ask me about the strike, part 3

1 week down.

(The following should be sung to the tune of Guns n' Roses' "Don't Cry" (Original version).

We're chanting loudly, you pretend there's something in your
ear
here we stand before you, just as you feared
you're being called to account yeah, that much is clear
now,
we won't lose this fight

we won't lose this fight
we're on stri-i-ike tonight
there's a picket around you, Stimpy.
we're on strike tonight.

The strike continues into its second week. I'm exhausted (and frustrated about the horrible plumbing in my apartment, which is probably way more than you wanted to know) but i also feel like, while we, and especially I, have a lot of work to do, that there have been a lot of things to celebrate about the strike in the last week - fantastic media coverage, great support from undergrads and faculty and from eachers and researchers and other workers at other universities, and some very clear indications of the kind of chaos which is taking place amongst administrators at the highest level who are in a mad dash to attempt to find some cover from the Blackboard fallout. I've heard some scary things about administrative plans today which I hope are not true. I've also seen vibrant and powerful picket lines encircling the Silver center and rocking the library. Nelson Lichtenstein walked our picket line. So did John Wilhelm. So, for that matter, did Emilio Hernandez, Shirley Lawrence, and Pat Carta, to name a few. The GSOC strikers greeted the FHUE folks when they marched in from their Dattco bus with "2,4,6,8, who do we appreciate, GESO," which I didn't engage in, because they all know that i appreciate them at this point, plus, Julie would also have ridiculed me for the rest of my life. When everyody left people started chanting "thank you Yale." I guess Federation of Hospital and University Employees doesn't really make for a good picket line chant. I'm hesitant, however to thank Yale as an institution for much other than, as Bob Proto once said, "doing our organizing for us." I did, however complete a verse of "Oh GESO," to the tune of John Lennon's "Oh Yoko," which i would like to share with you now. I should add as a prefatory note that while i am attempting to comply with Alek's unspoken edict that i not mangle good songs, and am instead currently confining myself to the Cheap Trick/GNR/Bon Jovi/Journey quartet for my most recent compositions, I believe that Lennon's work isn't really manglable, that no matter how badly i rip it off it possesses enough signifying and symbolic power at this point that anything i do will be inconsequential. Thus,

In the middle of a strike
In the middle of a strike for which Yale's to blame
(alternativley, "in the middle of a strike, you call my name.)
oh GESO
oh GESO
let's trample Levin's lawn.

Last line lame, i know. Let me know if you have better ones. Like i hinted in my op-ed, the folks in GESO and they work they have done has been formative in how i think about the academic work that i do, not to mention the organizing. I get a very powerful, visceral sense of how what I'm doing here is connected to what i've been doing for most of the last five years of my life when they show up in the UNITE-HERE! shirts and swell our picket lines. Seeing and talking with folks from the federation on what's thus far been a weekly basis helps me to articulate for myself the stakes and dynamics of this struggle at NYU in ways i find deeply rewarding and important. They're very, very good at this. (Which isn't to say that there aren't folks here who aren't or make a value judgement, which would be ridiculous and unproductive. There are things we can help each other out with -- GESO have 15 years of organizing and research experience they're sharing with us. Maybe we have some resources we can share with them...) Having folks from other schools around helps us see the breadth and depth of this movement and reminds us how important it is that we win here.

A year and a half ago, Wendi told me in no uncertain terms that i had to go to grad school somewhere where i'd have to organize. Check. Three months ago, Jeffrey told me I had to organize. Check. Well, i'm working on it, anyway. The different organizing culture's a little disorienting, and when all's said and done, I'm not half the organizer that Julie is, or Lauren is, or Thomas is, or a one hundredth of the organizer Abbey is. I'm just kind of dogged and very angry, and i don't always feel like i'm being particularly useful here in any role other than that of cheerleader, which i am ok with. Really though, what i guess i need to do is step up.

Lots of folks told me today that they've been reading this blog. This is awesome. (Indeed, Jeffrey's proclamation that I have to organize has become one of frequent updates to this website.) Welcome to folks from NYU, Yale, and elsewhere. post a comment sometime.

The GSOC folks love GESO too. Especially Maris. Everybody loves Maris.

And I'll end with a cliche, and promise more later, which i tend to do rather frequently.

Oh. While i'm blogging about things and people in a city i haven't lived in since June 1, 2004, somebody told me there were 35 undergrads at the board of aldermen hearing last night. Or whenever it was. Not too shabby.

"UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICE=/WEAPON OF MATH DESTRUCTION"
-sign held by Math/Computer Science folks today. Eventually de- got changes to in- because each element of the sentence was on opposite sides of a picket sign. Alright, i'nm losing the ability to think coherently. Good night.

Dean Catherine "Stimpy" Stimpson asked to shake my hand while Liz and I were leafletting at the south entrance to the Silver building today. I don't like shaking hands with administrators unless i feel like it will push them to do something useful, and i was loathe to shake Stimpson's hand because, well, threatening and insulting emails don't exactly inspire congenial responss on my part. She expressed dismay and then walked away. I guess she didn't like being "called to account" very much.

sectarian communist blues

(thanks Thomas.)

The ISO are really pissing me off. They've been trying to hijack some meetings in ways which are not only infuriatingly obvious, obstructive, and counterproductive, but may actually be hurting our organizing with specific individuals in departments in which we are not as strong as we need to be. The shit they keep bringin up over and over again isn't even important stuff. it's not going to win this strike. It may not even help us win this strike. Today one ISO guy told me that the undergrad solidarity group (and he isn't even an undergrad) was "more militant" than us because they wanted to hand out a stupid, badly written leaflet telling prospectve students not to come here and all we grad students are doing is, uh, putting ourselves on the line, organzining like hell, and going on strike. Oh, wait. Thankfully, whatever drama there's been, we're still winning, because people are working their asses off to make that happen. But why can't they just do what the Yale ISO folks did - call us the "old guard" (damn you, "Alex Felstiner") and then disappear for months at a time? Seriously.

The undergrads - the actual undergrads, have been fantastic. And this is coming out of a place of frustration and exhaustion. I'll take it dwon if someone tells me to.

Felstiner, as i proved today after class in which i stormed out on my cohort after someone made a crack about the union which pissed me off, i am the biggest spaz ever. I make Rick Levin look well adjusted. This was almost as bad as the time i spazzed out on Erin when she was facilitating that UOC meeting and was talking about subcommittees and i like got up and left the rrom and people had to physically restrain me to keep me from leaving. I suck so much. My favorite hotel chants: 'Don't check in, check out,' and 'Arriba, abajo, el congress esta carajo." Or however you spell that. It's probably got real problematic gender politics.

A blow by blow of the latest sexton letter and more on the strike to come later, when i am less exhausted. The AP is reporting that Vine Deloria has died. This is a loss.

i got no nothing in mind.

Thanks for the link to NYUinc. Check 'em out if you haven't already.

Highlights of the day:
1. Actually finishing a freaking book. (Omi and Winant's Racial Formations, which is in places rather unstrategically essentialist and assumes all sorts of very problematic things about unitary racial subjects and what "race" is and how racialized groups ought to organize. The "racial formations" chapter itself is useful. The rest of the book is full of all sorts of very problematic statements. I'm particularly apalled at their response to "internal colonialism" perspectives, in which they argue simplistically and without any explanation or exegesis that colonial projects did not have any substantial effect on domestic racial projects. (Barbarian Virtues? Hello?)
2.Finding a copy of the out of print Blackwell CLR James Reader at the used book table in front of Bobst. Who wants to touch me?

whoa

Specter of Marx posted this Gary He WSN pic of the Bobst line from wednesday on the Soc. "Nerds for GSOC" blog because sociology prof Jeff Goodwin is in it. (He's the guy who looks like Holtz from season 3 of Angel.) But check out who's behind him...

Not sure whose hand that is on my arm. Also worth noting is the dude at the bottom next to the cop with the "I heart my unionized TA sign." He's a undergrad who had this pin which combined a star of david with an anarchy symbol. He said he got it at orthodoxanarchist.com.

I picked up the new Soul Jazz Studio One - Women comp at Kim's yesterday. It's got some amazing stuff i've never heard before - like Della Humphrey's sublime "Dreamland" and Jennifer Lara's "Consider Me."

Ben-no Schmidt! Ben-no Schmidt!

Excerpt from the faculty letter to Sexton regarding Blackboardgate and electronic surveillance, signed by 204 members of the NYU faculty.

We consider this seizing of access to the communication
between professors and their registered students to be an intensely unethical
act, one that is in the deepest violation of academic freedom. At our meeting
with you on Tuesday, you tried to assure us that your primary identity at the
university was as a proud member of the faculty, but it is hard for us to
believe that anyone committed to faculty rights and governance, and academic
freedom (especially in the arena of classroom pedagogy) would countenance
practices of this sort. These are acts of invasive intimidation. You suggested
at our the same meeting that your opposition to the unionization of graduate
students at NYU was a measure of your principled devotion to the sanctity of the
academic process, and yet the university's effort to resist that unionization
have now evidently compromised the most basic principles defending that process.
You also suggested that the various parties in this struggle no doubt were not
acting from mendacity, but for outsiders to secretly listen in on the
communications of a class is mendacious in the extreme.

The principle of safe space – in terms of a classroom
ethic of mutual respect, in terms of specific anti-harassment rules, and in
terms of instructors’ duty to seek consent before sharing any privileged
communications or materials – is a principle that we all work painstakingly to
establish in our classrooms. Indeed, it is fundamental to establishing the basis
for a functioning class.

Opening of Blackboard lists to administrative surveillance compromises
principles of free conversation and exchange perennially enjoyed not only by
faculty, but undergraduate students as well.

Nothing so confirms that academic workers at this university need
protection and representation of their own choosing (such as the protection
afforded to graduate students by a union) as this single egregious act, which
goes against the foundational principles of higher education as well as those of
a democratic and open society.

We spoke to you in our Tuesday meeting of the deep wounds that the
administration's refusal to negotiate is causing the university. Now we must add
the outrage we feel at this terrible and shameful act of misconduct. Faculty
trust in the administration’s good faith has been irreparably damaged, and we
have little confidence in the university administration’s ability to lead us out
of this crisis. We urge a rapid effort to resolve this dispute with the graduate
students before matters pass the point of no return in the university as a
whole.