Strike again.
So, the strike is here, once more. Our local organization called to start the strike on Sunday evening (after finishing up the market they host), but the national organization beat them to it and declared the national strike starting today. The government, not far behind, declared state of emergency everywhere, with a curfew from 10pm to 5am, cleared a few pre-ejaculated roadblocks and pronounced themselves in control of the situation.
Little do they know…
It’s just another rodeo for most people, and yet they panic. Oh no, another strike. As if we hadn’t lived through 4 of them since the big one in 2019. "Nothing is eaten as hot as it's cooked" is a German proverb, and it pretty much fits the situation here. Political disasters blow over soon enough. And there’s actually much to learn during the strikes.
Who are you with and who’s with you?
I wrote a post in our local Facebook group, saying that there’s no need to panic. That it’s an opportunity for those who haven’t lived during a strike here yet, a shutdown, enforced by a para-governmental organization. An opportunity to see what the community is really like, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Some people are conquered by greed, trying to make the best for themselves in a dire situation for all. I remember a guy during the last strike, when eggs were getting more expensive. He bought a lot of them for 3$/30 eggs and sold them for $6/30 eggs. And he was proud of his supposed financial genius. Needless to say, I wouldn’t do him a favor.
There were many others, trying to give a hand, reaching out, organizing. One thing I always tell people that the best way to get through this is to be loyal to those who are loyal to you. I buy my flour from the same people I bought it 10 years ago, though I could probably save money by now, buying in bulk from their provider, skipping them. But the provider is not a local distributor, but a national one. Do you think they would think about me for a minute when push comes to shove? For them, I’m a number. For my guy, I’m a long term client. He brings me the flour, if he has it, no matter how, even if that means showing up at 3am.
I remember the ice-cream guy, cycling in from Ibarra, the nearest big town, as he couldn’t get through with a car due to the barricades. It was around 2 weeks into the big strike in 2019, and some specific meds didn’t arrive in Cotacachi for a client of his. He got the meds in Ibarra, where he lived, and brought them with him when he came to see if he was able/allowed to open, at least for a while.
I don’t remember any chain, or big company, doing anything within the community. They were indeed paralyzed. The disruption of the regular capitalism through organized resistance is not something that they can react to, except for probably paying for brute force. Community can. And no, this is not a plaidoyer for communism, not at all.
It’s for communitarianism.
We are way too individualists. That may work while the illusion of normality is upheld, but as soon as an emergency comes around, a real threat, it’s useless. And that makes it a very bad principle to follow, even in good times. It’s in crisis when things become real. And the reality is that we need the network, we need our neighbors (even though we sometimes disagree with them substantially), we need the local producers, we need the community.
And it takes time to build that. It took me years to build mine, and I’m still building it. On different sites, different towers, but the same unbreachable castle. Honestly, I had no idea what I was working on. I thought that I had just gotten good at managing crisis, but in reality, I had just expanded my network. Grown my community.
So, here I sit…
Lily fast asleep, with a little bit of a cold. I’m sipping a cold beer, in my Donald Duck pj’s which were gifted to me by a good friend after seeing the utter disaster that my former pj’s were, ready to go to bed. And I’m not worried. Not about me, not about my friends. Not about those who are a little bit frightened at the moment, by what might be coming.
We have our backs.
What are your thoughts about this topic? Please feel free to engage in any original way, including dropping links to your posts on similar topics. I'm happy to read (and curate) any quality content that is not created by LLM/AI, as well as read your own experience and point of view, I love to learn!
Is that not bread of life am seeing there? 🙄🙄🤔😄
Oh, it definitely helps staying alive.
Such a thoughtful reflection. You’re right, it’s in times of crisis that true community and loyalty really show.
Nad the opposite, too. It can also bring out the worst in humans. Either way, it's a learning experience.
Even in my former corpo life, it was about getting to the person, as opposed to the department, or the person who knew the person, in order to ever get anything done.
Society is much the same, only with true survival involved.
It is indeed. Knowing the others around you and their skill set and if you can count on them. That's either something developed over time, or learned in crisis.
You're absolutely right. Support local producers, know your neighbours, build community. I've bought my chicken feed for the last 5 years from a farm about 30 km away that grows and mills it. When a courier let them down recently and I was out of feed, the owner, unbidden, delivered a bag to my door, free, gratis and for nothing.
That's how it should be, right? But in their incessant quest for "cheaper" and "more convenient", most people have dropped the community for the individual benefit. And the system is supporting them, for now. Even when those who have been utterly disappointed by the system don't even realize that, but blame everything else except their incapacity to build and maintain and contribute to a community.
This is the problem with so many people today - they are only making connections for the good times, and they disappear if someone is having bad times. But, if they are the ones having bad times, they expect others to be there for them, to support them. It is the entitlement of the times.
Healthy communities survive are through thick and thin times.
Yeah, that's an additional risk. I was about to put that in there, too, writing about those who pretend to be all community oriented but really aren't. The guy who did the thing with the eggs later tried to pretend that in a restaurant, but it didn't work for him, it wasn't genuine and people noticed.
Thank you for commenting, always an honor to have you reading & commenting my posts!
I hope they can restore order soon, I read the news about how they reallocated funds and the price of diesel spiked. Strikes are bad for the economy, especially growing businesses like yours. Take care my friend!
They will restore order with a compromise. Hopefully, that was their strategy from the beginning, Trump style - going all in first, and then retracting to get to a good outcome. But here, it's uncertain. They can just be totally apathetic towards the impact that that measurement has on inflation and the poor.
We usually do well during those emergencies. After such a long time here, I established a vast network, as described above, and that helps a lot. More than anything, it's a lot of stress and energy that goes into keeping everything running.