Since the strike, there’s a definite sense of solidarity that wasn’t there before. When you go in to school and see all of your coworkers in red, it’s like they’re saying, “I’m with you, I got you.” It’s hard to even sum up that feeling. You used to go in to school, do your thing, and go home. Now if there’s a struggle, we go do something about it because we’re in it together. It’s not just that there are a lot more personal friendships—we saw that we had power.
—Arizona teacher Noah Karvelis
When it comes to political strategy, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. West Virginia and the other recent teacher revolts have confirmed the continued relevance of an old political insight: strikes are workers’ most powerful weapon. Formerly accepted as commonplace, organized labor dropped this idea decades ago; on the Left, it has been marginalized. For both movements, the consequences of turning away from on-the-job militancy have been dire.
Labor-management “cooperation” has led to concession after concession by unions across the country. The much-heralded organizing model associated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and with the “New Voice” leadership that swept the AFL-CIO in the 1990s has not significantly increased union density. Nor has the prevailing form of social justice unionism reversed organized labor’s decline. Even today’s progressive unions often focus more on electing and lobbying Democrats than on building workplace fightbacks.
The union movement’s turn away from the strike over the past four decades has reinforced the Left’s drift from organized labor. As unionization rates and job actions continued to drop, it was understandable—if strategically shortsighted—that progressives and radicals would look for greener political pastures elsewhere.
New social movements since the 1960s, such as environmentalism, feminism, and LGBTQ liberation, have scored important victories, but none have approximated the social weight of organized labor at its height. Demonstrations, civil disobedience, and electoral campaigns haven’t been enough, on their own, to reverse the neoliberal tide. In the absence of a strong labor movement capable of challenging capital and the state, organized radicals have remained marginal—and movements against oppression and environmental devastation have been unable to generate the social strength necessary to extract their most far-reaching demands.
The red state revolt illustrates why the Left needs labor to win—and why bringing back the strike is an indispensable and urgent task for anybody interested in creating a better world. Paralyzing production remains the most impactful and empowering action that working people can undertake. Since the system depends on our labor, we have immense structural leverage. This holds true for public employees—including predominantly female workforces, like teachers—no less than it does for the private sector.
With an eye to understanding the power of strikes, this chapter explores how the work stoppages unfolded in West Virginia and Arizona. Since Oklahoma took a different path, it will be discussed mostly in the following chapter.
I begin by outlining the processes and mechanisms through which educators tapped into their latent power—as well as the obstacles they confronted along the way. From there, my focus turns to an analysis of how the strikes radically transformed the collective organization, self-confidence, and political consciousness of working people. As Polish socialist Rosa Luxemburg once noted, “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”
What Education Strikes Do
Like all strikes, a walkout by governmental employees (such as teachers) aims to shut down a given workplace in order to extract concessions from their employers. The basic means to do so is the same as in a private company: get as many workers as necessary to withhold their labor. Fittingly, one of the most popular chants of strikers at West Virginia’s capitol was, “If they don’t fix it, shut it down!”
If only a fraction of people strike, or if demoralized strikers begin to return to work, strikers cannot effectively paralyze production in a particular work site or sector. For this reason, in both private and public sector walkouts, building some form of collective organization (i.e., a trade union) and upholding unity in action between different workers is almost always a precondition for success. To sustain coordinated strike action around common demands, a workforce therefore needs to sufficiently overcome internal divides regarding occupation, religion, politics, nationality, race, or gender.
The immediate target of a public employee strike (the state), however, is by definition distinct from that of a private sector walkout (a business). Flowing from this are some important strategic consequences. Most obviously, public employees don’t generally have the power to directly halt capitalist profits by withholding their labor. Educators play an indispensable role in the reproduction of capitalism: we train the workers of the future. But the absence of profit-halting power is one important reason why the revitalization of organized labor cannot be limited to the public sector.
At the same time, capitalists aren’t neutral bystanders in state employee work stoppages. Business leaders—who use their immense economic power to ensure that governmental policy corresponds to their interests—know that walkouts for better social services often result in profit losses through higher taxes. Successful strikes also cut against capital’s drive, in its endless search to increase profits, to privatize the public sector. Finally, the powers that be are well aware of the threat of contagion: public employee strikes risk inspiring job actions inside private enterprises.
So while work stoppages by state employees are an indirect challenge to big business, their leverage doesn’t come from paralyzing profits. Rather, public sector strikes win by creating a social and political crisis. Closing schools, for instance, creates a crisis for governmental leaders, who are charged with providing this essential service to the public. Politicians who are unable to resolve the conflict on terms supported by the electorate risk getting voted out of office.
School strikes affect students, too, who need an education to get a job or get into college. Many also depend on schools for meals and supervision. Additionally, teacher walkouts often create havoc for parents because somebody needs to care for their kids while they’re at work.
Paralyzing an essential government service, in other words, puts pressure on the state, as well as on those layers of the population to which that service is provided. In her 2016 book No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, union strategist Jane McAlevey notes that in public education, like health care, “the point of production is the community.”1 For this very reason, the question of winning and maintaining public support is indispensable in any teachers’ strike.
Aiming to win over parents and the broader public, each of the contending sides will naturally seek to blame the other for the conflict. For example, a typical conservative op-ed published a few days before Arizona’s strike called the impending action a “war against parents”:
As of Thursday, the fight will no longer be teachers vs. politicians; the fight will be teachers vs. parents … Some parents are begging friends and family to watch their kids. Others are getting prices for daycare and worrying if they’ll be able to afford it on their stretched budgets.2
Faced with such arguments, striking educators invariably reply that these hardships were caused by the administration’s refusal to meet their reasonable demands. In making this case to the public at large, educators have an important advantage over their employers: they can lean on their established relationships with parents. Thus, what teachers lack in power to cut off profits, they can often make up for through their influence among broad layers of the working class.
Christine Campbell, president of the American Federation of Teachers—West Virginia (AFT-WV), put it well: “The thing that makes the public sector different is the relationships we develop. Educators are embedded in our communities; people trust us to educate their kids. So when parents see the teachers of their children struggling to make ends meet, working at a second job on the weekend, this is a much more direct relationship with the community than in the private sector.”
Public education’s location at the heart of social reproduction means that these work stoppages involved far more people than the roughly 130,000 teachers and support staff that struck in Arizona, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. The total number of students that missed class was well over 1.5 million, and the number of affected family members roughly twice that. So even if we don’t include the one-day walkouts in Kentucky, Colorado, and North Carolina, it’s clear that the red state rebellions involved many millions of individuals.
To sum up: the basic challenge for a successful education strike is to close schools by building up and maintaining employee unity in action, while simultaneously seeking public support. Hostile politicians and their proxies will try to reverse these processes, aiming to prevent a walkout or to force educators back to work before their demands are met. To see what this looked like in practice, let’s begin by examining the role of the strike’s opponents.
Attacks from Above
While right-wing opposition to educators took on distinct forms at different moments in each strike, overall the dynamic conformed to that famous saying (wrongly attributed to Gandhi): “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Until very recently, politicians from both major parties generally ignored the demands of teachers in Arizona, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. Rather than frontally argue against pay and funding increases, state leaders pled poverty, claiming that the money just wasn’t there. The state met annual union-led “Lobby Days” with a polite, if stubborn, rebuff.
Once momentum toward a strike started picking up in early 2018, it became difficult for state leaders to continue ignoring educators. Upholding claims about empty government coffers, Republicans began to openly mock those who dared to demand change. In Oklahoma, Governor Mary Fallin infamously declared to the press that teachers were acting like “a teenage kid that wants a better car.”
For his part, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice told teachers to trust him and not be “dumb bunnies.” In protest, incensed educators soon began showing up at the capitol wearing bunny ears. Across the country, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey fired the first shot in what would soon become an especially vicious smear campaign against the state’s teacher leaders. In early April, Ducey justified his refusal to meet with Red for Ed representatives, calling their movement a “political circus.” He accused twenty-three-year-old teacher leader Noah Karvelis of being a Democratic Party “political operative” seeking to undermine Ducey’s November bid for reelection. “The idea that I’m a political operative is absurd,” Karvelis explained during the strike. “I’m a K–8 music teacher—I literally spend all day singing with a puppet on my hand.”
It’s worth noting that sustained organized opposition to the strikes came virtually only from above. Notwithstanding the liberal media’s exaggerated claims about the reach of protofascist movements in Trumpland, grassroots right-wing groups were a negligible force in these events. Nicole McCormick, a public school teacher in West Virginia, recalls that there were “very few antis” during the work stoppage: “We had a counterprotester one day at our picket line, but since she had a red sign, people thought she was with us.”
Far more consequential was opposition to the strikes from leading forces within the school system itself. Charter school administrations, for one, were prominent in undermining the work stoppages. Though a handful of charters participated in the walkouts, most openly scabbed.3
But charters weren’t the only element undermining the public education movement from within. Statewide superintendents in West Virginia and Arizona, unlike many of their district-level peers, also openly opposed the strikes. One week before West Virginia’s educators walked out, State School Superintendent Steve Paine issued the following declaration:
Work stoppages by public employees are not lawful in West Virginia and will have a negative impact on student instruction and classroom time. Families will be forced to seek out alternative safe locations for their children, and our many students who depend on schools for daily nutrition will face an additional burden.
Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey made a similar announcement:
A work stoppage of any length on any ground is illegal. Let us make no mistake, the impending work stoppage is unlawful. State law and court rulings give specific parties avenues to remedy such illegal conduct, including the option to seek an injunction to end an unlawful strike.
This remained their position over the entirety of West Virginia’s strike, during which they repeatedly—and unsuccessfully—threatened educators to return to work.
In Arizona, the situation was similar. Hoping to prevent a walkout, State Superintendent Diane Douglas spoke on every television and radio show available, announcing that teachers could lose their jobs by walking out.
These threats succeeded in scaring many educators, particularly in the lead-up to the strikes. On social media and in break rooms, teachers expressed their worries about getting fired, suspended, or fined. One Arizona teacher recalls: “Tensions were running high across the state. Almost every educator I knew was nervous and unsure of what would happen.” Others worried about paying the rent and grocery bills once the strike began. As Mary Wykle, a West Virginia bus driver, explains, “Up until the very day the strike began, we had no idea that the superintendents would end up shutting the schools and paying us by treating the walkouts like snow days.”
Despite incessant threats against educators, it’s significant that at no point did politicians or administrators impose legal or financial penalties on the strikers. The red state revolt was never obliged to confront full-scale state repression. How should we make sense of this governmental reluctance to move from words to deeds?
One explanation put forward in the media for why educators were not legally penalized is that these were superintendent-supported “walkouts,” not real strikes. It’s true that local superintendent and school board support was significant. For instance, by closing the schools ahead of time, district leaders enabled full-time school employees to continue to get paid during the strikes, since they could make up the missed days later in the year. Some district superintendents sincerely supported the movement’s demands because devastating cuts and teacher shortages made it more difficult for them to do their jobs. Nevertheless, superintendent and school board support was more uneven than described in the media. And the fact remains that, in West Virginia and Arizona at least, these were strikes—and illegal ones at that. Whatever the personal inclinations of different district leaders, the initiative for the work stoppages always came from below. Indeed, it was only under pressure that the schools closed, after workers voted to shut them down.
In West Virginia, most organizers and workers assumed from the start that the superintendents would not agree to a work stoppage voluntarily. Union organizer Allen Stump explains that the educators presented district leaders with an ultimatum: “Basically, we said to the superintendents: We have over 90 percent of your employees announcing that they’re not coming in to work. So either you cancel school or you’ll have a bunch of students and nobody will be there—which would be a huge safety issue for the kids.”
Even the most supportive superintendents acknowledged this dynamic. Mingo County’s Don Spence, the first superintendent in West Virginia to agree to close his schools, explained to me why he had made this decision: “I saw the teachers’ unity and determination; that’s why I closed our schools. I didn’t set out to do anything. They did the work. They deserve all the credit. All I did was support.”
In Arizona, though not every single district struck, the general course of events was similar. As Arizona Educators United leader Dylan Wegela puts it, “We called the strike vote—we didn’t consult with the superintendents about this ahead of time.” Most district leaders were public about this fact, as seen in a letter to parents from Deer Valley Unified School District: “If a strike is planned, DVUSD will make every effort to avoid closing schools. We are currently working on plans to keep our schools open in the event of work stoppage. However, if we have too few staff members to safely hold school, we may be forced to close schools.” Numerous superintendents attempted to intimidate employees into remaining at work, and once the strike began, many tried to pressure their staff to return.
In both West Virginia and Arizona, Republican leaders had more than enough legal justification to punish striking educators; indeed, strikes throughout US history have been broken on far-flimsier legal grounds. And despite the support of some local superintendents, the state’s highest governmental bodies were clear about the illegal nature of these work stoppages. Arizona Superintendent Diane Douglas directly addressed the question: “It is illegal to strike in Arizona, and by every definition I’ve read, this is a strike.” Douglas openly rejected claims that because “the [school] doors were closed” by local superintendents, teachers’ actions did not qualify as a strike. She was not wrong to note that “the doors would have never been closed if the teachers didn’t vote to walk out.”4 For all of these reasons, it’s clear that superintendent sympathy was not a primary reason why the government did not resort to repression.
Another explanation of the government’s legal inaction was that the teacher shortage tied the politicians’ hands. According to this argument, which was shared by many in the movement, the state couldn’t take repressive action against teachers because it had no one to replace them with. Though it’s clear that the shortage undercut many educators’ fears about getting fired, this line of reasoning is unconvincing. Even had there been no educator shortage, the sheer number of employees on strike would have made it very hard to fire all strikers. Moreover, state officials had many means to break the strikes other than mass dismissals, including the imposition of steep fines on individuals or organizations, union decertification, and firing (or jailing) the strike leaders. None of these measures, however, were imposed in Arizona, Oklahoma, or West Virginia.
In fact, the main reasons governmental leaders avoided punishing the strikers were, above all, political: first, repression risked emboldening (rather than intimidating) the strikers and their supporters; and second, it risked further alienating politicians from the public. Unlike in the corporate world, a large layer of employers in the public sector—governors, legislators, statewide superintendents, and local school board members—are generally subject to popular reelection, which tends to make them take public opinion more seriously. Given widespread public support for educators during the 2018 strike wave, it’s unsurprising that politicians and superintendents (who are chosen by elected school boards) were reluctant to resort to repression.
This brings us to one of the big lessons of the red state rebellions: at moments of mass struggle, legality comes down to a relationship of forces. If a strike has the organization, momentum, and support of the public at large, it’s more difficult for the ruling elite to crack down. When asked in a post-strike press conference why he hadn’t tried to impose an injunction, Superintendent Paine’s reply was refreshingly honest: it would have only “added gas to the fire,” he acknowledged.5 In the words of West Virginia teacher Emily Comer: “It doesn’t matter if an action is illegal if you have enough people doing it.”
This is not a new phenomenon. In the public employee upsurge of the 1960s and 1970s, the state also found it difficult to impose legal penalties against strikes that were well organized and well supported. After the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) defied a 1968 injunction, its militant president, Jerry Wurf, explained: “I have never been impressed with the injunction. If you got the power to win the strike, it’s academic. If you ain’t got the power, they are going to knock your head off anyway.”6
Wurf was also right to stress the dangers of striking without sufficient strength. In 2005, for instance, a poorly organized strike by New York City transport workers resulted in the jailing of their president, a $2.5 million fine, and the end of automatic union dues deductions. The red state revolt also witnessed some similar, if smaller scale, setbacks. In a story that deserved far more coverage, seven bus drivers in Georgia’s Dekalb County were fired after leading their coworkers in a three-day wildcat “sick-out” in late April 2018.
As these defeats in New York and Georgia show, public sector strikes are not a silver bullet; calling a strike and winning a strike are two distinct tasks. To organize an illegal strike and win requires strong internal unity and external support.
The relationship of forces between labor and management, moreover, depends not only on workers’ strength, but also on the strength of their adversaries. In West Virginia, for instance, Republican politicians and state managers were caught somewhat flat-footed by the unexpected popular upsurge. By all indications, the powers that be were unprepared for the challenge. But by the time the strike wave reached Arizona in April, the Koch Brothers’ anti-worker apparatus was well oiled and prepared for battle. The means through which workers and their unions were able to successfully confront these powerful opponents is the subject to which we now turn.
Workplace Unity
If the red state rebellions had one strategic watchword, it was unity. Organizers and rank and filers endlessly insisted that it was only by coming together across their myriad of divides that school employees could achieve their demands. The names of the Facebook organizing groups that launched the walkouts are indicative: West Virginia Public Employees United, Oklahoma Teachers United (OTU), and Arizona Educators United (AEU). In West Virginia, the page quickly became known simply as United.
This consistent emphasis reflects a basic fact about labor struggles under capitalism: namely, that as atomized individuals, workers are virtually powerless at work. Only by joining together with our coworkers in common organizations and actions are we able to assert ourselves against management.
The unitary ethos that characterized the school strikes was a far cry from the sterile sectarianism, political insularity, and callout culture that still prevails among so many on the Left. This divergence has a structural basis: building unity at the workplace is a qualitatively different task than it is in self-selecting social movements.
We don’t choose our coworkers. Often all we have in common with them is our shared position of subordination to management. As such, effective labor organizing obliges constant engagement with people with very different backgrounds and belief systems. This is particularly true for strikes, which to succeed usually require exceedingly high levels of participation and coordination from a given workforce.
Once educators began seriously considering the prospect of walking off their jobs in early 2018, they quickly confronted the basic challenge at hand. On March 5, the first day of Arizona’s Facebook group, one teacher immediately stressed the centrality of unity: “We do need to be united or it won’t work. It has to be all or most. WV is a right to work state but because of the numbers of teachers that striked it worked.” In support, she received the following reply: “Unity is the key guys. If it’s just a few of us, they can pick us off one by one. But if we stand strong in the masses, they can’t do jack.”
It would be no easy task to bring together tens of thousands of school employees, who were divided and hierarchically stratified in dozens of ways. This was true even in West Virginia, with its strong regional identity, labor traditions and compact geography. Widespread disunity was evident in the United page’s first debates over striking. In a January 7 thread initiated by Jay O’Neal on the lessons of the 1990 West Virginia teachers’ walkout, he asked, “Do you think it’s worse now than it was before the strike in 1990?” He received this reply: “Getting there. This is why a strike would be hard to pull off now because they play groups against each other.”
Overcoming these divisions required a tremendous amount of political debate, both in person and online. Over the course of months, politics became the normal topic of conversation in lunchrooms, staff meetings, and normally apolitical community events. Each of the states’ Facebook groups witnessed an endlessly unfolding discussion over whether a strike was possible, how to get there, what to demand, and how to win.
As important as these debates were, unity was above all forged through deeds. An effective buildup to something as risky as a strike required a whole series of smaller preliminary actions to generate working-class self-confidence and cohesion. For instance, AEU’s first action proposal was for educators to wear red on Wednesday, March 7—a proposal that caught on and was repeated every Wednesday for the rest of the school year. Soon afterward, AEU leader Rebecca Garelli called on educators and allies to draw education facts and red markings on their cars; within days, Arizona’s streets and highways were filled with Red for Ed messaging.
Rallying at the state capitol proved a particularly powerful means to bring educators together. On Facebook, one Arizona teacher expressed a commonly shared sentiment: “The experience at the Capitol was incredible. I think that educators have been pitted against each other for so long (elementary vs. middle vs. high school; certified vs. classified, etc.) that to see that kind of unity and solidarity was amazing. It’s easy to feel alone in this line of work, and being at the capitol reminded us all that we’re not alone.”
In many ways, it was this sense of joyful community that brought people back to the capitol day after day. In addition to marching and chanting all day, they shared snacks, stories, sunscreen, and phone chargers. People got used to talking for hours with strangers, as if this was an everyday occurrence. “It’s like I’ve made 75,000 new friends,” read a teacher’s post from Phoenix. At times, one caught a small glimpse into what a society founded on genuine reciprocity might look and feel like.
To build these sorts of solidarity-generating mass actions, educators had to confront a whole series of obstacles along the way. To begin with, they were divided between union and nonunion members. A minority of public school employees in Arizona and Oklahoma were unionized—only 25 percent in the former, and 40 percent in latter. Among charter schools, union organization was virtually nonexistent. In West Virginia, roughly 70 percent of teachers belonged to the unions, but relatively few members participated in any active way.
Since labor organization is a crystallized expression of working-class unity, weak trade union organization in these states was a troubling indication that atomization largely prevailed. Though organized labor has succeeded in beating back some of the Republicans’ worst attacks since 2014, most educators have for years treated the unions as, at best, a distant and ineffective third party, useful mostly for providing some form of insurance in case of individual trouble with administrators.
Even among organized educators, intra-union division was the norm in Oklahoma, Arizona, and particularly West Virginia. Unions compete, often viciously, for members. In the Mountain State a given school might have members of all three of the states’ unions—the American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia (AFT-WV), the West Virginia Education Association (WVEA) and the West Virginia School Service Personnel Association (WVSSPA).
Communication, let alone collaboration, was the exception rather than the rule. Indeed, overcoming this paralyzing turf war was a primary motivation behind Jay O’Neal and Emily Comer’s creation of West Virginia Public Employees United in October 2017. After months of rank-and-file pressure from below, the unions finally started collaborating in late January 2018. Crucially, the school-site strike votes in mid February included participation by all school employees, regardless of union affiliation.
Regional differences were another key challenge. Nicole McCormick recalls the situation preceding the strike: “I felt really isolated here. I was isolated not only as a teacher, but even from other people in the education system. Each school, each school district, felt disconnected from the others. West Virginia has a sense of cultural community—we love our sports teams, our foods (like pepperoni rolls), our mountains—but there was basically no political links or discussion across county lines.”
Bridging these divides became an urgent necessity, since the attacks on the Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA) were coming from the state capitol in Charleston and because the salary schedule in West Virginia (as in Oklahoma) is determined at the state, rather than district, level. Again, the United Facebook page served as the main vehicle for rank-and-file educators to link up with their coworkers. “The United group became like one big faculty room where we could connect with other teachers and workers throughout the state,” notes Ashlea Bassham, a teacher in rural Logan County.
By late February, West Virginia’s movement had become truly statewide, as immortalized in its slogan, “55 united, 55 strong.” Every evening of the strike, workers across the state would obsessively check the Department of Education website to see whether all other counties had voted to go out the next day. Educators ceaselessly stressed their pride that each of the state’s fifty-five school districts had come together.
Katie Endicott from Mingo County describes this well: “I remember the first time I heard the ‘55 united, 55 strong’ chant, I broke down and cried. Because it was unity like I had never experienced. We were up in front at the capitol, near the front of the Senate chanting and I remember someone just started holding hands, my hands. And it was people from Mason County, Putnam County, people I had never met before—but these were my brothers and sisters, these were my fellow educators. And we were standing together, we were standing united. And no one wanted to be the county that made it fifty-four.”
Achieving this level of unity proved to be more difficult in Oklahoma and Arizona, neither of which experienced a complete statewide shutdown. One reason for this is that unions and labor traditions were significantly weaker than in West Virginia. Another was the sheer number of school districts in Oklahoma (512) and Arizona (715); while all cities and big towns in these states were paralyzed by the walkout, remote rural districts often remained aloof.
But given the size of Oklahoma and Arizona, the weakness of their unions, and their lack of continuity with past labor battles, the remarkable aspect of their strikes was not their relative geographic narrowness in comparison with West Virginia, but rather their statewide breadth. For unlike most education strikes in recent memory, these work stoppages were not limited to just one school district. In a country where labor law divides private and public sector workers into the narrowest-possible bargaining units, each of these strikes demonstrated the power of a more expansive approach.
Schools were closed for roughly 70 percent of students in Oklahoma, and 75 percent in Arizona—no small feat in so-called Trumpland. Unlike in West Virginia, collective bargaining in these two states exists in limited forms within some districts, creating a structural pressure to focus on localized targets. But, inspired by West Virginia’s example, rank-and-file leaders in Oklahoma and Arizona focused their fire and their demands on the state government in order to coalesce as broad a movement as possible. “We could have organized on a district-by-district level,” observes Noah Karvelis, “but it wouldn’t have had the same power.”
Divergent political perspectives were another source of division. Far from representing an ideologically homogeneous bloc, the movement was comprised of registered Republicans, Democrats, independents, and a small but influential layer of socialists. Estimates from education union organizers concerning the affiliation of their memberships were roughly the same in each of the states: Democrats (45 percent), Republicans (40 percent), and independents (15 percent and growing). In the past few decades, differences over issues like guns, abortion, and religion have divided the political loyalties of these red state educators. A large number of others, including many registered Democrats and Republicans, dismissed party politics altogether, viewing it as a corrupt game over which they had no control. For every teacher who voted for Trump, there was at least one who had nothing but the harshest possible things to say about the new president.
Had educators attempted to make broad ideological agreement (or a long list of demands) a precondition for unity in action, their movements would never have gotten off the ground. Instead they focused on the big, burning demands that the vast majority of school employees and community members already felt strongly about. Emily Comer underlines this as one of the big lessons of West Virginia’s strike: “For a successful mass movement, people don’t have to agree on partisan politics, on religion, or anything else for that matter. But they do have to come together and fight in solidarity around a shared issue. We’ve learned that people will push the other differences aside in the name of solidarity.”
In West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona, an organic, bottom-up emphasis on unity was so strong that participants generally avoided discussions of internal differences, whether in regard to ideology, gender, race, or religion. For instance, when I asked strikers about the particular challenges facing female teachers and strikers, they almost always responded by pivoting the conversation, insisting that the salient feature of the movement was that it united all educators, all public employees, or working people generally.
Among strikers there was also very little discussion of race. For the most part, the reason for this was simple: educators from all backgrounds actively sought to put their divergences aside for the sake of winning common goals. But in light of the centuries-long centrality of white supremacy in the United States and the prevailing liberal discourse about the racist “white working class,” it’s essential to explore racial dynamics between teachers in more depth.
In part, this relative silence on racial differences arose from the fact that a majority of strikers were white. Stephanie Price, a Black educator in Oklahoma’s overwhelmingly white teaching force, explains that most of her coworkers did not fully appreciate the particular challenges facing communities of color in her state: “Racism is very much a problem in Oklahoma, and it’s not really discussed. People here honestly don’t realize the ways that they’re racist. My town was a sundown town not that long ago—but people don’t know that history or how it still shapes us today.”
It was in large part due to experiencing “insensitive, borderline racist” incidents at work that she joined the Committee for Racial and Ethnic Minorities of her local union chapter: “Unfortunately, the state removed the cultural competence courses that we used to have. And it’s not uncommon for me to get stopped in the hall at school by random teachers asking me why Black people are always overreacting to things, or telling me out of the blue that structural racism isn’t a thing. The way I see it, the main form of racism today is different than people marching around with tiki torches—it’s ignorance about what people of color in this country are facing.”
During the red state revolt, proactive anti-racism among white educators was certainly not commonplace. Teacher unions and public schools in each of these states—like in the rest of the country—have had an uneven record, at best, when it comes to the struggle against racial oppression.
Nevertheless, most of the core rank-and-file leaders—particularly the socialists—were committed anti-racists, as were various top union officials. The fact that they didn’t try to include demands against racial discrimination as points of unity for the walkouts did not mean that they saw such issues as politically unimportant. In fact, movement organizations and leaders were periodically denounced by right-wing forces for their public commitment to the struggle against xenophobia and racial oppression. For example, as proof of the Oklahoma Education Association’s supposedly “far-left agenda,” one conservative local news columnist seeking to discredit the walkout denounced the union’s open support for immigrant rights.7
This line of attack was particularly widespread in Arizona. A Breitbart hit piece on Noah Karvelis condemned him for using “Black Lives Matter ideology in his teaching which, he tweets, allows him to connect ‘black identity’ to political ‘activism’ for his students.”8 And House Representative Maria Syms ratcheted up the racist dog whistle smear campaign:
You would likely not want your children boarding his intellectual ark—or sitting in his exotic classroom … He prides himself on teaching the hip hop music of Kendrick Lamar (whose lyrics include “we hate Popo [police], wanna kill us dead in the street for sure …”) to 10-year-olds, indoctrinating them in “social movements and societal change” and “socioeconomic and racial privilege.”9
Karvelis’s outspoken advocacy around these issues was an exception among teachers. But it’s important to underline that these strikes showed that the blind spots, or unconscious prejudices, of white educators did not prevent them from striking with their nonwhite coworkers for common demands. To quote Jacqueline Gilliard, an African American teacher in Mercer County, West Virginia: “There are a lot of Trump supporters and racists here in West Virginia. But I was totally included in the movement; I didn’t feel any racism during the strike. You know, my next-door neighbor is a Trump supporter, but she stood right next to me on the picket line. I guess we were able to unite because we had a common goal—if it meant being a little uncomfortable, or being around someone you weren’t used to being around, that was okay. Plus, as a teacher you’re already used to working with a lot of different people all the time, because you have to do what’s right for the kids.”
Each of these movements was self-consciously inclusive of all educators, parents, and students. Vanessa Arredondo-Aguirre—a teacher in Yuma County and a top AEU leader—explains: “I never felt that I, or the Hispanic population, was being left out at all. Actually, my ideas for organizing Hispanic educators and parents were generally supported. I felt very included.” Stephanie Price recounted a similar experience in Oklahoma: “I know we need to be tying social justice into education struggles, but honestly I personally didn’t see instances where racism played a role in the outcome or process of the walkout.”
Participation in multiracial struggle helped break down existing divides within workplaces. Educators from all backgrounds stressed this dynamic. For instance, Roz Ellis, a Black teacher at South Charleston High School, characterizes the strike as follows: “That was the most amazing experience of my life. It was so much better than 1990. Everyone was truly in it together this time. It didn’t matter the color of your skin, it didn’t matter your differences, everybody stood beside each other.”
The consistently multiracial quality of these strikes was an indispensable aspect of their success. Tens of thousands of African American and Latino educators were active participants and leaders in all facets of the movement. In Arizona, Native educators spread the work stoppage to the reservations under the slogan “Rez for Ed,” and they spoke in their native languages at the rallies in Phoenix. Latino educators, who constitute 14 percent of the state’s teachers, were a particularly prominent force. Arredondo-Aguirre explains the dynamic: “It made a big difference that I was in the AEU leadership team—parents and other teachers saw that we were represented. A majority of teachers statewide are white, but there are still a lot of us. Lots of folks were speaking in Spanish—and when I spoke on stage at the rallies I made sure to speak in Spanish. So the movement was definitely not just white teachers!”
One of the ironies of the media’s one-sided vision of racist Trumpland is that it has tended to make workers of color like Arredondo-Aguirre invisible. Liberal pundits, and even many left activists, strangely continue to assume that people of color are somehow not particularly interested in labor struggles or economic demands. But nonwhite teachers in these states were undoubtedly just as committed as their white colleagues to the fight for better pay, working conditions, and school funding.
Indeed, polls of Oklahoma teachers who left the profession found that educators of color consistently felt even more strongly about low pay than their white counterparts.10 In the words of Price: “I think anytime you start talking about getting more money in people’s pockets, you’ll get a good response. All of us wanted raises. Some people out there might look at a $5,741 raise and say’s that it’s no big deal—but being a single mother, and a woman of color, that raise was huge because I’m constantly broke.”
The point here is not that racial divisions in public education have been overcome, nor that strategies to build working-class unity should ignore race. Such claims would be absurd in a country where the legacy of Native American genocide, chattel slavery, and Jim Crow continues to profoundly structure politics and society. As Price notes, the strikes did not automatically reveal these underlying dynamics to her white coworkers: “The raise we got was a big win, and there was a lot of unity in the walkout. But it’s not as if most teachers here have now started digging deeper into the realities of structural racism.”
In Kentucky, tensions over broader questions of institutionalized oppression proved to be especially problematic. In April, the walkout movement’s interracial unity began to fray after neither the Kentucky Education Association nor the rank-and-file network KY United We Stand agreed to the proposal of a group of Black teachers and white allies in Louisville to include demands against an impending racist “gang bill,” HB 169.
Even in those places where movement leadership was most actively focused on overcoming racial divisions—like Arizona—significant gaps remained. This was especially the case when it came to building unity with school support staff, who in Arizona tend to be disproportionately Spanish speakers. Teacher leader Dylan Wegela explains the challenges: “Support staff definitely did participate in the movement, [and] we did try to translate as much of the material, and the discussion, as possible—but it wasn’t always easy to get it done.”
Whatever the strengths and limitations of such unitary emphasis, in the West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona strikes it proved to be crucial in coalescing workers from a wide range of backgrounds and ideological persuasions. Without it, it’s hard to imagine the participation of individuals like the Arizonan striker who posted this message on the first day of the walkout: “I am conservative. I am Catholic. I am a public school teacher. I am walking and prepared for the long haul … until whenever.” A unitary approach was also key to involving those who considered themselves generally uninterested in politics, like the following teacher from Arizona: “I learned that true power comes from such a vast group of people setting aside their individual stories to become part of a larger voice. I’ve never been comfortable with politics, but when you believe in something as much as Red for Ed, you have got to do something.”
It was through experiences similar to these that thousands of conservative educators began to question their Republican affinities. A redirection of popular anger upward, against the ruling rich, has profound anti-racist implications. Though the process is uneven and far from automatic, scapegoating marginalized groups tends to lose its political traction when a viable class-based alternative is presented. Consider the reflections of one white teacher following the strike: “I’m an Arizona native and please forgive me for being asleep my entire life … Red for Ed has awoken my spirit of justice, truth, love, and respect for all people. I will not return to my previous slumber but fight for the many with little against the few with much.”
One of the fundamental reasons why the movement’s emphasis on unity proved so effective was that its demands were not merely limited to those of teachers. In addition to a consistent emphasis on student needs, the walkouts in all three states were of and for all school employees, including bus drivers, custodians, secretaries, cooks, and paraprofessionals. The role of support staff workers was absolutely central, though the extent to which each strike overcame the teacher–staff divide varied significantly.
Unlike divisions of ideology, union membership, or willingness to strike, the relationship between teachers and other school employees is a distinctly structural and hierarchical one. At most schools, support staff receive the least respect, the fewest benefits, and the lowest wages; many make less than half the pay of teachers. As one bus driver posted on Facebook: “I am constantly being reminded that, ‘I need to be professional’ by my superiors. Perhaps that argument would carry more clout if my wages reflected that of a professional … #justsayin.” In this context, the challenge of overcoming the isolation of support staff parallels the more often discussed difficulties of overcoming racial and gender divisions within the working class.
Within the education system, support staff are often overlooked. Many people I spoke with felt that this was the deepest divide among school employees. Linda Vanuss, a cafeteria cook in Ravenswood, West Virginia, explained: “I love my job, but we really don’t feel like we are part of the school. For instance, they have faculty dinners that we’re not invited to and that they then ask us to do the dishes for.” Head custodian Pam Shamblin made a similar point about the previous school she worked at: “I was treated like dirt.”
Seeing the need to build the widest possible unity, rank-and-file leaders in West Virginia and Arizona consciously sought to build a movement that extended beyond just teachers. The names of their groups—West Virginia Public Employees United and Arizona Educators United—were not accidental. As the latter explained in its online FAQ: “So many different job families are involved in the day to day operations of our public schools, that we just say ‘educators.’” Moreover, both groups consciously pushed for demands that would unify all school employees. “You need to organize people around a specific issue,” noted Jay O’Neal. “For us, it was the insurance. That’s a big-tent issue that affected one in seven West Virginians.”
Organizers in Arizona took a similarly expansive approach. When Governor Ducey promised a 20 percent teacher pay raise to head off the impending strike, Red for Ed leaders didn’t take the bait. At their press conference explaining the reasons why they were rejecting the deal, Phoenix school-staff representative Vanessa Jimenez noted, “[Ducey] made no mention of education support professionals. So that saddens me because everybody knows that it takes a village to raise our students—and that village includes teachers and classified staff … When I think of his proposal, it’s clearly an attempt to divide us. We’re not going to be divided. We’re in this together.”
Stressing the contributions and dignity of the tens of thousands of service personnel was necessary to undercut the tendency of the media—as well as many rank-and-file teachers—to justify the protests by arguing that teacher pay was too low given their high educational levels and their specific professional responsibilities. Against such narrow framing, Pam Shamblin in Ravenswood insisted that “this was a labor movement for everyone, not just teachers.”
Unfortunately, support staff marginalization within the schools and the movement did not disappear overnight. As is so often the case, the stratification of working people made it difficult for workers to recognize the particular plight of their worse-off peers. Given this challenging context, it took sustained efforts by militant support staff in West Virginia to prevent their coworkers from standing aside from the general struggle. Mary Wykle—a bus driver in Wyoming County who played a key role in mobilizing other service personnel—explains: “Many of us felt left out because everybody kept calling this a teachers’ movement, a teachers’ strike. I understood why personnel often got discouraged by this—but it was counterproductive. So I ended up giving pep talks to them, to explain why we all needed to be in this struggle together.”
These efforts paid off. Unlike in the 1990 West Virginia teachers’ strike—when schools remained open through the labor of support staff and scabs—this time all employees went out together. Linda Vanuss recalls the ensuing transformation at her school: “We’re usually ignored, but during the strike it was different—we were united. I felt like when teachers looked at me, they saw me more like an equal.”
The capacity of West Virginia support staff to sustain their participation in the walkout was also aided greatly by the initiative of Cathy Kunkel and Stephen Smith—leftist organizer allies of O’Neal and Comer in Charleston—to launch a GoFundMe strike fund. Through small donations from across the country, the initiative raised $332,945—roughly half of which went to school support staff and substitute teachers. Whereas full-time teachers got paid during the strike because superintendents canceled school, the same was not true for other personnel like unsalaried support staff, teachers’ aides, and substitutes, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck.
Without the efforts of service personnel, victory would have remained elusive. In the words of Emily Comer: “There’s been a common misconception that we won because we had the support of superintendents. But, really, we were able to win because we were able to shut the schools down. And we were only able to do that because we had everyone on board—custodians, cooks, bus drivers, teachers’ aides. Schools cannot run without them.”
This dynamic became clear on Wednesday, February 28, the pivotal “cooling-off day” after West Virginia’s governor and union leaders ordered workers to return to work on Thursday. As educators across the state debated if and how to defy this edict, support staff took the initiative to make it clear to superintendents—and teachers—that they were staying out. When bus drivers at mass meetings in Charleston and in southern counties announced that “the buses will not run tomorrow,” they received standing ovations. By all accounts, the initiatives of drivers like Mary Wykle in Wyoming County to prepare for hard picket lines were pivotal in the ultimate decision of superintendents across the state that evening: schools would remain shut. “The service personnel were our saving grace,” notes Nicole McCormick. “In Mercer County, some schools would have gone back on Thursday, but they couldn’t open without their bus drivers and cooks.”
In Oklahoma, support staff participation was much lower—in fact, most continued to report to work throughout the walkout, even when there were no classes in session. This development, which significantly weakened the impact of Oklahoma’s work stoppage, was rooted in various sources. Though inspired by Mountain State strikers, the inexperienced rank-and-file groups that sprung up in Oklahoma did not consistently assimilate all of West Virginia’s lessons. Unlike in the other states, they did not establish a strike fund for those in need. The names of the Sooner State’s Facebook group—Oklahoma Teachers United and Oklahoma Teacher Walkout: The Time Is Now—were also indicative of a somewhat narrower approach.
This generalized inability to incorporate service personnel into the work stoppage was above all the result of a broader limitation of Oklahoma’s strike: teachers in the Sooner State could legally miss work and receive pay if their superintendents voluntarily canceled school, but the same was not true for service personnel. For this reason, to quote Amanda Ewing, Associate Executive Director of the Oklahoma Education Association, “Though they tried to support the movement in their districts, it was rare for support staff to attend the protests at the capitol; most ended up reporting to work each day.”
Oklahoma’s limited staff participation in the walkout illustrates an important point: the fight for working-class unity is always inseparable from broader political questions—in this case, a willingness to challenge superintendents and potentially break the law. While it’s relatively easy to affirm the need for unity, actually building a united movement is easier said than done.
Community Support
Labor law in the United States is uniquely structured to divide working people. By prohibiting most public and private sector workers from bargaining over issues relevant to broader layers of the working class, the American state succeeded in narrowing organized labor’s purview to the economic demands of its members alone. This, in turn, led much of the nonunionized working class to treat “Big Labor” as just another special interest group looking out for itself.
In 1995, faced with steady marginalization and decline, the AFL-CIO officially adopted a strategic orientation toward winning public support through broader community alliances. This was a significant step forward from the narrow business unionism of years prior. Yet labor’s continuing crisis over the following two decades showed that this strategy was no political panacea. The devil, as they say, is in the details.
For most unions, building unity with the community has meant working with liberal nonprofits to promote electoral campaigns or, at best, to organize demonstrations in support of progressive demands. Much of this work is laudable. But, as critics like Jane McAlevey and Joe Burns have pointed out, labor’s current social justice approach suffers from two critical flaws. First, it has gone hand in hand with an abandonment of the strike weapon. Second, this approach has depended on alliances from on high—with relatively weak nonprofits and community leaders—instead of relying on rank-and-file workers to organize and mobilize the broader working-class communities of which they are an integral part.
However, a different model of social justice unionism exists—one capable of generating the power required to win. By leaning on the leverage of workplace militancy, raising demands on behalf of the whole working class, and tapping into strikers’ deep social networks, the red state revolt showed what this alternative looks like in practice.
From day one, educators were well aware of the necessity to gain, and hold on to, community support. Indeed, much of the initial opposition to a strike came from educators’ fears that the public would turn on them if they walked out on students. To win parent and student support, teachers in West Virginia, like Arizona, began grassroots organizing months before they voted to go on strike. They took every opportunity for discussion with parents, explaining that educator working conditions were students’ learning conditions. They waved signs, passed out informational fliers, and organized morning “walk-ins,” during which they rallied together with parents and students alike.
As the walkouts approached, educators began collecting food donations to give to those large numbers of children who were dependent on school lunches and free breakfasts. Once the strikes began, teachers spent untold volunteer hours collecting and distributing food to these same students, often hand-delivering care packages to their homes.
One of the strikers’ secrets to success was that they consistently raised political demands—for example, massively increased school funding—that lay outside the restricted bounds of normal collective bargaining. The defense of student interests was consistently placed front and center. At a press conference announcing their impending work stoppage, Noah Karvelis explained: “We are underfunding our students every single day—every single student in the state of Arizona is being underfunded. And by doing so we are throwing away an entire generation’s opportunity for academic success.” And in Oklahoma, the work stoppage focused almost exclusively on demands for increased school funding, since the legislature had already passed important salary concessions in a last-minute attempt to prevent educators from walking out.
Fighting for students, and framing their struggles as a defense of essential services for the public, went a long way toward undercutting the Right’s constant harping that striking teachers were hurting children. Educators made a compelling case that they weren’t walking from the students, but for them. As one West Virginia teacher explained in a March 1 letter to her students: “I love you and that’s why I’m doing this.” Posts from Arizonan strikers conveyed a similar message: “I educated my students the best way I know how, and that’s by taking that stand and showing them that they’re worth that time and effort. If we can get them to believe they’re worth us walking out then maybe they can be our loudest advocates.”
Students reciprocated this support by taking matters into their own hands. During each of the strikes, high schoolers organized massive rallies in defense of their teachers and public education. As Tucson high school student Patrick Robles declared on April 23, “My teachers have stood for me, and now I will stand for them on the picket line.”
Together with her classmate Juliana Purdue, Jazmine Aliff of Seth, West Virginia, made a last-minute Facebook event in hopes of getting a hundred students to demonstrate their solidarity. “The reason we did it was simple,” she told me. “Our teachers do so much for us and we know that a lot of them felt down during the strike, like they were failing us by not being in class. We wanted to show that we supported them—and we wanted to fire them back up.” To the organizers’ surprise, over 2,500 students joined the rally.
Another crucial ingredient of striking educators’ mass appeal was their contestation of the Right’s attempts to pit them against other working people in the state. Like their counterparts in West Virginia and Oklahoma, Red for Ed leaders sharply opposed Republican maneuvers to increase public education funding through cuts to vital social programs. Against Governor Ducey’s proposal to give teachers a raise off the backs of other services, union vice president Marisol Garcia made this point clear: “They’re going to rob money from the developmentally disabled? They’re going to take money from the arts? They’re going to sweep money from Medicaid? That’s not what teachers want to see from the future. They want real revenue streams brought into Arizona.”
The experience of these strikes—like the Sanders campaign of 2016—revealed that even in deep-red states, there is a majoritarian basis for independent working-class politics. And, contrary to the hopes of Republicans and the initial fears of educators, public support actually increased after the strikes began. A week into the walkout in Oklahoma, for instance, polls found that 72 percent of the state now supported the continuation of the educators’ strike “until all of their demands are met.” Similar developments took place nationwide, and one poll found that of those Americans who had heard of the strikes, 80 percent approved of them.11 There’s an important lesson here: public opinion is fluid, and it can shift in the direction of workers, provided they take a stand. Rather than moderating one’s politics to accommodate a mythical center, the only way to truly test the potentialities of popular support is through systematic organizing and the process of mass action itself.
Unlike numerous teachers’ struggles in US history, most notably the 1968 New York City strike, the 2018 actions received strong backing from African American and Latino parents. By foregrounding demands on behalf of students, the walkouts also took important strides toward bridging existing racial divides. In each of these states, the student body was disproportionately made up of people of color; and in Arizona the majority of students were nonwhite.
Demands for increased school funding were particularly popular among Black and Brown working-class families, for whom austerity has had an especially devastating impact. To quote Stephanie Price of Oklahoma: “I never saw an instance where parents from communities of color didn’t support the struggle.” Indeed, the “race-blind” demand for more school funds was objectively anti-racist insofar as it would have disproportionately benefited these families. “Districts in Arizona with high Hispanic populations definitely generally supported education more,” notes Dylan Wegela.
Arizona’s walkout was a particularly remarkable example of multiracial working-class solidarity. The state has a vicious recent history of anti-immigrant xenophobia, and Latinos are the largest group of students in the school system. Unsurprisingly, the same Koch-funded forces pushing school privatization are also open advocates of the anti-immigrant border wall and stepped-up ICE deportations. By channeling working people’s anger into a broad struggle for common demands, the strike provided a clear alternative to right-wing racism. Organizers consciously sought to make the movement as inclusive as possible to all educators and parents. All official Red For Ed placards, for instance, were printed in English on one side and Spanish on the other—not a minor detail in a state where the politics of language has long been central to the right-wing agenda.
AEU leader Vanessa Arredondo-Aguirre played a particularly central role in these activities, creating a specific AEU Facebook page in Spanish for Latino parents and school employees, and coordinating much of the media outreach to Spanish-language stations. “I’d do interviews for Telemundo and Univision,” she recalls, “and my message would always be the same: ‘We’re fighting for your kids.’” These publicity efforts paid off. As one Latino parent posted on Facebook: “Got more information from Mexican stations than from American stations. They were up to date on all points. Very supporting!”
Still, Arredondo-Aguirre insists that in-person conversations were the most important: “The community where I live, it’s a border town, so a lot of teachers went out talking to people door to door, we went with fliers in Spanish informing them about Red for Ed and our demands. In my experience, I’d say that about 90 percent of responses were positive—we had a lot of support.”
The experience of the spring 2018 strikes showed that there’s no zero-sum relationship between broad working-class movements and fights against racial injustice. Rather, workplace organizing, at its best, can serve as the strategic anchor for fighting all forms of oppression. For example, Arizona’s Red for Ed movement, while concentrating on education-specific demands, also helped generate political space and a broader audience for the fight for immigrants’ rights.
At a June 30 rally against President Trump’s family separations, Red for Ed leader Derek Harris livestreamed the following message to their Facebook group: “I know it’s not our core issue, but it is an important issue because we’re doing this for our friends, our families, our students. We’re doing all of our [Red for Ed] things for the kids and we get immigrant families that come in, we teach them too, and we want them to have as good an education as anybody else. Sometimes they’re traumatized by the events getting here or after they arrive. Our kids are counting on us in so many ways—so stand for them in every way you can.”
Parents and community members of all backgrounds returned their support for educators in a myriad of ways. Simple actions—like honking while driving by an informational picket line, or thanking a teacher at the grocery store—were significant morale boosts. Frequently, community members also brought water and donuts to the picket line or picked up the tab for strikers at restaurants.
A big strike is made up of many small acts of solidarity. One highlight was the unexpected encouragement educators received from parents. In my conversations with teachers, many recounted experiences similar to that of Tanya Asleson in Ravenswood. While delivering food on the day West Virginia educators decided to go wildcat, she expected resistance from parents: “I went to the house of a parent who was really poor, his kids always desperately need food at school. The strike was a real hardship for his family—but instead of telling me to go back to work, he said: ‘M’aam, you stay strong now. You haven’t won yet, don’t go back tomorrow.’ It was so moving.”
A number of local institutions also lent their support to the strikers. Contingents of unionized workers from other industrial sectors were a common sight at the big rallies; many issued public messages of solidarity and donated food and water to the educators. Most importantly, unionized construction workers at the capitol in Oklahoma refused to cross the picket line, halting the building’s $200 million retrofit. And though the AFL-CIO, National Education Association (NEA), and AFT unfortunately failed to organize any systematic national support campaign, solidarity messages and photos from individual unions across the country similarly bolstered the educators’ spirits.
Churches proved to be no less politically important. Once the strikes began, a large number of church buildings became makeshift childcare sites and food distribution centers. Rank-and-file workers and their family members also brought the movement directly to their co-religionists. As one Arizona teacher explained on April 22, “I just talked to my 94-year-old mother who proudly told me that she had worn Red for Ed to church and to her women’s group meeting and had talked to everyone she could about our cause. Oh, and we are also on the prayer list. #churchladieshaveourback.”
Given pervasive liberal stereotypes about bible-thumpers in Trumpland, it should be underlined that religious beliefs were not an obstacle to active participation in class struggle. In fact, during the strikes widespread religious sentiment generally helped promote and sustain mass action in the face of considerable adversity. Strikers on Facebook frequently reminded their peers that “God helps those who help themselves,” and that it was necessary to “put legs on our prayers.” Jennifer Deibel’s “#RedForEd PRAY-in” conveyed the general sentiment: “As you continue to walk-in, wear red, contact your representatives and fight for what’s best for Arizona students, would you commit to taking a few moments each day to hit your knees and fight in prayer.” On Monday, March 5, thousands of West Virginian educators participated in a powerful joint prayer inside the capitol rotunda. “Now that is how you strike. Beautiful!” replied one educator on the United page.
Though national celebrities were noticeably absent, some important local figures lent their support. For instance, Oklahoma State’s head football coach Mike Gundy, one of the most beloved individuals in the state, took a clear stand on the side of the walkout: “I’m 100 percent behind our educators … and I think they should do whatever they think is necessary in order to get what’s necessary to be successful.”12
Local Democratic leaders also came out in support of the educators, playing a significant role in legitimizing their demands. For some, this attitude clearly stemmed from personal conviction. But for most Democratic representatives, particularly in the higher echelons of the party, electoral calculations seem to have been the overriding factor. Sensing that these movements could be their ticket back to power, politicians had nothing to lose by jumping on the strikers’ bandwagon. In the words of Emily Comer: “If workers hadn’t taken the lead, the Democrats would never have taken the stand that they did.”
National solidarity efforts were also critically important in bolstering the strikers. Educators, teachers’ unions, and supportive socialists from across the country wore red to work and took photos of themselves with messages of support. “People might think these solidarity photos were no big deal, but actually they were hugely important to us,” explained Jay O’Neal. “Being on strike is really physically draining, and these small acts gave us strength to keep fighting.” In a message of encouragement to public employees, Emily Comer posted the following note on March 3: “We are inspiring the entire nation! We’re leading the way for other workers who have been ignored for too long and they’re watching us for guidance.”
Pizza donations were another emblematic crystallization of national support. The tradition began when my mother, Lita Blanc, president of the United Educators of San Francisco, ordered hundreds of pizzas for striking West Virginia educators during the last two days of their strike. A GoFundMe page comment described the morale boost when the food arrived: “I was at the Capitol yesterday when pizzas were delivered inside. It was like pizza crowd surfing!!! Pizza boxes were floating across hands of teachers up in the air. After the pizza was gone, the boxes made great drums for the chanting! Lol. Again, thank you from the bottom of my heart!”
Among conservatives, views of blue states even began to shift, as seen in the following note sent to the SF educators’ union by a Mountain State striker: “Thank you for your support of West Virginia teachers. People of California get a lot of bad press. Obviously, it isn’t fair for all of you.”
Empowerment and Politicization
Concessions wrested from employers are not the only manifest impact of strikes. Equally important, work stoppages also empower and politicize the working class. One Arizona educator posted on Facebook that, “During the walkout I felt more empowered and respected as a teacher than ever before. We all get the ‘I’m so sorry’ looks when we say we are teachers. I never experienced that once. I was suddenly an activist and hero.”
Strikes constitute a dramatic break from normal routines and social hierarchies. At most times and places, workers under capitalism have remarkably little say over their jobs, communities, or government. Even if workers are allowed to vote periodically, it is unaccountable employers and the politicians at their service who possess systemic decision-making power over economic and political life. Mostly, working people just try to keep their heads down and get by.
Before these movements began, labor organizations in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona were numerically weak and/or hollowed out. Most educators who joined the unions did so primarily to receive legal services in case of disciplinary conflicts. WVEA regional organizer Allen Stumps described the situation in West Virginia, where the unions were relatively strong in comparison with Oklahoma and Arizona: “Prior to the push for a strike, it was very tough to organize. We’d be happy if ten people would show up to a meeting.”
All this changed dramatically over the course of the strikes. A groundswell of collective action went hand in hand with an unprecedented union membership surge. The influx of thousands of new members decisively vindicated those dissident labor militants and analysts who for years have been arguing that reviving the strike was the key to labor revitalization. It’s hard to imagine how educators will be able to sustain their power and win further gains in the coming period without this continued revival of organized labor; indeed, while Facebook can be a valuable tool during moments of peak mobilization, there’s no strategic substitute for a strong trade union movement.
And membership increases only tell part of the story, for there were many union members who did not become active until this movement emerged. Tanya Asleson’s experience was not atypical: “I went from not wanting to be a building rep, to being aggravated and involved, to now becoming president of the AFT in our county. The strike forced me to find leadership skills within myself. We’ve all really grown in the last couple of months; it makes us proud.”
To be sure, much of this organizational and leadership development took place outside formal union structures. To quote Katie Endicott: “We learned that you don’t have to have a union title, a position. You just have to have courage and a backbone to stand up for yourself, for your state, and your kids. And that’s what we did.” In Arizona, in fact, self-organized ranks directly led the strike. Arizona Educators United, formed in early March, immediately developed a volunteer site-liaison network of 2,000 school-based organizer-representatives, the overwhelming majority of whom had no prior activist experience. When asked to describe their highlight of the walkout, one Arizonan educator posted the following: “Saying Yes to being a liaison – not my personality! Huge personal growth!”
Referring to the strikes as “endurance tests,” teachers emphasized the challenges of staying out for so long—and how easy it was to fall into despair along the way. “The longer it went, the more it felt like we weren’t going to win our demands,” recalls Mingo County teacher Eric Starr. “It was like trench warfare—and it seemed like the Senate was out to bust the union. The longer it went on, the more stressed I became, but I didn’t want to go back to school and tell the students that I had folded.” Even for educators used to a demanding job, physical exhaustion was a very real problem. According to Tanya Asleson, “By the end of the strike I felt like I needed to go back to work to get some rest.”
One reason for this exhaustion was the intensity of the capitol actions. Due to the noise and crowd numbers, these often felt like outdoor music festivals or playoff sporting events—except with much higher stakes. In Oklahoma, there was all-day picketing, lobbying, and dancing, punctuated by noontime rallies. Political discussion was incessant among the educators camped out in front of the building. All throughout the day, educators proudly carried their homemade protest signs and admired those of their peers.
Midway through the Sooner State’s walkout, Stephanie Price described the scene: “Being at the capitol is empowering and exhausting. It’s crowded and chaotic; it also often means waiting for hours in line to get inside the capitol. But at the same time, it’s so positive and emotional, people have been really polite and kind to each other. People are coming together to find a solution to a common goal. It feels good.”
The capitol protest in Phoenix was very similar, although it was marked by intense heat and outfitted with an even better marching band. One Arizona educator posted that her favorite part of the strike was “getting a teacher who I never thought would participate down to the capitol.” The only downside, she noted, was that now she couldn’t get “[Twisted Sister’s] ‘We’re not Gonna Take It’ out of [her] head.”
West Virginia’s protest, in contrast, was relatively no frills. There were no daily rallies, no sound system, and no campout infrastructure. Each day the protest consisted almost entirely of chanting and singing in front of the Senate chamber doors. It’s significant that protestors at the West Virginia capitol never sang labor songs—instead, anthems like John Denver’s “Country Roads” or the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” were the norm. Though one could certainly find many teachers decked out in traditional red bandannas, the strike’s level of political-cultural continuity with West Virginia’s militant past was lower than portrayed in most outside accounts. Protest signs were far more likely to reference Beyoncé than Mother Jones.
When I asked West Virginia educators to describe a particular moment when they had gained a newfound sense of power, many cited the numerous confrontations between teachers and leading Republicans. Such in-person clashes played an important role in unmasking the politicians’ veneer of legitimacy and in giving educators confidence in themselves. Ashlea Bassham’s anecdote was typical:
My favorite moment of the strike was on the second day. Me and seven of my coworkers were waiting in a hallway where we hoped we’d be able to corner Senator Karnes, the vice chair of the Education Committee—and a real reactionary. Eventually, Karnes comes out and we start asking him things like “Why are you being anti-teacher?” He responded in this really arrogant way, interrupting us and telling us made-up things like that our average class size was fifteen.
Eventually my coworker goes up to him and says “Why do you keep talking over people? It seems like that’s the one thing you’re good at.” Keep in mind that my coworker is not an outspoken guy and he’s generally very polite. So I really wasn’t expecting him to speak up; it was great to see that bit of empowerment. It felt like we were finally starting to stand up to the bullies who run our state.
For most educators I spoke with, the single most empowering moment of the strike was the night it went wildcat. On the cold evening of Tuesday, February 27, thousands of striking educators gathered on the outside steps of the capitol, having heard that union leaders were meeting with the governor and that the national press would be filming live at six. WVEA president Dale Lee and AFT-WV president Christine Campbell strode to the top of the steps and quieted the restless crowd. Only ten minutes earlier, everybody’s phones had begun buzzing with the announcement of the deal’s details at the governor’s last-minute press conference inside the capitol. Strikers were incensed when they saw that the deal fell decidedly short of their expectations.
In an epic misreading of the situation, Dale Lee calmly announced to the massive crowd that the strike was over, and that they would return to work on Thursday. The ensuing confrontation was perhaps the defining moment of the entire strike wave. As he tried to finish his declaration, Lee clearly didn’t know what had hit him:
We’re going back in Thursday, but we reserve the right [growing boos] … Hold up, hold up, hold up [Lee raises his hand to quiet the crowd], hold up please. [From the crowd: “No you please hold up!”]. We reserve the right to call you back out as we need to [Loud shouts: “No! Boo!”]
Drowning out Christine Campbell’s subsequent attempt to speak, the crowd of educators began chanting, “55 united! 55 united!,” “Fix it now! Fix it now!,” “Back to the table! Back to the table!,” and “We are the union bosses! We are the union bosses!”
Rank-and-file leader Jay O’Neal was one of the many teachers assembled that night. He later explained to me: “It was my favorite moment of the whole strike. I was watching everyone around me and my jaw dropped. I saw that people, my coworkers who had felt powerless for so long, now after four days of striking felt their collective power. When they yelled ‘We are the union bosses!’ they really meant it. It was so beautiful to witness that realization.”
Everybody now acknowledges that the wildcat saved the strike. Contrary to the message of the unions and the governor that evening, the Republican West Virginia Senate had not in fact agreed to a deal. Had school employees ceded to their union leaders’ command to return to work on Thursday, they may well have won nothing.
It took another full week of striking to make the Senate back down. In the late morning of Tuesday, March 6, Governor Jim Justice waded into the crowd rallying inside the capitol and announced, to the surprise of all, that the Republican Senate had finally agreed to the strikers’ demands. Once it became clear that this deal was indeed final, the capitol was immediately engulfed with celebration. Strikers broke down crying, hugged friends and strangers, sang songs, and chanted as loudly as they could.
Immediately following the announcement, Emily Comer described the scene to me: “We’re overwhelmed with emotion. I have broken down sobbing more times than I can count today. There’s probably video footage of me bawling while I’m surrounded by coworkers singing ‘Country Roads.’ There’s almost a sense of disbelief, because for about a solid week there, we were really in unfamiliar territory.”
Jay O’Neal conveyed a similar sentiment: “I’m excited, I’m thrilled, I feel like my life won’t ever be the same again. It sounds like hyperbole, but it’s not. Going back to the classroom won’t be the same now.”
The strikers’ final chant in the capitol was fitting: “Who made history? We made history!”
Arizona’s victory came in the predawn hours of May 3. To ensure that the pay-raise deal passed—and to support the fight to add progressive amendments to it—AEU leaders had called upon strikers the afternoon prior to remain on the capitol grounds. That evening’s all-night campout was a highlight for many, ranking with the 75,000-strong march that had kicked off the strike a week before. Thousands participated in a candlelight vigil, capped by a group rendition of “Amazing Grace.” As one educator recalled on the Facebook group, “It gave me goosebumps and when I tried to tell my mom about it today, I started crying.” There was something in the air. As teachers camped out on the capitol grounds, the ever-popular marching band led an ongoing nighttime sing-along (punctuated only by periodic pizza breaks).
People were reluctant to leave, even after the capitol lawn’s sprinklers came on. All the while, hundreds of red-clad educators packed into the legislative chambers, remaining there well past 3:00 a.m. One can glean a sense of the crowd’s irreverent mood from the following Twitter request: “Can someone please bring a pizza up to 3rd floor of the Senate? They won’t let us back up if [we] go down. And also a Coke??? #redneedsfed #kiddingnotkidding #maybejust-thecoke #notthatkoch #caffeinatemeplease.” The request was quickly met.
When the budget deal was finally passed in the early morning hours, educators were celebratory, although somewhat less euphoric than in West Virginia, because they had not yet won their demands for full school funding. Despite having gotten only a few hours of sleep, thousands nevertheless returned to the capitol later that morning for a lively mass rally to celebrate their achievements. A teacher’s freshly made sign put it well: “Best group project ever.”
The return to work was no less emotional. As one Wyoming County, West Virginia teacher remarked, “I’ve never been hugged so much in my life.” Educators posted hundreds of moving anecdotes on social media about their first day back at school. One of Vanessa Arredondo-Aguirre’s third graders gave her the following card, replete with Wonder Woman stickers: “Thank you for all your courage Ms. Arredondo. You are my hero.” That same day, another Arizona teacher posted the following to the AEU page: “I just had a student come up to me and say thanks for fighting for me coach. That made all of the struggles and sacrifices worth while.”
Pride was a common theme of teachers after these victories, just as it had been throughout the strike. “My feelings about West Virginia have changed a lot. Before this, I felt politically isolated and was ready to leave the state, but the unity has really affected me,” noted Azareen Mullins. “The biggest change in me since we won is the deep pride I feel in the people of this state and our accomplishment. I’ve seen that not everyone is asleep at the wheel, that there are other people here willing to fight.”
These processes of empowerment went along with a rapid and deep politicization of tens of thousands of workers, students, and parents. For weeks on end, politics became the 24/7 topic of conservation. Asleson recalls that “during those nine days of striking, when I wasn’t at the capitol or our picket line, I was glued to my phone, checking for updates and watching the capitol’s livestream. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch a movie.” The West Virginia legislature website repeatedly crashed due to network overload.
When you’re involved in collective action, it no longer makes sense to tune out politics. Whereas liberals and academics tend to treat education as a precondition for progressive action, the red state revolts demonstrate the actuality of an old socialist axiom: most working-class people learn about social power through their experiences in struggle and mass organizing. A book or a lecture cannot effectively explain, on a mass scale, ideas like solidarity or collective action; for these to sink in, you need to experience them firsthand.
Given the diversity of strike participants and community supporters, this politicization has, of course, proceeded unevenly. These strikes were only the initial shots in a much-longer battle through which working people can come to realize the depth of their power, differentiate political friend from foe, and see the possibility for a radically better society.
But even in the span of just a few short months, some basic lessons in class consciousness reverberated widely. The importance of trade unions and worker solidarity became widely evident. So too did the potency of the strike weapon. In the words of Noah Karvelis: “Educators saw that they have power. They’ve realized that they’re exploited and that they have structural power. And in this walkout, they made their power felt.” For Emily Comer, “more than anything, the strike changed people’s ideas of what is possible. I now have coworkers asking me about when we’re going to have a nationwide teachers’ strike, which I could have never imagined being uttered even a few months ago.”
Among educators’ takeaways from the strikes, disillusionment with Republican politicians was a common theme. Facebook feeds were flooded by Republican educators repenting their past ballot decisions and denouncing their current leaders. On March 5, a West Virginia teacher repented: “I won’t ever vote for another Republican in this state again.” To this, another replied: “My mom is a Republican and at this time I wouldn’t vote for her.”
Strikers in Oklahoma and Arizona put forward similar critiques. To quote one post:
Conservative, Christian, Republican and I support RedforEd. I’m astonished and mortified that Republicans leaders are undermining education so callously. I believe in families and that children are blessings. I cannot understand why the idea of increasing funding for education is not their top priority. If you want to say you are for protecting families, you have to fund education accordingly.
Such sentiments did not just remain on paper. Unlike their private sector counterparts, public employees have the opportunity to vote out their bosses, and so in the wake of the strikes, hundreds of educators decided to run for office to challenge anti-education Republicans in Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Arizona. The basic political intuition behind this electoral surge is correct: protests aren’t enough. Indeed, systematic transformation of the priorities of a state—or the country—requires political power. Given this fact, and the role played by local Democrats during the strike, it is not surprising that many teachers and staff in these states enthusiastically voted to kick out local Republicans in November 2018.
The problem, however, is that the Democratic Party is not a party of, or for, the working class; in fact, elected Democrats have a long tradition of pro-business policies and broken promises in each of these states. Through their experience in struggle, a layer of teachers in the spring of 2018 concluded that it was necessary to act independently of either party. The strikes, after all, demonstrated that mass struggle can win major gains no matter who is in power. As one rank-and-file teacher commented in the AEU group: “I’ve also come to realize just how deep the problems in government are. I know everyone keeps saying we need to vote in Democrats, but that’s not the answer. Educational funding problems exist in highly Democratic states too.” A post on West Virginia’s United page voiced similar sentiments: “I’m not the far left and not the far right. This is what WV Democrats used to be before this total demise of our party. Maybe we should start a 3rd party.”
The extent of the subordination of politicians and governmental policy to big business was a key revelation for many strikers. According to one West Virginia teacher: “What I did gain from the strike was knowledge … and what I learned scares me. I learned that most of our legislators do not respect our profession. I learned that most of them are not willing to help the working class because it conflicts with their loyalties to the gas/oil industry or pharmaceutical companies.”
At Oklahoma’s student rally during the walkout, sixteen-year-old Cameron Olbert reached a similar conclusion: “The poor and working class … have already paid more than enough into the system. It’s time to ask those who can best afford it to pay their fair share too. That means we stop starving public education just so we can feed Big Oil.”
Opposition to privatization spread widely, particularly in Arizona. Parent activist Dawn Penich-Thacker explained the dynamic: “Red for Ed has more people paying attention to education than ever before. Even last year, a lot of people hadn’t heard of the funding crisis, let alone vouchers. Now you can’t go anywhere in Arizona without talking about this. Red for Ed is an incredible ‘force multiplier’ for efforts to put a stop to increased privatization: it makes all of our tools more powerful. Now every conversation we have about vouchers and charters is amplified across the state.”
Though the initial demands of these education movements may seem relatively modest, each walkout raised a question with radical political implications: Should our society’s wealth and resources be used for human needs, or for corporate profits? A small, but not insignificant, number of strikers concluded that systematic solutions will be needed to resolve our society’s underlying crisis of priorities. In this sense, it’s fitting to end our chapter with a letter sent to me by Morgantown teacher Anna Simmons. When asked about her favorite moment of the strike, she recounted the following anecdote from the day West Virginian educators went wildcat:
At a mostly unoccupied mall in Morgantown we met to discuss our options. Ultimately, in a nearly singular voice, we stated that we were not willing to accept the same empty promises our politicians have given their constituents for decades. It was a spontaneously planned meeting with short notice but our school employees showed up in huge numbers.
I realized that night that I wasn’t the only one feeling as passionately as I was feeling about what the work stoppage meant. It was the moment I realized that it was about more than just insurance premiums and salaries. It was the continuation of a movement that started with Bernie Sanders and is going to result in a power shift from the elite wealthy to the working people.