Interview by Eric Blanc

Despite a public education strike wave, and the recent uptick in hotel work stoppages, strikes are still a relatively rare occurrence in the United States. For that reason alone, the October 23 decision of Baton Rouge educators to walk out merits the attention and support of working people across the country. But there’s something particularly extraordinary about this action: it would have been an unauthorized political strike against ExxonMobil, the tenth-largest corporation in the world.

Incensed by Louisiana’s decades-long policy of granting billions of dollars in tax giveaways to corporations, teachers and support staff voted to hold a one-day school shutdown on October 31 to demand that the school board reject $6 million in additional property-tax exemptions demanded by the ExxonMobil. This was not a decision undertaken lightly. The East Baton Rouge superintendent pledged to keep schools open.

Baton Rouge educators quickly won the first round of battle. Just twenty-four hours after teachers and schools staff approved their walkout, ExxonMobil’s proposed tax exemptions were scratched from the upcoming state board agenda. To discuss the roots and meaning of this movement, Jacobin’s Eric Blanc spoke with Angela Reams-Brown, president of the East Baton Rouge Federation of Teachers, and Tia Mills, president of the East Baton Rouge Parish Association of Educators.