"If anybody were bugging my room, i'd want it to be Abbey Hudson, but still..."
-Me, to Julie

good day spent enjoying the sunshine, catching up with friends, getting flustered at the ISO. I think that during the strike we should rename ourselves The g.s. O.C. and create picket-line teen dramas full of witty banter and trendy indie rock exploring the weighty interpersonal drama associated with graduate student unionization struggles.

New York's Alright If You Like Picket Signs

This entry isn't actually union related. At least, not entirely. I apologize for the misdirection.

I've run into like twelve people i know or once knew today, all in the east village, and all randomly. One person from my department here, one person from high school, and a bunch from college - seems like there's a rather large population of Yale kids living the MTV Downtown life in the corporate/corcoran simulacrum of la vi(e)llage boheme.

Alright, that was a bit mean. Forgive me - i don't mean to slight these folks. Some of them are very nice. I'm just feeling generally pessimistic about the future of the city as a social space.

New York (TM), a designation by which i am tempted to refer to the branded experience of living in prime gentrified real estate with an upwardly mobile career (this is dubious in my case) and shopping in the mallified city, however many people i run into on any given day, remains a deeply atomizing experience. Trying to form lasting and meaningful relationships with people sometimes feels like trying to tread water in a whirlpool. I want to be clear that the argument i am trying to make here is not a primitivist or otherwise reactionary one, full of romanticized yearning for the good old days of industrial violence and slavery and imperialism and genocide (hey, wait. All of those things are still happening...) I think what i'm ultimately frustrated by is the lack of people to hang out with on saturday night. But really, I shouldn't be hanging out with anyone, because i have 500 pages to read and an organizing committee (GSOC's version of what GESO calls CC, minus Tandoor but with pizza) meeting tomorrow.

Back to work.

Steve Perry!

Steve Perry, who co-wrote the song the White Sox took as their
theme, ''Don't Stop Believin,'' was also on hand and led the team in a rendition
of the song.

''They've always believed,'' Perry said.

rhetorical question

I saw x on the street yesterday. I wonder if Gawker Stalker accepts sightings of emeritus labor historians.

All roland betts are off

As strike voting continues, so do administrative harassment and threats of retaliation against strikers which would have been illegal back when we still had a National Labor Relations Board which, if totally useless, wasn't expressly in the business of excludng entire categorizations of workers from legal protection to organize unions and dramatically curtailing those protections. I don't talk about these kinds of things on the internet until they're public, so I won't go into the gory details, but it seems like specific departments are being targeted before a strike has even called or voting has even ended. I don't mean to be alarmist -- these threats are most likely groundless and i don't think anyone in either of these two departments is actually going to be punished for striking, and i know that the union will not let anything happen to anybody without doing everything in our power to fight for them. That whole "Injury to one is an injury to all" thingy.

Spent all day yesterday organizing in one of the affected departments, which was actually pretty good. We talked to a lot of people and had some good conversations. Again, I can't really say more here. Amazing department meeting today. Then i got a call from a bunch of mendicant uocistas, met Thomas, Marissa, "N-dubba-wubba," and Josh and a bunch of first and second year people i didn't know. Wound up in Roland Betts' office at Chelsea Piers at 3:00 in the afternoon watching folks drop off 500 financial aid letters. Good times!

Then ran back to the union office and walked around the village with Jana for an hour and a half or so, trying to find locations willing to host classes off campus. Hopefully some or all of these locations will pan out.

well, what do you know

Davis-Bacon Reinstated.

I don't miss the YDN

Thanks, WSN.

Five bucks says this guy has no idea where Bishop Street is.

Looks like that "Health Insurance" comes with strings attatched.

It's like they're in a war with Yale-New Haven Hospital over who can get hit with the most class action lawsuits in the shortest amount of time.

Now there's administration anti-union literature taped to the wall right above where folks were voting in the library yesterday.

You think maybe they're a little scared?

Rosa Parks died yesterday. Josh has a great post everyone should read.

Folks should also check out Mike Davis's Left Turn article on Gentrification and disaster in the rebuilding of New Orleans.

responsibility?

histrionic email from the GSAS dean today begins with definition of "responsibility" and threatens us with "being called to account" for the strike vote.

God forbid NYU should be called to account for its neoimperial urbanist designs, its hypercasualized divisions of academic labor, its happy complicity with the neoconservative legislative, judicial, and politicsal attack on organizing, and its vicious threats against the people whose work makes it work. It is because we are responsible for the future of the academy that we organize, and if our membership authorizes it and the organizing committee deems it necessary, that we will strike.

I voted today.





Graduate School of Arts and Science

Mon, Oct 24, 2005 at 4:49 PM
OPEN LETTERTO THE COMMUNITY OF THE
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCE

From Catharine R. Stimpson, Dean

October 24, 2005

responsible…1…liable to be called to account (to a person or for a thing).
2 morally accountable for one’s actions; capable of rational conduct…1
This is not a letter I write happily.
I understand that the United Auto Workers (UAW) and an NYU affiliate,
theGraduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC), have scheduled a “strike vote”
for today, October 24, and tomorrow, October 25, and perhaps for even further
into the week. The UAW and GSOC want graduate assistants to vote to go on strike
in order to force the University to recognize the union and engage in collective
bargaining with it on behalf of graduate assistants. I may be misinformed.
I hope I am. Prudence, however, requires that I believe what I have been told
and read. Since Spring 2005, members of the NYU community have disagreed
about the issue of unionization of graduate assistants. The union has supporters
among faculty and students, some passionately so. Some say that the union
gives purpose totheir lives. Others say that the union offers them protection
and security. Still others want to offer solidarity to their fellow
students who may believein the union more strongly than they do. 2
I respect these voices, and others, but all of us who are
teachinghave an overarching responsibility to our students—no matter what our
position about the UAW and GSOC. Our obligation is to meet our classes. If we
were doctors, we would not walk out on a patient in an operating room. If
we were lawyers, we would not abandon a client in a court room. Graduate
assistants or faculty, we are teachers, morally accountable for being with our
students in their classrooms and laboratories. A vote for our accountability as
teachers must trump a strike vote and a strike. If we are irresponsible, we are
liableto be called to account. More work needs to
be done to strengthen graduate education at NYU—and elsewhere. Despite our
differences about unionization, I am profoundlycommitted to working with the
entire GSAS and University community to continue this job. In a few days, the
GSAS “Priorities Statement” for 2005-6 will be distributed to faculty, staff,
and students. It offers some ideas about our common future.
I would be happy to talk to anyone about this Letter.
Best wishes.

1 _The Concise Oxford Dictionary_, Ninth Edition (Oxford: Clarendon
Press,1999), p. 1173.
2 The University’s position is available at www.nyu.edu/provost/ga
andhttp://www.nyu.edu/public.affairs/gata/

funny

You are a Grassroots Activist. Anti-capitalist,
anti-patrist, anti-authoritarian, whatever,
you're just fuckin' anti. You probably tell
people you hate postmodernism, but that
assertion elides the complex interdependencies
among academic poststructuralism and
street-level activism. You don't bathe
regularly, and know at least one person who has
scabbies.


What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla

Liz Phair sang "God Bless America" during the 7th inning of Game 1 last night. Liz Phair. Exile in Guyville Liz Phair. "I come when called" Liz Phair. "Every time is see your face i get all wet between my legs" Liz Phair. "I want to fuck you like a dog/I'll take you home and make you like it" Liz Phair, up there with an acoustic guitar doing a Cheryl Crow impression. You can watch the video on mlb.com. It's surreal. I didn't watch the game, because i don't have a tv, but i watched a couple highlights this morning. She clearly should have played "Stratford-On-Guy" instead.

Florida, New York, and California are all shaped like male genitalia. Also, West Virginia looks a little testicular. Discuss.

So Racist, It's Cute!

White power for the tweenybopper set.

"ask me about the strike" pt.1

I've realized that I'm very far behind on my song rewriting. To wit, i never finished "Happiness is a Pen-sion," beyond "Richard Levin [easily changeable to John Sexton] is on the run, richard levin is on the run... Happiness is a pension, get off that loot" etc. I think Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker" is simply begging to be rewritten as "Strikebreaker." Also, "Love Is a Battlefield" shows promise, though it might be easier just to change it to "Yale is a battlefield," so maybe someone else should take that one. Also, "You never give me your money" : "Teachin' college, money spent, adjunct future, can't pay my rent, negotiate now or on strike we'll all go." Just think of all the things you could do with Soul Asylum's "Somebody to Shove."

What rhymes with NYU?

My Letter to John Sexton

John Sexton sent out a letter to NYU students today which made a number of misrepresentative claims about the union and the upcoming strike vote. Here's the response i sent him:

President Sexton,

As a student and future teaching assistant who has been following this history attentively, I'm greatly dismayed to read here your deliberate misrepresentations concerning why GSOC, my union, chose to reject a ludicrous contract offer which would have demanded an anti-worker open-shop clause and abolished an independent grievance procedure - something no union in its right mind would ever consent to. At no time, as you well know, did GSOC ever threaten to take away anyone's stipends. When I read things like this, I'm ashamed to be associated with this university.

And then I remember why i'm here, and i remember why I'm involved with the union -- because i care deeply about the future of the academy and believe this is what is at stake in getting a new contract for our union. So i urge you to reopen negotiations with GSOC and bargain with us in good faith. We shouldn't have to strike to secure benefits, our right to collective bargaining as workers regardless of what an NRLB stacked with right-wing Bush appointees decrees, and an independent voice on this campus. NYU has a chance here to truly lead the rest of the nation's private universities and take a bold step in ensuring a just and equitable future for academic workers. At the town hall meeting, you claimed that you had "moved past" the union. I write to inform you that we are the union and again to urge you to resume negotiations with our union now lest a strike become necessary.

[me.]

We Have The Facts And We're Voting Yes!!!

On Monday, GSOC is beginning a week-long voting process to authorize a strike.

The last time we had a strike vote, we won recognition (i think. I'm still a little fuzzy on GSOC history and i can't remember whether there was a separate vote over the first contract negotiations.) GSOC has never struck before, so if that's what we wind up having to do it'll be interesting to see how the campus reacts.

First thing when the picket lines go up, I plain on reclaiming "We're Not Gonna Take It" from Yale-New Haven Hospital. I can't remember the last time The Register gave top billing to any FHUE event to which only 250 people showed up. The July 7 2003 "They're The Quantity, We're The Quality" tax hearing, maybe? (Except we had way more than 250 there.) Second thing, I ressurect Plan:Chase University President Around With Boombox Playing Nothing But Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass's "Spanish Flea" On Repeat. Ok, i'm probably not going to do that, because I'd probably just get thrown in jail, and there are better and more powerful ways to do that. Also, what killed this the first time around was Abbey pointing out that actually Herb Alpert is an anti-union asshole. Perhaps ABBA's "Waterloo" would make more sense. Or Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop."

Anyway.

I want our picket lines to be explosive, euphoric, and imaginative. If we strike, we won't be striking out of desperation; we'll be striking to win. And i'm in this for the long haul, in one way or another.

I am eligible to vote. I've been to a couple of strike votes before, but I've never voted in one. There's a first for everything.

I've got yet another presentation paper to write this week/end, this one on David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity, which i've been meaning to read since Seth Fein gave it a shout-out in class three and a half years ago, and am happy i'll finally get the chance to do so. On Friday, i'll be taking time off from this, however to do some more organizing, because that's what David Harvey would probably want me to do. Not that I've ever met him. But if I were David Harvey, that's what I'd want me to do. At any rate, it's what I want to do.

Pat Buchanan, Meet Antonio Gramsci

BUCHANAN: Well, look, in the battle against Marxism (search) and Leninism, in economics
and politics the Western civilization won, the United States won. The Soviet
empire collapsed. But what I called cultural Marxism and militant
secularism are clearly winning in the United States of America.

You just did that ad by Paris Hilton (search). That would never have
been shown in the '50s or '60s in the United States. If you take a look at the
pornography and the filth that pours into American homes and you see the
consequences in divorces and broken families and delinquency and all of the rest
of them.

There was a communist known as Antonio Gramsci in Italy who
argued that this is the only way that Marxism is going to win. And I have to say
they are sure making progress and I think they're on the
offensive.

O'REILLY: Yes, but in the totalitarianism regimes of China and the Third
Reich and Stalin, they didn't want any of this stuff. I mean, they knocked this
stuff out.

Franco in Spain. I was in Spain when Franco was in power. Man, they
didn't want any of that. Even in Singapore. The totalitarianism regimes did not
want them. So what's the difference here?

BUCHANAN: What's the difference here is that this is sort of, if you will,
soft Marxism. And what it's done is replaced Christianity. You know, a culture
is a product of a cult. Western civilization is a product of Christianity.

And Gramsci and the others realized they had to de-Christianize
the culture. They had to change values. They had to make people think
differently, and then the citadel of western civilization would
collapse.

If you look at western nations, there's not a single one today, Bill,
that's got a population that is not dying out. And I think if you take a look at
the culture we have now, compared to what we had in the 1950's, you cannot say
that is progress.

Especially when you see folks that are cutting off their TVs or
throwing them out. They're not going to movies; the language is filthy. I think
you take a look at the popular culture and you can't say we're winning.

After this it gets extremely racist, and i don't feel like putting that shit on my blog.

quick link

Really interesting Salon article on Latino workers rebuildng New Orleans.

I feel so much safer now.

oooh, interesting.

it's on.

More later.

i smell a Benno Schmidt moment on the horizon

An NYU spokesperson refers to faculty who support the union as "those who hope to "spread division and divisiveness in our community."

Faculty support of the graduate students' union and moving classes
off-campus will not prompt administrators to negotiate a contract, Beckman said.
“There may be those who wish to move backwards and who hope to spread
divisiveness or disruption in our community because they think it will cause the
university to change its mind on the matter of a contract,” Beckman said. “That
won’t happen, and I believe that those who are proponents of divisiveness or
disruption or intimidation will quickly come to be seen as out-of-step with
NYU’s values, and especially our obligation to our students.”

Right. Because the faculty are the ones who unilaterally decided to throw a negotiated contract in the trash can and turn their backs on a recognized bargaining unit.

well, holy crap. The sun's out.

Now to read C.L.R. James's "The Struggle For Happiness" chapter from American Civilization real quick before i figure out what I'm writing my paper in crappy Latin American Studies class on. I'm really screwed.

10 songs for this week.

Deerhoof, "Wrong Time Capsule"
Silver Jews, "Punks In The Beerlight"
The Clientele, "E.M.P.T.Y."
Damian Marley, "Welcome To Jamrock."
Missy Elliott, "Lose Control."
Super Furry Animals, "The Horn"
Wu-Tang Clan, "Ain't Nothin' Ta Fuck With" (I be tossin enforcin' my style is awesome/I'm causin' more family feuds than Richard Dawson! And the survey says... Ya dead!...)
The New Pornographers, "Three or Four."
Blue Oyster Cult, "Don't Fear The Reaper." You know you love it.
GBV, "a salty salute"

"aincha heard the news? adam and eve were jews"

That's my nonsensical response, completely and unapologetically lifted from "Punks in the Beerlight," off the new Silver Jews cd, Tanglewood Numbers, to the anonymous commenter who called me an anti-semite below. I'm getting a little tired of being called an anti-semite. It's neither remotely true nor particularly funny. And i'm pretty touchy about it. The Silver Jews cd is pretty good, by the way. Better than the last one, not as good as American Water, but not much is. Tanglewood Numbers is less drony, more lush. The pavement alumni are back. Will Oldham guests. There's a lyric "police conversation, 1783." There's a shout out to "Mutt and Shania" in the thankyous. Nashville must be a really small place.

Firm and Atoned pt. II

There's a broken water main at west fourth and bowery and the whole intersection was flooded. Lots of firefighters standing around in rubber boots and a car stuck in the middle of a huge-ass puddle, reminds me of katrina photos a little bit. The weather here's been pretty crazy all week, and it isn't going to stop raining until staurday, which is like 8 straight days. 32 more and shit would be all biblical.

Speaking of which, i wound up observing the fast, which i think was the right thing to do, though i broke it an hour or so early, because it's hard to read Gramsci when your brain is all spaced out from lack of food, and i felt like i'd done all the atonign i was capable of doing in one day.

I am feeling a little down because no one is laughing at what i think is the funniest post title ever. Come on, people. Indulge my narcissism! (But only if you get the joke.)

What about Messirs Clarke and Sorum?

firm and atoned

It's Yom Kippur. I'm doing my secular fasting thing. If i need to eat tomorrow in order to be productive, then i may have to break my fast early, which will suck, but we'll see. I have mixed feelings about the relationship between fasting and atonement, and about the problems of limiting atonement to a single day. But i think Yom Kippur's important even for someone extremely secular because i think that atonement and reflection have an importance that surpasses liberal guilt, which strikes me as a reactionary performative politics which demarcates difference and privilege and embraces the inevitability of change and the futility of trying. Yom Kippur is useful for me because it imagines a collectivity which strives to understand iniquity and commit to change. Atonement is an act. So even if i'm uncomfortable with the sometimes individuating nature of the way we think about this, i also think it's incredibly important. I should note that my attatchment to this day and practice grew exponentially in my first year of college, when the very problematic assertion of myself as a figure of Jewish suffering in opposition to my racist, roman-numeraled roomate became a very attractive gesture, but it also felt powerful, for reasons, which, i think, i've tried to describe above. This power is something deeper than redemptive suffering. As Deerhoof say on their brilliant new album, "Don't forget me yesterday/'Cause today's no place to stay/Will you spirit me away?"

(All the folks who know more about Yom Kippur than i do can smack me down now. Also, it being Yom Kippur, I should point out that the new issue of Heeb, while not containing any bizarre pictures of any of my relatives or people with whom i have organized, is pretty funny and worth reading.)

This is somewhat pump up the volume. Sorry to my former TA from Steve Pitti's class/potential future Nebraska Congressperson because my paper was written in between a building occupation and a better way village and it sucked royally. Also, this guy is an asshole who does exactly what he claims he won't in his article. (Oh no, middle aged homosexuals looking at porn! Clearly CCL needs metal detectors!) Not that its any of my business, but my new university doesn't let you in to the library without an ID card, and people stil download porn. God forbid people who work at Yale should be able to use the fucking libraries. Thank god all we got down here are a stray Olsen twin or two... And hey, the Washington Square News site now seems to be functioning, for once, so maybe i can link there instead of the YDN. Which would probably be more productive, as this entry demonstrates.

welcome to graduate school, now shut the fuck up and do as we tell you.

I had to skip tonight's extremely important meeting on account of my three-hour long class, so i won't find out what was decided until tomorrow morning at the earliest, unless someone actuallly decides to call me and tell me, which isn't likely. In the meantime, my inbox has been flooded today, first with the provost's almost ashamed announcement of the appointees to the "student voice" mechanism that's supposed to serve as a replacement for the union and includes more than enough professional students and M.A. students to ensure that the university can ignore us for as long as we let it, which hopefully won't be very long. (Nothing against professional students or MA students, of course, but since they don't usually work in our bargaining unit in large numbers, I feel like it's safe to assume that they're being used. The MA students in particular seem like they are being totally screwed over, and there are quite a lot of them.

The second email is some newspeak from the GSAS dean trying to excuse the cuts in health care they said they wouldn't make and then did by claiming that we should be happy with what we get cause "90% of the NYU student body pays its own premiums." Uh-uh. Doesn't work like that. 90% of the NYU student body doesn't provide cheap labor for teaching your undergraduates, grading papers, and doing research which makes you filthy rich. And regardless, we aren't gonna let you pit us against other people you're screwing over. If NYU really wants to become the top-notch research instutition they're trying to sell themselves as, part of that is going to have to involve not fucking over sick students. They own half of Lower Manhattan. Money really shouldn't be a problem. Plus, you invest in Farallon, so I have no sympathy for the fact that your endowment's a "measly" $1.3 billion.

I'm totally swamped through next wednesday, with an 8-12 page paper (it was 8 as of 6:00 tonight but the extra four pages just got added on to make my life more miserable) due tuesday and then a presentation on Gramsci (Tony G!, how i have missed you)'s "Americanism and Fordism", a chapter from Norwood's Strikebreaking and Intimidation, and C.L.R. James's "The Struggle For Happiness" in American Civilization for a class on Wednesday afternoon. I'm stressed out and rather frustrated, and i don't know if i can afford to fast on Yom Kippur because i kind of need my brain all functional, and this strikes me as grossly unfair. Complaining about all this as i read about the 42,000 some odd deaths from the quake in South Asia seems grossly narcissistic. Anyone got any suggestions about what discipline/field of Latin American/Carribean Studies i should write an 8-12 page mapping paper about for Tuesday? Keeping in mind that i know absolutely fuck-all about Latin America? (okay, exaggeration, but still, I mostly do US stuff, however schizophrenically and transnationally.)

US District Judge Joseph Greenaway has certified a class action lawsuit by undocumented, subcontracted Wal-Mart workers who were denied fair wages and overtime and were locked in stores overnight.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Greenaway's decision to let stand
the wage charges, which were brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act, helps
explain the court's thinking about the claims of undocumented workers. First, he
rejected Wal-Mart's argument that because the workers are illegal, they can't
seek relief from the law. Greenaway wrote, "This court only joins a growing
chorus acknowledging the right of workers to seek relief for work already
performed under the Fair Labor Standards Act."

Next, he rejected Wal-Mart's assertion that since the janitors
worked for contractors rather than Wal-Mart directly, Wal-Mart was not their
employer. Greenaway also rejected Wal-Mart's claim that the wage issue should be
dismissed because it had paid above minimum wage to some of the workers and
"near" minimum wage to several others. "Simply put," Greenaway wrote, "payment
of 'near' the lawful minimum wage is not payment of the minimum wage."

On the allegations of false imprisonment, the workers will
have the opportunity, as a class, to sock Wal-Mart with punitive damages, should
they win this issue at trial. Linsey says he'll be able to present testimony not
only from workers who were locked into the stores but from their friends, family
members and neighbors who sometimes couldn't find the workers because of their
confinement.

Here's Nathan Newman on why the current absence of the RICO charge from the suit is probably a good thing.

music blogging, as promised

While i wait for the new Deerhoof CD to be released (both the Times (specifically the husband of my brother's high school English teacher) and Pitchfork have good things to say.

Wolf Parade's record, which Pitchfork gushes over, i found boring and formulaic. The new Franz Ferdinand isn't bad at all. The new Broken Social Scene CD is pretty damn good. I haven't listened to the new Blackalicious CD and i don't know when i'll get around to doing so. I'm perplexed as to why PFork is re-reviewing the reworked US release of Thunder, Lightning, Strike! Less than a year (by like a week or so) after the original UK release. Do a couple switched sampls and two new songs we've all heard before on MP3 blogs merit a new review? Listening to Enter The Wu-Tang and The Pretty Toney Album today and i miss ODB and i don't get how everyone says Ghostface was "slept on" until Cuban Links. He's all over 36 Chambers, literally from the first verse.

The (International) Noise Conspiracy's Armed Love has finally, after over a year of delays, been released in the U.S., on american/Epitaph. I don't know why it took so long. The cover is some 70s-style posters on a wall painted with the CNT-FAI flag. The liner notes have forgone the "lets cite our favorite radical texts" schtick of A New Morning, and the songs are more srtaightforward and, unfortunately less funky. Back when PFork reviewed the CD, they gave it nearly twice as high a rating as they'd given Survival Sickness or A New Morning. They said Armed Love was a less slogany record, which isn't true in any meaningful sense, and that the focus was on songcraft rather than polemics. Having listened to the album once, however, i'm feeling like the defunkified songs lose a lot of their bombast and force and the album suffers greatly because of it. Oh well. When's that new Coup record coming out?

Here at NYU, unlike at Yale, we get days off up the wazoo. We get MLK day off and didn't even have to compare our university to Wallingford to get it. We get President's day off. Granted, we only get a one-week spring break and three days at thanksgiving. And unfortunately, we get Columbus Day off too. (And no jewish holidays, to boot.) I understand that Columbus is a floating signifier and succesive generations of European immigrants have laid claim to the man and holiday through potentially subversive acts of mythmaking, but it's pretty difficult, nonetheless to elide Columbus's central role in the colonization, enslavement, and genocide of the Western Hemisphere and tens of millions of its inhabitants. I don't know if folks do Indigenous Peoples' Day stuff here, but i certainly hope that they do. Hell, without Indigenous Peoples Day, i might never have met Julie Gonzales, and then where would we be? I just saw J. Klein in the library here, which makes me miss New Haven and the federation's usual ass-kickingness quite a bit.

At some point i want to blog about music. For now, it's back to Arrighi and then on to Chandler

Same Struggle, New Fight

This summer, when NYU unilaterally decided to use the Brown Decision to refuse to negotiate a new contract with GSOC, they claimed that their magnanimous paternalism would ensure "the continuation of the University paying 100% of the student health insurance plan premiums for the GAs" (shouldn't that be premia?) and that the benefis of the post-union regime would be "exactly the same" as those guaranteed by the GSOC contract. Sounds nice, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, that's about all it does. Out of pocket maximums (maxima?) and prescription drug copays have risen by 50% or more. Maximum visits to outptient mental healt (including therapy) have fallen from 30 to 20 maximum visits per yeqar. (And this place makes people need therapy real fast.) Many other benefits, including chemotherapy, mammography, and anaesthesia fees have either become less covered or aren't even listed - as is the case with radiation therapy, chemo, and home IV therapy. It seems that NYU flat-out lied about continuing to provide the same health care to graduate students and employees. At the Town Hall meeting on the 26th, President Sexton dismissed these increases by referencing the rising costs of prescription medecines and told us we should be thankful for the university's magnanimity, since he argued that this is csting them more than last year. I haven't seen the math for that, but even if it's the case, that excuse didn't fly when it was trotted out by the San Francisco Hotel Industry's Multi-Employer Group, and we shouldn't accept it from the president of a very rich corporate university, either.

beisbol

The Red Sox are done, but I think Boston Fans will probably let them off the hook for losing to the best team in baseball and because everyone there's still pretty stoked about last year and you can't knock a team that had two players hit over 45 Home Runs this season. (I don't care if Alex Rodriguez invents the cure for alzheimers, David Ortiz deserves the AL MVP far more. "A-Rod" makes 25 million dollars a year, played ok defense, sometimes terrible, and hit .321 with 47 home runs. Ortiz makes 6 million dollars a year, hit .297 with 48 HR and over 140 RBI. And he's the best clutch hitter in baseball, with the possible exception of Manny Ramirez, who's hit more grand slams than anyone in history except for Lou Gherig. Also, A-Rod did that slap thing against Bronson Arroyo in the ALCS last year, and that should count against him. Cort Schilling, asshole fundamentalist anti-NYC millionaire that he is, was right to call that shit "bush-league.") One more loss and the Yankees are out, which Mets fans around New York are silently and sometimes vocally praying for. Other than that, I hate the Braves for the racist nomenclature and for ever having employed John Rocker, so i hope they lose, but i don't want Houston to win either, because Clemens is a schmuck and Petite used to be a Yankee and Oswalt's a schmuck too (just ask Cliff Floyd.) I could root for the White Sox now that the Mets and Red Sox are out. My grandfather grew up a White Sox fan in the post scandal era when no one was a White Sox fan. But Carl Everett is an asshole. And if they go up against St. Louis in the World Series, assuming STL can beat whoever wins the Braves-Astros series, i think they'll lose, barring another collapse/ridiculous pitching dominance like the Cardinals had and faced last year.

public transit and permanent catastrophe

This afternoon, Mayor Bloomberg announced that the city has received a specified bomb threat against a specified subway station. They won't tell us which, or when the threat's for, which is info they also have. They won't tell us why they were chainsawing bikes in Williamsburg instead of protecting the subways. I think Sunset Park probably isn't a target, but as i was riding home tonight on the D from Broadway-Lafayette i felt vulnerable, i felt precarious, like at any minute the train would explode in a pinwheel of shrapnel and plastic and rip me and everyone else on the train to pieces. Folks are saying the warning is convveniently timed on all kinds of levels and the NYPD is searching baby carriages and bags and terrorizing people on their morning commutes and i just feel pissed. So i'm going to walk to the East Village right now for our departmental OC (that's Organizing Committee, not Orange County, although sometimes i've found the two to be remarkably similar) meeting and hope i don't get blown up on the way home. But hey, if i do, well, you guys rock.

Yale Invests In Private Prisons

Yale invests 1.5 million dollars in private prisons via Farallon Capital Management's financial intanglements in notorious corporate merchants of the penal, CCA. Folks who've been following the breathtaking investigations into the Yale endowment's imperial involvements might not be particularly surprised at the news, but I can speak for myself and say that I'm disgusted that money that comes in part from student tuition and alumni donations is privatizing the prison-industrial complex. I'm disgusted, though again not surprised, which in itself disgusts me, by Tom Conroy's unbelievably callous dismissals of evidence that the university is essentially investing in prisoner abuse. And I'm glad that GESO and the federation are around to organize for a better university, one neither carceral nor casualized, but, as Paul Gilroy might say, "convivial."

NYU invests in Farallon too.

I'm Like a Walking Slingshot

Besides being Rosh Hashanah, today was October 4th, and thus marked the second anniversary of the Flushing Meadows IWFR rally. I wore my shirt (pictured to the right) without even realizing this. Pretty spooky. I don't have to say much about how incredible that rally was, because most of the poeple who read this weblog with any regularity were there. But if you have any thoughts on this anniversary, please share them. That would rock.

Also, tomorrow is October 5th. If your first reaction upon hearing that date is "I'll Be There," then you were likely present at the event four years ago, less than a month after 9/11/2001, when 3000 of us participated in a candlelit march to the Yale Bowl to constitute a movement of "Hope Not Fear" and to urge Yale, on its Tercentennial, to pursue justice. It was another two years before contracts were signed, and there are 4,000 workers who still need them, but I know that that day was an important one for the movement - particularly the community organizing, and i figured i ought to commemorate it here, because it was pretty amazing. Alek was on stage, so if he reads this and feels like saying something about that, by all means go ahead. There used to be a great photo gallery on the GESO website, but i think it got taken down after the redesign, which makes sense, because it was a long time ago and the site needed to be relevant to new grad students trying to figure out what the hell was going on and how to start organizing. And amidst the tercentennial panegyrics, the march was criminally underreported by the campus press. (Dear "MPM," (the nickname by which friends freshman year referred to the article's author) I have a question. Who, pray tell, is Rev. "David Marks?") But for those of us who were there, looking back and forward over the sea of light stretching into the dusklight, you can damn well bet it was more important than Big Bird and Bill Buckley.

Things here are starting to get crazy. The next two months should be very interesting.

"Este lucecita tiene que brillar."








update: I feel compelled to point out that October 5, 1984 was also an important day in the history of the New Haven labor movement. Something like 125 Members of Local 34 were arrested outside the President's House in an act of civil disobedience during their first strike's second week. I've always found it odd how these dates reoccur. Part of that has to do with the academic calendar - like the requisite late april big rally (Workers Rights Are Human Rights, Building an Equal Partnership, heck, Better Way Village, and, of course, the 2005 Strike,) but other than being roughly a month after classes resume, which is probably pretty important, actually, 10/5 seems like a much more random date. Thoughts, anyone? Also, if you're reading this blog and you've never read On Strike For Respect, you need to rectify that ASAP.

l' shanah tovah.

I watched the season premiere of Veronica Mars today. Charisma Carpenter plays Heather Locklear, and I'm wondering what Stonecutter got Steve Guttenberg the job, though it was actually kind of cool to see him in a bob saget in half baked kind of way. The episode itself was ok, implausible at points, and Charisma Caroenter's character seems totally one-dimensional at the moment.

I also, upon finally finishing my half of the Foucault presentation paper, went out and saw Serenity, the movie continuation of Joss Whedon's wonderful Firefly series. It was pretty much everything i'd hoped for, although there's some stuff i wish had not happened, and I very much wish Fox had not canceled the series in the first place, because it was one of the best things i've ever seen on television. The film does the series justice. I'd recommend renting the DVDs before seeing the movie, though you'll be able to follow what's going on, for the most part, even if you haven't seen the show. I am being tight lipped because i don't want to spoil the plot, but it's great and you should go see it.

Finally done with the Foucault presentation paper, which was supposed to be 3-5 pages and we ended up making ours 9 and change, which we blame on Foucault, whom someone needs to inform that "Inter pocula" means "among the cups" and is a reference, of course, to alcohol. Hopefully discussion will be engaging and we will all have good things to say.