Perth Indymedia

In February 2018, in an extremely important development that might yet prove to be a historical turning point, teachers in the so-called red state of West Virginia, a Republican Party-supporting state which helped sweep Donald Trump to the White House, decided to go on strike. Remarkably, this would be the beginning of a teachers' strike wave that would engulf not only other red states like Oklahoma, Arizona and Kentucky, but eventually spread to Oakland and Los Angeles in California. Eric Blanc is a former teacher and writer whose Red State Revolt: The Teachers' Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics, published earlier this year by Verso Books, is the single best account of the still ongoing strike wave.