Red State Revolt: The Teachers Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics

(Paperback)

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After nearly four decades of labor quiescence, the US was hit by a wave of strikes in early 2018. Inspired by the wildcat victory in West Virginia, educators in Oklahoma, Arizona and beyond walked off their jobs to demand increased school funding and better pay. Confounding all expectations, these actions erupted in Republican-dominated states with weak unions, bans on public sector strikes, and electorates that voted for Trump in 2016. With similar movements now emerging in California, Colorado, North Carolina, and Massachusetts, there is no sign that this upsurge will be short-lived. Red State Revolt is an compelling analysis of the emergence and development of this historic strike wave, with an eye to extracting its main strategic lessons for educators, labor activists, and radicals across the country. A former high school teacher and longtime activist, Eric Blanc embedded himself into the rank-and-file leadership of the walkouts, where he was given access to internal organizing meetings and secret Facebook groups inaccessible to most journalists, populating the book with the voices of the school workers who put their livelihoods on the line.

Reviews

Comprehensive and excellent -- Diane Ravitch, a historian of education, an education policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University. She is the author of Reign of Error
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. -- Corey Robin, author of the Reactionary Mind
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. -- Micah Uetricht, author of Strike for America
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. -- Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump
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. -- Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System
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. -- Jane McAlevey, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age
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. -- Amy Goodman, Host & Executive Producer, Democracy Now!
Read Eric Blanc's book! -- Sara Nelson, President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA
[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. -- Samir Sonti * New Labor Forum 2019, Vol. 28(3) 107119 *

Author Bio

Eric Blanc is the son of educators, a former high school teacher, a writer for Jacobin, and a doctoral student in sociology at New York University.