Courtesy of Josh

My jews is in the hizzy!  ¶ 2:00 PM

  Whoever surfed onto this page by searching for "'not a deserter'+bush" was probably somewhat dissapointed.

Interesting obituary in the times yesterday for Jack Sheinkman, the former president of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, the union portaid as the "Textile Workers Union" in the film Norma Rae, and whose merger with the International Ladies Garments Workers Union (ILGWU) to eventually become the Union of Needletrade, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE) Sheinkman oversaw in '95.  ¶ 11:16 AM

  Interesting:

SOC Workers Win Their Fight for Higher Wages! Bremer's Orders Defied!
Across the Board Rise for Public Sector Workers Expected

Ewa Jasiewicz, Occupation Watch, Occupied Basra

Southern Oil Company workers won their three month struggle, underpinned by the threat of an armed strike, for higher and fairer wages this month. All oil sector workers in Iraq will now be receiving the SOC's negotiated wagetable. The unity, solidarity and support of oil sector workers in the central and northern fields in Kirkuk, Baaji and Baghdad's Daurra was key in achieving this victory. Plus the fact that the CPA/GC is heavily dependent on oil production and export from SOC, Iraq's biggest and most lucrative oil company, following the inoperability of Iraq's northern fields due to continuous attacks on pipelines and stations. The only Oil Companies exporting crude oil from Iraq right now are SOC and Basra Oil Company.

In December, union representatives told Occupation Watch that they had been telling workers since last month to save some of their wages in the event of strike action. When SOC workers saw that their wages were being decreed by the Occupation Administration (OA) as signed by Paul Bremer III in Order 30 on Employment Conditions of State Employees and that the wages were lower than the emergency payments the OA had been paying post regime fall, they decided to form their own wage scale based on market prices - including the price of fuel, gas, rent and foodstuffs, work location, and level of risk. The OA's wage table slashed all family, risk and location payments workers survived on under the regime. In every workplace OW visited, workers were frustrated with their low, late and fluctuating wages, as well as the axing of all their 'survival' payments and subsidies which sustained workers and their families.

The SOC union's wagetable demanded the minimum wage for an Iraqi oil worker be set at 155,000 ID ($100) per month - more than doubling the Occupation set 69,000 (currently worth $50-55) and a rise of 84,000 ID. SOC's table also cut out two whole levels and 20 positions of the CPA's 130 position, 13 level wagetable. The Union persuaded their management and General Director to support their demands for the homemade scale following two days of meetings last month. The union reinforced their demands by declaring that workers would join the armed resistance if their demands were not met. This prompted the minister of oil to travel to Basra himself and begin negotiations with union reps immediately.

The result was that the lowest minimum wage for the generators of Iraq's wealth, the heart pumping its' economic lifeblood, is now 102,000 ID per month - a rise of 33,000 ID. The whole wagetable now starts at level nine and all those meant to receive level nine wages will now be moved up to level eight, which starts at 120,000 ID ($85) and ends at 155,000 ID ($110). The maximum level an unskilled worker can earn is 328,000 ID ($250) per month - the end of level five. Five upwards deals with technicians and workers with diplomas. Level four refers to workers with over 30 years of experience and upwards is reserved for senior technicians and engineers and management.

But why the concession for the lowest paid? Why not push for the 155,000 minimum? 102,000 is barely a life supporting wage. The lowest rent in Basra is 25,000 per month (most peoples is 50,000), that leaves just under 20,000 per week (approx 3000 ID per day) to spend on food, school books, gas, fuel, car maintenance, clean water, cigarettes and any other unexpected necessities. A full UN plastic 4-5 litre carrier of drinking water costs 250 ID. A small chicken costs 3,500 ID, 1 kg of apples or oranges (6) is 750, potatoes (6) is 500, a bag of bread (5 pieces) is 250, tomatoes (6) is 500 (in Baghdad due to transportation costs up from the more fertile if DU radiated south, a kg is 2000 ID); a canister of gas is approx 2000 ID. A pair of adult leather shoes is 20,000 ID, a pair of socks 500 ID, cheapest family shampoo 750 ID. A family can just about survive eating basic simple, rations bulked food, but it is nearly impossible to save or find the money for a gift or journey or new item of clothing. Life is hand to mouth for the vast majority of Iraqi people and that's just for those lucky enough to have work - the estimated 70% or 10 million unemployed have even more of a struggle on their hands.

According to the occupation wagescale over a third (35%) of the Iraqi public sector workforce is on 69,000 to 155,000. 10% - managerial and administration levels receive 574,000 to 920,000.

So why the compromise? Infact its not. Risk and location payments have also been taken into account and a further 18-30% payment is included on top of the tabled figures. This means that all the wages detailed on the table are potentially 30% higher according to a worker's location, i.e dessert, remote area, dangerous position. Whether North Rumeilla, contaminated by Depleted Uranium during both Gulf Wars is included as a risky location is yet to be seen but the danger presented to workers breathing in the tons of radioactive nuclear waste used by invading US/UK troops is immediate, severe and life-threatening.

Of the victory, Hassan Jum'a, Head of SOC Union said: 'This is something we were sure of. Our sector is the most organized in Iraq and we were elected by the workers themselves'.

On the effect of the victory on the swelling struggle in the Electricity sector, Jum'a said, 'It's the oil section first, then the other sectors will follow, soon, soon, it will change, the influence will be felt'. Samir Hanoon, Vice President of the Federation of Iraqi Trade Unions said he was thrilled by the result and that it was 'all good' and was already having a positive impact on the electricity unions' negotiations for higher wages. 'Soon we'll be next. Our negotiations have been helped by this and they are going well' he told OW. The rise for Iraqi workers means a cutback for the exploitative ambitions of the Occupation Administration and a blow to the logic and regularly heard corporate boast of Iraq now possessing some of the cheapest labour in the middle east.

The regional Occupaiton Administration, CPA South, claimed ignorance of the wagetable, confusing SOC workers' new wagetable with the September CPA Ordered one now printed up in December into colour booklets for workers to read and understand why its natural for them to be paid slave wages.

All in all, the courage of Iraqi oil workers in recognizing and affirming their power as the sector capable of commanding GC ministers to attend to their demands and breaking the perceived 'last word' authority of the Occupation Administration, shows that social resistance to the occupation and its dictates is alive and on fire and ready to strike for justice in Iraq. Noone is taking this as a final result, but as a first win in a journey of many, making up for the decades of silencing, violence and murder by the Baath dictatorship. And it's also the first move in a social battle waged more than anything to raise the consciousness and confidence of workers, so broken by the Baath, to realize that they themselves are a weapon against the injustices and exploitation of the Occupation.

http://www.cpa-iraq.org/regulations/20030909_CPAORD30.pdf - OA Order 30 on Reform of Salary and Employment Conditions of State Employees. The OA wage table is at the very end

***********************************

(apologies for the lack on quotes and voice from Iraqi workers in this. I had to go back to Baghdad so I didnt get a chance to discuss this at length but I will be returning to Basra soon and will collect a statement on the Victory from Hassan Jum'a (he said he'd write one) and hopefully some from other SOC workers. Samir Hanoon was really depressed when I saw him as he'd been threatened by Baathist-loyalists with having his brains blown out at the latest union elections. The loyalists were pissed off with the transparency and absence of space for corruption in the elections)

  ¶ 5:10 PM

  I'm finally finished with last semester.

feel like i should celebrate. Anybody doing anything interesting tonight?



Phoebe asks (in relation to yesterday's YDN orgy of postmodern racial difference/class anxiety) "What am I being taught by this university."

Josh makes good points as well:

Yale undergraduates appalled at the lack of respect paid them by lack of deference and weak labor ethic of the working class New Haveners their school pays them to oversee preparing food for Yalies. And wishing that Yale were as effective as McDonalds at quelling worker militancy and squeezing more productivity out of the help.

No workers are interviewed for this article except to inform on other workers, no students are interviewed who don't work in the dining halls, and no union representative has the chance to explain their policy or their struggle, or to contest the underlying current of this piece: that the people who prepare and serve your food are dangerous invaders in the ivory tower.

Evan Cobb takes an incisive look at why Salovey should NOT be the next Dean of yale college:

If by crown jewel they mean "forefront of eroding mentorship and academic freedom in the liberal-arts education" then right on, Mr. Professor. The policies carried out in the Graduate School by then-Dean now-Provost Hockfield, and by Dean Salovey, have gutted this part of the university, and now we can expect the same sorts of ramrod policy shifts to be deployed in Yale College, too -- though anyone who watched the faculty's vote to change the language requirement and adopt the recommendations of the CYCE knows that this was of course the approach championed by good old Dean Brodhead.
  ¶ 2:16 PM

  I have two immediate responses to this article. One, the flippant, kind of sarcastic of the two, is that it's wonderful that yale has "lax hiring policies" for everyone except the 13 latino workers they promised jobs to when they signed a contract with Locals 34 and 35 back in September and who have now been blacklisted by New Haven's ruling class because of their refusal to cross Local 35's lines.

The second response is a discomfort with the discourses and technologies of "security" as applied to Yale workers and students. They were branded terrorists repeatedly during the last two strikes, particularly in the vile and contemptible attacks by some faculty members against their own graduate students, and this article - discursively associating workers with the drug trade and the implicit possibility of violence, follows in this tradition. It's part and parcel of a particularly pernicious project (massive alliteration, sorry) of policing and containing yale workers and the communities in which they live that seems a fundamental aspect of the way Yale articulates its relationship with the city's 120,000 residents.

I'm interested in and struck by the comments made by the two student dining hall workers who complain about the workers' ability to "talk back" to managerial discipline. Rather than emphasize the tremendous position of privilege that student workers tend to be in relative to non-student workers in the dining halls, which may have something to do with Gentry and Watford's sentiments, but which isn't a particularly productive discussion, i want to think about the way that the union becomes here not merely a discursive shield behind which "lazy workers" may supposedly hide, but a threat to students' well-being, allowing violent, drug-using New Haven to penetrate the protective bubble and shit where Yalies eat. It both scares me and says something very profound about the extent to which this is a hegemonic sentiment among students that the YDN would print this.  ¶ 12:41 PM

  What is it about this blog that is putting the word "communism" in the google banner advertisement? My Durruti quote (an anarchist, not a communist.) My use of the word "fetishize?" I'm fairly certain Marx didn't invent this. My tireless harangues against capitalism? Ok, Touche. Still. You'd think they could reference something more germane, like, oh, smashing yale.

EDIT: now that i got mad, they're callin me a terrorist on my own webpage. Maybe if i type in "santorum" they'll post a link to homophobic assholes

EDIT EDIT: Nope. Still a tearer of wrists  ¶ 11:57 PM

  Google bomb the Yale Office of Public Affairs today!

I love geso  ¶ 9:16 PM

  To be a deserter is to be a renegade, to embrace a DeLeuze and Guatari-esque nomadism, to remove oneself from the battlefield at the potential cost of one's citizenship. It is to reject the logics and structures of war and challenge them by one's absence. On a more grounded level, it's an act of fear as much as if not moreso than resistance. People desert with full knowledge of the consequences of doing so, and they do it because the consequences of doing so are worth the opportunity to escape the consequences of not doing so.

George W. Bush was not a deserter. His absence without leave rejected neither the war nor the privilege which insulated bush from its horror and made possible his paid vacation to parts unkown. His was an action withjout consequences because his privilege was steeped in the machinery which sent so many hundres of thousands of Americans, and so many millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians, to their deaths.

So when Michael Moore calls Bush a deserter while stumping for Wesley "I love the School of Assassins" Clark, i find it extremely problematic. Rather than examine the mechanisms of death and destruction and their connection to the unelected president and his family of Yale Alumni, Moore essentially, in his hagiographic boosterism for the former general whose politics are almost as suspect as his defense of terrorism, torture, and Empire, can only call Bush a sissy in terms which are highly gendered. In doing so, the true horror and scope of Bush's project is obscured by the strivings of a kinder, gentler model of imperial control.  ¶ 4:06 PM

  The state banking commission has approved the NHSB conversion plan without a depositor vote.

Bill Meyerson, spokesman for the Connecticut Center for a New Economy, said union officials plan to continue pursuing an injunction against the conversion, and will urge union members to withdraw their money from the bank. He said the bank should have allowed its depositors to vote.

The Yale Daily News ignores this story altogether. Their lead headline today is that the abyssmal Mexicali grill will now accept flex dollars.  ¶ 11:39 AM

  COOL NEW YALE LABOR-RELATED SITES:

Scientists On Strike

and Phoebe Rounds

check em out  ¶ 5:33 PM

  Yeah, i know this is old news, but

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING???????

I checked out Working Mother's website, but found no evidence of any Linda Mason-related conspiracies  ¶ 5:28 PM

  Clarification: I don't really fit Kirchick's mold for all that's wrong with the left. I don't fetishize "diplomacy to the point of endangering our national security and the security of millions of others." Fuck diplomacy, i believe in nonviolent direct action. Let's liberate 22 million newly colonized iraqis and 250 million Americans yearning for freedom from not only an illegitimate president, but from capitalist accumulation and state tyrranny as well. Thank you.

[steps off soapbox.]   ¶ 12:28 AM

  Shout outs to Ana Munoz for running a three hour long UOC dinner/meeting (thought we weren't doing any more of those -- ) incredibly well. See, that's twice in like two days. Shout outs to Julie and Lauren for hosting a three hour long UOC dinner/meeting in their apartment. Shout outs to Abbey Hudson for being Abbey Hudson.

Working on the paper. Stressed, depressed, sick, haven't seen a roomate in three days, excited about UOC, petrified at thought of organizing again, think i have an ear infection, ate too much food at Julie and Lauren's, am proud to be part of the indecent left, kinda wish i hadn't left Mexico but realize that it was inevitable and feel like me wishing i were there is not particularly fair to the person who is the reason i wish i were there and feel very conflicted and that sucks, am going to do UMOJA again this semester, am exhausted, need to finish my paper, this was really cool. This was absolutely incredible:

During the morning's "Education in the Streets," sponsored by the Undergraduate Organizing Committee, undergraduates sat in mock classrooms set up along College Street to learn about labor issues on campus. Union organizers referred to the stage as "the principal's office" and told supporters to "go to your next period" as they moved between events. UOC members estimated that 500 students were in attendance.


And it was just the beginning.

Ok, well, not quite.

But it isn't over yet.

  ¶ 10:28 PM

  Okay, this is just hilarious. Saul Alinsky Machiavellian? And didn't David Brock renounce this shit? maybe i'll have to edit my senior essay to describe Hillary Clinton as the secret power behind the 71 strike and Yale's war with New Haven.

Like the Black Panthers really wanted or needed Hillary Clinton to orchestrate their supposed "torture and murder." (Eight of the defendenants were acquitted of all wrongdoing right before 35 went on strike, NOT because of Hillary Clinton or their lefty lawyers (which the world needs more of if it needs more lawyers of any stripe - shout out to my Roomate Abbie who's a first year law student.) but because they had no involvement in Rachley's death and were being FRAMED BY COINTELPRO.)

Gah!!  ¶ 9:40 PM

  Just stumbled onto Jason Farago's blog by accident. Anyone who mentions Hardt and Negri in a not entirely condemnatory way is ok in my book.  ¶ 9:21 PM

  What kind of sick hospital would use pepper spray on it's patients? Like you really had to ask...


This is the year 2004, and there are several state-of-the-art programs to de-escalate a frightened or highly agitated mentally ill patient. Yet Yale-New Haven Hospital allows its security to spray pepper spray into patient’s eyes. This is an unethical act.

The third principle from the American Nurses Code of Ethics states, "The nurse promotes, advocates for, and strives to protect the health, safety, and rights of the patient." This is a moral obligation for all nurses.

Needless to say, the use of pepper spray on patients should be abandoned by these hospitals.

As a nurse in New Jersey, the very first thing we told a patient upon admittance into a psychiatric unit was, "We will keep you safe." We showed our patients love and handled them with care. They loved and trusted us. How else could they get well?

Elizabeth Elliott


Of course, the Yale New Haven Register can't let this fly without defending such a generous advertiser and patron, and thus, we are treated to this explanatory and excusatory note:

Editor’s note: Pepper spray is used rarely and only in the most dangerous conditions to subdue patients at the Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital, according to Medical Director Dr. William Sledge. After each incident, a full review is conducted on use of the spray.

To quote Jerry Dammers of the 1970s British 2-Tone Ska Revival Band The Specials, "It doesn't make it alright. It's the worst excuse in the book, and it doesn't make it alright."

Yale New Haven Hospital, "just because you're nobody, doesn't mean that you're no good."  ¶ 4:12 PM

  Holy Shit. Sleater-Kinney now has a webpage! I can die happy.  ¶ 1:10 PM

  I'm really stressed out. Still working on this paper from last semester, kind of wish i were taking time off and possibly in another country. While i'm heartened and excited by recent developments in the UOC and the continuing success of the fight against (Y)NHSB's greedy depositors, I am also feeling kind of useless and like i am not really doing anything worthwhile. Hopefully after i finish this fucking paper and get cracking on mi ensayo senior again, that will change, but i'm feeling frustrated and confused about stuff and not completely sure why. (Or why, given earlier encounters with unwanted Blog audiences, i'm writing this here, Think of it as a tongue-in-cheek cry for help or something. I don't know.)

My two reprieves from paper-fretting this weekend are the party at the Elmhurst tonight and the UOC meeting sunday night. (Woohoo, meetings! Haven't been excited about meetings since ante de la (segunda) huelga.) It's good that we're organizing again. I feel a little ambivalent about my ability/desire to be doing this right now, but shit doesn't get done by itself so i guess i need to suck it up and just move.

EDIT (2):Shout outs to all the UOCistas in court today. Stay strong, kick ass.  ¶ 11:17 AM

  A rarity: a good piece of reporting in the New York Post. (Courtesy of Josh Eidelson.) Wesley Clark is a major supporter of the School of Americas (now called the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security and Cooperation, (WHISC,) formerly in the canal zone but now in Fort Benning, Georgia. At WHISC, erudite dictators and death squad leaders (Manuel Noriega and El Salvador's Robert D'Aubisson, to name but a few) recieve lessons in torture, rape, and murder from the best minds of the imperial american military elite.

One of the most controversial school incidents occurred in November 1989, when a Salvadoran army patrol executed six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter. The United Nations found that 19 of the 26 soldiers graduated from the school.

If almost starting World War III weren't enough, this is a clear reason to be very skeptical of anything this guy says.  ¶ 2:55 PM

  Jesus.  ¶ 12:05 PM

  Courtesy of Katie Kline, La Jornada's coverage of the Daschle-Hagel counterproposal to Bush's Immigracion initiative. Still looks very problematic to me, unless my spanish is leading me to misunderstand key aspects of what i'm reading, which is a definite possibility.

  ¶ 11:56 AM

  Senior Essay-Related Quote of the day:

In its effort to stabilize and defuse radical content in the surrounding
community, Yale follows a well directed community counter-insurgency program
under the direction of an ex -CIA operative. From the surrounding community,
Yale draws working people to serve as secretarial, janitorial and other menial
servants to the corporation. The power wielded by the corporation affects the
entire New Haven community. Yale is the largest employer in the city. It is
also the largest landholder in the city.
The university's domination of the New Haven community reveals only the tip
of the iceburg of Yale's national economic and social power. The university's
portfolio of investments includes some $600,000,000. The trustees of the Yale
Corporation represent directors of the most powerful corporations in America.
Yale alumni and their ruling-class mates form the managerial class which sets
policy for the multi-national corporations and the government which serves
them. What this means is Power... political-economic power over the lives of
the people of New Haven and the world.
Yale's role in the repression of the Black Panther Party and indictment of
the New Haven Nine can only be understood in terms of Yale's interest and
power. Likewise, the appearance of support given Bobby Seale by the
university administration can only be understood when Yale's role in the
community is exposed. Our analysis suggests that the interests represented by
Kingman Brewster, Chaplain Coffin and the host of other liberal Yale
mandarins, are directly threatened by the growth, if not the very ex istence
of the Black Panther Party. The reason is simple: Yale exercises its power
to control and exploit the local community... the Black Panther Party serves
the people and organizes them into a political force. Free Breakfast
programs, free medical clinics and community power make the people less
dependent on, and less subservient to, Yale. This is a threat to the
corporation.
The Yale managers must not only control the New Haven community; they must
also control the students. Because the Yale University-Corporation in in the
vanguard of liberal repression, it is not surprising that the public image
presented is one of rhet orical support for the strikes, demonstrations, etc.
So far these techniques have succeeded in defusing much of the radical
sentiment within the student body. The situation remains contained...though
unresolvable in their terms.


--From Go to School, Learn To Rule (See links.)  ¶ 8:11 PM

  Wasn't this an episode of South Park?  ¶ 7:54 PM

  SHARON AND BRIBERY

The New York Times reports

The indictment accuses Mr. Appel of paying roughly $700,000 to Mr. Sharon's son Gilad, with the aim of getting Mr. Sharon's support for real estate projects.

Mr. Appel "gave Ariel Sharon a bribe in recognition of activities connected to the fulfillment of his public position," the indictment says. He paid "exorbitant funds to the son of Ariel Sharon for the goal of getting action from Ariel Sharon," the indictment says.  ¶ 7:14 PM

  YDN article about the freedom rides found on Bangladeshi website.

Discuss.

Meanwhile, according to Thomas Frampton, the UOC is "back and rocking" and meeting TONIGHT at 9PM in the SJN Room, so y'all better be there.  ¶ 7:04 PM

  Thanks to Evan Cobb for the link.

Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, now has a blog.

Meanwhile, it looks like Richard Trumka, the man who said "We're gonna shove light and truth so far up Yale's ass..." is taking over the California supermarket strike. Great article here.  ¶ 11:02 AM

  EDIT: just a quick addendum. Wouldn't it be cool to have a dean who didn't try to sabotage his or her own students academic careers based on their union activity? A dean whose work actually reflected stuff you were interested in, cared about, and whose approach to life, rather than being an imperious good old boy give zach schwartz-weinstein bizarre inexplicable stares on the street kind of thing, administrative illusion of the survival of a liberal arts education in the age of the globalized university which both indicates the ideological pitfalls of said liberal arts education and ultimately functions as just another new form of 'flexible' management, connects academic work to struggles for social justice? So if not Alicia, consider Steve Pitti, Michael Denning, Hazel Carby, Laura Wexler, Vron Ware, Paul Gilroy...

Actually, i need to go, because i owe Laura Wexler a paper from last semester and really need to get it done.  ¶ 5:56 PM

  Hey, i finally made it onto Yale Insider. Now all i gotta do is possibly crossdress (Maybe that'll get me on the blogroll!)

Eidelson points out that pitting my blog against his doesn't smash Yale (my words, not his, of course.) True, but i'm bored, lonely, old, and procrastinating, and sometimes you need a break from the Yale Smashing

Today's FHUE service and action on the (Y)NHSB was pretty awesome. Hundreds of people making it very clear to Peyton Patterson and Joe "Jay-Z" Zaccagnino that they are not going to be able to buy their way out of this one.

Afterwards, a Helena Herring/Marissa Levendis/Emily Jones axis-of-asskicking organized speakout rocked the Wooolsey Rotunda. Drew King, Alyssa Rosenberg, Emilio Hernandez, Josh Eidelson, HH, ML, Henry Morris, Bob Proto, Laura Smith, David Lee, and Scott Marks, among others (GESO's Elisa Mader, Phoebe Rounds, etc) spoke powerfully about the continuing struggle for social justice.

In New Mexico, a six year long strike looks like it's been settled. Assuming it's a good contract, this is good news.

In LA, however, the supermarket strike continues with no end in sight. Good luck to all of the workers battling Von's, Ralph's, and Albertsons. (A Palm Springs Newspaper reports on people's angry reactions to Safeway's appropriation of MLK.)

For the record, I support ASC for the next dean of Yale College.  ¶ 2:09 PM

  YDN reports on Yalie Bloggers. I get no love. None from Tony Dugs either.

All right then, since when has Little Wild Bouquet been read by ONHSA-backed aldermanic in pitiful attempts to discredit the Honorable Benjamin Goldman Healey?

Yeah, that's what i thought.

EDUCATION IN THE STREETS: making the Yale Left look respectable in comparison since Dan Kruger infiltrated my last blog.  ¶ 1:39 PM

  Bit of a hiatus while i was in Mexico City (which was great, thanks for asking.) Now i'm back in New Haven and sub zero temperatures and fascist restructured knowledge subcontractors abound. Bush wants to put a man on mars and bring back the braceros of yore. Kids are killing kids, but this time, Cheryl and Sandy, it's about more than just juice. Thomas Friedman is still a fascist apologist. (Kurds? What Kurds?)

The Times' coverage of the immigration shit has been rather lame. They should read La Jornada. La Jornada's David Brooks could kick the NYT's pet Neoconservative pig of the same name's ass any day of the week. La Jornada's 12 page exploration of the significance of the new policy and the motivations underlying it should be required reading for anyone who studies this stuff.

Going home to crash for a few. Long day of shopping classes tomorrow. Last semester - HOLY SHIT! I Need a Job!!!  ¶ 9:27 PM

  "Native Americans have been fighting terrorism since 1492." - Margaret Cho  ¶ 6:46 PM

  This essay is extremely interesting and well worth reading for all of us involved in any kind of organizing for social justice concerned with anti-oppression work.  ¶ 6:24 PM

  The Advocate continues its reporting on the impending possibility of impeachment proceedings for Connecticut's corrupt governor, an ex-oficio member of the Yale corporation (which doesn't really mean anything, cause he never shows up at meetings.) Here, the Basses look at the insurgent state house Democrats' impeachment plans, while here the Advocate Staff imagines what an Impeachment porcedure might look like. Among the articles:

Article VII: Illegal Strikebreaking The House of Representatives charges that John G. Rowland, Governor of the State of Connecticut, did abuse the power of, undermine the integrity of, and bring disdain upon the office and trust he held by his course of conduct in illegally using state money to hire strikebreakers during a strike by employees of private nursing homes;   ¶ 11:51 AM