wednesday night strike update

Because I finally have a little bit of time....

It's been an intense three days. We were all a little unsure what Monday would look like, following the Sexton email and then Sunday night's brazen attempt to trick us into returning to work by trotting out a "company union" proposal delivered by a dean at the public policy school and some medical student. But when i got to the line at 8 in the morning, there were fifty people out already, shouting loudly and adapting Blondie songs:

One way, or another, we'll get a contract
We're gonna bargain bargain bargain bargain
One day, maybe next week, we're gonna find you
and break you break you break you.

and the beach boys

Wouldn't it be nice to have a contract
then we wouldn't have to strike so long
Wouldn't it be nice to have some health care
Then we could all just get along
John Sexton should come down and settle
that would really prove his mettle
wouldn't it be nice.

Folks started defiantly making picket signs with their names on them, daring the administration "blacklist me." And indeed, we've seen some suspicious figures snapping digital photographs of us only to slink away when noticed. If they actually follow through on the threats they have made, there's going to be hell to pay.

Yesterday American Studies/Civ folks from Yale and Brown (!) came down to picket with us, three of the major east coast American Studies programs, walking the picket line and fighting for the future of academic work. Also, Andy bought a drum kit, which is totally legal since the noise isn't amplified. Sexton, fear the polyrhythm. In me news, the coolest thing that happened yesterday was the unnanounced and unexpected appearance of Cathy, whom I had not seen since the graduation I didn't attend, on the picket line at around noonish. It totally made my week.

Today, the new deadline, was even more intense. We had a great turnout. it was fucking freezing. International students delivered a powerful letter to the administration condemning their strikebreaking tactics.

December 7, 2005
John Sexton
President
New York University

This is in reply to your letter of November 28, 2005, stipulating the
deadline of December 5, 2005 for striking Graduate Assistants to return to work
or face the consequences of loss of stipend and ineligibility to teach for the
following two consecutive semesters.

The undersigned are international graduate students: some have withheld
labor since November 9, some have continued to work, some others do not have
teaching or research obligations this semester. Among the undersigned, those who
have continued working have been influenced in their decision by direct or
indirect intimidation. Out of those who are striking, some will return to work
and others will not. Those returning to work will do so in fear of the legal and
financial consequences that the implementation of your threats may carry and not
at all out of agreement with your arguments. Those who continue to strike will
do so in spite of those possible consequences, and in full awareness of the
particular risks entailed. But we are all equally outraged and will not be
silenced.

We, as international students, feel especially vulnerable to your
antagonizing, intimidating and outrageous threats. Many of us have had to deal
with increasingly restrictive U.S. immigration policies, enhanced surveillance
and record-keeping and with hostility when being questioned by immigration
officers. Some of us have suffered the threat of deportation. Thus, we are
concerned with maintaining our legal status in this country.

NYU has stated that our legal status is not in danger, yet the
administration is fully cognizant of the fact that our student visas are
contingent on our continued status as full-time students and our ability to
cover our living expenses, which in turn depends on our stipends and salaries.
Our status prevents us to a great extent from working outside campus, as well as
from applying for external grants and loans. If loans in US dollars were granted
to us by NYU, as the administration has proposed, it would be extremely
difficult to repay them when we return to our home countries.

We were invited to this institution to study and work and we came eagerly,
expecting to find an environment of respect and mutual consideration conducive
to academic advancement. But the administration's recent threats to our
well-being have significantly harmed our confidence in NYU. Such a loss of
confidence can be reversed by the administration. Under the current conditions
we cannot encourage prospective students from our respective countries from
coming to NYU. By refraining from doing so, we are following the lead of faculty
from NYU and other prestigious institutions. A good part of NYU's strength comes
from its international students. Hence, the administration's present position
weakens the institution as a whole.

We all share a commitment to academic integrity and the rights of workers,
as well as a deep belief in the possibility to resolve conflicts through
amicable negotiations. We therefore support the Graduate Student Organizing
Committee (GSOC) and will continue in various ways to argue and fight for a
reasonable contract for our labor.

NYU was the first and only private university in the United States to
recognize a union of Graduate Assistants. That was unprecedented, and laudable.
NYU now threatens Graduate Assistants with actions detrimental to their finances
and careers. This is also unprecedented, and deplorable. We therefore strongly
condemn these threats as signaling a sharp decline in NYU's intellectual and
ethical position in the academic and labor community.

We believe that the administration can easily rectify its unethical
position and palliate the antagonism it has created by withdrawing the threats
and dropping the ultimatum. It is NYU's ethical responsibility to recognize the
rights of workers and to engage in the constructive dialogue that has made this
university an outstanding academic institution.

Sincerely,
Waiel Abdelwahed, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
Mariana Amato, Spanish and Portuguese
Magali Armillas-Tiseyra, Comparative Literature
Anurima Banerji, Performance Studies
Clarissa Behar, French
Diego Benegas, Performance Studies
Claudio Benzecry, Sociology
Leslie-Ann Bolden, Sociology
Paola Bonifazio, Italian
Alexandra Borer, Institute of French Studies
Michiel Bot, Comparative Literature
Nathalie Bouzaglo, Spanish and Portuguese
Lina Britto, History
Elda L. Cantú-Castillo, Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Ipek A. Celik, Comparative Literature
Elizabeth Chavez, Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Wei-chi Chen, History
Teresa Colombo, Biology
Valeria Coronel, History
Hector Martin Crocce, Physics
M. Zeynep Dadak, Cinema Studies
Santiago Deymonnaz, Spanish and Portuguese
Munir Fakher Eldin, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
Rong Fan, Physics
Miao Feng, History
Carolin Hagelskamp, Community Psychology
Ellen Xiang He, Comparative Literature
Matthias Heymann, Courant Institute
Katharina Ivanyi, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
Pablo Jercog, Physics
Jelena Karanovic, Anthropology
Yilmaz Kocer, Economics
David Koffman, Hebrew and Judaic Studies, History
Monika Krause, Sociology
Azra Krek, Physics
Frederic Laliberte, Courant Institute
Sanghyuk Lee, Physics
Pia Leighton, Spanish and Portuguese
Christophe Litwin, French
Mariano Lopez-Seoane, Spanish and Portuguese
Sudhir Mahadevan, Cinema Studies
Aldo Marchesi, History
Morad Masjedi, Physics
Silvana Melitsko, Economics
Lina Meruane, Spanish and Portuguese
Al Saeed Momin, Courant Institute
Alessandra Montalbano, Italian
Gulseren Mutlu, Economics
Osamu Nakano, History
Jeppe B. Nielsen, French
Rachel O'Connell, English
Alan Page, English
Yaakov Perry, Comparative Literature
Marco Polin, Physics
Stéphanie Ponsavady, French
Sebastian Pueblas, Physics
Stephen Russell, Hebrew and Judaic Studies
Marco Scalvini, Italian
Jenny Shaw, History
Mariano Siskind, Comparative Literature
Federico Sor, History
Yi Sun, Comparative Literature
Gail Super, Law and Society
Smita Tripathi, Spanish and Portuguese
Aristotelis Tsirigos, Courant Institute
Basak Tug, History, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
Z. Umut Turem, Law and Society
Javier Uriarte, Spanish and Portuguese
Alejandra Uslenghi, Comparative Literature
Yeliz Utku, Chemistry
Agnes Veto. Hebrew and Judaic Studies
Emily Wilbourne, Music

The International human Rights day rally in the park was good. The airport hotel folks who have been out on strike for over a year now were inspiring. Sarah from history (everyone in GSOC is named either Matt or Sara(h). Discuss) was terriffic, linking the strike to accesibility of higher education, the right to organize, and the right to a voice on the job.

this is pretty awesome

We are seeing retrenchment and reaction on the part of university administrators and some pointless and frustrating gestures by faculty who need to recognize that graduate assistants on this campus have demonstrated repeatedly that we will only accept a new contract with our union as a satisfactory resolution to this dispute. You want to end the strike? So do we. Support the union.

More later. I need to sleep now.

Oh. One more thing. Today's the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Yale Grade Strike. The academy is still reeling from the viciousness and the brutality with which Levin and anti-union faculty crushed that action. We can not let a revanchist, reactionary climate of repression and fear triumph here. We can't let what Yale administrators and "liberal" faculty did to graduate employees happen at any university ever again. We need to stay strong now to ensure that academic workers have the right in the future to organize ourselves, that an NYU education is more than "an education in cynicism," as Gordon Lafer referred to Yale schooling, and because right now the entire labor movement is counting on us.

Maggie Clinton from the history department lays it on the line (somewhat literally) in the New York Daily News:

NYU's motto is perstare et praestare, "to persevere and to excel." NYU
cannot excel without our work: Exams and papers are ungraded, classes canceled,
manuscripts unedited, computer programs unwritten. Nor can NYU excel with the
embarrassing reputation as a university that tried to break the union of its own
teachers and researchers. That is why we will persevere in our strike, and why
the NYU administration will be forced to sit down with us at the bargaining
table.

Meanwhile, Michael Denning and Hazel Carby, two of the three people who wrote my letters of recomendation to graduate school, have informed President Sexton that they will not reccommend any more students to NYU, or vice versa, should he carry through with his threats.

For many of us, the 2002 contract between NYU and the GSOC/UAW was a sign
of NYU's leadership, grudging perhaps, in recognizing the rights of graduate
teachers in private universities. For those of us teaching at private
universities, it seemed a model for our own institutions. Thus it was with
dismay that we saw you decide in August "to move ahead without the union," as
you put it in your letter.

However, it is even more dismaying to see you embark on a strategy of
strike-breaking and blacklisting in your letter last week. Employers may well
withhold wages during a strike, but your threat to cancel stipends in semesters
after the strike and to blacklist strikers from employment as assistants in the
future invokes illegal and immoral practices that effectively abrogate the right
to strike, practices that have long been rejected from labor relations. Your
home-made version of a "yellow-dog contract" --requiring graduate teachers to
sign away their right to strike in the future without a union contract -- is
unconscionable.

A free academy depends on a delicate balance of rights and
responsibilities, recognitions and reputations. We are afraid that your actions
are not only tarnishing NYU's standing as a leading research university, but
will lead to professional sanctions against NYU's violations of academic
freedom. We will not be able to recommend our students to NYU if you follow
through. We urge you to resume negotiations with the union, to cease the
intimidation of the graduate teachers, and to restore NYU's position as a leader
in collectively bargaining with its teachers.

won't back down.

Ok, that last entry bordered on the illiterate. Sorry for that. The strike has severley hampered my ability to construct complete sentences. Shoulld bode well for my presentation Tuesday.

we are the union

Word has it that NYU has ditched our old friends at Proskauer Rose in favor of Jackson Lewis, who proudlly offer "preventative strategies" for the workplace. They boast of having "assisted many employers in winning NLRB elections or in avoiding union elections altogether."

"The preservation of management rights is our goal, whether prior to a union
offensive, during a union-organizing campaign or in collective bargaining
negotiations."

What, we wonder, brought on this change? Have the folks at Proskauer lost their touch? Is NYU reconsidering its strike strategy?

Judith Butler, Fredric Jameson, Joan Scott, Talal Asad, Gayatri Spivak, Paul Gilroy, and Donna Haraway have written a letter to John Sexton, one of the hundreds pouring in from across the academy and labor movement.

December 2, 2005
John Sexton
President, New York University
We, the undersigned
faculty from several universities in the United States and abroad, write to
express our objections to the New York University administration's efforts to
defeat the graduate student union and retaliate against those who have initiated
and sustained the current strike. The union in question was clearly instated on
the basis of a fair election which then obligated New York University to
negotiate with the appointed representatives in a fair and open manner. Although
the NLRB in 2005 released the university from its obligations to recognize the
union, it did not authorize retaliatory action on the part of the
university.The recent actions of your office, now widely publicized, defy
all protocols of civility and fairness and herald a bellicose approach to the
union and its demands for fair wages, decent health care, and provisional job
security.
As we all know, there may be differences of
opinion on how best to formulate policies that would address these various
issues, but undermining the union itself is nothing more than Reagan-esque
union-busting and so conveys and enacts hostility to student labor that can only
heighten conflict and circulate a ruinous image for New York University as an
unfair and indecent place of employment. The infiltration of student and faculty
email constitutes an unauthorized invasion of privacy. And the most recent
threat to rescind funding for students engaged in the strike constitutes an
abhorrent form of coercion.
We urge you to enter into negotiations with
the union and to find civil, legal, and productive ways of resolving whatever
issues of employment exist between these two parties.

Yesterday, during the fantatsic labor rally in which we shut down West 4th street for an entire block as workers from all corners of the labor movement came to support our struggle, one of the GESO folks handed me a another letter to Sexton written by the Yale American Studies folks and signed by a number of folks who've played formative roles in shaping my intellectual trajectories and organizing commitments. It read:

Dear President Sexton,

We, the undersigned graduate students and faculty in Yale University's
Program in American Studies, are deeply troubled by your response to GSOC's
ongoing strike. By making no-strike commitments prerequisites to holding
graduate teaching positions at NYU, you have compromised the principles of
workplace democracy and academic freedom that we hold vital to a healthy
university.

Sincerely

(signed by 37 members of the department.)

This Monday, we're staying out in the face of administrative attempts to break our strike and crush our union. Folks are scared, and my own cohort is deeply divided. Or, uh, Divided from me, at least, which is largely my fault, i think. But in the last few days I've noticed several things. First, we are starting to become a real union. People are forging strong commitments to each other across departments and disciplines. Computer Scientists, physicists, and queer theorists are forging deep solidarities and making commitments to each other to see eachother through this. The second and related development is this incredible stregnth which people are showing to each other. At a GSOC party in Greenpoint last night (the third of the night -- a union that drinks together strikes together, it seems) someone who's overcome a deeply hostile department and a uniquely and frighteningly contingent and transient employment status to become a powerful organizer committed to staying out until we win told me "We're still on strike. Despite all the bastards, we're still on strike."

post 1000

Seems like only yesterday I shut down my last blog and swore off blogging and then started this one like 18 hours later, but actually it was well over a year and a half ago... These days I spokesmodel t-shirts.








This is the best WSN strike picture ever taken. John Sexton the puppet of Richard Levin and Lee Bollinger and George W. Bush, supposedly "in Washington D.C.," walking right past John Sexton the GUS/GSOC puppet. Alanis Morisette, this is what irony looks like. (fyi.)

I'm exhausted, and I don't really have a probing, meditative post in me right now, though one certainly begs to be written about the last few days' intensity and everything that's happened, good, bad, mostly good.

We are going to win this strike. We are going to do it because we are strong and committed and because we can. We are going to win this strike because we have to, because too much is at stake to lose, let alone give up.

On February 28 2003, a Friday, the Friday before the March strike, the Reverend W. David Lee told the folks assembled at the First & Summerfield Methodist church a story. He told us about a guy in an art museum who saw a painting of a man playing chess with the devil. The painting was titled "checkmate." The man stared at the painting intently, studying the chess pieces deployed on the checkerboard. His tour group left him behind, i seem to recall, but were loudly reminded of his presence when he began to loudly exclaim "It's a LIE! The Devil has another move!" (Please correct me if i have this all wrong, Josh, Julie, Alek, Katie, or anyone else who was there.) At this point, Reverend Lee brought the message home: "Local 34 has another move! Local 35 has another move! 1199 has another move! GESO HAS ANOTHER MOVE!"

We struck for a week in the freezing cold, 500 undergrads walked out of classes in the middle of a blizzard to watch the snow accumulate atop Cornel West's head and create an new vision of the university immanent in the relationships between strikers, community members, and students. You know the rest.

Last week, President Sexton gave us an ultimatum. He tried to scare us into submission using the most base and violent kinds of fearmongering and intimidation. Today we stood up and said "We're not gonna take it." And "we won't back down." We overwhelmingly resolved to stay out. Tomorrow, we're joining working people from across the country to demand justice from our neoliberal, panoptical employer. Be there.

On monday, We'll be walking the picket line at 8 am.

John Sexton has made his move. He's tried as hard as he can (within the constraints of fantastic faculty and undergrad support) to crush us.

He's failed.

GSOC has another move.

My grandmother could organize your grandmother. Unless your grandmother is dorothy healey. In that case, vice versa.

Nov. 30,2005
Dear Sir:
As a former faculty member and as a grandmother of a graduate assistant, I
have to express to you my disappointment and chagrin over the university's
refusal to negotiate with the Graduate Teaching Assistants.
It seems to me that the great institution of NYU can arrive at
an equitable solution to the problems of serving both your student population
and the young scholars who are contributing their energy and intelligence to
help provide the students with the best possible education, an education that
rewards both the university and the students with honors and distinction.

Sincerely, Judith S--------z (Associate
Professor SENAP--retired 1985)

My grandmother just turned 89 at the end of October. When i spoke to her on the phone this morning, she was talking about calling her former colleagues and asking them to write letters as well or take other actions. My grandmother is awesome.

More to come, but Yesterday was amazing and tomorrow is going to be amazing. Back to the picket line.