Why Women Strike 

In Oakland, California, teachers returned to the classroom this week after striking to demand smaller class sizes and wage increases. Students in the district turned out to a school board meeting on Monday to oppose nearly $22 million in cuts that put programs like the district’s restorative justice program at risk, but the cuts passed. The strike had only moved their schools only so far, they said, and that more had to be done: “Now we have to stick together, no matter what. And do it for us.”

In Denver, Colorado, teachers engaged in a three-day strike in February, securing wage increases for educators and other staff along with reforms to a merit-based pay system that had left teachers struggling with fluctuating pay and financial instability for themselves and their families. “It’s been a struggle to finally feel like I have my feet under me—and barely,” Rebecka Hendricks, a 33-year-old high school teacher and bargaining committee member in the union, told Vice News. “I still have to have a roommate. I’ve had several extra jobs: I used to drive Lyft, I used to deliver food for Postmates, I used to sell things on eBay. I did whatever I could to get extra money to just be able to make it that month.” (In 2018, a Republican lawmaker in the state Senate introduced a bill that would have banned teacher strikes, threatening them with fines, termination, and jail time. It failed.)

In January, Association of Flight Attendants president Sara Nelson called for a general strike to end what was then the longest government shutdown in history. While the strike did not happen, Nelson framed the shutdown as not just a crisis of government, but a wake-up call to all workers:

The country sees no solution in sight, but labor can lead the way. Dr. King rallied us by reaching for the mountain top. He didn’t seek integration of just one school, he sought freedom in our schools for all children. He didn’t seek integration of just one lunch counter, he aspired to have us all “sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” And sisterhood, Dr. King!

Today, people are starving for this kind of leadership. They are hungry for answers where some would say there are none. Through our labor movement, we have the answers for them and together we can lead the way.

In Los Angeles, California, teachers engaged in a week-long strike in January to win smaller classroom sizes; more nurses, counselors, and librarians in their schools; wage increases; reforms to standardized testing; and, in what was arguably the centerpiece of the struggle, a cap on charter schools. “In the day to day, teachers on the ground hold stuff together. We go above and beyond to take care of our students. And we want the district to do that too, to really push itself,” Kirti Baranwal, a teacher with the Spanish-English Bilingual Program at the UCLA Community School, told Jezebel as she prepared to strike. “It inspires me that our contract demands are not just about teachers as workers. In our contract, it’s us asking: How do we, as union members, raise standards and the bar for what communities and students deserve? Because the billionaires are not going to do it. The privatizers are not going to do it.”

In San Francisco, California, workers at the Marriott hotel chain reached an agreement with the company, ending a nine-week, multi-city strike that involved thousands of workers across the country. The deals negotiated varied from city to city, but in San Francisco workers secured increased wages, maintained lifetime health benefits, and shored up pensions. Workers across shops also won additional protections against sexual harassment and violence on the job. “It means so much to me,” Larrilou Carumba, a single mother who had, prior to the strike-won wage increases, been earning $23.50 an hour after six years working as a housekeeper at a San Francisco Marriott, told the New York Times. “I will be able to take care of my kids now because I don’t need to go work another job.”

In mid-October in Los Angeles, California, tenants in a three-building complex in Central Los Angeles were still engaged in a rent strike to protest poor living conditions and rent increases that tenants said would force some families out of their homes. They were part of what was one of several rent strikes that had been launched in the city since 2016—with similar strikes happening across the country—in response to an affordability crisis that is hitting low-income families of color especially hard. Jackelin Lopez, a 34-year-old mother of two who had also participated in a rent strike in her Exposition Park building, told Jezebel that organizing with her neighbors against her landlord was the first time she had participated in a strike, but it led her to become active in the fight for other families in Los Angeles facing the same conditions. “The frustration is very big,” she said, both of her own situation and the crisis conditions that are pushing more tenants into organizing.

In September, workers at McDonald’s in cities across the country went on strike to protest the fast food giant’s refusal to meaningfully address sexual violence and harassment on the job. In Kansas City, Kim Lawson, who walked the picket with her three-year-old daughter, told Jezebel that her decision to strike was about sending a message to her employer and to her child. “I’m a single mom,” she said. “I want to set the right example for my child by speaking out about something that happened to me that is wrong. I can’t tell her to stand up for herself if I’m not willing to stand up for myself.”