Countering fragmentation, cultivating solidarity: Arizona teacher organizing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Exploring the interplay between teacher solidarity and fragmentation in Arizona, this paper uses a critical bifocality lens to examine the experiences of six teacher organisers during the pandemic. This qualitative research centres teacher organisers’ experience in an iterative analysis of policy and pandemic context, labour action, and teachers’ discursive sense making. Situating teacher organisers’ experiences in a socio-political history of Arizona's labour context, the paper contends that (1) teacher fragmentation intensified in summer 2020 as a result of the state's uneven response to the pandemic, which undermined certain possibilities for interdistrict action; (2) an embodied sense of mutuality and power that developed through participation in the 2018 Red for Ed movement carried over to teachers’ pandemic organizing; and (3) this embodied sense of power prompted rank and file teachers to engage in militant labour action, some of which compelled reluctant union leaders to embrace a more oppositional approach. The paper considers how teacher movements shape their political and labour landscapes just as they are shaped by them.

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