Happy May Day, the international workers’ holiday, a tradition begun in the nineteenth century to demonstrate the strength of the working class! You know what else demonstrates the strength of the working class? Strikes. And strikes are back, baby.

Jacobin’s strike coverage in 2018 started with an article called “The Disappearing Strike,” in which author Doug Henwood warned that the strike is “like a muscle: if workers didn’t exercise it regularly, it would atrophy.” Sadly, as Doug pointed out, “It’s atrophied.”

But later that month, West Virginia’s public school teachers surprised everyone by walking out, sparking a teachers’ strike wave that spread across the nation. US health care and hotel workers flexed their atrophied muscles too, as did higher-ed workers — from custodians to researchers to professors, and, most recently, supermarket workers. Internationally, railway workers, dockworkers, truck drivers and more sent shock waves through nations from New Zealand to Sweden to Brazil.