Strike for the Common Good
Fighting for the Future of Public Education
Amy Schrager Lang editor Dr Rebecca Kolins Givan editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:The University of Michigan Press
Published:8th Oct '20
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
In February 2018, 35,000 public school educators and staff walked off the job in West Virginia. More than 100,000 teachers in other states—both right-to-work states, like West Virginia, and those with a unionized workforce—followed them over the next year. From Arizona, Kentucky, and Oklahoma to Colorado and California, teachers announced to state legislators that not only their abysmal wages but the deplorable conditions of their work and the increasingly straitened circumstances of public education were unacceptable. These recent teacher walkouts affirm public education as a crucial public benefit and understand the rampant disinvestment in public education not simply as a local issue affecting teacher paychecks but also as a danger to communities and to democracy.
Strike for the Common Good gathers together original essays, written by teachers involved in strikes nationwide, by students and parents who have supported them, by journalists who have covered these strikes in depth, and by outside analysts (academic and otherwise). Together, the essays consider the place of these strikes in the broader landscape of recent labor organizing and battles over public education, and attend to the largely female workforce and, often, largely non-white student population of America’s schools.
"Strike for the Common Good provides an excellent roadmap for beginning that important work and is therefore essential reading for anyone interested in the future of worker collective action and the labor movement." —The Forge
* The Forge *"I highly recommend Strike for the Common Good for teachers, everyone interested in the education system, trade union officials, activists, and labor scholars—the editors and contributors have provided detailed and informed insights into a groundbreaking wave of mobilization."
—ILR Review
"This well-written, timely collection constitutes serious political and social analysis of an important turn in both the labor and social-justice movements in the US. Importantly, it is filled with the voices of organizers themselves, their reflections on tactics, lessons learned, and what is needed for the future of public education. While the book is especially important for those interested in social movements, labor movements, and education policy, its focus on the role of public education in American society makes it appropriate for and accessible to a broad readership. Highly recommended."
—CHOICE
"[A]n exceptionally rich collection, filled with diverse voices and keen insights. . . .The work of building broad, stable communities of common interest—of forging genuine solidarity—is slow and difficult, but this excellent volume demands that we think of what it could mean for the power or leverage we could bring to the bargaining table and the good we could do even for people who are not members of our unions."
—Academe
ISBN: 9780472074723
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
286 pages