A clarification: the long entry i wrote about organizing and sophomore year and Local 100 was intended as a means for me to talk about why that internship was powerful. I went back to the beginning of the Fall 2001 semester because there was a continuity, in terms of my frustrations about organizing, that i think was somewhat separate from anything that i'd encountered the previous year, even during those conversations with katie and stephen and others. I am not trying to overstate my importance to the UOC, which is what i am afraid the entry could be read as, but instead to talk about how i arrived at the point where i was able to do the organizing that i did, regardless of how successful that was.
I forgot to talk about September 11 and its legacies, which were extremely important for Local 100 and for the RA contract victory - 43 Windows on the World employees, members of the union, were killed in the flames which consumed 1 WTC. The company argued that it could not afford to pay workers a living wage and brandished the threat of its clients moving to New Jersey - a somewhat unique manifestation of the race to the bottom in the financial service sector which Saskia Sassen analyzed in The Global City. I wasn't in New York when the planes hit, i was in New Haven, as i have written elsewhere on this blog. Working with Local 100 was both overwhelming and inspiring. From the ashes, and having suffered unimageinable losses, the union was fighting for the rights of immigrant workers demonized as potential terrorists and security risks in the wake of the bombing and the bush administration's barely cloaked jingoism.
I also think that I just blocked out the whole YCC Card Check orgy of arrogance. I don't really want to think about those six hours, or any of the YCC assholes responsible for them, ever, ever again. So i'll just say that I sat near Katie and Michael Denning and i seethed. A lot. And then they tried to kick Lis out of the room. And no one would listen to Steve Fortes. Oh god, it was disgusting.
Yo, I think we should all write 'memoirs' to leave for the underclassmen, so that they don't fuck up in the same ways that we did. No point in reinventing the wheel every four years just because of graduation.
ReplyDeleteLord knows that people should know exactly when and why the Pan Ethnic Coalition crashed and burned in the way that it did, so that the same mistakes can be avoided in the future.
Folks should also be aware of the racial/ethnic/class divides that have seemed to plague the slac/usay/uoc incarnations, so that people working in the uoc can continue to emphasize those issues in current work.
That being said, I'm not sure that I'm done with my activism yet, and maybe it's a little problematic for me to be talking about writing my own memoirs of college days organizing. I'm still kicking. I'm just off in my own little corner, by my brown lonesome self. o_O
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the UOC was, at least when i was still in New Haven, (i can only speak from personal experience and am not claiming any responsibility) far better in dealing with these issues than USAY, due to a combination of who was on the committee, how we organized, and how sophisticated our coalition-building model was. I also think coming in and saying "we don't want to eat you up, we want to work with you" was massively important, particularly given some of the things people felt USAY had demanded from them. Alek was present in a lot more USAY meetings than i was, as was Katie, so they may disagree, but that's my take as the former UOC Liason to the PEC or vice versa. Regardless, it's obviously crucial that the UOC continues to develop new ways of dealing with these issues and doesn't grow complacent. The fact that they've mounted such a sucessful campaign around financial aid, something that fizzled like a can of flat diet doctor pepper the last time we tried it, is a development i find pretty heartening. It's something i don't think we could have pulled off last year. And yes, you do have to graduate first, which shouldn't be that difficult for you.
ReplyDeleteDuring the summer of 2003, i was planning to write a history of the UOC. If i can't find a goddamn job, i might return to that project, either dealing only with the period between July 18, 2002 (the first summer committee meeting) and May 2004, or relying on oral histories and shit to cover the stuff that's happened since then. But if someone else wants to do that, I would gladly step aside and concentrate on getting paid.
No, just write it already.
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