What factors led to the current educators’ revolt, and what role, if any, did the 2016 primary run of Bernie Sanders play? At a moment of continued public school strike activity from Chicago to Little Rock, as well as a looming national Democratic primary, this is a particularly important discussion to have.

The recent piece “Social Movements Gave Rise to the ‘Teachers’ Revolt,’ Not Bernie” should be commended for eloquently describing some of the various factors that led to the strike wave. I agree with much of it. Unfortunately, in their desire to deny that Bernie played any role whatsoever in the emergence or development of the strikes, the authors — Oklahoma State University professor Erin Dyke and Brendan Muckian-Bates, a West Virginia teacher and organizer with the anarcho-syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World — present numerous factual errors and radically distort the argument of my recent article on this topic, as well as my book, Red State Revolt.

The closest the authors get to finding any textual evidence to back their critique is when they cite me as arguing in Red State Revolt that West Virginia’s wildcat strike was “the continuation of a movement that started with Bernie Sanders” [emphasis added]. Yet anybody who bothers to look up this citation on page 101 of my book will see that this quote was in fact made not by me, but rather by a rank-and-file West Virginia educator, Anna Simmons.