It was only eight years ago that seething hostility towards teacher unions was the status quo. The national media lauded their demonization in liberal documentarian Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman and corporate-backed education reform policies enjoyed a bipartisan consensus — from Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s Act 10 to Democratic president Barack Obama’s Race to the Top.

The 2012 Chicago Teachers Union strike was the first real public challenge to the business elite’s education agenda. Now, it appears that the teacher strike wave rolling across the country has the potential to finally turn the tide.

What started as a walkout in three West Virginia counties quickly spread to the entire state. Since then, walkouts and mass rallies have taken place in Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. The audacity of the West Virginia teachers is clearly contagious. This is an inspiring moment, one that will hopefully leave hundreds if not thousands of activists fundamentally transformed by their experience of collective power.