Challenging the feel-good but oftentimes transient and ineffective nature of protests, Prose pointed to the economic disruption of last weekend's peaceful airport demonstrations as small-scale models for impactful resistance. "It's hard to think of a nonviolent movement that has succeeded without causing its opponents a certain amount of trouble, discomfort and inconvenience," Prose wrote. "And economic boycotts—another sort of trouble and inconvenience—have proved remarkably successful in persuading companies to cease supporting repressive governments."

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Nelson Lichtenstein is a UC Santa Barbara professor and director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy who has written extensively on the subject of strikes. When I called him to ask whether a general strike could result in real change, Lichtenstein told me he believes that with the amount of political energy lingering after the Women's March and renewed with each controversial Trump action, this call for a strike "could easily balloon into something absolutely real."

But he tempered that statement with cautions that for a general strike to work, there must be specific and overt demands. Because the flashpoint of this proposed strike is clearly immigration-related, Lichtenstein suggests that the movement more explicitly asks for "a complete rescinding of Trump's anti-immigrant executive order."

"For a general strike to be truly considered successful," he added, "you have to get some of the employers to join in on or make allowances for the protest