untitled 11:20 PM 11/30/06

I just got internet in my apartment for certainly the first time since May - when the wireless connection i was "borrowing" cut out, but really the first time ever, since this is a dependable connection I pay for and control. It's exciting. In a totally banal kind of way.

I've been thinking about academics a lot, in part because there's no picket line around the library so i have more time to do so this year, (although there's a lot of organizing that needs to be done,) in part because I'm incredibly stressed out and need to be thinking about academics if I want to stay in grad school, and in part because, dude, I like thinking about the work i do or i wouldn't be in grad school in the first place.

I've felt detatched - and lost. I've been unexcited about my work and I'm still angry about last year, and, perhaps most keenly, unsure of what i want to focus on and what focusing on certain aspects of american studies will mean within the context of my university and/or department. The guest lecture i did last week, and the research i did for it make me increasingly certain that I want "labor" in there somehow, but perhaps coupled with "cultural theory" or making the move to specifically deal with cultural histories of labor and workers' movements, something that isn't in itself a new gesture, but could point my attentions towards places I would find it useful and rewardling to go. The spatial metaphors I'm using here are somewhat out of control.

And then the second exam could be something like "histories of capitalism," maybe. I don't know. Any suggestions?

Interdisciplinarity kind of sucks. It seems at least in part an illusory intervention. The limits of free play and open exchange become readily apparent not only when you get told you aren't focused enough or you're looking too narrow and need to be more broad - these are helpful interventions, more often than not- but, more pointedly, when it becomes all too clear that interdisciplinarity's an open signifier and as much a symptom of the neoliberal discursive hegemony of the "University of Excellence" as a zone of resistance to it - at least that's part of Bill Readings' argument in The University in Ruins, which I m enjoying but the pagination in my copy is totally fucked up and makes the second half unreadable so i have to find another copy. I haven't given up on cultural studies as a site from which to lodge powerful critiques and mobilize political and anti-political interventions, but I think I've done a poor job of figuring out how to situate what I want to do within such projects. Does this make any sense?

Brearley Unleashed

One wonders if BlackRock Realty, thought to be involved in a possible deal to sell rent-regulated housing on the (ugh) Upper East Side off to the elite Brearley School, is related to BlackRock Inc, the capital management firm operated by NYU Board of Trustees Vice Chair Laurence D. Fink...

Yale Retirees Still Fighting

The university really doesn't have a leg t stand on here. Given the massive growth in the endowment, leaving the people whose labor built the university into what it is today out in the cold is just criminal. It's good that the Federation is standing strong behind these people who put themselves on the line and palyed a major role in the 2003 contract victory. It's time for the university to step up. We'll be watching

Locals 34 and 35 held a dinner to honor 11 retirees who helped obtain better pensions for employees who retired under the contract signed in 2003. But these honorees are among the approximately 1,000 retirees receiving pension benefits under the previous contract, which labor leaders have said are inadequate. University administrators said the pensions in question have seen increases above the cost of inflation.

The 11 retirees protested outside the Yale Investments Office on the eve of the unions' 2003 strike, and five of them held an overnight sit-in until Chief Investment Officer David Swensen agreed to meet with them. Local 34 President Laura Smith said their actions pushed Yale to offer fair, secure pensions to employees who retire under the new contract, but not for themselves.

Update: Better coverage on this (not surprising) from Melissa Bailey at the New Haven Independent. Weapon of Class Instruction sends its best wishes to Lucille Dickess and her family.

Tuesday, a conference room at St. Anthony's Church filled with the chants and
images of that day in an honorary dinner for the nine retirees, hosted by Locals
34 and 35, Yale's pink- and blue-collar unions.
"Oh, it was a trip!"
recalled Rogan, standing at the podium before a room packed with labor support.
"I was raised a very good girl, to do what you're told," she said. "I was
nervous and scared, because we're afraid of the unknown." She gained strength
that day by looking outside, where a crowd gathered, and where Rev. Jackson led
chants from the steps.
"Knowing you were there just really made a
difference. ... You can't do it alone!" she told the crowd. Today, she remains a
firebrand union supporter. Right now blue-collar workers at Yale-New Haven
Hospital have a union-organizing drive underway.
As she was being wheeled
through the hallways of Yale New-Haven Monday night on her way to diagnostic
radiation, "I started right then and there. 'I hope you're going to sign a
card!'" she told the employees.

the financialization of the hospital-university city

Taken as advertised, as a story about the upper-middle class transitioning into the ranks of the super rich, today's installment in the Times's "Gilded Paycheck" series is, to quote RMJ's cousin, "boring." But taken as a story about new fronteirs of accumulation in an already deeply commodified set of professions and workplaces - the university, (and the business school,) the hospital, the nexus where the twain meet, etc., - the tale seems - at least to my admittedly obvious prejudices - more gripping. What exactly, we wonder, is "health care investment management,"and why is it so lucrative - so much more lucrative than actually practicing medecine?

As for the section on philanthropy, the valorization of the reagano-machiavellian spirit here - make shitloads of money for yourself so you can give lots of it away later and thus replace the welfare state with voluntarist and extragovernmental structures, of course ignores the baleful effects of the privatization of the commons and commodification of life-worlds by which these folks are amassing their fortunes in the first place. It seems unlikely that "health care investment management" is a victimeless crime. That money has to come from somewhere, and that means someone else's work is involved and rendered invisible by this tale of ingenuity (or canny mediocrity, as Robert Glassman himself suggests) and excess. A study might be made (that's me pretending to be Gramsci) of the forms of labor central to this story but excluded in the times piece, included but not limited to the lives of the health care workers and "consumers" upon whose backs Glassman's fortune seems to have been built.

Justice at Rising Sun

Linking to the website posting updates in support of the locked out union workers at the Rising Sun textile factory in Kenya, which manufactures university apparel and is the target of a USAS solidarity campaign

“The reality that is here is that there is a lot of oppression... Whatever
clothes the buyers are wearing, to me I can term them as ‘blood clothes,’
because they are not being got in the just way. People are being oppressed;
people are being harassed to produce their garment. It is very wrong if whatever
someone is wearing is made by somebody who is not paid… They should be aware of
what is happening on the ground.”
“I can talk about the major problem with
the working conditions which was discrimination, nothing else. Discrimination is
the one which brought all this. Because the CEO, or someone like CEO, is telling
people they are like “black monkeys.” …They see the Blacks as if they are
prisoners, …as if they are working with somebody who does not have their
rights.”
“I had worked in Rising Sun for two and a half years. There was an
incident that happened … where one of our managers, by the name Mr. ________,
had abused one lady. He found that lady; she was at the table working, but there
was no job. So, he threw garments on her face. After that… the lady asked ‘why
did you do that?’ [He said], ‘I can fuck you and sack you.’ So, from there it
was a case that came up to the Export Processing Zone Authority, where the case
was presented…They ruled that the lady should forgive the man. Then the lady was
asking, ‘If I was the one who had abused the manager, I would have been
summarily dismissed! Why should that rule not be applied?’ Then, he came in the
morning, the same same manager. You see after coming [to the authorities], there
was no action that was taken so he was very proud and bragging about it. He came
and then he said to the factory, “I can fuck you and sack all of you.” Then,
from that statement, people were very much annoyed, so they came out
demonstrating and policemen were called to throw us out…
“When the police
came they abused human rights because there was no talking about anything.
Ladies were being beaten. Men were being chased. That was what happened. By the
time the police came, people had settled down after demonstrating, but when they
evicted everyone from the factory…
“Then we came on Monday… and we found a
notice that all of us are being summarily dismissed. So, after a few days… they
wrote a circular, a memo, that our dues are being paid at Machakos District
labor office and that after you go and take that money we will take you back to
job …. When people went there, they found after working for two years, three
years, they are only getting 3,000 [shillings] ($41), whereas they expected
something like 20,000 ($274) … Some people were cheated to go and take the
money, but after taking the money they were not taken back to the job. So, we
still refuse to go and take the money, and we reported the issue to the branch
secretary [of the union]."…From there we have been fighting and some people… got
jobs, but after getting jobs they are still calling from where they are working.
They are saying ‘don’t employ those guys.’ I’m a victim. I was employed and I
was sacked just because… there was a statement that was written that this is one
of the guys that led the demonstrations. So, I was sacked.”
“They are
oppressing us so much because we can’t get jobs anywhere. This one they have to
be made to stop with immediate effect because what they are trying to do is they
are trying to oppress us. They are trying to make us desperate so that we can
agree with anything they come up with. Recently, I was working in [another
factory], but I was fired because there was a circular, containing my name and
around 30 other people, saying that these people are not supposed to be employed
anywhere. They have circulated it in Mombasa, Nairobi, even here. So, we cannot
get jobs.”

quis custodiet ipsos custodies, II

The past few weeks have seen a noticeable spike in police brutality in New York. However the powers that be swear that the Bloomberg administration is more tolerant and liberal than the Giuliani era NYPD racialized assault on poor and working class communities of color, and perhaps these claims are true, perhaps not - the end result doesn't seem much different. First and most high profile is this weekend's shooting by police in Jamaica, Queens of a young man on his wedding day outside the strip club where his bachelor party was held, as police fired 50 shots into the unarmed man's car, killing him and wounding two others. There has been a great deal of attention placed on this event, because it's tragic, and because the "story" plays well in the media, but even if he'd been just some random guy coming out of a strip club at four in the morning, not about to get married, would his death be any more acceptable? And the fact that some of the officers in volved were black and latino clearly does not trouble the racialized structures of policing and punishment except in the most superficial sense. A young black male in the crosshairs of a police officer's gun remains a young black male no matter the racialized construction of the officer who is holding the gun. The technology of policing and control itself produces and reproduces a discourse of race intimately linked to the frameworks of NYPD multiculturalism which the Bloomberg administration has so carefully nurtured as a means of avoiding the crises of the previous administration. Even now, Bloomberg plays the role of the contrite and concerned patriarch, rather than the sneering apologist for racialized terror - the posie so often assumed by his predecessor. None of this makes Sean Bell any less dead.

Meanwhile, in Greenwich Village (forwarded from an email sent out over the NYU Gender-Studies listserve)

We Demand that The NYPDStop Racist Police BrutalityDrop all the Charges
against Shakur Trammel & hisco-defendantsFIRE OFFICER TOCCOS! Release the
names of all theofficers involved in the attack on November 1stEnd the NYPD
campaign of Racial and Gender ProfilingStop the attacks on youth, people of
color, thehomeless and lesbian, gay, bi and trans people in theWest VillageWhat
Happened at Hudson and Christopher – HalloweenNight 2006According to
eyewitnesses, on November 1st, at around4:30am, at the intersection of Hudson
and Christopher,various African-American and Latina/o people wereapproached by a
van of police officers and told tomove from the corner. Some of these people
werepatrons of a pizza restaurant who were standing out infront, while others
were simply crossing theintersection.As people began to move away from the
corner, a20-year old African-American female remarked on howdisrespectful the
tone had been of the female officerwho had given the order. The same officer got
out ofthe van and began to initiate an argument with the20-year-old woman.
Within seconds, Officer Toccos, awhite male cop, also jumped out of the van and
beganto shout at the 20-year-old female.Then without warning or provocation,
Officer Toccospushed the 20-year-old African-American woman twice inher breasts
forcing her backwards. A witness at the
Shakur Trammel requested the badge
number of OfficerToccos.In answer to that request, Shakur Trammel was punchedin
his face. In a fit of rage, Toccos began punchingTrammel repeatedly in his
chest. He soon threw him ontop of the front of the police van and began
chokinghim with his nightstick. A rampage ensued. Witnessesreport, that between
4 to 6 cops, mostly whiteofficers, began kicking and punching, Shakur Trammelas
he lay on the ground. Throughout the attack,Officer Toccos continuously beat
Trammel with hisnightstick. Covered with bruises and his left elbowdislocated
Shakur Trammel was then thrown into apolice van.During the attack, Trammel could
hear the voices ofseveral people yelling for the police to stop andcalling on
each other to take pictures to document theassault. As many as 20 people, the
vast majority ofwhich were people of color, witnessed the attack. Eyewitnesses
report that the police went into the crowdand began beating another
African–American man,believed to be in his 30’s, who was very vocal abouthis
outrage at the police brutality wielded againstTrammel. Both men were arrested
along with anAfrican–American female who refused to follow thepolice command for
the witnesses to disperse.Once they arrived at the 6th Precinct, Shakur
Trammeltold his arresting officer that he was a Transsexualmale and wanted to be
placed in a separate cell. Thisrequest was ignored. Both of the men, in
desperateneed of medical attention, were initially placed inthe same holding
cell. Already in the cell were twoother men, one Black and one Latino, both
injured andbleeding, who reported that the police at the 6thPrecinct also
assaulted them. After an hour ofdemanding to be taken to a hospital, one of the
four",1]
);
//-->
scene, 23 year old African-American college
studentShakur Trammel requested the badge number of OfficerToccos.In answer to
that request, Shakur Trammel was punchedin his face. In a fit of rage, Toccos
began punchingTrammel repeatedly in his chest. He soon threw him ontop of the
front of the police van and began chokinghim with his nightstick. A rampage
ensued. Witnessesreport, that between 4 to 6 cops, mostly whiteofficers, began
kicking and punching, Shakur Trammelas he lay on the ground. Throughout the
attack,Officer Toccos continuously beat Trammel with hisnightstick. Covered with
bruises and his left elbowdislocated Shakur Trammel was then thrown into apolice
van.During the attack, Trammel could hear the voices ofseveral people yelling
for the police to stop andcalling on each other to take pictures to document
theassault. As many as 20 people, the vast majority ofwhich were people of
color, witnessed the attack. Eyewitnesses report that the police went into the
crowdand began beating another African–American man,believed to be in his 30’s,
who was very vocal abouthis outrage at the police brutality wielded
againstTrammel. Both men were arrested along with anAfrican–American female who
refused to follow thepolice command for the witnesses to disperse.Once they
arrived at the 6th Precinct, Shakur Trammeltold his arresting officer that he
was a Transsexualmale and wanted to be placed in a separate cell. Thisrequest
was ignored. Both of the men, in desperateneed of medical attention, were
initially placed inthe same holding cell. Already in the cell were twoother men,
one Black and one Latino, both injured andbleeding, who reported that the police
at the 6thPrecinct also assaulted them. After an hour ofdemanding to be taken to
a hospital, one of the four
armed with a stun gun.On November 1st 2006, at
the corner of Hudson andChristopher, 2 Black men were beaten, one trans andone
non-trans, and arrested along with one Blackwoman, for refusing to stand idly by
as a 20-year oldBlack woman was assaulted by a white cop. Racistpolice attacks
like the one on November 1st are adaily occurrence in working class and
communities ofcolor throughout NYC. In the West Village, the 6thPrecinct has
become notorious for racist, sexist andanti-lesbian, gay, bi and trans violence
unleashedparticularly against young people of color, thehomeless and transgender
people. The people of colorLGBT youth organization, FIERCE!, has been at
theforefront of fighting on these issues in the WestVillage for several
years.TransJustice of The Audre Lorde Project calls onsocial justice activists
and organizations from acrossthe city to Endorse and Come to an
Anti-PoliceBrutality Press Conference & Picket Line Wednesday,Nov 29th
6:30pm – 7:30pm in front of the 6th Precinct(233 West 10th Street)TransJustice
is a political group created by and forTrans and Gender Non-Conforming people of
color. Wework to mobilize our communities and allies to actionon the pressing
political issues we face. Theseissues include gaining access to jobs, housing,
andeducation; the need for Trans-sensitive healthcare,HIV-related services, and
job-training programs;resisting police, government and anti-immigrantviolence.
To endorse or for more info call 718596-0342 ext 15 or email ikhenry@alp.orgFrank León RobertsDoctoral Candidate, Department of
Performance StudiesGraduate School of Arts and Science & Tisch School of the
Arts, NYU---You are currently subscribed to gender-studies as: zsw201@nyu.eduTo unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-gender-studies-1868526P@forums.nyu.edu",0]
);
//-->
men of color was then taken from the cell by copsarmed with a stun gun.On
November 1st 2006, at the corner of Hudson andChristopher, 2 Black men were
beaten, one trans andone non-trans, and arrested along with one Blackwoman, for
refusing to stand idly by as a 20-year oldBlack woman was assaulted by a white
cop. Racistpolice attacks like the one on November 1st are adaily occurrence in
working class and communities ofcolor throughout NYC. In the West Village, the
6thPrecinct has become notorious for racist, sexist andanti-lesbian, gay, bi and
trans violence unleashedparticularly against young people of color, thehomeless
and transgender people. The people of colorLGBT youth organization, FIERCE!, has
been at theforefront of fighting on these issues in the WestVillage for several
years.TransJustice of The Audre Lorde Project calls onsocial justice activists
and organizations from acrossthe city to Endorse and Come to an
Anti-PoliceBrutality Press Conference & Picket Line Wednesday,Nov 29th
6:30pm – 7:30pm in front of the 6th Precinct(233 West 10th Street)TransJustice
is a political group created by and forTrans and Gender Non-Conforming people of
color. Wework to mobilize our communities and allies to actionon the pressing
political issues we face. Theseissues include gaining access to jobs, housing,
andeducation; the need for Trans-sensitive healthcare,HIV-related services, and
job-training programs;resisting police, government and anti-immigrantviolence.
To endorse or for more info call 718596-0342 ext 15 or email ikhenry@alp.org

Other interesting thing about The Adventures of Brisco County Junior is cameo in one episode by one of my sophomore year suitemates. I had no idea until i saw the episode for the first time in thirteen years and recognized a familiar face, and the episode credits confirmed it. Crazy.

Dave Chapelle's Block Party is enjoyable, although I get angry every time I see Common about the stupid gap commercial, and then Mos Def pops up and I think about the shittiness that was "the rapeover," and there's Wyclef's problematic speech to the CSU marching band kids which employs the narrative of West Indian immigrant success to call for a Booker T.-style throw down your buckets and stop blaming the white man strategy for African American communities, right after playing a song to them which is somewhat more cognizant of what the speech perhaps dismisses (or sees as strategically useless). But then you get Jill Scott openly laughing at the director's suggestion that she might feel nervous about going on after Erykah Badu ("Have you ever heard me perform," she replies,) and, of course, the Fugees get back together, which Chapelle calls a miracle, and then Wyclef comes out, which whatever cause i've seen him at three union events now, but still cool, and then Lauryn Hill comes out, and even wearing a Yankees cap that's still pretty awesome, and at that point Pras isn't even anticlimactic.

Thanksgiving break, which is always too short (except in college when they gave us the whole week) to actually constitute a break in any real sense is ending and the daily crush of NYU resumes tomorrow. I'm excited to get back to organizing, but increasingly stressed out about the end of the semester crush. What else is new, other than unseasonably warm temperatures? (Last year at this time, I was on the picket line every morning and it was fucking freezing.)

Un Superhero Cansado y Viejo

The title of this post is an expropriation of one of my favorite Josh quotes. It has nothing to do with anything other than that I saw Josh for the first time in almost a year this morning in Park Slope, which was fun.

Thanksgiving was oddly quiet this year - a function of the immdeiate family being all on another continent right now and most of the extended family who made it being of the elderly variety. Also, there were more non-family guests than family members, most of whom were over 60 or 70, and they were thus totally incapable of generating the same kind of ruckus that C and L and Lev and K and J and N and I have done in the past - though Z, Kai, and E do a pretty good job of picking up the slack for three people whose combined age is 12, one of whom isn't even potty trained yet. I miss the folks who couldn't make it - whether because of traffic or because of oblligations to other family elsewhere. I was also exhausted the whole time because of a lingering cold that seems to only now be receeding. It was very weird to not have R there, not so much because I wish she had been there as because that discomfort had become so ritualized and normalized that I found myself shocked by her not being there, by the absence of that familar family drama and trauma which has dominated my interactions with my dad's side of the family for most of my life. This is all sounding way more callous than it is, and I'll shut up about this on the internet. I will say that I deeply love B and Z and am incredibly blessed that they're still around and I can go hang out with them pretty much whenever I want to - like i did today, instructing them on how to use their new cell phone and bringing over a watch they'd left at I and El's and a photo of the immediate family plus B, Z, and J from I'm not sure when that I printed out the other night.

I really like my cousins. I miss my asshole brother who is in Leeds for no reason. Where the fuck is Leeds, anyway?

Did get to see C and L (and A and J) yesterday, when we went to see Casino Royale as part of the annual friday after thanksgiving cousin movie excursion. Good, for a bond movie, problematic by my more usual standards - fucked up racist images of dreadlocked african construction workers getting all shot up for no reason whatsoever except expediency and body count(still might have preferred Happy Feet or Borat or The Pick of Destiny.) And I recently came into posession of the dvd of the complete series of The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., the Bruce Campbell sci-fi western hour long series that was on on friday nights right before x-files for its first season and which I liked a lot when I was twelve. (Sixth grade.) Episode five (if you count the pilot) is called "Brisco in Jalisco" and it's absolutely ridiculous - set in 1893 Mexico with all these guys running around in fake Pancho Villa moustaches that don't even match their hair color, and that guy from NY Undercover plays "Emilio Pena," this pseudo-Zapata figure who talks with a Bronx/Nuyorican accent and sounds more like a Young Lord than an old peasant. Plus they spend the first half of the epsiode retreading every single stereotype of Mexico and Mexicanness before they introduce Michael DeLorenzo (the only Mexican guy on the show without a ridiculous fake moustache) as the messiah figure. So strange. Also, Abel Koontz, Balthazar, Socrates Pool - same person!

Alright. enough totally uninsightful commentary on popular culture from me. Hope everyone had good thanksgivings.

caveat lecture

Oh god, the honda commercial with "Huddle Formation" is on again. As i still love that song on a visceral level, its use to sell automobiles disturbs and saddens me. Though even with the many problems I have with him these days, I think Common's Gap commerical is even more disgusting, with its way-too-late commodification off the 60s now turnign towards the native tongues for its feelgood (by the numbers) harmless consumerist vacuous and crass commodification of hip hop. This is the guy who did "I Used To Love HER," for christsakes, and while that song's gendered metaphor was profoundly fucked up (Hip hop as woman, selling out/gangsta as drunken whoring,) it was pretty far from a gap commercial. Is this another case of what, following the late, great Joe Strummer, we might term "He Who Fucks Nuns Will Later Join The Church" syndrome?

I did a guest lecture yesterday for a class on social movements taught by a fellow GSOC member at Queens College. It was the first time I've ever done something like that - a)publicly lectured on labor for like an hour, b)publicly lectured on anything, c)tried to link my scholarly work and my activist commitments in front of people who aren't in GSOC or weren't part of the UOC. It was kind of trippy. I wasn't as well prepared as I should have been and if I'd had a better sense of what I was doing I think I could have changed what I said around to make it much more useful to the class. As it was I gave way too much historical/theoretical overview for what was supposed to be a personal narrative of my involvement with the labor movement, didn't talk enough about my experiences with the labor movement, and didn't link my experiences with broader concerns, in part because i hadn't mapped this out enough in advance, and in part because I was a little nervous. But i did get to talk a little about the hospital-university city, the medical debt fight, Local 34, 14 strikes in 65 years, GSOC, Hotel Workers Rising, PATCO, The Houston Janitors (whose victory calls to mind Vincent Sirabella's claim, oft quoted on this blog, that "They can beat us in the streets of New Haven, but they'll never beat us at the bargaining table,") the 1941 Disney Cartoonists strike, the Detroit Newspaper Strike of 1995-1997, the Taft hartley Act, the 1946-47 general strikes in oakland and Pittsburgh, and the NLRB. It was a lot of fun, and hopefully I'll do this better next time someone wants me to do something like this.

the group of kids i was sitting next to on the Q17 back up Kissena to Main street (Where you get the 7 Train, which winds past Shea stadium and then across Northwestern Queens back to midtown manhattan,) were having an absurd conversation. I don't remember what it was about. Queens College has a pretty campus. I like Flushing, but I wouldn't want to live there, primarily because it's called "Flushing."

Victory in Houstom

After three weeks on strike, what may be a landmark win for working people in the Southern US. Don't mess with Texas.

Higher Wages. Janitors will see their wages rise by 126 percent over the course
of the contract-with an immediate 21% increase on January 1. Janitors pay will
increase to $6.25 an hour on January 1, 2007, $7.25 an hour on January 1, 2008,
and $7.75 by January 1, 2009.
More Hours. The new contract will increase
work hours for janitors currently provided with only 4 hours of work a night to
six hours a shift in two years. The additional hours and the wage increase mean
that janitors who make $5.15 an hour will see their income more than double by
the end of 2008.
Quality, Affordable Health Insurance. At a time when many
employers are shifting health care costs on to workers, Houston janitors won
individual health insurance at a cost of only $20 per month. Family insurance
will also be available for a cost of $175 a month. The health insurance will
become available starting January 1, 2009.
Paid Holidays and Vacation Time.
The contract will allow workers-many for the first time in their lives-paid time
off from work. Janitors will receive six paid holidays per year and be able to
accrue paid vacation time beginning the first year of the contract.

This Just In...

...University administrators make a lot of money.

the pitfalls of the internets

Last night, which on the web using my phone, i tried to search gmail for an email someone sent me a while back. I used their name. Except I was so tired that i forgot that I wasn't in gmail, I was on facebook. And the field I was filling out wasn't "search" but "status," and I hit "update" rather than "search," and before I knew it, my facebook status, broadcast on the minifeeds of anyone who logged on for a twenty minute period last night, was someone else's name. And since i was using my mobile browser, i counldn't delete it, so i had to call someone else, tell them my password, and beg them to delete it for me, which they did.

When facebook introduced the minifeed, i didn't really see it as problematic. I still don't really have that much of a problem with it. But when you fuck up, things can get very embarassing really fast - although I'm not convinced that that's really all that different from in the pre-facebook era of rumor and gossip

the view from above

Um. Wow.

Notes from the University-Medico-Industrial Complex

The YNHH hospital workers file for their union election. Come december, 1800 workers in a bargaining unit that's been fighting for recognition practically since the late 1940s will finally have a voice on the job. Kind of amazing.

Meanwhile, a former postdoc is suing Yale for royalties from the patenting of medical technology (PT tests) she worked on and says she helped invent in the lab of a Yale PI in the late 1980s.

Because, as Patty Smyth put it, sometimes love just ain't enough.

Bechtel pulls out of Iraq

So, Bechtel was hired instead of the Iraqi companies who had successfully rebuilt their country after the previous U.S. invasion. And, since Bechtel's contract guaranteed that all of its costs would be covered, plus a set rate of profit, it took its time, spending its first five months in Iraq doing a countrywide assessment rather than rebuilding. Bechtel then worked on expensive new facilities that showcased its skills and would serve its needs were it to run the systems itself one day (and which have proven far too expensive for Iraqis to run). The Iraqis, meanwhile, knew that the Americans had received billions of dollars for reconstruction, that Iraqi companies had been rejected, and that the country was still without basic services. The result was increasing hostility, acts of sabotage targeted directly at foreign contractors and their work, and a rising insurgency.

In the end, Iraq has not emerged as the wealthy free market haven companies like Bechtel had hoped for, at least not yet (the economic policies put in place by the Bush administration remain and the work is on-going to turn Iraq into a corporate-friendly Middle East Mecca). However, the war has not been completely useless.

One month after the invasion of Iraq, President Bush announced plans for a U.S. Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) to expand his economic vision from Iraq to the rest of the Middle East. The war intensified the pressure on countries to prove that they were with, rather than against, the Unitede States. As a result, the MEFTA has progressed rapidly, with 14 nations signing agreements with the administration.

Bechtel is a member of the U.S. Middle East Free Trade Coalition, the corporate lobbying group behind MEFTA. Thanks to the MEFTA, a new free trade agreement expected to be signed with the United Arab Emirates this year is already opening new opportunities for U.S. firms, including Bechtel. The company was recently hired by the Abu Dhabi Ports Co. of the UAE to manage the construction of a major new industrial zone at the country's Khalifa Port.

People In The Pumpkin

The one word to describe Josh was ¨gesticulation.¨ (Alek was ¨marriage¨. Ted Haggard was ¨gay.¨ Homi Bhabha was ¨postcolonial.¨ Helena was ¨Jessup.¨) Gloria and Marissa are amazing at round three. I still dominate round 1 and suck at everything else. Firm and Toned is a descriptor ¨apllied to someone who works out a lot.¨ (The one word descriptor was JDate, and Phoebe had an amazing pantomime for this in round 3...)

I'm in new haven on account of Julie being on the east coast for the first time in a year and a half. I bumped into AP and LK - my first organizer, six years ago - today randomly on Dwight street when i walked by their house. They complimented my GSOC IS HERE TO STAY t shirt and i wished them good luck with their organizing and then I remembered what it's like to live somewhere where it sometimes feels like the entire community is standing in solidarity with you in a broad, multifaceted struggle for social justice.

They finally turned the Farmington Canal into a footpath (they had to evict the homeless in order to do it back in 2003.) The new Labyrinth store makes me envious - bought Selections from the Cultural Writings and slobbered over the Marxism, Cultural Studies, and Labor History sections for a while, then freaked out about what a shitty grad student I am - a daily occurence but that doesn't make it any less true. I walked up orange down livingston and thought about how difficult grad school and gsoc have been and The burrito cart is still way way better than chipotle.

Last night I was watching TV and I saw a Honda commercial which used "Huddle Formation." My heart broke - one of my favorite bands of the last three years being used to sell not only cars, but non union-made cars. But then "the bridge," an old school hip hop show on channel 25 came on, did a show entirely about the bronx, and played Afrikaa Bambaata's "Renegades of Funk" and BDP's "Love is going to get you" and I felt somewhat better, although I suppose i should be uncomfortable with the nostalgification of hip hop culture - particularly the complete evacuation of politics...

One Year Later

A year ago today, hundreds of NYU graduate teachers and researchers struck for a second contract in the face of the NYU administration's attempts to obliterate our union. Our strategy was flawed, we had no real organizing culture within the union, and I'll refrain from further criticisms because this probably isn't the space for them, but I have many. It was a crazy, frustrating, moment. Sometimes total collapse seemed not only imminent but inevitable. So , this is not going to be a panegyric. Neither will it be a eulogy for the strike or for our movement either at NYU or across the academy, because both are very much alive and both remain relevant and crucial.

Yet the year which began on November 9 2005, when hundreds picketed in the rain, joined by contingent academics from across the northeast, and the undergrads did a banner drop, and I was getting up at 5:30 every morning, walking to the village from Sunset Park and getting to the picket lines by 8 for the entirety of November and much of December, was sometimes incredibly exciting - this despite the frustrations and difficulties of both the quotidian and the overarching aspects of the fight.

But more importantly, though the strike really ended in late May, the struggle to build a strong academic labor movement at NYU, the struggle to win a second contract, to imagine alternatives to the neoliberal university continues even as i write this. There may very well be future strikes on this campus. I don't know what will happen. I do know that November 9th marks the anniversary of an important moment in the history of this university and of the academic labor movement, and thus merits commemoration here, and that many, many GSOC members are committed to building from the struggles and sacrifices of the last year and continuing to work to transform the university into an institution oriented not around the dictates of enterprise and patent office, but social and thus global justice.

I Can't Stand (in) The Rain

The democrats have control of the House and possibly the Senate (it's tied at the very least, although the Shuler/Tester/Casey democrat is basically a repulican by another name), Rumsfeld is gone (I'll blink when someone shoves him in front of a war crimes tribunal.) Interesting. I don't blog much on electoral politics, and I won't start now, but this seems worth acknowledging.

I was supposed to meet a friend from high school at the corner of 242nd street and Broadway on the edges of Riverdale and Van Cortlandt Park, where a decade ago I used to do things like hang out with my friends after school, drink Jamaican Ginger Beer, and run cross country. (Shut up.)

The block's changed, but not that much - although Character's Deli is now a diner called Mr. D's and there's a Dunkin Donuts where one of those bodegas used to be on Broadway that everyone would play X-Men Vs. Streetfighter at after school -- right where the Bx9 stops on its way to Kingsbridge and on to Fordham Road and East Tremont.

My friend never showed, and I wound up standing in the pouring rain, watching Horace Mann kids ditch school and walk up the steps to the elevated subway platform. I thought about walking up the hill and getting food, but it was miserable out and as musch as there are probably teachers up there I'd like to say hi to, there are also reasons i haven't been back in almost half a decade and if i do go up there I don't really feel like doing it alone, and I have no interest in a nostalgia trip which obscures all the pain and loss of these last few years - L, etc. I don't know if I'm making sense to myself right now, so excuse me if I'm dealing in esoterica.

So I got back on the 1, transfered at 168th (the 1/9 platform at that station is probably my favorite station on the MTA, with it's DC-style arched ceilings and globular gaslights. It feels very steampunk.)

The NYU Law School has a coatroom where someone is paid to sit and take your coat. I found this out when i went in there to pee after getting off the A at West 4th. So this is what NYU spends its resources on ebsides busting unions, buying real estate, and strawberries. A private university in the public service, folks.

I'm hungry.

one more post today

Ipod was on shuffle while i checked email and Operation Ivy's "Hedgecore" came on. Hadn't listened to it in at least seven or eight years. Didn't remember the moment at the end when Jesse Michaels starts howling the lyrics to Journey's "Lights." WTF.

Got Your Number

Jobs With Justice, together with the CWA and several Indian labor groups, have issued a report on the working conditions in outsourced call centers in both India and the US.

In the US:

In terms of working conditions of US workers, it reveals that
• Subcontractors are under intense pressure to maintain low costs and meet certain
efficiency goals.
• Electronic monitoring of employees at work is a common feature
• Call handling time varies between nine minutes in call centres serving large business or
providing IT services to 4.7 minutes for retail and financial services centres.
• The number of customers per employee per day ranges from 56 in IT service centres and
66 in business centres to 83 in outsourced centres and 99 in retail centres.
• Call centre employees work 40 hours per week on an average, with a range of 35 hours
per week in retail and outsourced centres and over 40 hours in large business and IT
service centres.

In India:

• Workers have to meet daily targets and maintain a consistently good performance, as the
salary package is linked to performance. To meet these daily targets, workers have to
work overtime Compulsory night shifts for men and women, and long working hours
make the workers more vulnerable to psychological and health risks related to work.
• Abusive callers and irate customers significantly add to the stress of a call centre worker.
• The atypical working hours and adoption of ‘western names’ and etiquettes throws the
workers into cultural confusion.
• More than 20% of the workers have severe health problems and behavioural disorders.

Among the reccomendations:

3) Customer service workers need a voice on the job. That’s the only way workers will be a
part of the workplace and be able to have a real investment in providing quality customer
service. Union representation can be an asset to companies as well, but far too many US
employers seek to block workers who want a union voice. For the US, this will require
real changes in labour law and employer behaviour to enable workers’ to make a fair
choice about union representation.

Customer service employees’ organizations in the US need to join hands with all working
people in ensuring labour law reform.

4) Customer service workers around the globe must work together and support each
others’ concerns, and not allow multi-national companies to pit us against each other.
CWA works closely with UNI unions and other worker organizations to build support for
the work of customer service and sales workers and to stop companies from pitting
workers against each other in a race to the bottom.

Organizing customer service employees in the Global South, where multinationals
subcontract their functions, is a priority and unions in the Global North must play a pro-
active role in working with organizations that are focused on organizing such workers.
Only through the formation of worker organizations, can genuine collaboration begin to
fight the global force of multinationals and subcontracting.

5) Call centre workers – no matter where they work – must recognize we are fighting
against a common problem: employers who are chasing the lowest possible costs no
matter what the expense to the customer service worker.

Development of international educational materials, tailored to local conditions, and
communication between customer service workers across the globe are essential for
debunking the myths that divide workers and help the multinationals.

To read the whole thing, click the link above.

The Joys of Democracy

Today's WSN carries a fascinating story on the Graduate Student Council(our student government)'s attempt to force an up or down vote on the company union.

During the senate meeting, alternate Graduate School of Arts and Science senator Roy Perez said the GSC announced unanimous opposition from its constituents to the proposal for a House of Delegates, which aims to function as the elected body of NYU’s Assembly of Graduate Students & Fellows. They say an “up or down vote” will determine whether such a body would be “an adequate, appropriate representative body.”

Among the ironies are Cate Stimpson accusing the GSC of being unnacountable:

Catherine Stimpson, dean of NYU’s Graduate School of Arts and Science, questioned whether the letter represented the views of the entire GSC.

“It is my understanding that a statement of unanimous opposition to the structure committee’s proposal came from the officers and not from the Council as a whole,” Stimpson said. “This is an important distinction. ... The statement that I saw was issued before there had been any physical or virtual meeting of the Graduate Student Council as a whole for this academic year.”

Stimpson said the House of Delegates could help graduate students.

“Graduate students from across the university have worked tirelessly to propose a pioneering structure for graduate assistants and fellows,” Stimpson said. “I look forward to working with the members of the House of Delegates and to the successful building of graduate student governance.”

So our elected representatives are somehow less accountable than schills the administration handpicked to create a governance structure we have no real voice in or power through. A curious argument from someone whose grievance procedures put in place after the expiration of the contract have only now shifted complaints filed in March to the "formal" stage. Meanwhile, there are folks in the English department who still haven recieved all their paychecks this year. What's particularly strange is that Dean Stimpson transferred a tiny fragment of the authority that once resided in the collective bargaining relationship to a glorified prom committee, and then, when the parent committee of the glorified prom committee starts actually attempting to represent the interests of the folks who elected them, the Dean accuses them of overstepping their authority. It's surreal.

“While they are issuing press releases, I can’t — even as an elected member of a student council and of this year’s Graduate Affairs Committee — find any accountability in this structure,” Carrington said. “A hug from the president and a fictive form of graduate-student voice would be equally magical solutions to my very real problems.”

Linking to SEIU's website for the janitors' strike in Houston, Tejas. Please call Chevron and tell them to "take responsibility for poverty conditions in Houston." The strike has been going on for about two weeks and is against national cleaning subcontractors employed by Chevron, Hines, and other Houton-based TNCs.

Picked up Oliver Wang's Soul Sides, Volume 1 compilation the other day, and whatever reservations one might have about Wang's blog, (which I've occasionally found to be really great,) his weird feud with Jean Grae, etc., the cd is excellent - mostly great stuff I had never heard before except as sampled by others - Joe Bataan's "Ordinary Guy," Donny Hathaway's cover of Lennon's "Jealous Guy," "Piece of My Heart" as covered by Aretha's sister Erma, Linda Lyndell's "What A Man," - which inspired Salt n Pepa and En Vogue's "Whatta Man," and William Bell's "I forgot to be your lover," -- which Dilated Peoples sampled on "Worst Comes to Worst," before they got really, really boring. Plus, Weldon Irvine. The addition of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings' "All Over Again" as the last track is somewhat strange given the years and contexts which separate the 60's and 70's gems Wang selects and this great but self-consciously retro-revivalist track from the 2005 record Naturally. But it's nevertheless worth checking out.


I'm looking forward to hearing the Lady Sov record. Also, I'm tired. Also, commercial on TV about cleaning substance a la draino but called "CLR." Apparently it's "everywhere." Transnational like its namesake?

pathetic peoplehood and computer lab ettiquette

It's been a busy week. Presentation tuesday, and i just finished a paper about five hours ago. Tuesday afternoon, around 1 PM, I was sitting in the ITS computer lab in the school of ed. building finishing up my presentation on CLR James for my postcolonial Marxism class. Because of the ADD, i get all sensitive to noise when i'm trying to write stuff i have to ocncentrate real hard on (not like blog entries,) and sometimes people in that lab are very loud, in which case sometimes i do my little mutter-scowl barely passive-aggressive schtick for a few seconds until I catch myself, reqalize I'm only an old man in Julie Math (fast approaching the big 9-0) and then get back to work. Tuesday was different.

An undergrad - a woman with long curly hair in hipster/olsen twin garb sat down immediately next to me and started a very loud and clearly unimportant conversation. Nothign worng with unimportant loud cell phone conversations. I have many of them myself. Just not in computer labs where phones are banned. Perhaps I should have been more diplomatic than I was, but given her response, in retrospect, I really doubt it would have helped. In a slightly frustrated tone, I said, "You know, you really can't talk on the phone in here." This was an accurate claim. I've seen ITS employees say the same thing to offenders numerous times. The woman, not missing a beat or averting her eyes from her screen, said loudly and ina disgusted tone to whover was on the other end of her telephone conversation, "Ok, a pathetic person just told me to get off the phone. He thinks he runs the place."

I kinda did a Stephanie Tanner ("how rude") at this point, and was mildly shocked by the rudeness and self-centered nature of her response. I trieds to explain that this was the lab policy as i had seen it enforced and that I was not trying to be rude, but she did a non-verbal "talk to the hand" motion and hung up the phone.

Thankfully, not all NYU undergraduates are this spoiled and obnoxious - many of them are really great but it's the hipster ennui, the dissafected, post-gentriification sense of yuppie entitlement to urban space - which is certainly not unique to NYU students (although at Yale, there's much more of a technocrats of the future thing going on)- which i find so disconcerting.

Wish fulfilment

“The House of Delegates is a unique and potentially revolutionary structure
among institutions of higher education,” the statement said.

Actually, no, it isn't. It's a company union. There's nothing "revolutionary" about that.