This week Eric welcomes to the show activist and author Eric Blanc whose book Red State Revolt (Verso, 2019) documented the teachers strike wave across the country in 2018-2019. The conversation begins with a discussion of the nature of the strikes, the political context in which they happened, and the juxtaposition of labor activism in red versus blue states. From there, Eric explains how standardized testing, charter schools, and privatization broadly has decimated the teaching profession in recent decades, and how the recent labor uprising from teachers and education professionals is a backlash to those trends. The final part of the conversation focuses on the Bernie 2020 campaign, and the specifics of Bernie’s proposals on education and rolling back the Wall Street-financed privatization movement.

Music: Max Romeo – “Socialism Is Love”

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