As winter swept across the United States at the outset of 2018, ushering in the bitterest and bleakest days of the year, American teachers and their unions had little to celebrate. The first eight years of the decade had exacted a heavy toll, and still more trouble was lurking on the horizon. In the wake of the Great Recession, funding for public education had been slashed across the country, with particularly deep cuts in the red states, many of which were granting massive tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations and thus reducing state revenues. A growing portion of the funds that remained were diverted from public schools to voucher programs for private schools and to charter schools. For American teachers, the 2010s had been a long, dark night. And at the start of 2018, there had been very few signs that it would end. This article discusses teacher strikes, including the West Virginia Strike of 2018 and four particularly noteworthy strikes of 2019 in Los Angeles, Denver, Oakland, and Chicago, highlighting how power can be built through direct action, politics, and community.