Red State Revolt: The Teachers' Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics by Eric Blanc (review)

The strike wave of teachers across southern US states in the spring of 2018 was arguably one of the most important events for the American labour movement so far in the early 21st Century, contributing to the highest national strike rate since 1982. Alongside a strong rebuke to years of cuts to public education funding, the struggle centred in regions with weak unions and entrenched Republican administrations. Claims that the Janus Supreme Court decision would spell the end of organized labour have been refuted by the fact of successful, unsanctioned mass strikes in right-to-work states.

Blanc's book has made a splash as the definitive account of Red 4 Ed –introduced by the West Virginia initiators of the movement in tribute to their state's historic miners' struggles where union-ists wore red bandanas. While following the strikes on the ground, Blanc was open about supporting the movement, and also drew on his background as a former high school teacher. This engagement helped earn the trust of grassroots organizers, giving him access to closed strategy sessions that considerably enriched the book's insights. It has received endorsements by Diane Ravitch, the most prominent US critic of the privatization of public education and Jane McAlevey, one of the most prominent contemporary US labour strategists. With its accessible style and focus on practical lessons, it has been promoted by the US labour left. As awareness of the Red 4 Ed strikes spread to Ontario, unions protesting Doug Ford's Conservative government wore red in tribute. Many activist teachers in Ontario have picked up the book, eager for lessons relevant to their context.

Red State Revolt's key point is how the large scale and intensive organizing of teachers and education workers in West Virginia and Arizona, and to a lesser degree in Oklahoma, revived working class left politics in these generally conservative states. Participation in the strikes led many to withdraw support from pro-austerity and pro-privatization Republicans. The strikers built on frustration over the degradation of teaching – evident in their paltry salaries and the thousands of un-filled vacancies in each state (which also reduced fears of reprisals). Blanc argues that the walk outs avoided mass repression because officials feared it would generate greater public support. Like many public sector workers, teachers are socially embedded in the community in which they work. With a successful strike not affecting private profits but "creating a social and political crisis," (45) winning and maintaining public support is essential. During the walkout, teachers and supporters distributed meals to the impoverished families that they served. Teachers of Latino background organized with the predominantly Latino families whose children attended public schools in Arizona, ensuring their majority support.

The education unions had not been combative for decades. Their leadership's vision of what was politically possible had narrowed in tandem with the underfunding of public education. A minority of school employees were members and the unions held limited collective bargaining rights. With the exception of West Virginia, there was limited precedent of collective action within living memory. Yet once the grassroots organizing gathered momentum, the official state union leaders engaged and used their formal structures to launch the strike and negotiate with state authorities. The continuing strength of grassroots organizing was critical. A pivotal moment in West Virginia which ultimately led to victory was a mass rally at the state legislature that received news of an ambiguous settlement by demanding union leaders go "back to the table".

Drawing on a comparative social movements approach, Blanc assesses what led to the most successful cases of West Virginia and Arizona where strikes yielded significant salary increases, defeated a barrage of Republican threats to public schools, and built lasting movements. The outcome was more ambiguous in Oklahoma, where teachers won a raise, but the movement demobilized. Blanc devotes nearly half of the book to an ethnography of the social networks that made the difference, arguing for the importance of...