On Thursday, Fortune published its annual list of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders. There, among heads-of-state, movers, shakers, CEO’s, and football coaches are “West Virginia Teachers” sitting at number 31.

Fortune’s write-up:

For years, it has been universally acknowledged that American public school teachers are woefully underpaid—and considered a given that it has to be that way. Late last year, thousands of West Virginia teachers rose up and said, “Enough,” mobilizing on Facebook and defying their union to strike for fairer pay and higher standards. (They did it thoughtfully; while not teaching, they made sure students who qualified for free at-school meals got fed.) After nine days, West Virginia’s legislature granted them their first raise in four years. The teachers touched off a movement now playing out nationwide, inspiring educators in Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Arizona to follow their lead.

You don’t need to do much googling to see why

Some of the titles say it all. Mother Jones:

Educators Across the US Are Using the West Virginia Teachers’ Strike to Inspire Their Own Battle Plans

And the Christian Science Monitor:

West Virginia teacher strike inspires Oklahoma, Arizona

My personal favorite from Citylab:

'Don't Make Us Go West Virginia On You'

Others see larger implications

From In These Times:

West Virginia Teachers and the Return of Labor Feminism

It begins:

Since the 2016 election, Americans have been treated to all varieties of media profiles and literary-safari trips to the heart of coal country—like J.D. Vance’s book Hillbilly Elegy—which leave the impression that the “working class” is largely an undifferentiated mass of reactionary white men.

The West Virginia teacher’s strike provided a striking contrast to this narrative. While strikers’ red t-shirts and bandannas signaled the movement’s connection to a history of labor radicalism in the state, the strike’s demographics were also revealing. In West Virginia, as in the rest of the country, teaching is a profession dominated by women, and the strike reflected this reality. This was a women-led movement, advocating for a predominantly female rank-and-file.

The rest of the article documents the growing importance of women in the public sector labor movement in West Virginia and elsewhere.

Earlier in the week, Bob Moser in Rolling Stone saw something different:

The Resistance Is Infiltrating Trump Country

He writes:

What the hell has happened to Trump Country? That vast imaginary region of hate-fueled, white-trash Donald Trump dittoheads – a joint creation of hillbilly-bashing memoirist J.D. Vance, The New York Times, and coastal liberals who need somebody to blame – has been behaving very strangely of late.

. . . . Something weird was happening here, though nobody much took notice. White people in Trump Country weren't supposed to be part of any Resistance. This was not part of the script.

Moser then discusses the West Virginia teacher strike and then takes Democrats to task:

And perhaps it's time Democrats wake up to the opportunities they have – not by catering to red-state prejudices, but by offering radically progressive solutions to red-state problems – in the 2018 midterms and beyond. What the Trump Country Resistance is showing is that there was some truth, after all, to the notion that some non-wealthy white people switched from voting for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 to backing Trump in 2016 because of something other than tribal hatreds and passive, ingrained stupidity. They were sending a message, many of them, as loud and clear as that of the teachers on strike: We're not buying the same old bullshit anymore, period.

Moser’s article is definitely worth a read.