The teachers won widespread public support by fighting not just for themselves, but for all government employees. There lies a lesson: We’re going to have to stand shoulder to shoulder or else we’ll all fall.

It won’t be easy. Going on strike is no longer a familiar exercise for American workers. Last year there were just seven major work stoppages, the second-lowest number ever recorded. In the aftermath of Janus, if unions are further undermined, workers will need to take on this kind of organizing themselves. The teachers strikes offer yet another example of how this can work. The rank and file did much of the organizing in Oklahoma over social media, and the union leadership had to catch up to the members’ overwhelming desire to strike.

Teachers were up against state lawmakers, who they can vote out of office. It could be harder for private-sector workers going up against the largest corporations on the planet.

The Fight for 15 movement offers some cause for optimism. Starting with its first fast-food industry strike, in 2012, Fight for 15 now includes child care providers, adjunct professors, Uber drivers, home health aides and airport employees. While financially backed by traditional unions, the movement has reached into workplaces that have resisted unionization, and it has gotten confrontational, staging ever-larger strikes and acts of civil disobedience. And it has had some significant wins: State governments in California, New York and Massachusetts and local bodies in Seattle and Washington, D.C., have passed legislation to increase wages to $15 an hour. Democrats now back a $15 wage for all.

Americans have done this before. In the 1930s, workers had to get militant in the face of a legal landscape in which strikes and organizing were restricted or even banned. That period ended with a truce that exchanged labor peace for laws that facilitated unionization, a truce that is now all but broken. We have no choice but to take up our organizing arms once more.

If we don’t, employers will only hoard more power. Economic growth will continue to leave us out. And if the courts keep turning their backs on us, we will have no choice but to take drastic measures.