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Mar 5, 18

The Iron Is Hot: Strike Wave Grows Beyond Teachers

On Monday, March 5th, West Virginia teachers will remain on strike for the 8th consecutive day, as the Senate within the State’s legislature has rejected a recent agreement over pay and benefits. In a statement on Friday, heads of the teacher’s unions stated that teachers are “ready to go back to work,” however in the course of the struggle, the rank-n-file has drastically removed control out of the hands of the bureaucrats, and currently there does not appear to be an end in sight. Last week, ad-hoc groups of workers soundly rejected a sell-out agreement between union leadership and the government, keeping the strike going, as demonstrations at the state capitol have remained constant.

Coal-mine owning governor Jim Justice also attacked the strikers, calling them “rednecks,” a remark that was answered by many strikers who donned red bandanas around their necks, a reference to the Battle of Blair mountain in 1921, and the “Redneck” mine wars. In these battles, mine workers waged armed insurrections against hired goons of the coal industry as well as with the US government, taking over entire towns in the process, while the government used troops against and dropped bombs on the insurgent workers.

This communal and self-organized activity seen outside of the ongoing protests at the capitol in West Virginia have also pointed towards new forms of life outside of capitalism, just as much as the strike has shown the power of self-organized direct action. As a teacher that talked with It’s Going Down said in an interview, everyday teachers are volunteering and putting in work at the capitol, on the picket lines, and also in volunteering to help distribute food and other resources to children across the state who are missing meals at school.

But as the teachers’ strike in West Virginia continues into its eight day, another state wide strike is set to take off, also in West Virginia. According to WDTV:

After ten months of negotiations, members of the Communications Workers of America have not been able to reach agreement on a fair contract with Frontier Communications. As a result, 1,400 Frontier Communications workers in West Virginia and in Ashburn, VA went on strike at 12:01 am on Sunday, March 4.

Oklahoma public school teachers are planning a statewide strike for sometime in the coming weeks:

More than 25,000 people have joined the Facebook group “Oklahoma Teacher Walkout – The Time Is Now!” and a group of educators met Friday to discuss plans for the walkout, according to Tulsa’s KTUL.

“We are to the point where we have no other option,” one teacher told KTUL.

The teachers are frustrated with lawmakers’ lack of action on increasing teacher salaries. The state’s teachers are reportedly some of the lowest-paid in the nation, according to KTUL.

“Frustration levels are high, so a strike is not a touchy word anymore,” Molly Jaynes, an Oklahoma City teacher told KTUL. “I think we have surpassed the point of conversations, and I don’t think that there’s anything the legislators have provided us recently to give us any sort of hope that they’re going to take actual actions this time.”

One teacher stated:

“I am driving a 15-year-old car with 200,000 miles on it. I have two daughters in college, using student loans they will have to pay back for the rest of their lives. Our insurance has shot up so high that we have only a few hundred dollars a month to buy food and incidentals after we pay our mortgage. I am hoping a pay increase will come before my car dies completely.

The unions have done nothing but to impede progress we might have made without them. And, we can’t wait any longer on them.”

Clearly, West Virginia has ignited something. And the lessons of the West Virginia teachers’ strike are several. The first, is that the bureaucratic and tired model of both working with the Democratic Party and engaging in a legalistic framework of collective bargaining that at times includes symbolic 1-3 day strikes – doesn’t work. Instead, mass direct action is needed that shuts everything down to bring the bosses and government to the table and forces them to grant concessions.

Moreover, workers are learning that just as they can push for their own interests against the desires of the State, so too can they take over and control the decisions happening around them while on strike, by pushing back against the strangle hold of the union bosses.

Lastly, by coming together and creating living forms of mutual aid, the teachers have been able to grow substantial support from the surrounding community, as well as get non-teachers to take part in picket and protest actions.

As anarchists, autonomists, and anti-capitalists, we have a role to play in supporting the strike, both in terms of offering material solidarity in the form of donations, walking picket lines, and bringing food to share, but also in terms of giving confidence and support to the autonomous elements within the struggle which are pushing back against the bureaucrats attempting to squash it. This can mean supporting groups like the West Virginia Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), to encouraging and supporting the creation of workers strike committees and assemblies to coordinate the strike, as well as mutual aid programs that are feeding people on the ground.

Above all, we need to carry out another difficult task, one of articulating that life on strike reveals a entirely new mode of existence, one that is preferable to this one. For as teachers, bus drives, and others run and manage their own struggles and feed their own communities, we see a glimpse into how things could be.

Ultimately, this points us towards the kind of world we ultimately want to create: not just one in which we are constantly fighting for wages to match inflation, or attempting to win back the last set of crumbs the rich are attempting to sweep from the table. But instead, winning control back over our lives and the means of existence.

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In search of new forms of life. It's Going Down is a digital community center and media platform featuring news, opinion, podcasts, and reporting on autonomous social movements and revolt across so-called North America from an anarchist perspective.

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