“They Should Put Us Kids First”
The Rochester, New York, school board is set to lay off 200 educators midway through the school year. We interviewed three students organizing mass walkouts to stop the cuts.
Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. He is the author of Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics and Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1882-1917).
The Rochester, New York, school board is set to lay off 200 educators midway through the school year. We interviewed three students organizing mass walkouts to stop the cuts.
So far in the Democratic primary, unions have been riding the fence. But they could play the decisive factor in Bernie Sanders’s efforts to defeat the Democratic Party establishment, oust Donald Trump, and win transformative social change.
Last night, immigrant rights activists asked Joe Biden to repudiate Obama’s immigration record. Biden said no and then told them to “vote for Trump.” Carlos Rojas, one of the activists, talks to Jacobin about why he spoke out — and why we need an immediate moratorium on deportations.
Los Angeles educators voted last week to endorse Bernie Sanders for president. Arlene Inouye of United Teachers Los Angeles speaks to us about the significance of their endorsement and why Sanders is the best candidate for the working class.
Teachers and support staff are walking out today in Little Rock, Arkansas. It’s yet another show of worker militancy in a deeply red state, focused on the most basic questions of racial justice and school resegregation, teachers’ rights to organize, and democratic control over the school district.
Numerous factors contributed to the recent teachers’ strikes. But it is factually accurate, and strategically important, to acknowledge that Bernie Sanders was one of them.
Most Democratic presidential contenders are now saying they support striking teachers. But only one candidate can take credit for helping inspire the nationwide educators’ strike wave: Bernie Sanders.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised to end business as usual in Chicago. Instead, she’s antagonizing teachers, refusing to fully fund public schools, and giving the rich whatever they want. That agenda didn’t end well for Rahm Emanuel. It won’t for Lightfoot, either.
Chicago’s 2012 walkout inspired a national educators’ upsurge across the country. This week, the movement is set to strike again where it all began.
Don’t worry about the naysaying pundits and polls. Bernie Sanders’s road to victory is through mobilizing the kind of voters who don’t usually vote. Whether or not he can pull it off is up to us.
When it comes to K-12 public education, Elizabeth Warren’s progressive credentials are weak. Educators and students deserve better.
Socialists have historically played a key role in the US labor movement as part of a broader current of militant rank-and-file workers. The recent teachers’ strike wave shows that to rebuild unions, we have to build that militant current.
To win, fighting back on a citywide and national level isn’t enough. We need a strategy to build working-class power on a statewide level.
Is there a democratic road to socialism? And if so, what does it mean for socialists today?
The teachers strike wave is the most important development in working-class politics in years. Combined with the rise of socialism, chances for a major transformation leftward in American politics are better than ever.
Hundreds of Wayfair workers in Boston walked out on Wednesday to protest their company’s complicity in Trump’s migrant detention camps on the border. We spoke with walkout leader Maddie Howard about the workers’ decision to take action on the job against the camps.
There are four important things to know about strikes in the public sector: strikes must be central to public-sector union strategy, workers need to be willing to strike even if it means breaking labor law, building community support is crucial, and strikes can defeat the Right’s privatization offensive.
Yet again in West Virginia, Republicans are seeking to privatize schools and stop teachers strikes. A West Virginia teacher explains how educators are yet again mobilizing to stop it — and why “there’s nothing to compromise on.”
Karl Kautsky’s vision for winning democratic socialism is more radical, and more relevant, than most leftists care to admit.
Contrary to the myth that socialists have always ignored gender oppression, women’s suffrage was first won by socialist feminists — and working-class revolt.