Oaxaca

4 more APPO supporters in the teachers' struggle in Oaxaca were murdered yesterday and Vicente Fox is using this as an excuse to send in troops, with the Bush administration cheering the "return of lawfulness and order".

The CNN article basically makes it sounds like the feds are using the corpses of the murdered as an excuse to throw their support behind the PRI government.

EDIT 6:50 PM: See http://www.oaxacarevolt.org/ for further coverage of events. I quote their "account of the priista attack" yesterday in full below.

Account of the Pr�ista attack in Santa Lucia del Camino in Oaxaca, Mexico

Attacks across the city kill at least 4.



*NOTE: This account is not meant to be a complete account of the day, it is meant to be from the perspectives and experiences of two people in the midst of what can only be described as a battle in the streets of Santa Lucia, in Oaxaca. We know that other things happened in other neighborhoods, and that other things probably happened in our vicinity. This is our best effort at capturing the events that we experienced and witnessed. *

On Thursday night, Barricade Three in Santa Lucia del Camino set up a little earlier than normal. Reinforcing the barricades for Friday's day of action required more trucks and buses than usual. At times, it was a chaotic scene with *cami�n* after *cami�n* joining the barricade and people unsure of where they should go. Eventually things calmed down. Many more people than usual guarded the barricade and the tranquility of the night had many regulars taking time to lie down, if not sleep. As day broke, the barricade took on the feel of a community holiday or small block party with small children running about. At what felt like an informal pot-luck, people brought tortillas and beans, sandwiches, bread, and arroz con leche. Most chose to not cover their faces, despite this being a regular practice at the barricades. Up to this point, the only "contentious" moment was the permitted approached of a chicken truck that surprised several people.

Sudenly, about a dozen people started shouting, donning masks, picking up Molotov cocktails (known as *bombas Molotov*) and *cohetes* (large bottle rockets typically shit out of PVC pipes the people call bazookas), and collecting rocks and sticks. A small group moved forward to see why a truck that was part of the barricade (about 200 feet away) was moving and investigate a commotion on the other side of that barricade. After advancing about 100 feet, the group spotted 150 to 200 Pr�istas (supporters of the authoritarian PRI party that ruled Mexico for 70 years and currently "rule" the state of Oaxaca) marching toward the barricade. The *cohetes*were fired into the air to warn the Pr�istas not to approach. The warning was ignored.

The tiny group of defenders fell back to the barricade and gathered more supplies. It was a chaotic situation. Prioritizing in the moment, a split second decision was made to leave our bags, in part because rocks from the Pr�istas were already falling where our bags lay. As we sprinted down side streets to the closest barricade, there were shouts for children to go inside their homes to safety. At the next barricade, people were banging on poles and railing to sound the alarm and rally the neighborhood to fight the Pr�ista advance. People came out of their homes and armed themselves with sticks, machetes, metal poles, *cohetes* and rocks. Once a fairly large crowd had gathered several people started shouting "Vamos, compa�erQos, Vamos!" (Let's go) and "Avanza!" (advance). People began advancing to the fallen barricade and the Pr�istas, spreading out along the width of the four-lane highway, it's median, and sidewalks. Both sides fired their * cohetes*, and as we drew nearer rocks started flying from both sides. Wepushed the Pr�istas back passed the remnants of the now disassembled barricade. There was a lull of about thirty seconds as we populated the area around the barricade before many decided to chase the still-visible Pr�istas only about 100 feet away from us. Though most of them retreated faster than we advanced, one unlucky Pr�istas was forced to choose his own safety and well-being over that of his fancy SUV. The look of regret was visible on his face as rocks crashed to the ground around him and he turned and ran. The SUV, lacking a license plate, briefly became the target instead of the retreating Pr�istas. Tires slashed, windows smashed, someone decided to ensure that it was beyond use and set it ablaze. While some focused their attention on the SUV, some continued to chase the Pr�istas. Most Pr�istas had scattered into nearby homes and businesses, so people re-grouped back at the barricade.

As we all clustered in the intersection, the two of us looked around and estimated that there were at least 500 people ready to defend their neighborhood. We were both amazed by what we were seeing. Neither of us had ever witnessed such an incredible display of collective self-defense. We both nearly cried at the inspiring sight of people successfully working together to ward off aggression without centralized leadership. The barricade reclaimed, sandbags replaced, and the Pr�istas pushed back, the battle appeared for a few moments, to be over.

We're unsure as to the exact reason for the second advance, but we believe that Pr�istas were again spotted at the next intersection where they had scattered minutes before. As we cautiously advanced, walking in cover when possible, shots were heard from the intersection and everyone ducked or ran for cover. Many corporate news outlets, most notably those relying on AP "reporter" Rebeca Romero (widely believed to be on Ulises Ruiz's payroll), have claimed it was "unclear" as to who shot first. It was the Pr�istas. From the ground, on the receiving end of the gunfire, there is no doubt as to who shot first. There is nothing "unclear" about it. It was the Pr�istas, shown by El Universal photos and local television to be armed to the teeth, who shot first.

After the shooting stopped, the group moved quickly to the other side of the road and to the corner where the shots had originated from. The attacking Pr�istas had retreated back away from the highway and deeper into the neighborhood. Fifty to 100 people slowly advanced north a block into the neighborhood while 200 people gradually moved up, either by going north, or approaching it from the west by way of the barricade. Again the group moved north, taking cover by vehicles parked along the street. In addition to shooters at the far end of the street, more Pr�istas were taking cover inside a building along the street. The building was targeted with Molotovs, rocks, bricks, and *cohetes*. Someone kicked the door in before Pr�istas down the street started shooting again and we had to retreat back to the end of the block. This gave the Pr�istas time to close and blockade the door. A few attempts with similar results gave way to milling about, as we waited for reinforcements. One block west towards the barricade, about 100 people had gathered to take cover from additional Pr�istas on that treet. Soon we heard a truck roar to life and a few minutes later, compa�eros in a dump truck came to provide shielding for another advance. In the first such advance, the truck went too far down the road, shooting started again, at which point we fell back to the end of the block. Most waited there while the truck maneuvered itself horizontally across the street in front of the gate of the targeted building. Once the truck was ready, another advance began and the truck smashed open the gate. Another round of shooting began, and again everyone took cover and began to withdraw.

At this point, Brad Will, an Indymedia reporter from New York, was shot in the abdomen as he was filming. Many people ran to carry him around the block and down the street. As we waited for a car to arrive to take him to the hospital, efforts were made to keep him conscious and breathing, including CPR. As Brad showed signs of consciousness and movement, the crowd surrounding him cheered. He was carried into a car and driven to the hospital. Moments later, as people were still taking in what happened, it started to rain. People gathered up the Molotovs and *cohetes* and got them out of the rain. About a half hour later, people started to gradually head back to the barricade.

When we arrived at the barricade, we learned from a teary-eyed compa�ero that Brad had died on his way to the hospital. People from APPO such as Flavo Sosa arrived at the scene and were attempting to coordinate with the rest of the city where there had been other attacks. Hundreds of bottles were being filled and prepared as Molotov cocktails. Thanks to the help of several compa�eras, we recovered one of our bags; though the other which contained a passport, several forms of id, travelers checks, over $1,000 pesos (most of which was intended to be used for the barricade), a video amera, is gone and was presumably stolen by the Pr�istas. Hundreds remained at the barricade for the night. The two of us went to a compa�ero's house to rest, write and watch the news.

As of this writing, the Pr�istas have set up their own barricades within the neighborhood, APPO has activated the mobile brigades, 4 or 5 people have died, dozens injured, and barricade 3 remains up, reinforced, and alert. Among the attackers were local municipal police (such as Abel Santiago Z�rate and Juan Carlos Soriano Velasco) and politicians/PRI thugs (such Manuel Aguilar and Pedro Carmona, the man identified as Brad Will's killer), all from the neighborhood. Though the two of us had slightly differing expectations of how the day would pan out, neither of us expected an attack of this kind or magnitude in broad daylight. The diversity of people who fought the Pr�ista attackers was astounding. We saw young kinds helping to gather *cohetes*and Molotovs. We saw old women armed with rocks making their way to the front. We saw people wearing circle As, hammer and sickles, and people who didn't wear their political identity on their sleeves. In the end, it didn't matter who you were, only what side you stood on.

La lucha sigue; the struggle continues.


"Tenemos dos manos y un coraz�n para luchar."

"We have two hands and a heart to struggle."

--CIPO-RFM

Two Poggers in Oaxaca

Nightmares, Torture, Coursework, Ska

I had an upsetting dream last night in which my undergrad advisor was calmly relating to me his dissapointment in my many failures as a graduate student. I felt like shit. Then my brother showed up, but he was all like 17 and beardless and rolling his eyes at me. It was all very disconcerting, well, except for Lev rolling his eyes at me, because that's a fairly common occurence.

I went to hear Judith Butler speak last night in Hemmerdinger Hall. The last time I was there was for this. Hemmerdinger's really not all that large, and the cops locked the doors as some folks banged on the glass trying to get in, and it looked for a few moments as if there might be some real violence exercised on people's bodies even as Butler spoke eloquently about torture, photography, Abu Ghraib, and the limits of the secular - specifically secularization's coercive aspects and the ways in which torture is constructed as a coercive technique/technology of modernization. Butler's speech was very smart, at times funny - she cracked a couple of jokes at the expense of Thomas Friedman (who has "apparently never read Boaz" - an offhand reference to the racist essentialsm inherent in how Friedman constructs "The Orient") and Bill O'Reilly, and very much on point - she even joked about her own writing at one point. which was slightly surreal. The last time I saw her speak was this lecture she gave on Nietzsche in the Whitney Humanities Center in fall of 2003 and i had no idea what the fuck was going on. Whether I got everything and appreciated it and thought it was really smart this time around because i've read Precarious Life and found it really useful, or because it just wasn't on Nietzsche, or because Butler was simply talking about politics in a much more immediate and tangible sense of the term I will leave to the reader to decide. After the lecture, another GSOCer and I went up to Butler and thanked her for her support for our strike last year, and she wished us luck moving forward.

I'm really swamped at the moment - a presentation on C.L.R. James (aka J.R. Johnson) in MarcoPoco next tuesday immediately followed by a paper due Wednesday, so if I have been bad about getting in touch with folks or returning e-mails, i apologize and will get my shit together asap.

In the meantime, please respond to this post with, in addition to any salient points, your favorite original song by the (English) Beat. No covers - i.e., no "Jackpot," (originally by the pioneers) "Rough Rider," (Prince Buster, but you knew that already,) "Whine or Grine," (also Prince Buster) or "Tears of a Clown," which was originally performed by Smokey Fucking Robinson and the Miracles.

Mine's "too nice to talk to," although it switches every five minutes.

Mikey Bloomberg, Standing Up For The Little Guy

If by "little guy," we mean Jack Valenti.

“Video piracy is not a victimless crime — it kills jobs,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference. The mayor, who has made courting the film industry a priority for his administration, added that revenues from such piracy supports criminal gangs. In addition, the counterfeit DVD business has attracted its share of violence in recent years, with several shootings connected to DVD robberies in Midtown.

Using tactics the city employed to go after counterfeiting in the apparel industry, officials at the association, the Police Department and the city’s Office of Special Enforcement will work to identify buildings where piracy operations are located and take legal action against landlords and owners.

Under nuisance abatement laws, according to John Feinblatt, the city’s criminal justice coordinator, the city can essentially take control of the properties, shutting down offices, floors or entire buildings, depending on how they are being used, and suing the landlords, which could result in substantial fines. The legal actions could also force landlords and owners to post bonds and to submit new tenants for city approval.

Officials also plan to seek state legislation to make illegally recording a motion picture, currently only a violation, a crime carrying potential time behind bars. The plan would make the first offense a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in prison, and subsequent convictions Class E felonies, punishable by up to four years in prison.

The city also plans to work with the motion picture association to create a public service campaign to educate New York consumers about the detrimental effects of piracy.

Screw all those homeless people, forget about gentrification and the skyrocketing cost of living in NYC, the 30,000 transportation worers who still have no contract, etc etc - clearly, it's the guy selling bootleg spanish language DVDs on my corner who's destroying America. Michael Bloomberg, I salute you for being so in touch with the problems faced by wealthy movie moguls!

It's indeed a strange day when hard-hitting criticism of the (Yale-)New Haven Register comes from the YD"N". I guess the three times a week full page ads by the Office of New Haven and State Affairs don't cut it anymore.

Latest acquisitions from the Tower Records Bankruptcy Sale:

• Big Black: Songs About Fucking. Because nothing says sexy like Steve Albini.
• Against Me!: Reinventing Axl Rose I have only heard "Baby I'm an Anarchist" and i don't actually like it very much and it strikes me as kind of obnoxious/pretentious but perhaps that is the point. Anyway i bought this mostly because i saw Amelia and Thomas yesterday and it made me think of them.
  
• Yo La Tengo - Electro-Pura
• Journey - Greatest Hits. Stop laughing. You know you play air keyboard right along with the video for Separate Ways (Worlds Apart.) It's for song rewrites, I swear.
  
• Pat Benatar - Greatest Hits. No, really stop laughing. Seriously. Stop. Just shut up.
  
• The Beatles - Seargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Yup, I never owned this album before. Let the scorn flow in from the peanut gallery.

Speaking of stuff to listen to, the folks at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign put together this really great radio show about GSOC, (downloadable as an mp3) which has the first ever recording of the ad-hoc rap committee as well as great interviews with Mike, Tricia, Susan, Liz, Franny, Shana, and Anita. It's very much worth listening to on your commute to work or long walks around whatever city you live in.

It's been a good, busy weekend swamped with UOC folks after a week of being swamped with piracy. Last night was my grandmother's 90th birthday party (her actual birthday is tomorrow.) My great aunt got everyone to rewrite verses of "Hello Dolly" to be "Hello Judy." (If you were wondering whence came my proclivity to rewrite pop songs, you now know, and knowing is half the battle.) My mom's verse:

Old Judy, very old judy
Can you believe you’re 90 now for real?
You’ve been a great mama and a loving babu [my baby yiddish for bubbe (grandmother.) Not a reference to racist british discursive construction of hindu effeminacy]

You’ve even gotten us to dance just how we feel!
From women’s strike walkers to Hallmark altacockers
you’ve organized for what you think is right

We’re overjoyed judy in your old age
judy you are up to fighting the good fight

I'm trying to apply tags to all my posts.. This is takeing me a long time because this blog has 1357 posts including this one. Please bear with me.

ugh

Morning after the mets' expulsion from the postseason after Oliver Perez of all people pitches well and Endy Chavez makes another fucking incredible catch - to rob Scott Rolen of a 2 run homer and turns a double play - as if that wasn't enough. It was a great season, but we also - because of a series of freak injuries - didn't have the pitcvhing depth to beat detroit, and Steve Trachsel's suckitude in game 3 really doomed us, I think. But even without Pedro, El Duque, or Duaner Sanchez, the mets were able to force and almost win a Game 7, and that's leaps and bounds better than anything the team's done since the unceremonial end of the 2000 world series. Plus, the future's looking up. There's always next year, I suppose.



The current iteration of the piracy project is handed in, which is good, because it was driving us nuts. I saw Abbey and Amelia Sunday and I'm hanging out with them and some other UOC folks tonight (hopefully AM, Dubba, and TWF,) which is awesome. Plus, i saw Cathy yesterday fro the first time since she randomly showed up on the GSOC picket line last December and only the second time since college, so that was also awesome.

Still, I am really bummed out about the mets.

Edit: But if you were wondering what differentiates the Mets from the Yankees, I offer this as proof, though i could offer a great deal more:

“We went to the last out of the last inning of the last game, and we gave it our all,” Minaya said. “What else can you ask for?

In a downtrodden clubhouse, plastic sheets still hung draped over televisions and computers in preparation for a Champagne bath, when Fred Wilpon, the Mets’ principal owner, entered. He went directly to Heilman, grabbed his arm and thanked him before crisscrossing the room to meet with the coaching staff.

On his way out, he found Minaya in the middle of the locker room. As they hugged, Minaya told him, “The players didn’t cheat you, they didn’t cheat you.”

Partnership

Once upon a time there was a university named Yale with 19 billion dollars in the bank and a campaign to add another 3 billion almost halfway there. In 2003 this univeristy signed a contract with its workers and declared a new era of partnership. Kind of like back in 2002 when Levin hugged Bob Proto and then fired John Stepp and forced two strikes. Anyway, now Yale is subcontracting out sanitation jobs because of all that money they save by relying on folks with no control over their working conditions or wages. And because at only 19.3 billion in the bank, they're soooo hard up for cash right now. Turning Beinecke Library blue is expensive, i guess.

Green said the union will continue to stage protests over the coming weeks to raise awareness on campus. While only six members were present at Wednesday's protest, he said, the group made a conscious decision to focus on involving sanitation workers directly affected by the changes in the initial protests.

"We'll get more [union members] involved in the coming weeks," Green said. "We're collecting signatures from students, workers and faculty for a petition to [President Richard] Levin to restore garbage collection [to Local 35.]"

Green said they hoped to have the petition ready for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

"We are going to march from Golf Street, where the workers punch in, to Levin's house and hand him the petition," he said.

Dan Bromel, one of the sanitation workers who attended the protest, said he worried that nothing prevented sanitation workers from seeing their jobs further reduced.

"We used to take care of all the trash," he said. "They subcontract it out, and now they got us doing recycling, but there's no guarantee they can't subcontract out recycling."

The group plans to set up a booth outside Woodbridge Hall in order to raise the visibility of the issue, Green said.

I'm leavin/on a midday train to Connecticut

I woke up yesterday morning and it was beautiful out and i didn't want to finish my customary walk into manhattan only to spend the next x hours stewing in the oppressive depths of the worst university library i've ever seen, freaking out about work and grad school and being 20something and kinda lonely. I didn't really even want to be in NYC - I wanted to get out, to go somewhere where the leaves are actually changing colors and it didn't smell so much like urine and yuppies. So after finishing my walk, I jumped on the 6, and then on the 12:07 and a couple hours later after gawking at the semi-demolished shell of the New Haven Coliseum and the gentrified geography of the ninth square, I met Phoebe on the corner of Orange and Elm and we walked up to the top of East Rock, which the family of Red-Tailed Hawks (buteo jamaicensis, for the wildlife biology enthusiasts out there) that live up there were circling, and looked at the trees and the water and felt happy to be not in NYC at the moment. We walked back down, cut through the ITS parking lot, laughed at 55 Whitney and the Office of Quality People (ONHSA) and then I met Dubba Wubba Noah on the steps of the union office and we went to Lalibela. I saw some other UOC folks later before jumping on the 9:16 and would have gotten home at a reasonable hour had not the Brooklynbound N-R line been predictably fucked up. But I'm still really glad i got out of the city for a day, because I'm not sure when I'll have the next chance to do that, and I really needed it.

If i appear to be carefree

I want to note here that yesterday's post on the politics of the hug is as close to psychoanalysis as I'm going to get ever, so enjoy it.

Also "Tears of a Clown." Great song. So's "The Tracks of My Tears." Basically, if you put Smokey Robinson anywhere near themes of concealed anguish between 1960 and 1970, you got a great song.

Mets won yesterday on a 2-run HR by Carlos Beltran off a fastball that Jeff Weaver hung over the middle of the plate. Tonight's John Maine against Chris Carpenter. Glavine pitched seven shutout innings and the bullpen worked out of a couple of jams. Good game.

Last night, while the game was on, during the commercials i switched to channel 25, WNYC TV, which was airing an episode of its old-school hip hop video show "The Bridge" about the Wu-Tang clan. I caught the videos for "Da Mystery of Chessboxing," "C.R.E.A.M," and "Triumph" and interviews with U-God, Masta Killa, and Inspectah Deck, all of whom look old. Particularly compared to what they looked like in 1993. The GZA is 40 years old!

"then bring the ruckus"

Finally, my labors as unsanctioned troubador of the academic labor movement have been recognized. Oh, wait. Maybe not.

Nobody noticed its strike after the first few weeks, so GSOC adopted a new tactic in its valiant struggle for recognition: point out the fascist power structure at NYU whenever the university or its administrators do anything. This strategy is at its ugliest when GSOC members personally attack NYU President John Sexton.

"Nerds wonder why Sexton’s high-priced lawyers have not told him that hugging people without their permission...could constitute sexual harassment," wrote "Bread and Roses" on the blog Nerds on Strike.

There’s even a song about his hugs circulating Facebook and pro-strike blogs.

"I don’t want no hugs/when a hug is a gesture of patriarchy," it says.

Hugs are a symbol of patriarchy, uh-huh. At this point, GSOC members sound a lot like Dennis, the famous anarcho-syndicalist peasant from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

"Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I’m being repressed," says Dennis, after King Arthur politely asks about the local feudal lord.

I can’t imagine how painful it must be to reach out to students, as Sexton does regularly, and have those efforts tossed back in your face by a handful of whining malcontents. He’s a nice guy; he gives hugs. Don’t be an asshole because you disagree with his administrative decisions. Sexton could walk into the street and toss $100 bills in the air; someone from GSOC would shrilly denounce him for flaunting his personal wealth.

I wouldn’t be surprised if GSOC members attacked NYU for purchasing wind-generated energy. The ivory towers enslaved wind; Sexton expects the breeze to do his dirty work. And why’s this autocratic patriarchy have to put petroleum out of work? Even if wind energy is cleaner and cheaper than petroleum energy, NYU is only doing it to improve their image — and distract attention from the real issue threatening international survival: Graduate student labor recognition.

That’s the thing: While I don’t know its members personally, as an organization, GSOC acts like an ass. It refuses to recognize that it’s just not that popular.

And I’m not alone in this opinion. I haven’t heard GSOC mentioned positively in months. I recently witnessed an expression of disgust on the face of a former GSOC supporter after I described its role in the St. Anne’s Committee lawsuit. You guys lost, miserably, and your new tactics won’t change that.

But if you’re really living in fear of guerrilla-hugs from Sexton, feel free to move on to another university. Plenty of seniors (this one included) would love to take your place next year.

Immmediately after reading this, and in the midst of a blogging crisis, (should I keep writing this thing if all it is is fodder for anti-union ideologues?) I sent in this response:

As the author of that song, I want to point out the presence of the word "when." The statement is conditional. Sexton's hugs are patriarchical when he employs them to stifle questions about his leadership, when he offers them in lieu of a meaningful dialogue with graduate employees, or while referring to us as a "virus" and vowing to extirpate us from his fiefdom. The song is satire. The problem is very real. I'm sorry you don't like us, Mr. Devlin, but this isn't a popularity contest, it's a struggle for worker justice and for a university not subjugated to the whims of megalomaniac administrators who boast about hugging undergraduates in the wee hours of the morning at public fora. I'm not moving on to another university because I'm committed to making this one better, and because, you will soon find, I suspect, should you decide to pursue a PhD, that the problems GSOC has identified in the structure of teaching and research at NYU are in fact systemic across the US academy and must be confronted everywhere.
Z

For some reason, when posting it, the editor (who may or may not be the same person as the columnist) changed "extirpate" to "extricate," which makes no sense, and changed fora to the singular, which seems like nitpicking to me, but what can you do. I perhaps should have also added that this blog is not a "strike blog" in the sense that it is in any way sanctioned by or the responsibility of the leadership of GSOC, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, or the People's Front of Judea. It is disingenuous to claim that GSOC and GSOC members somehow bear collective responsibility for "No Hugs" or anything else on this blog, including this entry. It's also problematic to argue, as the columnist seems to, that there really is nothing wrong with a university president telling a room full of students and employees that he gets phone calls from undergraduates very early in the morning and then meets them and hugs them. But, for arguments' sake, let's assume that's all on the up and up and is not in itself innapropriate - the real problem with the hugs is then threefold. First, there is the assumption by sexton that he has the right to hug, that a body is necessarily huggable and his office as president empowers him to hug even should members of the NYU community not want to be classified among the potentially huggable. This was the gist of the question asked at the forum. Second, there is the way in which the hug performs a certain liberal corporatist (no pun intended) politics of conflict resolution, trivializes the hugged's objections and instantiates peace sans equal rights or justice (to borrow a framework from Peter Tosh.) "You want a contract? Tough, here's a hug instead." Sorry, not good enough. Third (and extremely tertiary) is the way that said hug as a gesture of pacification then constructs Sexton as "nice guy" and the unwilling, the refuser of hugs, as pathological.

Finally, I want to argue that the neoliberal university 's ever increasing involvements in finance capital, real estate speculation, biopiracy, and the casualization of academic labor constitute something to be worried about and to organize against. The U.S. academy is in a very real crisis now precisely for this reason. In so arguing I am not claiming the primacy of graduate student unionization over other struggles, but instead calling for a perspective which understands the entanglements of the "global university" or "enterprise university" or whatever you want to call it in a more nuanced and delicate way than "universities are liberal oases that do good things full of ridiculous people who are way too radical," which i take to be the gist of Devlin's objection.

I will apologize for the title of this post, inspired by my listening to 36 Chambers on the way to campus this morning. Additionally I want to reccomend that everyone track down Eccentric Soul: The Mighty Mike Lenaburg, a complation of music from the Phoenix, Arizona soul scene from the mid '60s through 1980, and also check out The New York Sound: From The East Coast to the Future, which is a compilation of NY boogie music in the years surrounding the rise of hip hop. You can get both from other music.

As always, I and I alone am solely responsible for everything in this entry and on this site , except for comments and block quotes. Ok, back to work.

I saw a woman on the street wearing a t-shirt which read "I survived the 1986 Phillipine Revolution." Hipster irony has taken a strange turn.

Speaking of which, the new Decemberists album actually managed to surprise me, abandoning at times the fetishized pseudopirate atavisms of the previous 3 records for occasional Yes-style prog rock which at times even approaches funkiness. wtf.

Tower records is closing every store in the US. I raided the soul section of the one on B-Way and West 4th yesterday and bought a lot of cds at a large discount. I may go back as the closing date draws nearer and do so again. I don't really mourn tower's passing, even if it is supposed to mark "the death of the record store." I still buy CDs. I don't trust 100% digital media - I need some kind of hard copy for times like now, when the laptop i'm borrowing from my dad decides to stop reading usb drives, or in case i accidentally hit "restore." I'm going to continue to buy CDs - from places like Other Music - so named in part because it was and is right across the street from the downtown Tower store (well, i think that's why they named it that...) And there's that massive Virgin Megastore up in Union Square. And Kim's. And Sounds. And Bleeker Bob's. And Generations. Etc, etc.

"I'm a pirate lawyer, stupid bitch!" - RMJ

Jukebox

Julie wanted me to do one of those "currently listening to" posts. I'm happy to oblige. I just heard Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor and it's quite good - though i think some of the criticisms Fennessy makes are spot-on. I just bought the new Decemberists album, but i haven't listened to it yet, so i can't offer much there. I bought this at other music for much, much less than Amazon's selling it for and it was definitely worth it. And then there's the new Yo La Tengo album, which everyone should hear, because it's freaking great. Other than that, i've been listening to Smokey Robinson and The Miracles' "The Tracks of My Tears" over and over again, Al Green's Greatest Hits, and Boogie Down Productions' Criminal Minded.

Wal-Mart, Free Trade Zones, and Murdered Labor Activists (a blockquote)

In the interstitial, deregulated, outsourced manufacturing nodes of global capitalism, the "race to the bottom" apparently doesn't stop at murder.

Liza Featherstone at The Nation's blog.

Bishop Ramento was chair of the board of the Philippine Workers' Assistance Centre (WAC) in Cavite, where workers have also been under violent attack in recent weeks. (His colleagues there feel strongly that his was a political murder, not a robbery.) According to WAC, a church-affiliated labor organization that has had phenomenal success organizing workers in the intensely militarized Free Trade Zone, the owners of the Chong Won Fashion factory have been trying to destroy their employees' union by force.

Last week, a combination of municipal and free trade zone police, and private security, attacked strikers who were peacefully picketing, injuring twenty-two of them. It was the second violent attack on the picket line since September 25, when the workers first went on strike to protest the owners' refusal to negotiate a first collective bargaining agreement. At least sixty-six of the striking workers have also received termination notices, according to WAC.

The factory's largest customer is Wal-Mart. Last month, after repeated violations of workers' right to organize, the retailer audited the factory at the request of Maquila Solidarity Network (MSM), an anti-sweatshop group based in Toronto. But Wal-Mart ignored some of MSM's more crucial requests: the company did not meet with WAC to hear the workers' side of the story, nor did it put enough pressure Chong Won's owners to respect freedom of association, so violence at the factory has escalated.

Last year, around the same time that Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott started finding his inner tree-hugger, Wal-Mart also began cultivating a better relationship with North America-based anti-sweatshop groups. The company had been so notorious for ignoring these organizations and their findings, that even the ever-forgiving Domini Social Investment Fund had dropped Wal-Mart for "unresponsiveness."

The Good, The Bad, The Weird, and the Ugly

The Good:

• The Mets swept the Dodgers in the NLDS to move on to the NLCS for the first time since 2000 in a crazy game in which the mets were up 4-0, down 5-4, and then won 9-5.

• I just saw Alek for the first time since 2004.

The weird:

• The squirrel fight on Chapel between Flatbush and Jay this morning. A rolling mass of bush tails sweeping across the sidewalk.

• Walking across the manhattan bridge while the avon walk against breast cancer was walking in the other direction. I was dressed in all black, they were all in pink and white and looking at me strangely. I felt like cancer's metonym or something.

The bad:

• being pursued by the New York County Department of Jurors and threatened with jail for not responding to jury duty letters i never got, because i haven't lived in NY County for years.

• The announcers in Dodgers Stadium who couldn't pronouce Endy Chavez's surname despite the fact that they work in fucking Chavez Ravine.

The ugly:

• A homeless man was beaten bloodly and lying dazed on the street as I walked down Waverly between Bway and Mercer this afternoon. Someone called 911 and the cops and fire dept/EMTs came. A bizarre and fucked up little rupture in the geography of the neoliberal urban amusement park.

militarized fences make bad neighbors

really. Not like Fox or Calderon is actually going to do anything about this, and kind of interesting to note the huge disconnect between what folks on the border are saying and Calderon's waffling. Not sure why it's news that people get insulted when you put up a gigantic fence patrolled by the national guard and forcibly keep them on el otro lado, but i guess it gives cnn a rare excuse to give a view of the border other than the one of anti-immigrant outrage so often mobilized by Lou Dobbs...

The Mexican government this week sent a diplomatic note to Washington criticizing the plan for 700 miles of new fencing along the border. Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez called it an "offense" and said Wednesday his office was considering taking the issue to the United Nations.

But Ruben Aguilar, the spokesman for Mexican President Vicente Fox, said Thursday that Mexico had ruled out that possibility. He added he was "confident" the additional fencing would never become a reality because an immigration accord would eventually replace it.

President-elect Felipe Calderon Thursday criticized the U.S. plan, but said the case is a bilateral issue that should not be taken to any international organization.

"I think it is a deplorable decision that has been made by the United States Congress for the construction of this wall, and it does not solve our common problem, which is emigration," Calderon told a news conference in Santiago, Chile.

Guillermo Alonzo, a migration expert at the Tijuana-based Colegio de La Frontera Norte, said fences will force migrants to look find new routes into the United States through more dangerous terrain.

"When migrants are determined to cross, they find a way to jump the fences," Alonzo said. "Walls don't stop anything."

Alonzo cited the construction of a fence between Tijuana and San Diego, known in Mexico as "the tortilla wall." It was completed in the 1990s and forced migrants into the sparsely populated and dangerous Arizona desert.

While there are walls at various points along the border, the one in Tijuana is the longest stretch, running 14 miles west from the Otay border crossing to the Pacific Ocean.

The wall is a symbol of the divisive immigration issue. It has become a kind of shrine marked with graffiti, crosses, photos and remembrances of those who have lost their lives trying to sneak into the United States. Some families divided by the border even meet at the fence, talking through the metal wires.

Let's Go Mets

I don't blog about baseball very much. And, being the superstitious animal (be it monkey, penguin, or Panda) that I am, I certainly don't want to jinx anything, but the Mets are in the playoffs for the first time in six years. Despite losing two of their best pichers to season-ending injuries (Pedro Martinez, one of the best pitchers ever, is out at least 8 months, Orlando Hernandez injured his calf jogging in the outfield the day before he was supposed to start Game 1) the mets have won their first two games against the dodgers and only need one more win to the series and move on to the NLCS -- probably facing the St. Louis Pujol-- i mean Cardinals. Last night, i got no work done, because i was sitting at home watching Tom Glavine, a 40 year old pitcher, throw six shutout innings, and Julio Franco, who's 48, beat out a double play ball to first base. It was fun to watch - and made more fun by the constanbt text messaging back and forth between me and my brother, reminiscent of our email exchanges during the 2004 NLCS when the Red Sox came back from an 0-3 deficit for the first time in baseball history to beat the Yankees and move on to the world series. It's sad that Martinez and Hernandez are hurt, and i don't know how far the Mets can go with out them, but they're doing a pretty great job thus far and it's fun to watch.

Damn I'm Old Department

This was five years ago.

Who the hell is David Marks?

After the speeches, participants formed a line about three-quarters of a mile long and 10 people wide. United Students At Yale organizer Abbey Hudson '03, Proto, Local 34 President Laura Smith and Marks led the procession carrying a banner that had "Hope Not Fear" printed across the front.

Columbia Revolt (The Sequel)

Last night, when Minuteman Project co-founder Jim Gilchrist came to speak at Columbia University as a guest of the Columbia College Republicans, a group of students stormed the stage holding a banner proclaiming "There Are No Illegals," a fight ensued - those who rushed the stage claim that they were attacked by the republicans, and Gilchrist was rushed away as the attendees chanted antiracist slogans (and called Gilchrist a pinche culo.)

The myth of the university as a neutral ground on which armed fascists should be welcomed as distinguished guests, though the people they terrorize are coded as good enough only to clean floors or serve hamburgers lies at the center of many of the loud condemnations of the protesters that have thus far circulated - and the video embedded on the site linked to above shows one young republican referrign to his fellow students in a manner which is, frankly, racist -- as "animals" inapable of the sort of rational dialogue we all know that conservatives are so quick to engage in.

The Minuteman Project is an armed paramilitary vigilante organization. It is racist, premised upon metaphors of invasion and reconquista which construct the immigrant as corrosive monster, unnasimilable other, and welfare queen. I will not claim that Gilchrist has no place in a university - I have never been convinced that the university as happy bubble of tolerance was either a particularly useful metaphor or a particularly true one - universities are implicated in structures of racial difference in complicated and profound ways - but I support the efforts of folks at Columbia to counter his hatred and fascism with banners and bodies. No one is illegal.

Welcome to the ICE, bitch!

The most ridiculous scene in the oc season 1 comes not during the whole oliver arc but instead during marissa cooper's drunken pill popping slow mo collapse when she's in the bar in Tijuana. The camera slow pans across the wall and the faces of exoticized and demonic Mexican men - constructing the racialized other as menacing, mute scenery. It's one of the most racist moments i've seen on

television - worse than Seinfeld. And then came Survivor Race War, which i'll admit to never having seen, but which i anticipate becoming the subject of innumerable undergraduate cultural studies seminar papers for the next decade or so. Ok, back to work.

The kentucky river cases ruling is finally made public, removing millions more workers from union eligibility.

Wal Mart and Flexiblization of Retail Workers

Greenhouse/Barbaro piece here. Walmart internal memo here.

I'd say something insightful but I'm too hungry. The whole secular fast thing really isn't working for me that well right now - i'm too stressed out and hungry to think straight.

So I think i'm going to break my fast and eat something and then try to get some work done.

Lev, stoic

Thirty seconds later i noticed the bird shit all over the back of his sweater.