On March 15 at 4:30 p.m., a massive crowd clad in deep purple and bright red blanketed the streets of downtown Los Angeles and spilled out of the subway exit. Some attendees even showed up in hand-stitched half-purple, half-red shirts split down the middle with the purple logo of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99 on the left and the United Teachers Los Angeles’s (UTLA) red logo on the right.

Tens of thousands of Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) education workers stood shoulder to shoulder with thousands of parents, students, and allies. It felt as if the entire city had come together to loudly make one particular demand: LAUSD must use the district’s $5.2 billion it held in reserves to invest in staff, students, and communities rather than continue to sit on the reserves at a time when those staff, students, and communities suffered without the funding.

When Local 99 announced the dates of their three-day unfair labor practice strike at the rally, UTLA pledged to stand in solidarity with their schools’ nonteaching workers. That meant tens of thousands of LA educators agreed to voluntarily withhold their labor by not crossing picket lines — marking the first time the two unions joined together in a strike.