Articles
Class Dismissed: Class Conflict in Red State America
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{Editor’s note: Thanks to our media ally TomDispatch.com for sharing with Tikkun this important article about the larger significance of the teachers striking in Red states. RabbiLerner.tikkun@gmail.com]
Class Dismissed
Class Conflict in Red State America
By Steve Fraser
Teachers in red-state America are hard at work teaching us all a lesson. The American mythos has always rested on a belief that this country was born out of a kind of immaculate conception, that the New World came into being and has forever after been preserved as a land without the class hierarchies and conflicts that so disfigured Europe. The strikes, rallies, and walkouts of public school teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, soon perhaps Arizona, and elsewhere are a stunning reminder that class has always mattered far more in our public and private lives than our origin story would allow. Insurgent teachers are instructing us all about a tale of denial for which we’ve paid a heavy price. Professionals or Proletarians?