Manhattan bridge 11 am

Hello finance capital/ol

dear nyu wellness exchange

:Zach's Blog:
I'm fine. thank you for asking.

a little demoralized, a lot stressed, but, you know, 83 days.

Striking is not a passing mood, a sign of weakness or something you can convince yourself not to feel. It is a labor struggle that can affect you physically and emotionally and economically. It can be ended with collective bargaining. The most important step toward ending the strike — and usually the easiest — is sitting down at the bargaining table.

From the email:

Depression is not a passing mood, a sign of weakness or something you can
convince yourself not to feel. It is a health disorder that can affect you
physically and emotionally. It can be treated with counseling, medication, or a
combination of both. The most important step toward treating depression — and
sometimes the most difficult — is asking for help.

I'm not really sure what i'm going for here, but i clearly went for it.

day 82

Trent Lott's house can be wiped off the map by freak hurricanes and still the white huse is trying to muzzle NASA scientists from discussing the implications of recent work on climate change. Yesterday it was in the high fifties here in New York, which, in the middle of January, is kind of scary, particularly since we've only really had just afew truly cold days all month and even most of these haven't dipped too far below freezing. I'll stop talking about the weather cause you don't need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows.

For folks who haven't seen it yet, the letter written by the first three of the (now six) recipients of the lockout letters to Frank Hoppensteadt, Ph.D. Apologies for the absence of blockquotes - I'm writing this from a safari-running mac which doesnt seem to support Blogger's "WYSIWYG" tab, and i don't know the html for blockquoting.


January 26, 2006

Frank Hoppensteadt, Ph.D.
Senior Vice Provost for Planning
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, Room 1232
New York University
New York, NY 10003

Dear Mr. Hoppensteadt:

Each of us has received a letter from your office dated January 23, 2006 stating that our stipends will be withdrawn for two semesters. Your letter requests that we inform you of " incorrect information or any particular considerations of which we should be aware" regarding this action.

We are not meeting our classes at the appointed times because, as members of GSOC/UAW Local 2110, we are on strike over the university's refusal to bargain in good faith with our union for a second contract.

The punitive measures you have taken can only be seen as retribution for our exercising our right to strike as graduate employees. You have not only denied our basic right to collective bargaining, you have now compounded the injustice by withdrawing our pay prospectively for two semesters, an action which would clearly be illegal were we covered by the National Labor Relations Act.

Your letter suggests that your actions "move forward with the steps outlined in President Sexton's November 28 letter." To the contrary, the penalty outlined in your January 23 letter increases the penalty threatened in the November 28 email. President Sexton's November threats, which were roundly condemned by members of the NYU community, by scholars from across the country and around the world, and by the labor movement, stipulated the loss of stipends for the spring 2006 semester for graduate employees who remained on strike after the December 5 (later postponed to December 7) deadline. It went on to say, "For those graduate assistants who return by December 5th and accept a teaching assignment for the spring, this acceptance comes with the commitment to meet their responsibilities without interruption throughout the spring semester. Absences not approved by the dean will result in suspension from assistantship assignments and loss of stipend for the following two consecutive semesters." We do not fall into this category - we have been on strike consistently since the beginning.

The proposed penalties - a prospective docking of pay for semesters in which we have not yet struck - are not only patently unjust, but have been implemented without any semblance of due process, ignoring even the inadequate process called for by the university's own internal rules.

We are committed teachers and look forward to returning to our classrooms when NYU recognizes our contribution to undergraduate education and demonstrates respect for the work that we do here by negotiating a second contract with our union.

Sincerely,

Danielle Carlo

Amy LeClair

Sarah Wolf

Before I run off to my cousin's bar mitzvah, ( I think the last one I was at was my brother's, almost nine years ago. This should be fun) I wanted to point out that the Nerds On Strike have posted Amy Leclair's speech from the rally Thursday and urge folks who couldn't make it to hop over there and read it.

Besides Amy's speech, I think my favorite moments from Thursday were Adam Green's speech, Asad's speech, Wilhelm's speech, and Roger Touissaint's statement (and I'm paraphrasing) that "We took on the governor and the mayor. You took on the president, and I salute you."

I've come to thoroughly enjoy screaming at very loud volumes, in my meager approximation of a Scott Marks imitation, until my voice starts cracking and shutting down a la the fast-food employee kid in The Simpsons. There's something kind of therapeutic about it.

Kind of like karaoke.

around the line in 80 days

Recalculation suggests that Phil Wheeler was right yesterday, and that today is in fact the 80th day of the strike, about halfway through the twelfth week. I was supposed to go to a film screening early this morning, but i was tired enough from all yesterday's sturm and drang that I wound up making it to campus half an hour late and concluding that it would be much more useful of me to join the picket line rather than to go and try to see the movie of which i'd already missed the first half-hour. It was freezing cold, and i was a bit frustrated with myself for not wearing more socks or another layer of shirtyness. (That was kind of a Buffy reference, i think.) There are two pictures from the march on the front page of the WSN today, one of the crowd in profile marching beneath the arch, and this one:


I talked to some reporters today for the first time since coming here. One was writing a story about NYU's changes to Washington Square Park, and i guess wanted a striker perspective, and another was writing an opinion piece about the strike. I'm not sure what her opinion is, but I feel like I was on message enough that even if she's secretly like Jamie Kirchick in disguise, which didn't seem likely - she seemed non-fascist, but you can never tell - I didn't give her much to go on and policed myself, i hope, adequately enough

Ask me about the strike, part 4.

Today marked, depending on who is counting, (me or Phil Wheeler,) the 78th or 79th day of the strike. This strike is now officially longer than the one I wrote an 82-page senior thesis about. It's the longest ever TA strike at a private university in the U.S., possibly the longest at any university - i don't know the history of the strikes at the U.C. schools well enough to make this claim, though. We are fairly sure that it is also the only academic strike in the U.S. which has ever tried to bridge the semester gap. Rather than see this as daunting, i hope folks are finding it inspirational. Like the semi-situationalist banner said, back on day 1, "make history right now."

On Tuesday three GAs - including one person i went to college with - received letters notifying them that their stipends would be cut and that they would be barred from teaching for not one, as promised, but two full semesters, lest they return to work by today. They're staying out. So are the three folks who found out yesterday. These folks are all stand-alone instructors. Some of them are in departments in which lots of people are international students or have gone back to work. Others are in departments in which they were, from the beginning, the only people out. I'm sure there will be more letters in the future, as NYU carries out what seems a bit like a last-ditch effort to scare us back to work with the threat of extended retaliatory lockouts. I do not think this is a wise move on NYU's part. First off, even if they could break us with this, what they are doing is going to wind up dooming Sexton's whole "upwardly mobile University" agenda. This strike is being watched very closely, by union members in New York, by graduate employees across the country (and in Canada!) and certainly by faculty. The administration has now recieved hundreds of letters from professors across the country saying that they will be unable to reccommend prospective students to the university should the retaliatory threats be implemented. Now that these threats are not only being implemented, but doubled, I wonder if we can start conjecturing about what this says about the university's commitment to graduate education (not to mention undergraduate teaching.) Second, i do not think, particularly coming out of the discussions in the union over the past several days and today's massive demonstration of support from across the labor movement, that this is going to break us. Strikers were prepared for this eventuality coming into this semester, even if the threat has metastazized and violated the "contract" offered in President Sexton's infamous letter of November 28, to which the new letters deceptively refer. For comprehensive coverage of this, read the mother of all GSOC strike blogs, Nerds on Strike

The rally was pretty amazing. Amy, the sociologist who got a letter on tuesday, with the other five letter recipients standing behind her, spoke powerfully about why she decided to strike, what the letters represent, and why she's staying out. Christine Quinn and other city councilmembers promised to stand in the way of any NYU projects until Sexton is ready to resume negotiations with us. Adam Green said something about breaking out his old GESO t-shirt, apparently. Roger Toussaint led some very spirited chants.

I screamed through a pink fake megaphone until my voice pretty much completely gave out. That's happening to me more and mpore, and i'm feeling like i'm never going to have that singing career I've always dreamed of, and will be henceforth restricted to belting out "November Rain" (dedicated to all the strikers, of course) on karaoke machines from Avenue U to Moshulu Parkway for the rest of my life. While i'm skeptical of the rhetoric of sacrifice, that's one i'm willing to make.

Also on the personal side, It was great to see all the folks from the federation (all the busloads of GESO folks and Local 34 folks, especially Laurie and Beth, and Andrea,) and Rose, who i guess is now a former federation folk. And there was a UOC contingent (Thomas and Josh, to boot,) which made me happy. And Saqib was in town. And one of the Goldman Sachs cafeteria workers i met several years ago when i was an intern with Local 100 gave me a Unite-HERE pin.

I think that's all for now. I have some coursework to do.