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Red State Revolt:The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics
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One of the most comprehensive portraits of a strike wave ever written, an indispensable window into the changing shape of the working class and American politics
Thirteen months after Trump allegedly captured the allegiance of “the white working class,” a strike wave—the first in over four decades—rocked the United States. Inspired by the wildcat victory in West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, and across the country walked off their jobs and shut down their schools to demand better pay for educators, more funding for students, and an end to years of austerity.
Confounding all expectations, these working-class rebellions erupted in regions with Republican electorates, weak unions, and bans on public sector strikes. By mobilizing to take their destinies into their own hands, red state school workers posed a clear alternative to politics-as-usual. And with similar actions now gaining steam in Los Angeles, Oakland, Denver, and Virginia, there is no sign that this upsurge will be short-lived.
Red State Revolt is a compelling analysis of the emergence and development of this historic strike wave, with an eye to extracting its main strategic lessons for educators, labor organizers, and radicals across the country. A former high school teacher and longtime activist, Eric Blanc embedded himself into the rank-and-file leaderships of the walkouts, where he was given access to internal organizing meetings and secret Facebook groups inaccessible to most journalists. The result is one of the richest portraits of the labor movement to date, a story populated with the voices of school workers who are winning the fight for the soul of public education—and redrawing the political map of the country at large.
Reviews
Comprehensive and excellent
If you've not been reading Eric Blanc's reporting on the teacher strikes, you've been missing out. Far and away the smartest writing out there on the topic.
has anyone in American labor history ever covered a strike wave so closely? Has a labor writer ever been on the scene of so many different upsurges in so many geographically far-flight places in such a short amount of time? Has anyone ever covered these conflicts in a way that both captures the incredible sense of possibility that these strikes have put on the table while also remaining sober about what the strikers have achieved and failed to achieve, with both a bird's-eye view as an observer and a commitment to hearing from workers in their own words? Eric's work on these strikes has been superb.
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Before 2018, strikes had become so rare in this country that hardly anyone knew what they were. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, they began. Not in left-wing cities but in the reddest of red states. Not of white men in factories but of teachers, many of them women, many of them of color. Eric Blanc spent months with the strikers, talking to them on picket lines, listening to them in meetings, sharing with them on Facebook threads, and more. Like Orwell in Barcelona, he's given us a first-hand report from the front lines, making sense of the most improbable political story of an improbable decade. This is exhilarating reading about a movement that will be shaping politics for decades to come.
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Eric Blanc has written the best on-the-ground description and explanation of the red state teachers' revolt. He was there and he understands that what happened is historic. The brave teachers who walked out in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, and other red states started a powerful trend. They give hope that the reactionary politics of the past forty years may be reversed by working people who realize that 'enough is enough.' Blanc's enthralling description of their struggles is a chronicle that should be widely read.
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Read this book to understand the many important lessons educators so powerfully taught about what it will take to rebuild a working-class movement, defeat Trumpism, and take on the billionaires.
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Eric Blanc’s compelling new book, “Red State Revolt”, is a thoroughly researched and eloquently written story of one of the most powerful social movements of our time. His incisive reporting shows how teachers, through labor organizing and strategic strikes, are protecting and strengthening public education, the great equalizing force of any democratic society.
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Read Eric Blanc's book!
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[T]here could be real potential in a national campaign around basic needs like public education. For thinking through how to go about building that movement—how to connect struggles by the workers who provide such public goods to the communities that depend upon them, and above all how to deploy the power of our best weapon, the strike—Red State Revolt is indispensable.
, New Labor Forum 2019, Vol. 28(3) 107–119