There has been a tendency to mythologize West Virginia’s nine-day education strike. By many popular accounts, my coworkers and I appeared to cohere ourselves out of thin air (or a Facebook group) as a fifty-five-strong, ready-to-strike mob. To be sure, our win was monumental and even shocking to many. The day we won, I sobbed as I stood at the capitol alongside fellow teachers and school service personnel, celebrating this blow to austerity, privatization, and union busting.

Despite a Republican-controlled statehouse and a coal baron governor, we had beaten back charter school legislation, attacks on seniority, a paycheck “protection” bill, and we had won a 5 percent raise for all public employees in the state. But these weren’t just tears of joy, they were a catharsis from the pressure and uncertainty that comes with months of sustained, high-stakes organizing — a crucial piece of our story that’s often overlooked.

In his brilliant, exhaustive look at the recent education uprisings, Eric Blanc chronicles how this hard work laid the basis for the strike and our victory in Red State Revolt. “Before they occur, successful strikes appear impossible to most people” he writes. “Afterwards, they seem almost inevitable. And underlying both of these mistaken assumptions is a failure to account for the agency of organizers.” Blanc’s book draws critical lessons from the teachers’ strike wave that swept West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona by centering the voices of striking workers, particularly those of rank-and-file organizers taking the lead.