, and much of the cast at Steinem’s home in Manhattan. On what feminism means to them: Davion: It’s about the confidence in my own skin…What does it mean to be alive? I can’t talk about being alive without mentioning feminism. Wohl: I love what you just said, Kayla…as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to wonder how big can the definition of feminism be without losing meaning. How expansive can we make it? On why it’s so hard for Black women and white women to do feminism together: Davion: I code switch. Like, every day. So that means that I can’t live in the fullness of myself. [It’s often said or implied that] I should be doing something else, that there’s a more professional way of doing things, that my hair should be a specific way. But what does that have to do with the things that I have to say as the person that I am? I feel like we haven’t come into the real understanding of acceptance, because there’s still this idea of what it looks like to be a modern-day woman. Lloyd: The system allows for women who are not Black to experience much more ease. When it actually comes to fighting the fight and getting uncomfortable, they don’t know how. On how the actors approached their roles: Davion (who plays a white woman, Lizzie’s mother, in one scene): I was terrified…As a Black woman, knowing that this audience is about to watch me transform into a white woman, the first thing I’m thinking of is ‘I don’t wanna be targeted.’ I don’t want people to think, ‘Why is this Black girl doing this?’ And for Black people, I don’t want them to look at me and be like, ‘Now Kayla, why?’ Lloyd (who grew up in a predominantly white community): On occasion, it does feel like a re-traumatization…[I’ve] been in therapy for healing from having to be in all-white spaces, and then [I] have to be the only one in this all-white space on stage telling the story of this woman who I don’t imagine in New York spends much time in all-white spaces. She’s also being re-traumatized being back in Ohio, where she has to be closeted [as a lesbian] and there’s no other group for her to express herself in. So, I find that I am able to pull on old feelings, which is why my ritual for getting out of Celeste is very specific. At the end of every show, I have to shower the smell of Celeste off. Before we go into the show, I tell myself: ‘You’re not a race traitor. Some woman out there is gonna be liberated because she sees you.’ There is something you have to turn on as a Black woman, and kind of, like, lower down when you’re in that space…these women are not gonna be able to meet you where you’re at. They just don’t know your experience. They don’t have your skin.  WEEKEND READING 📚On the needles: Resistance knitting is back. (Slate) On (not) all women: Dayna Tortorici digs into feminism’s 200-year-old history of infighting. (n+1) On human rights: The Taliban outlawed all forms of birth control in Afghanistan. Women are being “broken” by pregnancies and untreated miscarriages. (The Guardian)  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
