Opening my copy of barbarian virtues for the first time in four years (since seth fein's class) i found notes from the second meeting of the attempt to restart slac. I was keeping the queue. I think this was the first time i ever heard the term social contract in a non-rousseauian sense. Katie did the reportback from the convention, and i remember feeling like it was a very strange idea.

Not anarchist enough for me or something. So little about that year made sense except in retrospect, except for the town hall meeting full of graduate student unionists and marching down college street to the medical center on april 24th and understanding maybe for the first time how powerful organizing could be (maybe because it came at such a frustrating and difficult moment for me). That was a long time ago. Four years. Right now, i mostly feel stressed out, overwhelmed with work and feeling like i'm not being useful enough to the organizing or a particularly good graduate student. But i guess I need to carry that memory of the afternoon sun shining down on thousands of people, clamorous voices echoing against dead, acid-aged granite, and all of us together committing ourselves to the struggle for the future of new haven and the future of the university.