On GSOC's day in court, (those of us who pleaded not guilty will be back in August,) Cary Nelson and Jane Buck explain why they were with us last month and why our struggle is so important for the future of academic workers.

NYU quite possibly represents a turning point in the history of efforts to
improve working conditions in higher education. Especially after nearly 30 years
of a steadily growing national trend toward the increasing use of poorly paid
contingent labor to do most undergraduate teaching — a trendin which higher
education mirrors the now radical disparity between CEO salaries and the
salaries of those on the shop floor — NYU’s effort to decisively disempower its
more poorly paid teachers heralds a future of bitter labor conflict in the
industry. While it was inspiring to stand beside the courageous students at the
forefront of this struggle, it was sobering indeed to realize matters may now
get much worse on many other campuses.

Despite a few gaffes in chronology (Medical debt justice preceeded the bank campaign by a good six months,) this is by far the best article about CCNE and CORD which I've ever seen.

"We beat this statement to death with a stick," said Ted Gardner, a retired
firefighter recruited to the cause. "We've never denied or been against the
cancer center. Everyone gets cancer."The critical, behind-the-scenes role van
den Heever, Marks and their organization played in mobilizing people like
Gardner turns the accepted plot line of the cancer-center dispute inside out.
For more than a year, it was portrayed in the media and in dueling ad campaigns
as a contest between the hospital and a union seeking to enlist its blue-collar
workers, with Mayor John DeStefano, a leading candidate for the Democratic
gubernatorial nomination, caught in the middle.The union - New England Health Care Employees Union, District
1199, a part of the 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union
- had indeed laid siege to the hospital for eight years, finally winning the
right to hold an election under favorable rules. And DeStefano got credit for
ending the impasse, as did Marna Borgstrom, a longtime Yale-New Haven executive
who in October was promoted to president.But a funny thing happened on the way
to the March 22 peace treaty that most everyone greeted with jubilation. In the
end, it suddenly seemed to have less to do with the union than it did with
residents of the city's Hill section, the poor neighbors of the giant hospital
complex. Late on March 21, the night before the deal was announced, DeStefano
took Borgstrom to a meeting he arranged at the Sacred Heart Church in the Hill,
where she listened to residents tell her what the hospital needed to do for the
neighborhood if she expected to get the cancer center built.

Also, congratulations to all you graduated folks.