Jim Brown reviewed Red State Revolt by Eric Blanc
"One of the main lessons from the red state revolt is that the Left needs labor just as much as labor needs the Left."
A detailed, on-the-ground account of 2018 teacher strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona. These were illegal strikes in red states, and Blanc describes the different terrain in each situation, describing the different organizing tactics and political situations. The book is especially good at describing how many barriers were in front of these teachers - an entire infrastructure lined up against them that, in some ways, actually ended up energizing these strikes. Though, it took more than just an underdog mentality - it took lots of difficult organizing work.
Blanc's key takeaway is that the Left and labor need each other, and he argues that the Sanders campaign helped pave the way for this kind of labor uprising in red states.
"This revolt shares important similarities with the last great round of rank-and-file radicalism in the United States, the strike wave of the late 1960s and early 1970s. But there …
A detailed, on-the-ground account of 2018 teacher strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona. These were illegal strikes in red states, and Blanc describes the different terrain in each situation, describing the different organizing tactics and political situations. The book is especially good at describing how many barriers were in front of these teachers - an entire infrastructure lined up against them that, in some ways, actually ended up energizing these strikes. Though, it took more than just an underdog mentality - it took lots of difficult organizing work.
Blanc's key takeaway is that the Left and labor need each other, and he argues that the Sanders campaign helped pave the way for this kind of labor uprising in red states.
"This revolt shares important similarities with the last great round of rank-and-file radicalism in the United States, the strike wave of the late 1960s and early 1970s. But there are some critical differences. Whereas labor struggles four decades ago came in the wake of a postwar economic boom and the inspiring successes of the civil rights movement, this labor upheaval has erupted in a period of virtually uninterrupted working-class defeats and neoliberal austerity. As such, political scientist Corey Robin was right to call 2018’s educator upsurge the “most profound and deepest attack on the basic assumptions of the contemporary governing order.”
