Teachers’ strikes are impossible to ignore, since so much of the
workforce depends on public education for daytime child-care in addition
to education – when teachers walk out, parents’ ability to go to work
is also impaired, meaning that a teacher’s strike is a kind of warmup
for a general strike.
The striking teachers are operating in states where GOP legislatures
have destroyed or neutered their unions, leaving them without a tidy
leadership hierarchy whose senior members can be co-opted for weak
compromises. Instead, they are grassroots, radical and uncompromising.
