Hi Folks,
I’m pleased to share the news that the WAC Clearinghouse (https://wac.colostate.edu) has released another open-access book. It appears in the Precarity & Contingency book series, which is edited by Seth Kahn and Sue Doe.
Rank-and-File Rebels: Theories of Power and Change in the 2018 Education Strikes
By Erin Dyke and Brendan Muckian-Bates
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.
You can find the book at https://wac.colostate.edu/books/precarity/rebels/. This book, like other books published by the Clearinghouse, will be available in a print edition from University Press of Colorado in the coming months. Thanks to Erin and Brendan for their work on the book and for their decision to share it with us as an open-access publication. Thanks as well to the anonymous peer reviewers who contributed to its development.
All the best,
Mike
Mike Palmquist
Publisher, The WAC Clearinghouse
Professor of English
University Distinguished Teaching Scholar
Colorado State University
Email: Mike.Palmquist
“Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.