(a strike update)

more on that later.

For folks reading this in exotic locales like Denver or SFO or Pittsburgh or wherever, today was an extraordinarily cold day here. So cold the cops let us plug our coffee machine into a street lamp outlet at the Bobst line. So cold i was shivering through three layers of heavy clothing and my thick wool cap. We're talking March 3, 2003 cold. But folks were still out on the line at 8 AM picketing, shouting, leafletting, and we were there at 5, singing along with the labor chorus folks who came to visit us. Undergrads are sending hundreds of strike-related postcards home to parents. Faculty members stood, shivered, and marched with us, and a guy from GSEU and a bunch of CUNY folks braved the cold wind to walk the line in solidarity with us.

The administration is intensifying its effotrs to buy some of us off and force others back to work through threats and intimidation tactics. Now is not the time to go into details- i'll do that later, when and if the details become matters of public record. So much is at stake here. We can not let them break this union. We cannot let them single us out. We cannot let them force us to return to work without negotiating with our union.

I'm frustrated with academic stuff. The departmental chaos, rumors of faculty departures, failed classes, etc. By forcing this strike, NYU may dash its hopes of ever joining the ranks of the elite institutions to which it aspires and whom it emulates. I'm afraid that NYU's reckless attempts to crush our union are going to have very specific and injurious effects on graduate education - my education. Forcing or driving faculty elsewhere, defunding programs like mine, and either forcibly rejecting or effectively discouraging faculty hires whom i might want to work with are not unrelated. At stake is the attempt by the administration here to consolidate the neoliberal university at all cost. Even if we win the strike, how do we effectively combat this.

Oh. So this evening after picketing i get talked into leafletting some event by one of the union staffers. As we're walking to the subway I ask the local president what the event is, and she tells me that it is the place (a nonprofit legal research center affiliated with NYU) where a friend works. I verbally note this, I'm urged to call said friend and ask if we can possibly get into the benefit at all, i leave a frantic message on her voice mail before we dissappear into the 4 train, but she doesn't get it and we don't connect until we're already leafletting outside. Initially we have a bad relationship with some folks from the center and from the benefit venue. Alec Baldwin walks by, as does Mark Green. It's frigid. Eventually we establish a working relationship with folks from the center when we assure them we're not protesting them, just the NYU trustee who's the honorary chair of the silent auction, and i have some good conversations with some folks from the center, one of whom lives in my neighborhood, and another who previously worked for (Unite-HERE) Local 100. We hand out 200 leaflets, then take off. I wonder how Minnie Driver's doing these days. We go way back.) I leafletted my friend's job. It was totally surreal.

Nerds On Strike have the text of the new letter from the deans to department chairs regarding teaching assistantships, and Specter of Marx offers some trenchant commentary.

I'm feeling a little bummed because i totally forgot about the cohort "happy hour" and came directly home after leafletting. I'll see folks monday i guess, and i'm wiped out and am probably going to do the "wake up at 5:30 and walk to campus" thing tomorrow morning, but i wish i could have put in the time tonight to see folks before thanksgiving break.

On STRIKE. Shut it down. New York is a UNION town.