Alyssa, Josh and I just served Richard Levin a Notice of Lien on 43 Hillhouse Avenue. I'll have the text of that Lien up as soon as Josh emails it to me.  ¶ 10:10 PM

  over at Ben For Alderman, Alyssa gives us this gem:

On an interesting note, the Kruger campaign's finance filings haven't made it to the New Haven City Clerk's Office yet. The filing deadline was Tuesday. It's Thursday, now. In the last round of filings, it became evident that Kruger had accepted a donation from an organization called the Northwestern Leadership PAC, which is funded by the committee to re-elect Andrew Roraback, the Republican State Senate Whip. It's odd for a candidate who claims to be an Independent to be accepting funding from somone like Roraback, whose record on issues like campaign finance reform is less than stellar. It's even odder that this contribution has been filtered through a Political Action Committee that obscures its connection to Roraback, and that money meant to elect a Republican is being used to try to elect an "Independent" in New Haven. I wonder what's in the new filings, and why they aren't in yet...

Yep. Healey's right. We need Clean Elections.  ¶ 2:12 PM

  Mechanized Surveillance in Physics Lectures
Anyone else find this frightening?  ¶ 2:07 PM

  Yale Won't Pay
The university continues to refuse to foot the over $100,000 in NHPD overtime for which the city billed it in september. I've already discussed the implications of the stance of the Register, which Tom Conroy has now adopted. By provoking the strike and then requiring the policing of worker actions, Yale has deepned the city's fiscal crisis. You'd think the least they could do was cough up a fraction of what they make off their endowment in a day so New Haven's streets stay "safe." (I'm not endorsing the NHPD or any cops in any way, shape, or form.)  ¶ 1:57 PM

  From today's Wall Street Journal: Reason Number 357 not to fuck with working people's access to affordable health care when SEIU is watching ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE ALSO TAKING OUT WARRANTS ON PEOPLE AND THROWING THEM IN JAIL! - I mean come on, Zaccagnino and Levin, how depraved can you freakin' get????? Here's the article:

Hospitals Try Extreme Measures To Collect Their Overdue Debts
Patients Who Skip Hearings On Bills Are Arrested;
It's a 'Body Attachment'

The Wall Street Journal, PAGE ONE
October 30, 2003
By LUCETTE LAGNADO


CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, Ill. -- Late one night in June 2000, a police
cruiser pulled up to Marlin Bushman's house on a quiet, tree-lined
street. While Mr. Bushman's wife and son stood by, an officer
handcuffed the burly truck driver and took him away to jail. The
charge: missing a court hearing about a $579 hospital bill.

The hospital that pursued Mr. Bushman, a 295-bed not-for-profit
facility called Carle Foundation Hospital, is one of several that has
at times employed debt collection tactics that are shunned by many
other creditors. It has filed hundreds of lawsuits, garnisheed
patients' wages and seized their tax refunds. Since 1995, Carle, the
primary teaching hospital of the University of Illinois, confirms it
has also sought 164 arrest warrants for debtors who missed court
hearings.

In one case, Carle went after an uninsured, part-time musician whom
it had treated for a gunshot wound in a suicide attempt. When the
man, James Bean, missed a hearing on his $7,718 hospital bill, Carle
asked the court for an arrest warrant, and in November 2001 Mr. Bean
landed in jail for several hours.

In another case, Carle obtained an arrest warrant for an uninsured
single mother, Kara Atteberry, who missed two court hearings on a
$1,678 debt she incurred for a miscarriage. Ms. Atteberry turned
herself in to authorities in October 2001 and was briefly jailed
before making a $100 bail payment. She now owes a total of $2,070 to
Carle, including a bill for other treatments, and she expects to file
for bankruptcy.

Some hospitals now rank among America's most aggressive
debt-collectors, as they put increasing pressure on poor and
uninsured patients to pay their bills. Adding to the problem, as The
Wall Street Journal has reported, hospitals generally charge
uninsured patients far more than the discounted rates negotiated by
health-maintenance organizations and other private insurers and
government agencies.

Some also use one of the harshest and least-known collections tactics
of all: seeking the arrest of no-show debtors. A review of court
records and interviews with hospital trade groups, collections
attorneys and consumer advocates shows that hospitals in several
states, including Connecticut, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan and
Oklahoma, have secured the arrest and even jailing of patients who
miss court hearings on their debts.


Tough Tactic

The legal tactic of arresting a debtor who fails to appear for a
court hearing -- known in some areas as "body attachment" -- is so
extreme that some of the country's biggest commercial creditors say
they never use it. For instance, Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Ford Motor
Credit Co., the finance arm of Ford Motor Co., say they expressly
prohibit their collections agents from asking judges to issue arrest
warrants against no-show debtors.

In many areas of the country, collections lawyers say, the procedure
has been all but abandoned. Judges grant a creditor's request for a
body attachment when someone misses one or more hearings or otherwise
flouts a court's authority -- technically, it's not punishment for
the debt itself.

In Connecticut, the state's largest hospital, Yale-New Haven, has
obtained at least 65 civil arrest warrants in the past three years
for debtors who have missed court hearings, according to an
examination of New Haven County court records by a researcher for the
Service Employees International Union, which represents some hospital
workers. After several inquiries from the Journal, the hospital,
which doesn't dispute the union's research, said it would severely
limit the tactic.

In Champaign-Urbana, a county agency was so shocked by hospitals'
debt-collection practices that it tried to strip Carle and another
hospital of their tax exemptions as charitable institutions. The
effort failed against Carle; the challenge to the other hospital, a
268-bed Catholic facility called Provena Covenant Medical Center, is
pending. "This concept of debtor's prison, you read about it in
Dickens, but it is still going on," says Laura Sandefur, a former
member of the agency, the Champaign County Board of Review

The hospitals' pursuit of body attachments is surfacing at a time
when many major U.S. medical centers are under fire for their billing
and collections practices. In June, the American Hospital
Association, the industry trade group, issued a memo urging its 4,800
members to examine their bill-collection practices and demand that
their collections agencies and lawyers "treat your patients with
dignity and respect."

Connecticut recently passed a law slashing interest rates that could
be applied to hospital debt. In California, a bill that would have
shielded patients from aggressive billing and collections was shelved
this summer following heavy industry opposition. Illinois is holding
hearings on how hospitals bill and collect from the uninsured.
Meanwhile, Congress has launched an investigation into the practice
of charging uninsured patients more than the discounted rates offered
to insured patients.

Patient advocates argue there is a fundamental difference between
medical debt and other types of consumer debt. "If it is a car or a
vacuum cleaner, they will simply repossess it. What do you want them
to do? Give the heart valve back?" says Jane Perkins, an attorney at
the National Health Law Program in North Carolina.

For their part, hospitals say they are forced to recoup every dollar
they can because health-care costs are soaring, and insurers and the
government are cutting their reimbursements for services. Hospitals
have also been squeezed by the rising numbers of the uninsured -- the
total hit a record 43.6 million people this year -- who often don't
pay their bills. Hospitals say they shouldn't be forced to bear the
disproportionate financial burden of a national crisis.

"You can't solve the issue of millions of uninsured by simply turning
to hospitals whose financial conditions are quite fragile and say,
'You do it,' " says Howard Peters, senior vice president of the
Illinois Hospital Association, a trade group representing more than
200 institutions, including Carle and Provena Covenant.

Carle defends its debt-collection practices, emphasizing that body
attachments are imposed by a judge as the legal result of a debtor's
violating a court order. "We are not going door-to-door to put people
in prison," says Carle's chief executive, James Leonard, 48, a family
doctor who still occasionally practices medicine. "It is your choice
to not show up in court."

In some cases, the debtors did appear for at least one court hearing.
Ms. Atteberry says that when she did come to court, she was talked
into accepting payment terms she couldn't afford -- including an
order not to spend her tax-refund money. When the judge summoned her
back, she didn't go because she feared "the whole hounding process"
would start anew. "Who would want to show up?" she asks.

After inquiries from the Journal, Carle said it would permit its
collections agencies to seek body attachments only after a review by
a new, three-person committee consisting of two hospital employees
and an outsider. Dr. Leonard says he still considers body attachments
useful, but the panel will try to assess the "human story" behind
each case. He says Carle, which handles 100,000 patient visits a
year, goes to great lengths to serve Champaign's poor and uninsured,
and has programs designed to provide discounted care. "We really are
a microcosm of part of the struggle that is going on," Dr. Leonard
says. "We are charged with sorting out who can afford to pay, who
can't afford to pay. How do you set the rules?"

Carle says its policy is to refer bills to an outside collections
agency once they are 100 days overdue. The hospital says it has
authorized its collections agencies to pursue legal action on about
7,300 bills since 1995, but many of those cases were settled before a
suit was filed. In response to inquiries from the Journal, the
hospital searched its records from 1995 to 2003, and said it had
obtained 164 body-attachment orders during that period. Carle said
not all of the orders had resulted in arrests; some were vacated and
others remain outstanding. The hospital wouldn't be more specific. It
also said it has sought far fewer body attachments in recent years
than previously.

Because Carle doesn't always file cases under its own name, the
number of body attachment orders and arrests resulting from its
collections lawsuits couldn't be independently confirmed. As recently
as a few years ago, the hospital did file such cases under its own
name, but since then suits against Carle debtors have increasingly
been filed under the names of collections agencies. Gretchen Robbins,
a Carle spokeswoman, says the hospital isn't trying to camouflage its
legal activities, but rather its collections agencies increasingly
file "consolidated" suits on behalf of multiple creditors, which she
says is more efficient and cost-effective, saving court costs for
both sides.

Mr. Bushman, the truck driver who was arrested in the middle of the
night, has had a long struggle to pay his hospital bills. In a series
of trips to the Carle emergency room over a period of five years, Mr.
Bushman, who is diabetic, sought care for his wife and their three
young sons. At times, the Bushmans were insured. Other times, they
lacked coverage, or their insurance didn't cover the entire bill.
They paid some of the Carle bills, but by late 1998, still owed $579
and had received several collections notices.

In February 1999, Carle filed a lawsuit in Champaign County Circuit
Court seeking payment. Mr. Bushman appeared at a court hearing on the
debt a month later. He says he couldn't afford a lawyer -- and in
Illinois civil arrest cases, unlike criminal cases, the court isn't
required to appoint one. At the hearing Mr. Bushman agreed to pay the
full amount within a month, even though he says he wasn't sure he
would have the money. After he failed to make the payment, the court
ordered him to appear at another hearing at the end of April.

This time, he didn't show up. He says he was worried about losing a
day's pay. He knew he was risking arrest, but he says, "I assumed I
could probably take care of it later" and, besides, he says, he
couldn't pay the debt. Mr. Bushman, who is now 40 and works as a
mechanic, says he was "expecting some money from a tax return" but
didn't get it.

The court, at the request of a lawyer for Carle's collections agency,
ordered a body attachment. However, Mr. Bushman wasn't arrested right
away. In Champaign County, body attachments are usually enforced only
when an officer confronts someone for another incident or alleged
offense.

About a year later, at 1:10 in the morning of June 13, 2000, Urbana
police picked up Mr. Bushman's 16-year-old son for drinking and
violating curfew laws, according to police records. When the officer
brought the teenager home, his last name triggered an alert about the
outstanding civil-arrest warrant against his father. Mr. Bushman's
wife, Diane, remembers thinking, "You bring home my son and take away
my husband?"

Mr. Bushman was booked and fingerprinted at the Champaign jail. He
posed for a mug shot, turned over his shoelaces and was escorted to a
cell. A judge imposed bail of $2,500 -- with $250 payable up front.
Mr. Bushman waited in a cell while his wife tried to come up with the
money. He says he fell asleep on the concrete bench, using a roll of
toilet paper as a pillow. Ms. Bushman borrowed the money from her
mother-in-law, and Mr. Bushman was freed a short time later. Within
three months, he paid Carle the balance of his debt, and the case was
dismissed.

Carle's chief financial officer, Robert Tonkinson, defends the use of
a body attachment against Mr. Bushman. Mr. Tonkinson pointed out that
Mr. Bushman had more than a year to pay his debt between the time the
body attachment was imposed and the day he was arrested. "He landed
in jail, and that is certainly where no one wanted him to be," Mr.
Tonkinson says, "but I struggle with the personal responsibility on
his part, and my responsibility as chief financial officer."

The use of body attachments -- known in some states as civil arrest
warrants, bench warrants or writs of capias -- varies widely from
state to state, and even from courtroom to courtroom, depending on
such factors as the aggressiveness of local collections agencies and
judicial sympathies. It isn't possible to determine how many
hospitals nationwide use the procedure. In body-attachment
proceedings, a collections lawyer acting on the creditor's behalf
generally can request the arrest, which is then ordered by a judge.

Hospitals, industry trade groups, collection lawyers and consumer
advocates in several states, including New York, Louisiana, Wisconsin
and Texas, say they had never heard of hospitals seeking the arrest
of no-show debtors. Laura Redoutey, president of the Nebraska
Hospital Association, expresses shock at the tactic, and says she
"can't fathom it has ever happened here." Stanley Brezenoff,
president and chief executive of Continuum Health Partners, the elite
New York hospital system that includes St. Lukes-Roosevelt and Beth
Israel, says he has never heard of a New York hospital pursuing an
arrest warrant related to a debt. "We are not in the business of
replicating 'Les Miserables,' " he says.

Nonetheless, just last month in Evansville, Ind., the not-for-profit
Deaconess Hospital sought the arrest of a 22-year-old debtor, Jamie
Ruston, who had missed two court hearings on a $5,664 debt related to
gynecological surgery. Ms. Ruston, who works at a McDonald's, was
briefly in custody before her mother arrived at the jail with the
$500 needed to secure her release. "I cried the whole time," Ms.
Ruston says.

Alan Shovers, a lawyer for Deaconess, says the hospital, which is
affiliated with the United Church of Christ, made "innumerable
efforts to get in touch" with Ms. Ruston to work out a payment plan
or to see if she qualified for charity care. "In the range of 16
times, she has ignored us, ignored the hospital, ignored the court
house," Mr. Shovers says. He defends the hospital's use of bench
warrants -- as the proceeding is known in Indiana -- saying the
hospital seeks them only when debtors have been repeatedly
unresponsive. "Most people, whether rich or poor or whatever, can to
some degree respond to the system -- and you have some people who go
through life without responding," he says. "The question is, are we
taking some unfair advantage, and I don't think we are."

In Connecticut, one of the debtors pursued by Yale-New Haven
hospital, John Franchi, 35, says a state marshal appeared at his East
Haven home one Saturday morning last November and announced he was
placing him under arrest and taking him to the local jail. "I have
two little kids, and it was unbelievable," Mr. Franchi says. He was
able to persuade the officer that he would appear court on his own
the following Monday. "I didn't want to go to jail," he says. "I was
terrified."

After appearing in court, Mr. Franchi, a warehouse supervisor, worked
out a payment arrangement on his $3,978 debt for treatment he says
was related to viral meningitis. He says the hospital is now
garnisheeing a portion of his $14.50 hourly wages. "It is devastating
me," Mr. Franchi says.

Yale-New Haven initially defended its use of writs of capias -- as
the proceeding is called in Connecticut -- saying they were a useful
way to compel recalcitrant debtors to appear. "If someone will be
uncooperative and they ignore the legal system, what is the
alternative?" said William Gedge, a Yale-New Haven hospital vice
president. However, after inquiries from the Journal, Mr. Gedge said
the hospital would severely limit the use of such warrants and would
scrutinize each one that is sought.

Another debtor, Leslie Caplan Block of Newton, Conn., says she was
home caring for her infant twins and 3-year-old daughter in September
2000 when two sheriffs' deputies arrived. They arrested her for
missing a court date on a $9,454 debt she had incurred at Yale School
of Medicine -- which is incorporated separately from Yale-New Haven
hospital -- for surgery on one of her babies. After her father agreed
to come over and watch the children, Ms. Block, now 34, was taken
away in the back of the officers' car and was put in a holding cell
while she awaited a judge. She was released after her husband paid
$350 in bail money. "I was scared to death," she says. In the ensuing
months, her debt swelled to $15,715, including interest and court
costs.

Tom Conroy, a spokesman for Yale University, says the medical school
has used writs of capias only as "a last resort." He says doctors at
Yale medical school -- who care for patients at Yale-New Haven
hospital -- don't inquire into a person's means before offering care.
Mr. Conroy adds that the institution has vacated Ms. Block's debt.

In Champaign-Urbana, James Bean, the man who was treated at Carle
hospital for a self-inflicted gunshot wound, says he has been pursued
aggressively by a collections agent since 1995, when the hospital
sued him over his $7,718 bill. In June 2001, Mr. Bean, who says he
held a series of odd jobs during that period and couldn't afford a
lawyer, missed a court hearing. He says he wasn't aware of the
hearing. Carle's lawyer obtained a warrant for his arrest, and a few
months later, Mr. Bean says, he heard about the warrant and turned
himself in. Bail was set at $3,500, and he spent six hours in jail
before his brother came up with the 10% required to release him.

Five months later, in April 2002, Mr. Bean missed another court
hearing, which he also says he wasn't aware of, and Carle requested
another body attachment. The judge granted it and set bail at $5,000,
but the body attachment was then quashed, according to court records.

Mr. Bean, 44, has recovered from the shotgun wound to his neck and
now works as a stage hand. He says he tried to kill himself because
he was despondent over the breakup of his marriage. Since then, he
made payments totaling $1,340 to Carle, but because of interest and
court costs, his debt swelled to $10,345. "It has been a nightmare,"
he says. "Is there ever going to be an end to it?"

Ms. Robbins, the Carle spokeswoman, says the hospital acted
appropriately after Mr. Bean had failed for years to pay his debt.
The suicide attempt was in 1991, and Carle unsuccessfully tried to
collect for more than four years before filing suit. She says the
hospital also encouraged Mr. Bean to apply for the state's insurance
program for the poor, but that he didn't follow through.

"It doesn't appear as if we were incredibly aggressive in seeking
payment," Ms. Robbins says. "There are many tragic situations we see
day in and day out, and so there is a time for people to work through
their grief, [and] there is time for them to deal with the finances
of their medical care." Ms. Robbins adds that Mr. Bean's bill didn't
have a code that indicated a suicide attempt, so "the folks that
process this wouldn't have known." After inquiries from the Journal,
Ms. Robbins says Carle's collection lawyer had agreed to eliminate
Mr. Bean's interest charges, and that Mr. Bean now owes the hospital
$6,535.

Carle also defends its pursuit of its October 2001 body attachment
against Ms. Atteberry, 26, the single mother whose $1,678 debt had
resulted from a miscarriage. Ms. Atteberry, who then was working as a
waitress at a local pizzeria and is now unemployed, says she turned
herself in to authorities after her shift ended one evening. She says
she didn't want to be arrested in front of her two daughters. At the
time, one was 3 years old and the other 3 months.

Ms. Atteberry was also the subject of an earlier body attachment
order in August 1998, stemming from a debt of $1,514 that she
incurred for various medical treatments in the mid-1990s at both
Carle and Provena Covenant. Ms. Atteberry, who then was working at
Kentucky Fried Chicken, says she turned herself in to authorities the
following month, even though she was nine months pregnant. "I was
freaking out," she says. "I didn't want to go into labor when they
arrested me." She was detained in a jail cell for under an hour while
her $250 bail payment was being processed.

Cheryl Harmon, Provena Covenant's chief financial officer, says the
treatment of Ms. Atteberry was consistent with general practices in
the industry. Ms. Harmon says Provena Covenant filed several hundred
collections lawsuits a year in the mid-to-late 1990s, but a change of
philosophy and collections agencies has drastically reduced that
number -- to as few as 19 in 2002. A court search revealed that
Provena Covenant obtained a body attachment against one of its
debtors as recently as February 2003. That patient, who was briefly
arrested in March, couldn't be located for comment.

Provena Covenant has "made a number of changes to make sure we aren't
sending people to collection who cannot pay," Ms. Harmon says. "It
really has been a soul-searching to find a way to distinguish between
those who can't pay and those who can." Provena Covenant says Ms.
Atteberry has paid $764, and the hospital has "purged" the rest of
her debt. Earlier this month, in response to inquiries from the
Journal, Provena Covenant's chief executive, Mark Wiener, 47, said
the hospital would no longer pursue body attachments.

Ms. Robbins, Carle's spokeswoman, says Ms. Atteberry ignored numerous
efforts to reach her. "We sent statements and we sent her letters,"
and also telephoned Ms. Atteberry and left a message with her father,
Ms. Robbins says. Noting that Ms. Atteberry could have avoided the
court proceedings by communicating with the hospital. She probably
would have qualified for discounts or other financial assistance, Ms.
Robbins says: "There is only so much we can do for folks."

  ¶ 9:24 PM

  A Vote For Healey Is A Vote For France: Beth France thinks pretty highly of Ben Healey's record as an alder. And she's taking Dan Kruger to task for impugning it.

Kruger wants to diminish Healey's considerable achievements with unfounded allegations. He wants to slander staunch support for citizens' rights as blind ideology. He wants to label partnership with community organizations as negligence. He needs to be told that leadership cannot be measured in numbers of e-mails sent to students. True leadership is found in the partnerships it makes and the people it inspires. It is found in vision. Yale students need an alderman who will represent them on the board, not point a patronizing finger at it.

In short, they need Ben Healey.

It's time someone brought up Kruger's own ideology - that of an anti-choice, anti-affirmative action, ONHSA-ite masquerading as a mildly progressive liberal Yalie with a chip on his shoulder towards the illusory bogeyman of union bureacracy.   ¶ 9:15 PM

  Important Correction: I have discovered, upon careful research, that i did not in fact call Yale Vice President of New Haven & State Affairs and Acting Vice President Of Finance and administration "purefuckingevil." Rather, i called him Acting VP of Finance, administration, and purefuckingevil. While the latter two are factual statements agreed upon by both myself and the Yale administration, the former one is a statement endorsed only by me, not Benjamin Healey or any other individuals seeking office in the city of New Haven, Connecticut or anywhere else for that matter, with the possible exception of Arnold Schwartzenneger. Aditionally this statement is clearly a subjective one, should be read as such, and should not be the basis for legal action. Please alert Dan Kruger's campaign for future reference, thank you very much.  ¶ 9:08 PM

  Ok, those letters form today's YDN are online now, and you can read 'em here, here, and here. Go ahead. Knock yerself out.  ¶ 8:47 PM

  fixed the link to go to school, learn to rule in the side bar. Go check it out. I'm writing a paper that i've made very little progress on all day. i also got completely soaked. I just missed one of my favorite classes to try to write this thing. Today sucks.  ¶ 8:44 PM

  (updated, 11:50 am, Corrected 12:33 PM)

So much to blog, so little time. I'm writing a paper, so bear with me. Students at Minnesota are sitting in (or were yesterday -- click here for pictures) and demanding to talk to the president of the university about the strike and tuition hikes. Sounds like they've done an incredible job of linking student issues to those of the striking clerical workers. (Laura smith spoke there on Friday.) UPDATE:The Sit-in ended succesfully at 6 PM yesterday. Read about it here.

Meanwhile there's lots of debate in New Haven about the Ward One aldermanic race. While Kirchick says "A Vote For Healey Is A Vote For Proto", The YDN has endorsed Ben, and Abi Vladeck points out the hypocrisy of Kruger's position on Yale and Taxes in an incisive and biting op-ed.

Yale's paternalistic attitude is arrogant and, moreover, ineffective. If Yale is truly interested in improving New Haven -- from which its workforce is drawn and in which its students live and perform their extracurricular activities -- it will go beyond installing bluephones and bringing to Broadway national chains (whose profits flee the city faster than a senior on graduation day, before they've had any time to trickle down); it will pay its taxes like a good citizen. That is the kind of town-gown relationship that I, for one, would like to see, and that is why, on November 4th, I will be voting for a candidate who will continue to fight to make sure that our city government has the funds it needs to make New Haven a stronger, cleaner, safer city with good schools, good jobs and good homes for all its residents.

They didn't make it into the online additiion, but Calhoun students critical of Master Sledge's vocal Krugerism (and, More pointedly, his public attacks on Healey,) wrote a number of letters to the YDN, several of which were published in today's YDN. Here's one of those letters, courtesy of Alyysa Rosenberg over at Ben For Alderman. This Letter to the Editor is by Amia Srinivasan, the campaign coordinator of the Yale College Democrats:

When the Calhoun freshmen were blindfolded and herded out onto a muddy Old Campus for initiation into their college, it was a fun reminder of the importance of college solidarity and respect. Unfortunately, my Calhoun spirit was soon shaken when I received an email from our Master, inviting all Calhoun students to a reception for Dan Kruger, who is challenging Alderman Ben Healey for the Ward One seat.

When I first became aware of Master Sledge's strong support of Dan, I saw it as an encouragement of involvement in local politics. My feelings, however, have changed. First, there was Master Sledge's contribution to Dan's campaign, a choice that I regard as personal and within his rights. Then there was the op/ed in the YDN; even then, I reminded myself of my conviction in freedom of speech. There is a difference, however, between free speech and the use of a position of power to actively push a candidate. When Master Sledge uses his living room in Calhoun College, which is to at least some degree a public gathering place, for an event that is meant to encourage the students he has a considerable amount of influence over to vote a certain way, I believe he is over-stepping the boundaries of his position.

A residential college should be a place of comfort and security; unfortunately, for me, my Master's avid support of Dan Kruger has undermined this ideal in Calhoun. I am not overly concerned by the political effects of the reception; while Dan is at the reception, Ben will be going door-to-door, as he does most nights, directly speaking to voters. This is emblematic of the differences between Ben and Dan, and if voters are perceptive of these distinctions, the results will manifest themselves on election day.

I just hope, however, that no Hounies have felt discouraged about their political views, or have felt pressured to adopt those of their Master. For now, I am happy to still be in Bingham, distanced from the political pressure being exerted by someone whose role I believed was to foster a close-knit environment, rather than to sway my vote or divide us along political lines.

Yale's going to start cutting M&P Jobs. No one's really surprised by this, (thank god for union job security language,) but it's kinda funny watching the Register try to reconcile a supposed $30 mil defecit with a 9% endowment increase.

Meanwhile, in NYC, Local 100, the union i worked for a summer ago, is prepared to strike restaurants throughout the city.

As in many recent labor disputes, the major issues are health and pension benefits. The union is asking for a wage increase of 50 cents an hour and no change in health and pension plans. Most of the restaurants have separate contracts with the union, and want the workers to pay a greater share of costs for medical care and some want to stop contributing to pension plans. A few restaurants have said they would not agree to a wage increase unless the workers accepted the health and pension demands.

Despite Mr. Giovanetti and Mr. Sherry's conciliatory words, Brooks Bitterman, the research director for the union, said he knew of no restaurants that were willing to settle. He also said he had never seen such solidarity in the union, which voted 443 to 26 on Saturday to authorize a strike.

"A dishwasher gets only $7 or $8 and a prep cook is making $10 to $12," Mr. Bitterman said. "These people stick around in these jobs, they've given so much to the restaurants to make them work. They're furious at management and don't see the need for givebacks on pensions and health care. They sense that the restaurants are A.O.K., in fine shape. It's crazy that some of the highest-grossing restaurants in the country want givebacks. There's an absurd amount of money pouring into these places and management has misjudged the worker's anger."

While some restaurants have yet to recover from the effects of Sept. 11, the economic downturn, the decrease in tourism and higher expenses, Chuck Hunt, the executive vice president of the Greater New York City chapter of the New York State Restaurant Association, said overall, the industry is regaining its health.

"Right now the restaurants are doing all right," Mr. Hunt said, "they're coming back, improving."

Mr. Sherry said the Old Homestead is doing well.

The owners of La Caravelle, Rita and André Jammet, paint a less glowing picture. "Business has been up and down and maybe it's near last year's levels," Mrs. Jammet said. "Our food costs have gone up a good 15 percent, especially for beef. Insurance went way up after Sept. 11, and real estate taxes are up. And this is not a good time to raise prices." Mr. Jammet added that if there is a strike he and his wife will "try to run the show" themselves.

Mr. Demand, the union negotiator, said he thought the talks slowed when the owners called in federal mediators on Monday.

Richard Wilsker, a partner at McGuire Woods, the law firm which represents 17 of the restaurants, including the nine bargaining jointly, said he thought that move would make things go more smoothly.

Mr. Wilsker said the union had made substantial concessions on wages and health benefits, but Mr. Demand denied that.

The union has extended the negotiation period until mid-November for the Oyster Bar and Gallagher's. "The employees are aware of the difficult times these restaurants are having," Mr. Wilsker said. "They know that a union house pays two to three times nonunion. It's sad, because so many of these old places are threatened."

Bill Granfield, the president of the union local, said while marching down 52nd Street that he was encouraged by some of the negotiations with the restaurants in the last few days.

But when asked if he thought there was going to be a strike, he answered, "Yes."
  ¶ 10:55 AM

  Italy - ON STRIKE

All they want is to protect pensions - but Berlusconi, fascist multi-billionaire and Italian prime minister wants to restructure pension formulae and raise the minimum retirement age. So, yesterday, according to Reuters, millions of Italians went on strike. The one-day general strike is the second against Berlusconi since April 2002, when "he was hit by the first full-day work stoppage in two decades as the country ground to a halt to protest labor market reforms." "Berlusconi's first government," the article reports, "was toppled in 1994 over the pensions issue."   ¶ 11:25 AM

  The camp at Yale was even called a miniature socialist republic. While the Industrial Worker did not go this far it insisted that the strikers at Yale “are laying a broad and deep foundation for a system of society managed industrially by those who do the world’s work.” The strike as a whole was “proof that the workers are becoming capable of managing their own affairs and thereby are demonstrating their fitness to manage industry when power is gained to take and hold the industries.” - Philip S. Foner (on the Canada Northern Railroad strikers' camp at Yale, British Columbia. We could totally do that too though.  ¶ 9:12 PM

  The Nation reports on the supermarket strike/lockout:

A nationwide UFCW strike over healthcare could make that issue a central one in the upcoming presidential campaign. With more employers cutting benefits, the number of Americans without healthcare is growing. This is the Wal-Marting of America, and the labor movement and other progressive groups should be pushing the Democratic candidates to explain how they will provide universal health coverage for all Americans. A recent government census report concluded that the number of Americans without health insurance increased by 2.4 million people between 2001 and 2002. In 2002 there were 43.6 million people, or 15.2 percent of Americans who have no health coverage.

The UFCW has filed two new complaints against the supermarket chains alleging illegal witholding of past due pay.

In Oxnard California, Walmart and Vons are right next to each other -- and workers realize that both these chains are the problem -- so they rallied in front of both.

Demonstrators said direct competition from large discount chains such as Wal-Mart has forced grocery chains to cut their prices, causing the stores to reduce their labor costs.

"We walked over to Wal-Mart because we believe the health-care cost prices begin and can be ended if large corporations provide affordable health care to their employees who are middle and low income," UFCW spokeswoman Martel Fraser said. "The problem that we are having is that as a result of corporations sloughing off their health-care costs, Vons, Ralphs and Albertsons believe they can do the same."

This ILWU member waxed wobbly:

"Workers of the world unite," said Jess Herrera of Oxnard, a member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Oxnard Harbor District commissioner. "As long as we are together and as long as we are unified, we will win. They have said in the past that they can hire half of the working people to kill the other half, but we are not going to allow that. An injury to one is an injury to all."

The U of Minnesota clerical strike continues. The numbers of who's on the lines are in dispute. The U's claiming that only 45% of the union's out, and while one independent researcher points out that this is still enough to win if they're smart, the union says that the actual number of striking workers is much larger than the university is claiming. Since C&T's rarely punch cards, it's always hard to tell who's actually at work when you're talking about so many people over such a large space in so many different offices. I found this paragraph in the first article really powerful.

Sophomore Colin Schwensohn picketed between classes Tuesday with his mother Jane Schwensohn, a clerical worker in the department of restorative sciences.

“It’s my health care being affected too,” Colin said.   ¶ 12:18 PM

  INS Raids Wal-Mart, arrests over 300 Workers

Federal agents raided over 60 Wal-Marts in 21 states, arresting over three hundred allegedly undocumented workers. The workers in question were apparently subcontracted cleaning workers rather than actual "associates" of the notoriously anti-union megacorporation. The NY Times interviewed SEIU spokesman Steven Lerner about the raids.

The Service Employees International Union, which advocates benefits for cleaning workers' with campaigns like "Justice for Janitors," said that retail stores tended to use nonunion cleaners.

"You have everything from giant contractors to regional contractors to mom-and-pop organizations with mops and buckets," a union spokesman, Stephen Lerner, said, emphasizing that he had no details on the Wal-Mart situation. As a result, he continued, there is a "long history of litigation where we catch cleaners who bring in their whole family to clean, so the contract entity says, `They don't work for me, it's not our fault.' "

The Times also reports

Wal-Mart has been accused of skirting various employment laws in recent years. Class-action suits have been filed in more than 30 states accusing supervisors of pressuring employees to work off the clock for no pay.

In California, lawyers have filed suit accusing Wal-Mart of discriminating against women in promotions. The lawyers have asked a federal judge in San Francisco to allow the lawsuit to proceed as a class action, potentially creating a class of 1.6 million current and former Wal-Mart employees that would become the biggest employment class action in the nation's history.

Wal-Mart denies pressuring employees to work off the clock and asserts that it has an aggressive program to hire and promote women.

I stand in solidarity with the workers who are going tosuffer because of Wal-Mart's greed, and the laws that prohibit those workers from being able toorganize and fight back against corporate exploitation.  ¶ 9:05 PM

  Yale Forces Bankrupt State Health Care System To Pay For Workers' Families' Insurance
A new GESO report, Baby Blue, picked up by the register today, shows that at least a dozen grad student families have been forced to put their kids on the embattled HUSKY plan because Yale won't provide health care for families of graduate teachers and researchers. Yale has 11 Billion dollars, while Connecticut's state budget, thanks to a Republican governor and wimpy liberal legislature, isn't cutting it for poor and working families who need and deserve free universal health care. The GESO report also focuses on the problem of Day Care and Yale's lack of any kind of Parental Leave program, and the lack of gender parity among grad student parents which is directly linked to these issues.  ¶ 11:51 AM

  Felstiner Hammers Sledge:

Alek Felstiner eloquently responds to William Sledge's op-ed in the YDN today. "Out of respect for the prospective voters in Ward 1," says Felstiner, "and the eight members of our university who faced a year in jail for handing out pieces of paper, I'd like to get the true facts out in the open."

1.
The leafletters were arrested because of what was on their leaflets, not where they were standing. And as such, the conflict had nothing to do with "criminal trespass" and everything to do with free speech. Jorge Perez (Board of Aldermen President and co-author of the resolution) wrote in a Nov. 17th letter to the New Haven Register that "[no one was] able to explain how an individual with privileges to enter a building on a daily basis could be charged with trespassing."

2.
Hospital constables aren't city cops, they are private security forces serving a private corporation, with arrest powers granted them by the New Haven Board of Police Commissioners and the mayor. Being the only constabulary force in New Haven, Hospital constables enjoyed a unique city benefit that they abused, prompting the Board of Aldermen to vote 18-2-2 to recommend its revocation. After extensive hearings, the Board of Police Commissioners voted 4-1 to revoke arrest powers, with Commissioner John Einhorn arguing that "the general concept of private companies having special police powers, it doesn't belong in the 21st century." (New Haven Register, "Constables' arrest powers likely to cease" 12/12/2002)

3.
The constables' loss of arrest powers has no bearing on emergency response times, patient training, or on-site policing. Constables retain all the authority and freedom that they possessed before the incident, which includes detaining people, policing hospital grounds, and assisting staff and patients in emergencies. They just can't physically hand you a citation. And, given that the constables and the Hospital administration display a tendency to abuse those arrest powers in attacking freedom of speech, removing them seems an appropriate response that produces zero impact on hospital safety.

4.
I believe that Kruger and Sledge are trying to foster paranoia around "special interests" to distract voters from the central (and swiftly growing) problem of Kruger's candidacy: he has made a handful of campaign promises without offering any concrete policy plans.

Damn. I would not want to be Sledge right now. Kruger's master's tea in Stiles today should be interesting. I will not be there. (Need some sleep.)

Happy Birthday, Babu!!!!
Today's my grandmother's 87th birthday!

Sounds like the GESO membership meeting went really well. Even Claudia Brittenham is happy.  ¶ 11:21 AM

  Shame on Sledge

DISCLAIMER: the following statement is in no way endorsed by or linked to Ben Healey or his campaign for reelection, with which i am not affiliated. These are the rantings of an anarchist who is strongly averse to electoral politics and should be read as such.

A day after the second ward 1 debate (in which incumbent and progressive democrat Ben Healey pretty much demolished his opponent, the ONHSA-bred "independent" Dan Kruger,) William Sledge, Master of Calhoun College and the director of Yale New Haven Psychiatric Hospital publicly attacks Healey as a tool of the unions who endangered hospital safety to serve his "pro-labor ideology."

"So, what has been the outcome of the constables losing their arrest powers? There have been some dangerous, awkward episodes such as a New Haven police officer's lack of knowledge of how to handle bleeding patients (issues of handling bodily fluids of people who may be infected with life-threatening illnesses), and slowed response times to emergencies. I have seen hospital patients taunt and attempt to provoke the constables by indicating that they know that they cannot be arrested by the constables, resulting in a security force that is somewhat hamstrung. These provocations have nothing to do with the union's efforts to organize the hospital workers or free speech. Security is too important to allow it to be hijacked by issues related to whether or not politicians need to support the unionization of the hospital. Dan Kruger is the man for Ward 1. His independence will serve us well. He should be our next alderman."

I was there when four of those workers were arrested - Sarah Saiano and another member of local 34, and Fran Balamuth and Rosa Anna De Filippis, who are graduate researchers and GESO members. (actually, Rosa Anna graduated, and is now a post-doc in San Francisco.) I watched hospital police arrest them for leafletting other members of 34, 35 and GESO outside their workplace. I watched as they were carted off by hospital police and charged with "criminal trespassing" for something they've been doing without incident since 1982. I heard from hospital worker Willie Tart about how many times he'd been arrested or threatened by hospital management with arrest for his tireless efforts to organize Yale New Haven Hospital. Later, I read Katie Krauss's allegations that leafletters were "blocking entrances" and "impeding the path of ambulances," and wondered how setting up burrito carts doesn't impede ambulances but leafletting about a strike vote does. I wonder now why Sledge fails to discuss the options which mayor DeStefano presented to YNHH administrators regarding its constable powers, and why they refused to cooperate. I wonder if it isn't appropriate now to raise the issue that the sale of Sledge's Yale Psychiatric Institute to YNHH and the subsequent loss of tens of local 34 jobs to non-union hospital positions was a major factor leading to the strikes that rocked this city and campus over the past year. I wonder if it isn't also a good idea to point out that Sledge is a major contributor to the Kruger campaign.

Regardless, his argument that Healey willfully endangered public safety by demanding free speech rights for med center workers is groundless. No one has done more to damage the security. safety and quality of care for New Haveners who need health care than the administrators of Yale-New Haven Hospital (a classification in which we might include Mr. Sledge) who've both created this conflict over the constables by violating people's first amendment rights and running a vicious anti-union campaign, and making it next to impossible for working people in this city to get care at YNHH without being saddled with debt and aggressively pursued with wage garnishments, property liens, and other destructive and unjust collections practices.

EDIT:We might also ask what "ideological commitments" permeate Kruger's political actions "at the expense of good government," not to mention Sledge's own ideological commitments. And we might point out that the very notion of "good government" as defined by Sledge, Kruger, or anyone else is itself deeply ideological.

Erin Scharff says Vaclav Havel for class day speaker. I say "Scott Marks!"

From Abbey:
"No man's ass should look so good." - Vinnie O'Brien, on the Broncos' performance at the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride rally.  ¶ 12:10 AM

  Updates on the california/missouri/kentucky/ohio/West Virginia supermarket and the cali transit strike:
USA Today reports from Missouri about the health care issue.

Bob Finley, a Schnucks cashier on the picket line, fretted about stalled contract talks. ''We don't want to be out,'' said Finley, a 30-year employee.

Finley said that his job, and insurance, were considerable resources when his 20-year-old son, Mark, an All-American swimmer at the University of Missouri-Rolla, was diagnosed with cancer three years ago. After a year of chemotherapy, surgery and doctors, Mark died. Without health insurance, the ordeal would have ruined the family financially, Finley said.

An article in the UCLA Daily Bruin looks at how the strike is affecting one woman's life.

The AP reports that the transport workers' union and the MTA are going back to the table to try to reach a settlement. Let's hope they can.  ¶ 1:09 PM

  The Yale Daily News today picked up a story that the Register reported last week, and that Yale Insider picked up last week -- namely, that the hospital thinks it can run an effective anti-union campaign by filing a complaint against 1199 for extending picket pay to the dietary workers who struck last month. Katie Krauss told the press that the union was harassing scabs, improperly distributing funds, and what's more:

"We have been available to have a negotiation session, but the union has not indicated any interest or set up a time with us," hospital spokeswoman Katie Krauss said. "It's our sense frankly that the union is more or less holding these 140 employees hostage while working to expand union membership at the hospital."

I'm disgusted by what the hospital's doing. Yale-New Haven Hospital's idea of negotiations is proposing sham merit-pay increases while intimidating both unionized dietary workers - and the 1800 other workers at the hospital who've been fighting for the right to organize since 1998. These charges are groundless. Zaccagnino and company are trying to break both the dietary union and the organizing efforts of the other workers at the hospital -- as well as those of the hundreds of graduate researchers who work in the Yale Medical Center. Meanwhile, they've taken out an insane number of liens on poor people's property (so much for Yale's support for home ownership) due to the failure of people who are often Yale or YNHH employees to pay for health care, they've cultivated a colonial relationship with the city of which Dan Kruger is both but one example as well as an enthusiastic proponent and apologist, and they have further impacted the dynamics of land and labor in New Haven in numerous ways detailed by an upcoming CCNE report that i'm not going to blog until it's released. Suffice to say that this is bullshit, that we can't stand for this in our city or anywhere, and that YNHH and the university which more or less controls it can't continue this path to social death. We will resist, and we will construct new visions of citizenship and new ways of organizing society to triumph against the racist patronage politics and capitalist dystopias that constitute the net Yale's cast over this city.
  ¶ 11:42 PM

  On Strike!

Clerical workers at the University of Minnesota are on strike for step increases, job security, and affordable health care.

Check out this awesome support website, and here's an article from the Minnesota Daily  ¶ 9:46 PM

  Noah Dobin-Bernstein's aformementioned Ginsbergian ode to the supermarket strikers:

Striking a Supermarket in California
By Noah Dobin-Bernstein

1.

I sacrificed my cup of coffee to the cause this morning, imagining myself guided by wire cart down dairy isles to my deli girl, excited when her blond locks almost lick my #7 lox, onions and cream cheese on sesame.
The rows of cereal boxes, screaming their multicolor slogans, “two scoops of raisins…but only one for labor class A,” you taunt me you communist ketchup!
How oppressive the popcorn! Patriarchy picking pomegranates and tasting tapenades! Scabs shelving macaroons while mallowmars look to teddy grahams for solidarity!—and you, Leticia Garcia, four-time cashier of the year, why have you taken to the streets?


2.

Do you cross picket lines, Walt Whitman?
Are your eyes fixed on your blade of grass,
Or can you see the field, each body leaning
On the next, standing against the wind en-masse?
How do your like your America dissonant?
The owner singing numbers on spreadsheet,
The stocker singing ballads of hospital bills
As he lugs shipments of packaged meat.
Ha! How easy to win you, talk working men
Sweating slightly among produce, so American,
But stale bread makes us so less picturesque
That even Ginsberg won’t touch the baker’s skinny son.

Will we walk the lines dreaming of lost America of healthcare benefits cut to compensate for epidemic Wal-Marts paving lesions onto our valleys?


3.

There is no oppressor
like text, that unmoving
dictator, CEO of history.

You, who turned us inward,
spoke of beauty, toes, groins,
what now when the grocery boy’s locked out?

Our image shopping grows
expensive—at whose cost
contemplation? We march somewhere,

waiting for no one.




Speaking of the supermarket strike, there's lots of coverage in the news today. CNN reports that the strike has now spread to "involve 10,000 other unionized workers in Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio and West Virginia, making the labor dispute the biggest to hit the U.S. grocery industry in the 24-year history of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union." Yahoo reports that Jesse Jackson wants Governer Schwarzenneger to get involved.

"It's time for the Terminator to go to the bargaining table," Jackson told about 400 union supporters at a Santa Monica rally.

USA TODAY reports on the impact of the strike for hundreds of thousands of Californians. The article reports that the grocery strike, the MTA strike, and the blue flu by L.A. county sherrifs all have one thing in common: they are responses by workers to stop employers from cutting their health care benefits. John Sweeney says: ''Nearly every major labor action this year . . . has been the result of runaway health care costs and employers' attempts to foist those skyrocketing costs onto workers.'' The Ventura County Star reports that the teachers are supporting the strike.

The teachers' visit Monday definitely brightened Kathi DeBie's day. The strike captain and 18-year Vons employee was smiling as she greeted the arriving teachers.

"Awesome, isn't it?" she said. "We feel so blessed that they support us."


CONGRATS:
David Lee and Scott Marks are being honored by the NAACP for their role in the strike victory last month.


Lee, a local religious leader and community activist, will get the William H. Webb Religious Services Award, which state NAACP President James Griffin said goes to an individual for outstanding achievement and dedication to moral and spiritual renewal in the community.

"Lee has been very active bringing about enormous change in the community through his efforts to work a resolution of the Yale University strike," Griffin said.

Both Lee and Marks were key in organizing support for labor action during the Yale strike, which included major marches and protests that drew thousands.

Marks, a community advocate through the Connecticut Center for a New Economy, will receive the Lavore Tucker Social Advocacy Award for community activism in the African-American community.

"Through (Marks’) leadership on the Yale strike, he has done a terrific job serving people who have no voice (for themselves)," Griffin said.

"I’m very happy to be one to get an award," Marks said. "But it’s me in 1,000 people who did such great work in the city of New Haven, fighting for the equality of the working people at a time when many universities around the country are cutting back on pensions."

This despite the fact that the university, which is (somewhat incredibly given the outright racism they showed during the strike towards latino workers) recieving an "Equal Opportunity Award"

has contributed about $10,000 to become a corporate NAACP member from 2003 through 2005, and is sponsoring the state NAACP conference with another $10,000.
  ¶ 11:44 AM

  A month-long strike at Ansonia Copper & Brass Co. ended sunday with an 89-38 vote (out of the 153 steelworkers in the union.) While the officials, according to the Register, described the contract as "good and fair," and some workers felt that it was better than the contract they had going into the strike, others were troubled by a health insurance copay increase form $10 to $45.

The register article, meanwhile, contains this gem of a sentence:

"Since the workers started picketing, the company says it was forced to bring in some 30 replacement workers. "

Forced? Did Donald Rumsfeld put a gun to their heads and demand that production continue with replacement workers for the good of the recolonization of Iraq? Am i missing something? Since when are corporations "forced" to bring in scabs?  ¶ 10:05 PM

  Sound familiar?  ¶ 9:46 PM

  I saw Judith Butler speak today. It was incredible. I have no idea what she was talking about, but it was incredible.

After that I watched Sembene Ousmanne's Black Girl, which was also incredible.

Then i read Noah Dobin Bernstein's poem about the california supermarket strike (loosely based on Ginsberg's "A Supermarket In California." It was similiarly incredible.

Now, i need to get back to work.  ¶ 8:16 PM

  I just fell asleep for over an hour in the Sterling Memorial Library Reference Room. I'm glad that i don't drool.

My Somnolence was not for lack of a good read. Sven Lindqvist's Exterminate All The Brutes employs the fictionalized travelogue and a meditation on Conrad's Heart Of Darkness to investigate the colonial origins of European Genocide and locate the holocaust as a final application to Othered populations in the metropole of tactics first employed in wars of colonial domination. The jury's still out on how i feel about some of the claims Lindqvist's book makes, primarily because i haven't finished the book yet, but his reading of H.G. Wells's work in colonial context is fascinating. I am perturbed by the question of whether or not the narrative framework of the travelogue can have an anticolonial meaning or usage.  ¶ 10:35 PM

  Chaos in L.A. As the supermarket workers' strike (What thoughts i have of you, tonight, Emma Goldman) enters its second week, an unrelated strike by transit mechanics which is being observed by MTA workers, has further paralyzed Southern California.

Hundreds of thousands of commuters are stranded. Freeways are clogged. Grocery stores are scaling back hours. And the already ailing economy has taken another hit.

Meanwhile, the New York Times investigates the complicated role of the looming threat of anti-union mega-corporation Wal-Mart in the strike.  ¶ 3:11 PM

  Lindy Gold strikes again. The washed-up lame duck Ward 26 alder, who lost her election as a several-term incumbent because she was too arrogant to actually talk to voters, a week after claiming in the herald to have been "targeted by the unions," and alleging to the YDN that Project Orange has become a "Ben Healey re-election" conspiracy, has now written a letter to the New Haven Register which asserts that DeStefano favors some unions above others, as evinced by his treatment of the hospital constables. Gold's argument doesn't make any sense. She's grasping for attention to compensate for her rapidly vanishing political career. But wait, let's depsychologize for a moment and actually look at the claims that Gold is making, and whence they might have originated. (I just said "whence!" Take that, Lindy Gold!) If the surrounding neighborhoods are "suffering" (this was the propaganda that ONHSA had Hazelann Woodell recite for the benefit of the (Yale-)New Haven Register last fall,) if the city is 'overburdened' this has far more to do with Yale's greed, its neocolonial development agenda, and with the refusal of hospital administrators to sit down with the mayor and reach a fair compromise (since they had clearly proved that they could not be trusted with their own police force) than with anything DeStefano has or as not done. Gold's harping is that of a puppet whose strings have been laid bare, and from whom the very stage has been yanked away.  ¶ 12:58 PM

  There's a dope article in the NYT today about Tricia Rose, whose first book, Black Noise is one of my favorite books ever. Rose, the biracial child of a working-class family from Co-op City, went to Dalton, then Yale, and wrote her Ph.D. dissertation at Brown. In Black Noise, she has a really striking anecdote about Mansfield Street, New Haven's Yale-colonized social geography, the policing of the post-urban neighborhood, and the subaltern's use of Boogie Down Productions' "Who Protects Us From You."   ¶ 10:15 PM

  Who knew? Jacob Remes reads Dear Abby?  ¶ 6:57 PM

  The NYT reports on the Bolivia Uprising

It was also not clear how the indigenous and opposition groups that have been energized by their success in toppling the government would respond to Mr. Mesa's call for national unity. Evo Morales, leader of the Movement Toward Socialism and runner-up in last year's election, took a wait-and-see stance, though some of the coca growers whom he nominally leads vowed to continue with blockades of roads.

"I think it is important to give him a grace period," Mr. Morales told a television network. "He has expressed the thoughts of the Bolivian people" in the inaugural address, Mr. Morales added, so "let's hope that he organizes his cabinet and representatives" accordingly.

In contrast, the country's other powerful indigenous leader, Felipe Quispe, indicated that he would offer no truce at all. As the leader of the federation that initiated the nationwide strike that brought Mr. Sánchez de Lozada down, Mr. Quispe continued to demand that the government meet all 72 of his group's demands and added a new one: that Mr. Mesa not serve out the remainder of his original five-year term but call new elections as soon as possible.

"In any case, we are going to continue with the blockades," Mr. Quispe said. "We are not going to be with the executive, we are always going to be opposition."

Saturday at least, there were few signs of the recent unrest. Nevertheless, "there is still a lot of rage in Bolivians, which could lead to even more deaths," warned Carlos Toranzo of the Latin American Institute for Research here. The experience of the last month "has produced a lot of radicalism in some people, who want vengeance, to do to others what was done to them."
  ¶ 12:50 PM

  There's a massive insurrection in Bolivia against gas privatization. Ploice have killed dozens of protestors.  ¶ 12:34 PM

  GESO has released 2 Casual 2 Blue. Th report tracks the casualization of the sciences, the corporatization of research and intellectual property at Yale, the gendering of the massive dropout rate of science Ph.D's from the academy and the lack of a democratic voice in the laboratory. The solutions they come up with are innovative and really interesting.
The YDN reports here.

Meanwhile, Alyssa Rosenberg writes,

"If all we took from the recent strike was a shallow history lesson about the ongoing tension between Yale and locals 34 and 35, then we are not very good students. Unfortunately for the workers at Yale-New Haven Hospital and for Yale police officers, we may have another chance to learn."

Michael Jo, a Yale College Alum and current GESO organizer answers Jon Butler's defense of transient teaching/temper tantrum in yesterday's paper, as well as the YDN's obnoxious, uninformed editorial about Blackboard Blues earlier this week.

I'm one of those transient instructors. After reading the report I don't feel demeaned, and as a former undergraduate, I applaud it as the best appraisal of Yale's undergraduate education that I have yet seen. It greatly improves on last year's academic review, which consulted not a single graduate student and disappointed even the News

here's more:

Does the News really think GESO members are insulting themselves? Does Butler really think that graduate students don't want teaching experience? Instead, the report argues that part-time positions should not substitute for the full-time faculty students need. A similar point was made by the News' editors; "visiting professors should supplement full-time professors, not replace them." Also, I agree that we need "a critical examination of the role of non-tenured faculty." How long do they stay here? Do they receive the support they need? A new study, perhaps sponsored by the Yale College Council, could provide impartial answers.

The point is that those who teach at Yale, including lecturers, should be given the job security and institutional support they deserve. As the American Association of University Professors declared in 1978, "The teachers who must go, hat in hand, every year (or every two years, or every three years) indefinitely into the future, to ask if they may stay, are not teachers who can feel free to speak and write the truth as they see it." (Incidentally, it was the AAUP, not GESO, that coined the term "transient faculty.") This is hardly an insult to lecturers; it is a demand for due respect, for both teachers and teaching.

If you're looking for insults, go to the last line of the News' editorial, which argues that the administration should not seek input from teaching assistants because they are narrowly concerned for their own job security. "Blackboard Blues" shows the mendacity of this assertion. Its pages are full of graduate students expressing dedication to teaching and the desire to improve it. I don't see how the News construes this as narrow self-interest.

Jo concludes

We may disagree on details, but we all want the same thing -- the highest quality education possible -- and we should be working together to secure it. However, as long as graduate student teachers -- including GESO members -- are excluded from the dialogue over teaching, and their contributions met with misreading and hostility, we will never be able to honestly discuss this issue. As long as faculty, graduate students and undergraduates fail to see our common interests, we will never achieve more than token adjustments to undergraduate education at Yale. Surely we deserve better than that.

Amen.  ¶ 12:32 PM

  Wow, a YDN masthead almost as useless at the one on file sharing, except much more self-involved and neo-connie

Meanwhile, this kid actually tries to defend Mel Gibson's protocolsoftheeldersofzion-fest with the argument that the bible actually says that it happened this way. Filmic representations emphasize different things than textual ones, and i've commented before on the racism of the field of viosin as oposed to other ways of knowing, and we can of course debate whether or not the new testament is actually as anti-semitic as this guy is claiming, and if so why we care and what that means. Urbahn's claim that Gibson is faithfully recreating the bible is ridiculous. But it's also an apology for racism, an imagined textual referent against which interpretation can be ascribed solely to the viewer rather than the producer.

Oh, and by the way, YALE HAS THE WORST LABOR RELATIONS EVER!  ¶ 3:19 AM

  I'm really bored. It's a saturday night and i have nothing to do, and i feel like a big, dumb, asshole. If you want to hang out with someone who's bored, has nothing to do on a saturday night, and feels like a big, dumb, asshole, give me a call.

If you don't want to do that, or if you're a normal person and aren't sitting in front of your computer screen on a saturday night, you can check out the now-publiished and very incisive Blackboard Blues report. It's hard hitting stuff that points to both the crisis facing the academy and Yale, and a way of resolving that crisis and ensuring a democratic future for higher education.

If the report isn't enough to sate you, you can also check out Page Austin's great Op-Ed in yesterday's YDN, as well as this very good article by Jessica Feinstein. Feinstein should note, however, that the panel today, which about 35 people attended and which went really well, was organized and moderated by UNDERGRADS, not GESO.

Ghettopoly got banned by Urban Outfitters, and thsi is a good thing. Sarita Barton rightly asks why more white students didn't firmly condemn this racist game. But nobody points out what popped into my mind -- that the real Ghettopolist here may be Urban's landlord.

Pickets in the aisles?
70,000 UFCW members in California are poised to strike several large supermarket chains over health care and retirement benefits. They've released this to the press:

Over the past several days, Southern California supermarket workers have been voting on a contract offer from three of the largest supermarket operators in the country.
They have been confronted with a stark choice—give up health care benefits not for only themselves and their families—but, to sacrifice future generations of supermarket workers.
In unprecedented numbers, Southern California supermarket workers turned out to vote and sent a clear message--they will fight for affordable health care.
They delivered a mandate to their union—if needed to save health care—strike to protect our families— strike to save health care coverage for the next generation of workers.
These workers are heroes—they are willing to make the sacrifice—to take up the fight to save health care.
This is a fight for all Southern California workers this is a fight for all supermarket workers—union and non-union—here and across the country because if these three supersize, super-profitable, supermarket chains can cut benefits here then every worker is at risk.
We are announcing that on October 11, we will strike one of the supermarket chains. We will limit our job action to a single chain, so we will limit the inconvenience to our customers.
We are asking the employers to also respect our customers – and not to take retaliatory action against workers through a lock out. There should be no lock out.
After all the customers, are the ones that we depend on for our jobs and the companies for their profits.
Following today’s meeting with the companies and the federal mediator, we will announce the time and the target of the strike.
We will make an effort to avoid a strike—but, workers will not give up on health care—we are not asking for more—we are asking to keep the benefits that we have.
We have passed out some information on company profits and health care costs.
I want you all to note—employers’ profits have risen 10 times faster than their hourly contribution to worker health care.
Their profits overall have gone up 91% since 1998.
You will also see that we have contained health cares cost—the increased costs for health care for these employers have been significantly below the national average.


Meanwhile, it looks like a company that works with people with cerebral palsy is up to foul play in White Plains.

Thanks, Yaleinsider
Yaleinsider, in an informative reading of Paul Bass's analysis of Doug Rae's book and New Haven's response to the Lee-era project of urban restructuring (there wasn't too much renewal involved, except for the renewed militancy of Yale workers and New Haven Teachers) posts a link to a text transcription of Go To School, Learn To Rule, a seminal text from the era of the 1970 uprising published by the American Independent Movement (NOT, as the website claims, the American Indian Movement. (Thanks, Michael Denning)) Everyone needs to read this now.  ¶ 11:12 PM

  Responses to Eidelson's latest entry in the War of the Blogs

Josh says

I don't find the use of the term "minority" to refer to groups that are, empirically, smaller in this country than the majority along whichever axis we're referring to a particularly problematic terminology.

Fine, Josh, but the fact is that the 'majority' of people in the world are NOT white. If we use the admittedly deeply problematic and 'raced' field of vision, they do not 'look like' what the 'majority' of 'Americans' 'look like.' But this sentence is itself problematic because (among other objections) it uses a grammar of the nation, of nationalism, which links a racializing and racist discourse of national formation to this notion of the majority and its minorities. The 'axis', to use Josh's words, along which minority and majority are defined needs to be international, transnational, global, without erasing local histories and experiences. I think the story's far depper than one of simple numerics.

Finally, resoundingly, I would affectionately but bitingly make a comment to the effect that sometimes we have to choose between laundering clothes and organizing a movement and then sing Pete Seeger's rendition of "Which side are you on?"

Some of us are able to launder our clothes, bathe frequently, AND organize a movement!

(disclaimer: I am not alleging that Joshua Ruben Eidelson does not bathe frequently. I'll leave that up to Abbey Hudson.)  ¶ 10:13 PM

  Rumpus used to be really funny. No more. Sharp jabs at YD"N" elitism have been replaced by that dope "cavalcade of assholes" cartoon in the herald, and now rumpus is a site of anti-union, arrogant, elitist, CRAP. In addition to three or four pages of antiunion propaganda, this issue also manages to accuse me of being a klansman, because I argued that what Yale teaches, and how Yale manages has been and remains inflected with racialized understandings of difference, privilege, and work. I'm frustrated that a column i used to love reading in a paper I used to think filled a valuable niche at this university has somehow become another Yale Free Press - a site at which overprivileged neoconservatives can get their jollies by ridiculing the struggles of those in whose oppression they actively work to become complicit in. (How's that for bad grammar, you rich assholes!)  ¶ 9:30 PM

  The YDN page is down, so I can't link to their article about the Albertus Magnus protest yesterday, but suffice to say that this fight is not over, that we will be in the streets until we have won justice for working people in New Haven, and that Zaccagnino, Macnamara, and Marvin Lender need to rectify the way they've been doing business, because it's not acceptible any longer. Here's the register article:


"They don’t understand the 150 people — we are dangerous," said Mary Strachen, a cook at the hospital. "They definitely hear our voice. They might not respond, but they definitely hear our voice."

Damn Right.

Oh, and Josh: -- wash your damn clothes



The NLRB has issued formal complaints against the congress plaza hotel in Chicago for illegal wage cuts and failure to bargain. Workers at the Congress have been on strike for nearly four months. You can read more about the strike here.

Looks like a tentative agreement has been reached in the Chicago trash haulers' strike. The contract, reached through mediation, would give workers a 28% increase in wages and benefits over five years. We'll know how the vote turned out tomorrow.  ¶ 5:29 PM

  Tyger, tyger:Tyger, tyger, burning bright, seize the fire, it's yours by right.

(What relationship do the recent rash of tiger attacks have to Linebaugh and Rediker's invocation of Blake's fiery beast as a symbol of proletarian, antcolonial resistance and subjectivity? You decide!!!)  ¶ 10:05 PM

  There's a great YDN article about the freedom rides this morning. Check it out.

Greece still kicks ass.

Taxi drivers will join in the fun on Wednesday, with a two-day strike. Unionists are protesting against a government decision obliging cabbies to install cash registers in their cars, and want an increase in fares as well as access to Athens bus lanes for the capital’s estimated 15,000 cabs. On Saturday, what had been billed as a 24-hour taxi strike ended early in the afternoon.

'oi polloi eisi radioi.

Locked out tea plantation workers in India have occupied the fields. Read about it here.
  ¶ 1:16 PM

  The Blog War Continueth! Josh has responded to my challenge to his project of gloating over right-wing hypocrisy. I think part of my point though, is that we need to, instead of engorging ourselves in a politics of "I told you so," to instead seriously engage with the ideologies of what Eidelson calls "The Right" (I would argue that there are in fact "Rights," and, additionally, that the liberal capitalist bourgeoisie and its various projects also constitute a fundamental building block of empire) in order, not to simply point out that Rush Limbaugh is wrong or a liar, which we know already and have known for some time, but to gain insight both strategic and theoretical into the ways in which ideologies of control and strategies of Empire are linked. Deconstructing the rhetoric of this alternatively hyper- and/or trans-national imperialism means also understanding its construction and constitution.

Additionally, I'm less concerned with what Josh terms sexual and ethnic minorities - the term minority is a problematic one in that it presupposes a normative majority rather than destablilizing the structures of gender, sexuality, and race - than with the kind of project that does this very thing. (Although I also want to map the countersubjectivities that have emerged from positions of liminality to contest, and resist, reshape, and break through these structures.)

The freedom ride rally rocked. I saw people from Local 100 and someone from my high school I hadn't seen in over a year. James Lawson kicks ass. Maria Elena Durazo kicks ass.  ¶ 2:25 PM

  Uh-oh, looks like Josh is starting a blog war! Well, I might as well use this opportunity to disagree with his overly mechanistic account of the ways in which ideology is part of/is shaped by/shapes the reactionary agenda. Eidelson, Brock, et al (not to seriously attempt to lump Josh Eidelson in with David Brock and Michael Lind - you have to be conservative first to do that, and I think Josh was probably born holding a copy of The Nation, fail to lend enough credence to the ways in which, while opportunistic and convenient, the relationship of the right to racist, homophobic, and sexist ideologies of control -- which is how I'd characterize those who demonize non-violent drug offenders, even as I'd argue that maybe Rush Limbaugh isn't all that non-violent, is far too genuine. No offense to my man Josh, but arguments that privilege economics over everything else tend to generally originate from white men. The fact that Bob Barr's daughter had an abortion doesn't change the fact that Mr. Barr would like the state apparatus to control people's bodies in a fascistic linking of gender and power, of sexual reproduction and social reproduction. Rather than trying to claim that ideology's just a smokescreen, I think we need to look more deeply at how racism, sexism, heteronormativity, and capitalism are both intertwined and sometimes contradictory as subjectivities from below struggle to reshape and have reshaped the social relations of capitalism.


Much respect to Josh.  ¶ 8:07 PM

  Greece kicks ass.


Joining in a swelling wave of industrial action aimed at squeezing the government for as much as it is worth in view of the forthcoming elections, Olympic Airways flight attendants will hold work stoppages today.

Tomorrow, Athens and Piraeus taxi drivers will hold a daylong strike, while state primary and secondary school teachers will not be going to work on Monday. University and state technical college (TEI) teaching staff have been on strike for the past three weeks.

State hospital doctors will be on strike from Monday to Wednesday, while judges and prosecutors are also on the warpath.

And the civil servants’ union is mulling a 24-hour strike later this month or in early November.
  ¶ 7:40 PM

  Graduate Employees Together - University of Pennsylvania (GET-UP), still "waiting for the NLRB" (to reference last years wonderful Pins and Needles Project) rallied at 8:00 AM yesterday in front of University President Judith Rodin's house.

Despite administrative lies that sound a lot like Yale's, members of the the relatively young union are standing together.

"We're active and we're angry and vocal," Ginsberg said. "We won't stop until we get a union."
  ¶ 7:27 PM

  Polish coal miners are blocking roads to protest government restructuring.

In Chicago, garbage haulers are striking private sanitation companies (the AP says it's actually a lockout) for wages that will keep up with inflation. This is the first known garbage strike in Chicago's history.

And we made it into In These Times:

Right up to the final day of the strike, university spokesman Tom Conroy dismissed the office takeover, the rallies and civil disobedience as publicity stunts, and said the unions should worry more about the fact that only half the clerical and technical workers went out on strike.

But that’s the way it’s always been, ever since Local 34 was organized in 1984. With more than 90 percent of Local 35 members out on strike, the locals had the critical mass they needed—along with financial, physical and moral support from labor around the country—to prevail.

The multi-tiered coalition building in New Haven also is in use elsewhere. HERE President Wilhelm said that building such labor-community coalitions is the only sure path to success.  ¶ 11:15 AM

  The Yale Daily News is reporting on the enactment of the hospital debt legislation which we won this summer. Interestingly, the hospital seems to have returned to the same old ineffective line that this campaign is a front for the union effort.

Following the distribution of the pamphlets, the hospital issued a statement saying CCNE's efforts were driven by an ulterior motive: its desire to unionize workers at the hospital. A union representing about 150 dietary workers has sought to organize another 1,800 employees at the hospital.

"Yale-New Haven Hospital staff regularly provide patients who do not have insurance with information about free care and offer individual counseling to patients who ask for help," the statement read. "The unions that developed this document have a different agenda -- to organize a large number of Yale-New Haven Hospital's employees."

What the hospital doesn't understand is that this isn't about 1199 more than it's about what they are doing to every other working family whose lives they've placed on lien. It's about building a mass movement to fight for access to health care in this country. And Yale can't stand in our way any longer.
  ¶ 10:58 AM

  Eidelson rightfully points out that this YDN editorial is unusually (and delightfully) critical of University Properties style gentrification. What Josh misses is that the news is still backing what's ultimately a colonial relationship between Yale and the city. That's not cool. Although, Josh, you should know that it was Krauszer' s, not "Krauszner's."  ¶ 3:59 PM

  The Links Between Sexism in the Classroom and Academic Union Busting Lucy Teitler rightly points out that comments essentializing female presence in english seminars by professors in an article earlier this week were deeply sexist in claiming that intellectual discourse is worthless if men aren't in the classroom. One subject of Teitler's anger? None other than Annabel Patterson, one of the worst union-busters during the '96 grade strike.  ¶ 3:56 PM

  CCNE's published this pamphlet about patients' rights against hospital debt. Know Your Rights!  ¶ 1:21 AM

  GESO's pathbreaking new report on "The Need For Academic Visa Reform and Labor Rights at American Universities" is now online here. The report documents the plight of international student workers at Yale. It also talks about ways that workers have stood up and fought for a voice in their work. A graduate student who was diagnosed with cancer two years ago but forced to keep working in order to afford treatment said:

"I've been a member of GESO for several years now. It's been a good experience for me. GESO members are very good people and they care about other people, about me. When I was sick, I got a lot of help from GESO members. And I participated in the strike [in March, 2003]. It was tough. I want to work with other GESO members to win benefits for graduate students. But I was pressured to continue to work. In the end, I chose to strike because I thought it was more important to win recognition from the University. It was worth it."

You should also check out www.visareform.net

You can also read "The [Un]usual Suspects," the report about Yale's anti-union campaign against teachers and researchers. This report was submitted before the Academic Labor Board.

"On September 4, 2002, Enrique M. De La Cruz – a junior professor in the Department of Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics – warned a student in his lab as witnessed by a GESO organizer:

‘If you or anybody else in this lab goes on strike, I’ll kick you out of this
lab!’ De La Cruz then turned to (the student) and myself and said, ‘What
do you think of that?’ He was red in the face and shaking at this point. I
answered, ‘Well, I think what you are saying is illegal.’ De La Cruz
yelled, ‘I don’t care about the law, this is personal!’ He then looked at
(the student) and said, ‘We’ll take this outside, just you and me’."

The report concludes with some concrete recommendations. Among them:

"8) Because the right to organize specifically, and academic freedom more generally, have been threatened at many universities, professional associations and other academic institutions should come together to establish a code of conduct specific to universities that would seek to guarantee an academic culture that values the free expression of ideas and dissent free from fear of reprisals. Further, professional associations should include fair labor practices in their assessment of programs."

Oh yeah. One more thing: Gordon Lafer's article, Land and labor in the post-industrial university town: remaking social geography, is online. You need to read this.  ¶ 12:57 AM