"If anybody were bugging my room, i'd want it to be Abbey Hudson, but still..."
-Me, to Julie

good day spent enjoying the sunshine, catching up with friends, getting flustered at the ISO. I think that during the strike we should rename ourselves The g.s. O.C. and create picket-line teen dramas full of witty banter and trendy indie rock exploring the weighty interpersonal drama associated with graduate student unionization struggles.

New York's Alright If You Like Picket Signs

This entry isn't actually union related. At least, not entirely. I apologize for the misdirection.

I've run into like twelve people i know or once knew today, all in the east village, and all randomly. One person from my department here, one person from high school, and a bunch from college - seems like there's a rather large population of Yale kids living the MTV Downtown life in the corporate/corcoran simulacrum of la vi(e)llage boheme.

Alright, that was a bit mean. Forgive me - i don't mean to slight these folks. Some of them are very nice. I'm just feeling generally pessimistic about the future of the city as a social space.

New York (TM), a designation by which i am tempted to refer to the branded experience of living in prime gentrified real estate with an upwardly mobile career (this is dubious in my case) and shopping in the mallified city, however many people i run into on any given day, remains a deeply atomizing experience. Trying to form lasting and meaningful relationships with people sometimes feels like trying to tread water in a whirlpool. I want to be clear that the argument i am trying to make here is not a primitivist or otherwise reactionary one, full of romanticized yearning for the good old days of industrial violence and slavery and imperialism and genocide (hey, wait. All of those things are still happening...) I think what i'm ultimately frustrated by is the lack of people to hang out with on saturday night. But really, I shouldn't be hanging out with anyone, because i have 500 pages to read and an organizing committee (GSOC's version of what GESO calls CC, minus Tandoor but with pizza) meeting tomorrow.

Back to work.

Steve Perry!

Steve Perry, who co-wrote the song the White Sox took as their
theme, ''Don't Stop Believin,'' was also on hand and led the team in a rendition
of the song.

''They've always believed,'' Perry said.

rhetorical question

I saw x on the street yesterday. I wonder if Gawker Stalker accepts sightings of emeritus labor historians.

All roland betts are off

As strike voting continues, so do administrative harassment and threats of retaliation against strikers which would have been illegal back when we still had a National Labor Relations Board which, if totally useless, wasn't expressly in the business of excludng entire categorizations of workers from legal protection to organize unions and dramatically curtailing those protections. I don't talk about these kinds of things on the internet until they're public, so I won't go into the gory details, but it seems like specific departments are being targeted before a strike has even called or voting has even ended. I don't mean to be alarmist -- these threats are most likely groundless and i don't think anyone in either of these two departments is actually going to be punished for striking, and i know that the union will not let anything happen to anybody without doing everything in our power to fight for them. That whole "Injury to one is an injury to all" thingy.

Spent all day yesterday organizing in one of the affected departments, which was actually pretty good. We talked to a lot of people and had some good conversations. Again, I can't really say more here. Amazing department meeting today. Then i got a call from a bunch of mendicant uocistas, met Thomas, Marissa, "N-dubba-wubba," and Josh and a bunch of first and second year people i didn't know. Wound up in Roland Betts' office at Chelsea Piers at 3:00 in the afternoon watching folks drop off 500 financial aid letters. Good times!

Then ran back to the union office and walked around the village with Jana for an hour and a half or so, trying to find locations willing to host classes off campus. Hopefully some or all of these locations will pan out.

well, what do you know

Davis-Bacon Reinstated.

I don't miss the YDN

Thanks, WSN.

Five bucks says this guy has no idea where Bishop Street is.