In spring 2018, a wave of rank-and-file rebellion swept schools across the south and southwest United States, among other places. Educators in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arizona pushed their trade unions, school boards, and school administrations to shut schools down to increase wages, halt rising healthcare costs, and restore public education funding. Despite stringent anti-union labor laws, rank-and-file educators organized on the periphery and sometimes beyond their reticent state unions to take direct action, contributing to a resurgence in educator uprisings across the US and the globe. Rank-and-File Rebels explores and historicizes the spring 2018 “red” state strikes, offering insights into the racial, gendered, and political contexts of educators’ organizing in the lead-up to, during, and soon after the strikes. Through interviews with strike organizers across four states as well as the authors’ own experiences in education labor organizing, this book analyzes theories of power and change, approaches to unionism, and the significance of solidarity and social justice union approaches in contemporary educator labor movements.

Erin Dyke is Associate Professor of Curriculum Studies at Oklahoma State University. Her primary line of research examines the pedagogies, organizing, and impacts of contemporary educator movements on educational practice and policy. Dyke has published ethnographic studies of liberatory curriculum and pedagogy in Educational Studies, International Journal of Multicultural Education, and Journal of Education Human Resources.

Brendan Muckian-Bates is a former West Virginia public educator turned non-profit worker. His specialization is gender studies, critical pedagogy, and social studies education. His work has appeared in Jacobin, Berkeley Review of Education, and New Politics.