The last few decades have seen increasing attacks on educators' right to participate in formal unions. Given the all-time low of formal union power in the United States and the success of anti-union efforts (Shelton, 2017), how and why have the educator uprisings manifested so intensely in the last few years? This article draws, in part, on a larger interview study the authors conducted with more than two dozen organizers of the 2018 red-state strikes in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Arizona. Interviews took place immediately after the strikes and, again, one year later. The authors draw on key examples from the red-state strikes, as well as historical studies of education labor, to offer two distinct yet overlapping lenses through which the resurgence of educator militancy might be understood. Their first lens centers the rise of social movement unionism in the last few decades in tension with the historical and ongoing predominance of (anti-union) professionalist orientations to the work of teaching (Peterson & Charney, 1999). Their second lens centers the rise of rank-and-file-led solidarity associations--or what they term solidarity unionism. This approach exists in tension with business or service unionist approaches that privilege centralized, hierarchical leadership, and decision-making. Key examples are offered that illuminate these tensions and movements and suggest the importance of understanding the local and situated specificities of each struggle. Through mobilizing critical bifocality, the authors aim to understand how broader histories and political movements shape the terrain of local contemporary educator movements and vice versa.