$70,000 would save two local 34 jobs from the arbitrary layoffs which Susan Hockfield and John Pepper are using as a misplaced anti-union strategy - (so much for new cooperation, i guess.) Instead, it's being used by the YCC (see below for an explanation of my continuing enmity towards that farcical excuse of a representative body) to hire perhaps the worst band since, well, Guster. Last year's Wilco performance being the exception, Spring Fling generally reslts in horrible music at a ridiculous cost. Ben Harper sucks. Guster suck. Wyclef hasn't made any good music since Carnival, and that's only cause L-Boogie was involved. For this they spend ridiculous amounts of cash, while the university (fallaciously) claims dire financial conditions. It's kind of sickening. No, scratch that, it's just plain fucked up. I need something else to get me through this bourgeois fantasy of "meritocratic" racial difference.  ¶ 9:47 PM

  Like Josh, I find myself agreeing with Jamie Kirchick's analysis of Gibson's anti-semitism and homophobia.

Here's Zizek's take.
  ¶ 9:38 PM

  ON THE SEMANTICS OF "CONSENSUS"

In 2002, Jon Butler sent a fiercely volatile anti-union mailing to every graduate student in his department. He then wrote an op-ed in the Yale Daily News (I'd link it, but the server seems to be down -- this would never be the case if Jia Lynn were still in charge!) urging professors to condemn the union and make clear their opposition to graduate student organizing in ways which make clear their power in managing and evaluating graduate students' lives. He also rewrote, in the same article, the sordid history of the 1995-6 grade strike, omitting any mention of the vile harassment and intimidation tactics Butler and other members of the faculty used to crush the strike and instead fallaciously and dishonestly painting GESO as the intimidators and purveyors of violence. (Let's not forget his presence at that infamous YCC meeting in the spring of 2002 during which everyone's favorite hypocrites attempted to, while claiming to be 'pro-labor,' resolve that Yale should never enter into a neutrality agreement with anyone ever, testifying in favor of the resolution amidst Matt Robinson's disgustingly pompous claims that he knew more about card check than David Sanders, Lis Pimentel (who vid tried to boot from the room for calling him on his BS,) and Michael Denning, to name a few.) More recently, J-B, whose latest innovation as department chair has been to introduce draconian registration requirements which limit people's ability to do creative and innovative dissertation research, threw a hissy fit at this year's AHA convention in an attempt to prevent the association from urging Yale to negotiate a fair process with GESO.

I wish I could believe that Butler was a "new consensus builder," as this Herald article claims, that this statement were valid and made in good faith:

Butler suggested that regardless of his position in the past which he stressed has been "concerned more with tactics than the issue itself," his stance on graduate unionization in general will be one where, "the issue of unionization is an issue for students to settle. Students appear to have many different points of view on that question and they need to settle that question."

Given the history of Butler's interactions with graduate students in his department and what appears to be his vision for the future of the academy though, I doubt that he will actually practice what he is preaching. It looks like the next year is going to be combatative and crazy, and i'm feeling ambivalent about the fact that i'm not going to be around for it.  ¶ 3:01 PM

  work work work so minimal postings. Deal.  ¶ 2:26 PM

  The UFCW locals on strike have reached a tentative agreement with Supermarket executives.  ¶ 1:27 PM

  1971 REDUX

The Yale Daily News reports that Yale is once again attempting to build a thirteenth and fourteenth college.

Last time this was tried, it was halted because of massive community opposition. With the stregnth of the movement for a social contract this time around, i wonder how people will react.

911 IS A JOKE
The YDN reports on allegations of racial discrimination in the New Haven Fire Department.

GET UP

is getting bashed in the campus press, which follows a certain pattern which seems to have emerged at Yale in the form of Francis Menton's 1972 op-ed column in the YDN "No Raises for Fat TA's" but which was most likely present far earlier at places like Michigan and Wisconsin where TAs began organizing and successfully won recognition in the late sixties and very early seventies. For more on the culture of hatred against PhD students, check out Kathy M. Newman's great essay in Will Teach For Food. I will not link any of the screed here because i don't really have the time to adress it adequately. I do want to call folks' attention to this great piece in the Daily Pennsylvanian by two professors, though.

Finally, the YDN's Bess Hinson reports on Kat's letter.

Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky said though she has not seen the e-mail, "as an accusation, it is quite unfair."

"[The administration] addressed [the intrusion] pretty aggressively at the time," Klasky said. "There were several meetings in trying to ensure free speech and that no hate crimes exist, and President Levin took it very seriously at the time and continues to take it very seriously."

Shame on Yale.  ¶ 12:37 PM

  LA Times is reporting a possible end to the supermarket strike. Let's hope this isn't what the settlement looks like:

The deal on the table would trim supermarket employees' health benefits and create a second tier of new workers who would earn less than those hired before the dispute began, according to sources who know the rough details of the proposed contract.   ¶ 1:08 PM

  SHAME ON SLEDGE (AGAIN)

These kinds of alarmist histrionics belong in the dustbin with Rod Paige. Sledge is really out of control. To allege that people who protest israeli war crimes are "violent" while hosting an IDF general merits a special kind of distorted logic award.

Calhoun Master William Sledge said the security measures were warranted.

"We had no idea what we were dealing with and whether or not there was a potential for real violence," Sledge said in an e-mail. The college had begun receiving messages denouncing Almog as a war criminal, Sledge said, and he was worried that a large-scale protest would materialize.  ¶ 11:46 AM

  GET UP, GET ON UP GET ON THE SCENE

The strike at Penn starts today. I'm planning on heading down tomorrow to show some support.  ¶ 11:42 AM

  Unite HERE  ¶ 11:36 AM

  UNH president DeNardis on the Globalization of the academy.

Another critical issue is the role of higher education in the global economy. From the international trade perspective, higher education is now seen as a tradable commodity that should be regulated by the World Trade Organization. By agreement of world leaders, higher education will be included in the next round of WTO agreements. Ultimately, the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services will mean that nations will no longer have full control over higher education in their territories in ways that would be obstacles to free trade. GATS is designed to increase trade liberalization internationally.

As in the case of trading goods, advanced industrialized societies with stable higher education systems and strong entrepreneurial institutions, like the United States, are in a strong position to export higher education to developing countries. But difficult ethical problems will arise if developing countries have to ensure a trade-friendly environment for foreign higher education investors in ways that may undermine internal national values and priorities.

Educators in many nations are fearful that the jurisdictional scope of WTO and GATS regulation to align global higher education policy and practice with trade policy and practice will lead to an "ethics of the marketplace" at the expense of academic and cultural standards.

Globalization has transformed one American industry after another. In American higher education, our academic programs and our revenue streams are changing with the increase in student mobility and the freer exchange of knowledge across borders. Nevertheless, we have a moral obligation as educators to ensure that fully accessible, good quality education is available, regardless of who one is, where one is, or what one’s station in life might be, because it is indispensable for our well-being on the planet

Now that's some scary shit. DeNardis doesn't critiquie the commodification of higher ed, just kinda takes it for granted. His position that we have to all have equal access to this commodity is thus profoundly and characteristically (neo)liberal, as is the erasure of global and local educational inequality or any sense of education - teaching and learning - as work. Clearly, what he needs is some class instruction.

(Cause "We got to GET UP right now/Turn the system upside down/'sposed to be fed up right now... everybody GET UP" Same deal stands. You identify these lyrics, you get a meal.)
  ¶ 7:30 PM

  Naomi Wolf on The Silent Treatment.

I called Dean Brodhead again and asked him if anyone had known about Bloom’s approaches to students. He said that in his tenure as dean, “no one came to me” with a formal complaint. I said that was not what I was asking. We went back and forth. Finally, he said in exasperation: “Am I saying that no one ever went to anyone in the whole of history? I am not in a position to answer it.” I asked again. Eventually he exclaimed, “Naomi, please understand I am not in a position to say. I am not telling you there might not be students who share your thoughts or even your experience about this. I am saying they did not come to me.”

I asked Dean Brodhead how often the committee met last year. “It met more than no times and not many times.”

“What’s ‘not many’?”

“This isn’t a court.”

“Are these matters of public record?”

“No, they are not. To open the matter to public record is to expose the person who made the charge.” Not true; many universities make statistics about sexual-misconduct complaints available without naming people. “How do I know as a concerned alum, since these proceedings are confidential, that there are actual penalties?”

“I am an honorable and truthful person. These things are dealt with.”

“But how many complaints are brought?”

“I can’t answer that . . . I’m not in a position to give you the statistical information. I have no . . . the number of cases . . . I have not gathered a statistical abstract.”

“Can the student’s attorney be present?”

“The process is not designed as a judicial one . . . We do not have attorneys present.” I told him my story—again—and asked what he would do.

“Harold Bloom is someone I almost never see,” he said.

“Are you not concerned about other young women?” I asked.

“Do you want me to call him?”

“I am asking what you think is appropriate,” I said.

Because of the time lapse, he said, he would not have even an informal conversation with Bloom on behalf of students today. Then, as if he had never heard of the letter that had begun my first conversation with him months before, Brodhead noted that I could send him a letter.

“I’m going to have a successor,” he said with relief. “You can send a letter to my successor.”

The struggle continues:

To President Levin,

I heard what you said about me at the recent meeting you had with Concerned Black Students. When they brought up last year's upside-down flag harassment, you quieted their concerns by saying that 1) you had met with me, 2) that I'm fine, and 3) that the incident is now "swept under the rug."

Who gave you the right to speak for others? Oh, I forgot, that's your job - you do it every day. Without their consent, without their knowing, in fact oftentimes against their very wishes and well-being. Such is the job of being president of Yale, being best friends with W. Bush, being responsible for crushing efforts to create democracy and equality at this very institution, a top-down, for-profit corporation in disguise as a non-profit school. What are the longest-lasting, most hidden, and most dangerous lessons that most Yale undergraduates learn?

But I digress. We talked about all this at our meeting in the fall. I told you, and Nina Glickson, most of my concerns with Yale. You responded to each concern with a shallow justification. When faced with the question of why there's only one tenured black woman faculty, you both denied it, then tried to come up with names of others, but failing to, because there are no others beyond Professor Hazel Carby. You ended the meeting by telling me that once upon a time, you too were idealistic and had "similar" values to mine. Please - don't exploit empathy to bring attention to you being helpless in your role as Yale president, helpless to change the system which has made you what you are, all the while knowing about the consequences - of Yale threats against graduate student organizers, of Yale investments in unethical corporations, of Yale police racially profiling New Haven residents. You were mostly just relieved that I, at that point, was not going to press charges or raise a further ruckus about how Yale dealt with the upside-down flag harassment and ensuing incidents.

You reassured Concerned Black Students that I was fine (which you determined from your one-hour meeting with me, most of which was taken up by you rationalizing the discrepancy between your "real self" and the role you are expected to play). What do you know about being fine? Being terrified of being beaten up for your political beliefs? Being arrested by the Yale police for no reason except your skin color? Being raped, only to have your rapist go forth, free and anonymous, while your charges are dismissed, and you suffer from trauma of deep violation and violence the rest of your life? Being bombarded by hate mail and controversy because you, a faculty member, wrote an editorial with an anti-war stance? Of course I'm fine. I am breathing, going to school, going about my usual business. But I'm not fine, in that I will forever remember the moments waiting inside my bedroom for them to go away, knowing that it is like this, a hundred times worse, for countless others who have suffered harassment, discrimination, and assault at the hands of Yale, and the racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism it simultaneously cultivates and neglects to address. I'm not fine, in that I know that those men who visited my room, and others who have raped, assaulted, and harassed here on campus, will go on to live lives of privilege granted to them by their Yale degrees, anonymous and unburdened by the consequences of their actions.

You think that because the five men who came to my room went through internal disciplinary procedures, that it's now all "swept under the rug." It was NOT an isolated incident. Similar incidents, and daily acts of discrimination - based on gender, race, sexuality, religion, and political beliefs - happen all the time at Yale. And there are no structures of accountability, of support, of testimony, of justice, of prevention. Who is affected, marginalized, silenced? Students, faculty, and staff of color; women; non-straight people; New Haven residents; people who stand up for what they belief in. There is so much at stake. The harassment, assault, and discrimination continue, in all their forms.

So: 1) your meeting with me does not in any way excuse you from addressing the demands of Concerned Black Students; 2) do not speak for others when you, being "on the top," never have to imagine what it's like to be "on the bottom"; and 3) what happened will never be "swept under the rug" as long as Yale continues to perpetuate structural and cultural inequalities.

Speaking for myself,
Katherine Lo
  ¶ 7:06 PM

  NEA head Reg Weaver calls on Bush to fire Rod Paige over his stetement that the 2.7 million member organization was "terrorist" on monday.

Education Secretary Rod Paige is wrong about the National Education Association.

We have heard from thousands of teachers and educators who came home from working in their schools on Monday only to hear themselves and their professional organization referred to as "terrorists" by the top federal education official.

Our members say that once again this national leader has insulted them, this time beyond repair, with words filled with hatred -- and merely because they raised legitimate concerns about the president's so-called "No Child Left Behind" law.

Our members remain dedicated to improving education for the millions of children in our public schools. We will continue to insist on fixing the law's inadequate funding and unworkable rules that stand in the way of a quality education for all children.

Our members say they deserve more than unfair labels and mean-spirited apologies. The administration must be made to understand the gravity of the charge leveled at 2.7 million patriotic American citizens.

And our members say that if the Bush administration cannot work with the public school employees who educate these children every day, then it is time to find new leadership who can.

Our members are the NEA, and on behalf of them, I ask President Bush to express his regret to the nation's educators and demand that Secretary Paige step down.  ¶ 6:15 PM

  SHIT.  ¶ 4:02 PM

  I wish this were true. But thes systematic silence about rape and sexual harrasment at this university leaves me skeptical at best. Plus, it's hockfield, and we already know she's a liar.

This isn't particularly convincing either. Anderson has several incorrect facts and completely ignores the anti-union campaign report (see links) and the findings of the Academic Labor Board. Moreover, her vitriol, which directly echoes the propaganda of Levin, Hockfield, Salovey, Appelquist, and Rodin, suggests the kinds of fear and intimidation happening in her department more than any real commitment to anti-union ideology.

On the bright side, Anderson's column runs opposite this gem from Bob Proto.

Yale is trying to persuade its own graduate teachers that change is impossible, and that resistance is futile. It’s the same message they’ve tried on us for years, and we proved wrong. Change is possible. Now, it’s GESO’s time.
  ¶ 12:02 PM

  Bush's education secretary Rod Paige called the NEA, the largest teachers' union in the united states, a "terrorist organization" today in a private meeting with 49 governors (including everybody's favorite pomo suburban Nixon clone, John Rowland.) The NEA isn't particularly happy about this.

"It is morally repugnant to equate those who teach America's children with terrorists. NEA is 2.7 million teachers and educators who are fighting for children and public education. Yet this is the kind of rhetoric we have come to expect from this Administration whenever one challenges its worldview."

Neither is John Sweeney.

The Bush Administration would like to label all those who disagree with it as "terrorists" in order to cover up its policies which are harmful to working families and to divert attention from its inability to create good jobs. The fact is that 11 million American children try to learn each day in crumbling schools. Instead of labeling our teachers as "terrorists," the Bush Administration should get its priorities in order by fully funding its No Child Left Behind Act, investing in schools and infrastructure in this country, and stopping handouts of millionaire tax breaks to the ultra-rich.  ¶ 9:16 PM

  Alyssa Rosenberg's and Sheneane Ragin's campaign for Ward 22 co-chairs has a blog here (click on "events.") While I don't believe in electoral politics and will not endorse any political campaign on this site because of this, I also think Mae Ola Riddick was a sucky alderperson and that Bruce Alexander would be very happy if she won an election of any kind, so make of that what you will.  ¶ 9:06 PM

  GET-UP strike vote tonight

  ¶ 3:49 PM

  "Yale's workers hardly constitute a normal union. In fact, they're not really a union at all. They're a movement."

-Sherman Chickering, "Striking Out," The New Journal, October 10, 1971  ¶ 8:12 PM

  Meanwhile, across the pond  ¶ 1:13 PM

  Things are heating up at Penn.

About 75 graduate students abruptly stood up during the meeting. Over the objections of trustee chair James Riepe, one belted out a harangue that dressed down the trustees for blocking the students' attempts to unionize.

After the students sat down, the trustees resumed, and unanimously elected Princeton University provost Amy Gutmann as Penn's next president. She will succeed Judith Rodin on July 1.

Once the meeting let out, a small welcoming band of students led Gutmann and the trustees across the Penn campus in University City. Students stood along the route and waved, blue and red Penn balloons danced in the teasingly warm air, and the graduate-student protesters tagged along in blue shirts that read, "Penn Works Because We Do." They competed with the band's sunny rendition of school songs by chanting "Count the votes!"

Provost Robert Barchi claims that students are being "manipulated and coopted" by unions. Guess it says a lot about his faith in the people who he admits to his grad school and who teach his undergraduates that he doesn't think they know when they're being screwed over and when they're fighting for justice...

  ¶ 1:05 PM

  Procrastination

Because nobody asked for it...

...the links are now alphabetized

  ¶ 6:34 PM

  Phoebe deconstructs the Herald's puff piece on Dick Brodhead. Personally, i was dissapointed that Matt Ferraro left out those moments in the 90's when his Deanship saw fit to sabotage his own students' academic careers because of their union activity, writing them bad reccomendations in which he claimed that union organizing demonstrated an unwillingness to listen to reason. For more on this outrageous behavior, check out Corey Robin's essay "Blacklisted and Blue" in Steal This University  ¶ 4:52 PM

  Cool article about the collaboration between HERE Local 100 and the Restaurant Opportunities Center, ROC-NY.

Is a settlement near in the cali grocer strike? And on whose terms?  ¶ 11:42 AM

  The Rich Get Richer

As NHSB prepares for conversion, New Haven's elite stand to make millions.

The prospectus says the following directors and officers intend to buy shares:

• Peyton R. Patterson, chairwoman, president and CEO, $500,000 or 50,000 shares.

• Nathaniel D. Woodson, bank director, president of UIL Holdings Corp. (United Illuminating Co.), $600,000 or 60,000 shares.

• Joseph A. Zaccagnino, director, president of Yale-New Haven Hospital, $250,000 or 25,000 shares.

• Julia M. McNamara, director, president of Albertus Magnus College, $250,000 or 25,000 shares.

I'm shocked. shocked.  ¶ 11:27 AM

  RECLAIM OUR CAMPUS!



A year ago today, two hundred undergraduates gathered in front of Richard Levin's office to take the campus back from administrators keen on globalizing yale and yaleizing the globe. We haven't won yet, but we're still fighting today.

  ¶ 8:38 PM

  Is it irrational of me to think that I don't merit comparison to academics who union-bust their own students simply because of my criticism fro doing so, or my belief that such actions cheapen a scholarly commitment to social justice? You decide.  ¶ 8:16 PM

  Weapons Of Class Instruction IV

(post edited cause i decided i had more to say and wanted to post the kickass picture.)

Yale Provost Susan Hockfield and VP for Development Charles Pagnam traveled to Hong Kong last week to visit welathy alumni and stregnthen Richard Levin's project of globalizing the university, soliciting donations from wealthy Chinese alumni.

"They are extremely gracious and interested in the University. They view the University as a real world treasure. They see Yale as a world leader."

(Parenthetically, if this is true:

Pagnam said he returned from the trip optimistic about Yale's financial health. The University is financially ahead of where it was at this time last year, he said.

"Our cash is looking much better than last year," Pagnam said.

then why do they need to lay off 50-80 workers?)

While Pagnam and Hockfield were galavanting around the global South renewing the university's ties with the wealthy transnational business elite, the university's own international students came together yesterday in an incredibly powerful speak-out to make public the ways in which the complicity of Yale's employment and research structures with Federal immigration restrictions makes such travel very difficult for them. These students and researchers called on the university to honor its obligations to its students and push for visa reform. In doing so, they made visible the possibilities of an other globalization, a many-headed hydra of connectedness, multiplicity, and solidarity which posits itself into being in opposition to Yale's disastrous corporatization and imperial restructuring and the role which the exploitation of international student researchers on h-1b visas plays in the labor structure of this globalized corporation.

At the GESO CC last night, I and the other UOCistas were struck anew by the urgency and the power of this fight. The violence which Yale is doing to the people whose work makes it work is violence done to all of their students. We're in this fight until we win.

  ¶ 2:02 PM

  YOU NEED TO GET-UP RIGHT NOW AND MOVE WITH THIS YES THIS MEANS YOU!

(I'll buy dinner for the first person who identifies this reference.)  ¶ 1:26 PM

  GET UP WILL STRIKE
(edited cause I thought of more stuff I wanted to say)

Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania will strike for two days next week to pressure the university to drop the appeals and count the ballots of their election on its 1-year anniversary. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports

"Graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania plan to strike for two days next week in a bid to shut down the campus and pressure the university to drop its legal opposition to a grad-student union.

The students hope to post enough pickets at Penn's nine main entrances to dissuade undergraduates, faculty and other employees from crossing the line and holding classes.

They also plan "civil" public demonstrations along the route of a parade scheduled for tomorrow on campus for incoming Penn president Amy Gutmann."

Perhaps the most important sentence in the entire article is this one:

Since [the 2000 NYU decision], the makeup of the NLRB has changed from a Democratic to a Republican majority, and Penn decided that appealing its case would be worthwhile.

The Inquirer thus links what's happening at Penn to the larger structural processes by which corporations like Yale are trying to destroy union organizing campaigns by exploiting warm relations with the state apparatus of control and authoritization to legislate union drives out of existence. We're also seeing a powerful response from graduate unions who are not only organizing to fight this corporate legislative assault, but are also developing strategies of winning recognition whatever the NLRB rules.

  ¶ 11:57 AM

  W. of C. I. IIIa
It disgusts me that the YDN refused to publish peices by GESO members this week because of the claikm that Shalini's piece made them redundant. Most of the opinion peices in today's paper - particularly rachel wasser's response to Kirchick's ridiculously self-important and slavish attack on the levin-wmd protest, were surprisingly good, but could easily have been published tomorrow or the day after. With an NLRB decision looming and things heating up at schools throughout the country, graduate student unionization and pay equity, which is an issue of importance for everyone on this campus, merit discussion. Perhaos the YDN would find these issues less redundant were they to remove their heads from their  ¶ 9:28 PM

  WEAPONS OF CLASS INSTRUCTION III: The Pay Equity Speakout

About sixty graduate students and about twenty undergraduates spoke out today for pay equity, for a Yale which valorizes teaching rather than devaluing it by paying experienced TAs less than inexperienced ones, bouncing people out of a job halfway through the semester, not paying people for weeks, and otherwise cynically manipulating job descriptions and classifications in anticipation of a probable unfavorable NLRB ruling on the impounded election at Columbia, Brown, and Penn, which would allow the administration to fallaciously claim once again that graduate teaching assistants are not workers and thus do not have the right to organize. It was richard Levin, who, immediately following the NYU decision, urged that university not to respect the ruling, and urged other campuses to appeal any NLRB elections among graduate teachers and researchers to the board, it was Levin who was George W Bush's first overnight guest at his White House, (Bush later slept at Levin's during the 2001 commencement exercises) and Bush reciprocated by appointing an extremely right wing national labor relations board (the latest of which was a recess appointment and thus not even subject to congressional approval.) The administration's inequitable pay structure is not only a devaluing of our education, it's an attempt to destroy the right to organize.

Today, Tasha eloquently and powerfully explained why undergrads are going to fight the administration on this issue and fight alongside GESO and the rest of the federation to stop the casualization of work at Yale and make real our vision of a better university.

Brenda Carter, as always, laid things out incredibly powerfully. Evan Cobb took notes:

3. Brenda Carter, for her concluding remarks before the march to the Dean's office:

I can tell you what will happen over the next ten years. This academy will become even more white, even more male, and even wealthier, and that's not an academy I'm excited about being a part of.

I think Phillip's comments about the history department, Elisa's comments, Jen's comments, and the woman from poli sci who i didn't know (Gemma?)'s comments were really powerful as well.

I'm excited about comin back in two weeks with a couple hundred undergrads and taking our education back into the streets. Evan's concluding remarks after we delivered the letter to Salovey are a call to arms:

come back with anyone and everyone who is adversely effected by this ridiculous pay structure in which the more experience you have, the less you're paid. It is wrong and we will fix it.  ¶ 6:02 PM

  Riot in Sydney after the death of a 17 year old aboriginal teenager.  ¶ 2:37 PM

  From the onion:

Household Death Toll Climbs To One
NEW HAVEN, CT—Police announced Monday that the accidental death of 68-year-old Joseph Lang increased the death toll at 320 E. Oak St. to a staggering one. "We retrieved Mr. Lang's body from his bathtub, where it appears he slipped and hit his head," police officer Chris Ramsey said. "Although we don't expect to find any additional victims, we're continuing our 48-hour search of the two-story home, just in case." Lang is survived by his wife Helen, who still resides in the deathtrap.

Funny thing is, Oak Street used to be a real street in New Haven, till Richard Lee and Yale had it bulldozed so they could build a freeway to nowhere.

also, just for kicks, here's abbey:

  ¶ 4:12 PM

 

ouch.

Every year, i tell them to get The Coup or Sleater Kinney or Outkast or Kweli. Every year they get sucky ass crap like Guster or Ben Harper (Wilco is a solid, solid, band, but i couldn't see them play cause i was writing an already overdue paper.) I mean, come on. If you are going to blow 60,000 bucks on getting a band to play here, can you at least get a good band?

  ¶ 3:55 PM

  WHY SHALINI UPPU ROCKS

Amazing, amazing guest column by the one and only Shalini in today's YDN

Two particularly awesome moments:

But what is most certainly my battle is how my education suffers when the graduate students who lead my sections and give me feedback have little or no institutional voice in how educational decisions are made.

and

So the administration's expensive and unrelenting fight against relatively powerless graduate students is really a message to the entire academy. Who's guilty of the dirty politics now? The implication for undergraduates is alarming. Just think of the possibilities if all the money the administration is funneling into its anti-GESO campaign was instead spent on, say, paid teacher training or (dare I say it) hiring more tenure-track professors.

Shalini's editorial shifts the discourse in the campus press enormously and is a dope prelude to a massive undergrad presence at tomorrow's pay equity action.

Given how horiible on GESO every single member of this "short list" for the next Yale College dean is, (Cott and Butler's union busting antics are particularly notorious, which in Cott's case is sad, cause her scholarship is supposed to be really important and it's a shame to see respected feminist scholars use the kind of rhetoric and tactics she employed back in '95-'96 against organizations fighting for things like dependent health care, child care, and increased tenuring and hiring of women faculty) it's clear that the University understands the importance of keeping us undergrads under control. It's time to make that a very difficult endeavor.

Disclaimer: (actually, i don't know much about Bailyn, but given that he was on the Brodhead Committee, and given his attempts to misrepresent our criticisms of the exploitation of transient teachers and teaching in the YDN, we can extrapolate that he's probably not a big fan.



Everyone should read Abdelrahman Munif's Cities of Salt  ¶ 12:48 PM

  NEWSFLASH: STOP $ SHOP SETTLES

Looks good.

[Local 1445 President Richard] Charette said a key union victory was to fend off proposals by the company that employees begin to shoulder some of their health insurance costs. The company will continue to pay for 100 percent of health insurance under the proposed agreement, he said.

"We're relieved and happy with this situation now. Nobody wanted to strike," said Mary Daley, a worker in the Dedham store.

The new contract affects 40,000 workers.

The 220-store chain is owned by the Dutch grocery giant Ahold.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union also represents workers who have been involved in a four-month strike-lockout at grocery stores in Southern California.   ¶ 8:19 PM

  Weapons of Class Instruction, Part 2.

Kenneth J. Saltman's article "The Securitized Student" is useful in thinking about the security discourse as applied to educational institutions and their interactions with corporate power. Saltman deals not with the university here, but with public schools and the relationship between the commercialization of public education and what Ellen Meskins Wood calls "the New Imperialism."

Stephen Metcalfe makes fantastic criticism of crony capitalism between McGraw-Hill and three generations of Bushes. However, he misses the chance to explore the implications of how John Negroponte, who left McGraw-Hill to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a leading figure in the “War on Terrorism,” participated in the 1980s in what are regarded in the international community as crimes against humanity and U.S. state-backed terrorism in Honduras. 7 It is imperative that future work on corporatization of schools consider the relationship between the disciplining of particular populations in the U.S. through the mechanisms of capitalist schooling and how this relates to the disciplining of populations in other nations through both direct coercion and the production of consent that is largely accomplished through cultural production. It is also time for the global dynamics of discipline to be understood in relation to how the discourse of discipline, drawn from the market-based metaphor of “fiscal discipline” and the military ideal of physical and behavioral discipline, is the basis for the most recent educational reforms.

Negroponte, Yale Class of 1960 is the current U.S. advisor to the united nations. His expertise with terrorism clearly demonstrates that it takes one to know one.

(Workplace is a pretty interesting online publication about academic labor. Folks interested in the history of the Yale fight might want to look at this article by Antony Dugdale, this article by Joseph Entin, and this essay by former GESO organizer Cynthia Young.)  ¶ 6:59 PM

  Negotiations continue, as contracts for 43,000 workers represented by five UFCW locals expire. The company wants to eliminate time and a half for weekend work, and what's worse, slash healthcare benefits to the point that they would be unnaffordable for most workers. If a contract isn't settled, there will be a strike vote today, authorizing union leaders to call job actions in the future.  ¶ 11:54 AM

  This is pretty funny.

I started off Valentine's day being really, really depressed. Depression shifted to frustration and a shallow and adolescent rage. Met with Rebecca, then i walked home, and clogged the toilet. While my friends enjoyed their evenings of love, wine, and sex, I frantically ran from apartment door to apartment door in my building, knocking furiously, attempting to locate a plunger. (Never try to unclog a toilet by hand, even if you're wearing a glove or garbage bag or whatever, which i was. It just doesn't work.) Finally I called the old, wheelchair-bound woman who lives beneath me. She thought i was calling to complain about the noise from her TV (which has often woken me up at 5 in the morning) -- she's kind of hard of hearing and needs to turn it up really loud. Before i told her i just wanted to borrow her plunger, she told me that her husband had died just a few days ago (he was living in a nursing home, and so i never met him.) I felt horrible. She's moving to a nursing home on the other side of town. I borrowed her plunger, spet about a half an hour trying to figure out how to unclog the toilet before i realized that i'd basically taken care of it with the hand in garbage bag method but just had to fix the fusher mechanism in the tank so that the toilet would flush again. Anyway, i did that, took a shower, put my clothes in the washing machine, mopped the floor, and headed to campus to get some food (nione at home.) Ate dinner at ivy noodle at like 10 in the evening by myself, went to the greenhouse party for like five minutes, got dragged by Irma into this ridiculous dance party in the basement of one of the residential colleges, left quickly. Stood online for shades and then left, deciding it would be a good idea to get work done instead, but wound up here, at this computer cluster, instead of doing work at home. The euphoria of having sucessfully unclogged the toilet has somewhat worn off and I hope tomorrow doesn't suck so much.  ¶ 12:38 AM

  EDIT: Just so y'all know I aint some kinda Ivy league elitist, there are grad union campaigns at GW, Penn State, University of Washington, UIUC, (currently negotiating their first contract!), UNC, UT, Indiana University, Florida State, and Purdue. Last, but not least, is the campaign at tufts. With the exception of the GEO at UIUC, this list omits mention of the dozen or so pioneering recognized graduate employee unions, to whose web sites you can find links here. The University of Iowa's Campaign to Organize Graduate Students (COGS)/UE Local 896 has a particularly cool website.  ¶ 9:41 PM

  Sitting in SML, trying to get work done, think about organizing, and process the ups and downs of the last week. February 14th is fairly depressing for me, but the 15th marks a more important milestone, equally ambivalent but in a sense hopeful as well. Not sure if i'm being coherent, and, given the recent scrutiny of this blog by people (and i use the term advisedly) all too keen to label me a jew hater in their quest to obliterate any non-zionist forms of jewish identity and equate any kind of solidarity with the palestinian freedom struggle as support for suicide bombing of israeli civilians, i'm no longer sure how coherent i can afford to be. Once again i am seeing massive chaos on the horizon, as the stop $ shop contract deadline looms hours away, and the national movement to reshape the academic division of labor and bring social justice to academic workplaces continues to fight the Bush NLRB and opportunistic university administrators intent on continuing to exploit contingent academic labor at Penn, at Columbia, and at Yale, where one of the oldest and strongest of the organizing drives at private universities not only continues an uphill battle against an 11 billion dollar corporate institution through pathbreaking research and innovative alliances, but continues to win real victories along the way to recognition. Last february 15th, ten million people took to the streets to envision an alternative structure of world government, to constitute another superpower. That struggle will continue on March 20th, but it continues every day here at Yale, and on the streets of New Haven, New York, Toronto, Dakha, Mumbai, London, D.F., Jerusalem, Genoa, Montreal, Chicago, Johnannesburg, Seattle, and thousands of cities and towns in global networks of resistance that are constantly being forged and reforged. So have a happy valentines day (however much that holiday is inextricable from the capitalist reification of desire and attatchment and patriarchical constructions of love and posession.) But don't forget to observe February 15th too.  ¶ 2:57 PM

  43,000 Stop & Shop workers - 5,000 in connecticut, may strike tonight. Should this happen, BOYCOTT STOP $ SHOP  ¶ 12:48 PM

  GESO is a weapon of class instruction. The UOC is a weapon of class instruction. Josh Eidelson is a weapon of class instruction. Evan Cobb is a weapon of class instruction. YaleInsider is a weapon of class instruction. Alyssa Rosenberg is a weapon of class instruction. Phoebe Rounds is a weapon of class instruction.

"Just like i told you/You must learn." - (krs-one)  ¶ 3:26 PM

  Narrative is more bankrupt than your bourgeois morality and
o the scale of Mr Right and Mr Right Now i am
clearly Mr Left and (maybe just Left cause we aint in to honorifics round these parts)
fuckin tired of elitist racism in guise of
ivy league gentility
dunno if thats a word, don't care
cause i have seen to much shit in the last
three years to believe your lies
and when we were getting
pepper sprayed and beat by the cops on 5th avenue
Richard Levin was inside the waldorf with zedillo
talking about markets and democracy
JC was in jail for three days, MSM got pepper sprayed in the mouth
and i was worried about Ella and Anna
and everyone else
the thousands in the streets flanked by cops in riot gear who charged the crowd after making us wait in front of the plaza hotel for two hours and started beating people.
Richard Levin's suit has been provided by the proceeds form the Sudanese civil war, Russian Privatization, the cracked hands of a sixteen year old textile maquladora worker in ciudad juarez sewing those white letters onto blue cotton and disappearing into oblvion
and by the engineering student suffering from cancer who sat in hospital beds panicking unsure about whether he would lose health care benefits while chemo
kept him out of the lab.
Richard Levin was there
when the oligarchs dressed in suits
hair slicked back in respectable fashion
made their pronouncements about austerity and structural adjustment
when the blood of the third world minbgled with that of the second until the terms no longer held any meaning
You can take your private equity and shove it up your ass. How many of us have to kill ourselves before you grow up and become a human being?
Mr Levin, i have found your weapons of mass destruction. Please inform the president. You can let him know before March 2005 even. It wasn't hard just took a dozen years work by tons of researchers and organizers.
The denial of health care is a weapon of mass destruction
slumlordism is a weapon of mass destruction
medical debt is a weapon of mass destruction
war profiteering (how many wars, i wonder) is a weapon of mass destruction
Baca water rights was a weapon of mass destruction
threats of deportation is a weapon of mass destruction
urban imperialism is a weapon of mass destruction (this gourmet heaven gives me migraines)
union busting is a weapon of mass destruction
redlining is a weapon of mass destruction
Tell the president, Rick. Tell him that all of these weapons of mass destruction were discovered today in Woodbridge Hall.
This is a class war on corporate and state terror tactics
Like we said in new york when you were drinking champagne and joking with Sandy Weil and Strobe Talbott while we were dodging pepper spray and batons,
"the world needs us in the streets
we won't back down
we won't retreat."
And like Jim Lawson said we
won't be your
plantation
anymore.  ¶ 11:56 PM

  Yale is threatening to lay off members of Local 34, pointing to a budget "defecit." (Not to be confused with any actual loss of money.) Job Security languuage won by the union last september makes it really costly to lay folks off who've been around more than six years or who are in departments of more than 25 people. A large layoff of C&Ts would be a pretty blatant anti-union gesture given Mr. Pepper's current rhetoric of cooperation and best practices and all that crap Yale will probably drop in two seconds if anyone challenges their power. Local 34 was not consulted about these cuts, which seems like a pretty clear indication of what Yale is thinking. Laura Smith and Bob Proto both suggest that the problem lies in the top-heavy structure of the university's management.

Laura Smith, president of Local 34, which represents the clerical workers, was upset because she said the union has not been brought in to help determine where the cuts can be made.

A big part of the union settlement concerned establishing "best practices" to achieve a working relationship between labor and management to end their long history of bitter disputes. Smith attributed that acrimonious history to a lack of consultation with the union and she said the present situation compounds that.

Both she and Local 35 President Bob Proto said the university should look at management for savings.

"They should take a hard look at their vertical structure and mix. That’s where they’ll find waste and duplication," Proto said.  ¶ 6:27 PM

  Over one hundred undergraduates attended 12 "State of The University" forums last night in each college. Our forum in Saybrook had 13 undergraduates and the amazing Brenda Carter. Rebecca Livengood rocks. This is the largest purely GESO-related activity we have ever done, (if "purely GESO related actually has any meaning" - the issues raised by GESO's organizing are directly and immediately pertinent to undergraduates, workers, the new haven community, and the future of higher education, so i guess te line is kind of arbitrary.) I'm excited about where we move from here. To quote DJ T-Framp and Jeffrey Boyd,

"The UOC is just one wing of a wider social movement," UOC member Thomas Frampton '06 said. "We're working together with other social groups in the community to create positive change."

Jeffrey Boyd GRD '04 said he would like to see a stronger alliance develop between GESO and undergraduate students.

"Undergraduates have always been the heart of this campus," Boyd said. "I'm excited to see our relationship with them deepen in an effort to better [the University]."

This great picture of Phoebe, Mary Catherine, and an anonymous undergrad was on the front page of the YDN today.

  ¶ 11:58 AM

  I love it when people redefine Jewishness specifically so they can exclude me from that definition for the purposes of branding me a jew hater. Now that takes some skill. I "vehemently" oppose the right of all states to exist, not just Israel. And i believe jews, like palestinians, have every right to be wherever the hell they wanna be. I don't support racialized definitions of citizenship, apartheid walls, home demolitions, or missiles aimed at residential buildings, all of which the Israeli government engages in. I don't support suicide bombing. I also don't support the racist logic that an Israeli Jew's life is worth more than an Israeli or Palestinian Arab's.  ¶ 9:32 PM

  Possible Strike at Stop&Shop

The Register reports that 42,000 Stop & Shop employees (5,000 in CT,) may strike as early as saturday night if contract negotiations fail. As with fellow grocery store workers on the west coast, these UFCW members are fighting for health care.

The main sticking point is the same one that spurred the ongoing strike at several grocery chains in California — Stop & Shop wants employees to start paying far more of the cost of providing medical benefits, Petronella said.

Supermarket chains nationwide have cited competition by non-unionized grocery stores, such as those located in Wal-Mart Supercenters, in seeking such concessions.

Stop & Shop officials are asking employees to pay 20 percent of the cost of providing health care, Petronella said.

Currently employees pay a 20 percent co-pay for office visits, but contribute nothing directly from their paychecks.

Since the union provides health care benefits, such a move would cripple the union’s benefit program, since many employees would opt out of it, Petronella said.

The company would no longer have to contribute money for those who opt out, and that would drain the union’s benefit accounts, he said.

The company currently pays $475 a month for health care benefits for full-time employees and $120 for part-timers, Petronella said.

The company also wants to eliminate time and a half or double time pay for working on Sunday, and wants to freeze pension contributions at current levels, he said.  ¶ 4:35 PM

 
Negotiating with the cops at yesterday's press conference.

The controversy surrounding Yale's involvement with Baca Ranch began over two years ago when Yale's unions revealed that Yale was a member of the partnership that owned the ranch. The ranch's managing owner, Farallon Capital Management, wanted to develop the aquifer below Baca Ranch, prompting criticism from Colorado residents and politicians.

They contended that the proposed water development would harm local ecosystems. The 97,000-acre Baca Ranch lies adjacent to the Great Sand Dunes National Monument and Preserve in the San Luis Valley.

and

The students protesting yesterday disagreed with Yale's involvement in what they called an "environmentally hazardous" investment. Naasiha Siddiqui '05, an organizer of the news conference, said the students had e-mailed Swensen a week ago in an attempt to set up a meeting to discuss Yale's investments but had received no response. After the news conference the protesters tried to take the letter they had written directly to Swensen, but were not allowed to enter the office.

The building facility manager said the building was placed in "secure mode" due to the protestors -- a process that includes turning the elevators off and escorting patrons into the building. Approximately 10 minutes after the group asked to gain entrance to Swensen's office, four Yale police officers arrived on the scene. Yale Police Chief James Perrotti said the officers were dispatched because there was a large group of students in the lobby.

Justin Sez:

"[This] is a sad reflection of the kind of secrecy and lack of open participation that's exactly the problem with Yale's investment practices," said Justin Ruben FES '02, a GESO organizer and one of the news conference's coordinators. "That response makes a mockery of what I consider our community's most central values of debate and inquiry and ethical leadership."

Helaine Klasky said the protests were "without merit." I believe Helaine Klasky about as much as I believe Tom Conroy.

It's problematic, deeply problematic, that the new MAC includes no members of the coalition responsible for its existence. I hope that Bendor, Da Silva and Lu are up to the task of representing undergraduate concerns on this thing, but I'm also extremely skeptical of its power and aim to effect needed change. Plus the whole thing is ironically reminiscent of the Bush-Levin WMD debacle. Powerless committee with no real power to fix tings that lots of us want fixed, appointed by administrators to quell rising dissent. Hmmm.

Speaking of which, Saqib takes the YDN to task for it's ridiculous editorial monday on the WMD protest:

I am disappointed first and foremost with Bush for making a mockery of one of the most important commissions in American history. I am disappointed in Levin because he has agreed to be complicit in this travesty. Rather than taking a principled stance and rejecting Bush's offer, he has agreed to serve on a commission that will more likely that not be used as a means to sweep Bush's troubles under the rug rather than giving the American people the answers they deserve.

And last, but certainly not least, the mighty Helena Herring has a great op-ed piece about fair share.

Yale could easily afford to make up the difference that the state cannot afford to pay. The University has an $11 billion endowment that could help solve this problem. One day's interest alone is millions of dollars. A few days of Yale's unearned incremental income could make up the difference in the budget and pay for much-needed city services. For added perspective, New Haven has a debt of $3.7 million, mere pocket change for the University but a staggering number that forces the city to choose which services to cut and which jobs to save. The city is in dire need. Two hundred public employers were laid off last year because the city could not afford to pay them. Ten of Connecticut's 28 "priority schools," ranked as such because of poor performance, are in New Haven. The city is doing all it can to improve performance, but it is hard to do so on a deficit.   ¶ 3:23 PM

  Moving on...

Anybody know where i can find a photograph of David Swensen? Only people I know who have ever seen him are Lucille Dickess, Doris Rogan, and John Wilhelm.

Also, when I'm a big multimillionaire with a fifth floor office at 55 whitney, i'm gonna have them shut down the elevator system on a regular basis just to piss of the DOD folks on 4.

In all seriousness, I can't believe that they not only wouldn't meet with folks, but wouldn't even let people come up to deliver the letter or even answer their phones? How much more corporate could this place possibly be?

EDIT: So this is what plutocracy looks like...


brrrzzzt:Calling all shoppers, welcome to the Marketplace of ideas, where pretty much all we offer is cheap ideas about the marketplace.  ¶ 10:11 PM

  Note: this post has been edited

A few things and then i'm never mentioning any of the right wing bloggers again:

1)The first post on this blog was posted before i was actually using this site to blog. I shut down my previous blog after Dan Kruger attempted to use something i said against Ben Healey in his ONHSA-backed aldermanic campaign. I apologize only for the poor sentence construction and rather thrown together nature of the prose.

2)Perhaps it wasn't particularly productive to call James Kirchick (the only person i did refer to by name) a fascist. I stand by the statements i made last spring, which Kirchick was nice enough to post on his blog. He keeps a file on me -- I'm kind of flattered. I don't know the others or their work and have thus been relatively mum. Indeed, in the last 24 hours, i've found right wing yale blogs i didn't know existed. Regarding fascism, I think the Bush-Cheney-Levin project fits under this descriptor. I also thing that the activities of CampusWatch and the Daniel Pipes disciples are not only well in line with this project but also are certainly analogous to the aforementioned political ideology in ways which even right wing professors (Jim Sleeper, anyone) have found disturbing. Name calling isn't particularly productive under any circumstances, and my ire at seeing friends ridiculed and attacked on Kirchick's wensite could probably ahve been better directed into organizing than blogging.

I'll put aside the ridiculous epithet of "sadaam supporter" (which one right-wing yalie blogger, seemingly swimming in an ocean of white privilege and denial called me today, and which is ridiculous and fairly McCarthyist in its aims. Sadaam Hussein was also a fascist, one supported by Bushes, Rumsfelds, Wolfowitzes, Bakers and Cheneys until his presence was no longer welcome followin the instantiation of GHWB's New World Order.)

The other epithet, however, I won't dismiss so easily. How dare you call me a jew-hater? I am jewish. I wear my unpronounceable last name like a badge. I love being jewish. I love many jews. Lots of Jews kick ass. So do lots of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Aetheists, Pagans, and Muppets. What i don't like is what zionism, colonialism, and racism have done to jewish communities. I don't like the right wing identity politics that people like Kirchick and Johnson espouse when it comes to debates about the middle east on campus. And yes, I respect Amiri Baraka even though there's tons of shit i disagree with him on. I am not ashamed of being Jewish, nor am I ashamed of Israel, though i oppose the Israeli state's settler colonialism and colonial occupations with as much fervor as i oppose the American occupation of Iraq, because Israel is a state, and, like the one I live in, It's one we need to struggle against through nonviolent direct action, and not one i have enough of a stake in to fel ashamed of. Nor is shame or hatred any kind of basis for a liberatory politics.

Being called a jew-hater by you is kind of like being called a Klansman by rumpus for denouncing Yale's racism during the last strike.  ¶ 8:58 PM

  The Register reports that SEIU has filed a class action lawsuit in an attempt to force a depositors' vote at New Haven Savings Bank.

The Service Employees International Union is funding a class-action lawsuit intended to force a depositors’ vote. A preliminary hearing was held Monday in Superior Court here, and another hearing is scheduled Feb. 24.

"The depositors are already owners of the bank, and you are asking people to buy stock in something they already own. That’s not what a mutual bank is all about," said SEIU spokesman Bill Meyerson.

SEIU and the Greater New Haven Labor Council are encouraging depositors to withdraw their funds to protest the lack of a vote, and Elm City Congregations Organized is also protesting the conversion.

The Rev. Lillian Daniels, one of the leaders of ECCO, said she is particularly concerned with a report on red-lining written by the Connecticut Center for a New Economy, a union-affiliated organization.

"There is a long history of denying people access to wealth, which is home ownership, and what they are proposing to do is just sort of the bare minimum," said Daniels of the bank’s proposed $27 million in lending for low- and moderate-income residents.

The bank has also agreed to contribute $25 million to a fund that may lead to the creation of a community bank dedicated to low-income lending and community development.  ¶ 11:39 AM

  This is interesting:

John Wilhelm's Eulogy for Vinnie Sirabella



Vinnie had great vision. He knew long before most of us that our Union needed to recruit a new breed of organizers. He pushed to build our sophisticated corporate research group. In recent years, he worked to develop our relationships with Unions in other countnes, as our industry became increasingly internationalized.

This remarkable set of talents enabled Vinnie to accomplish things which seemed impossible. I think of the 1971 strike by Local 35 at Yale, a resounding victory for the Union, in what turned into a nationally known civil rights struggle. He literally carried that strike on his back, standing up to an incredibly wealthy and powerful employer that no one in Connecticut had ever successfully challenged. He united Union members who had never stuck together before: skilled tradesmen, dining hall workers, custodians, groundskeepers-Italian, Irish, Polish, black-men and women.

During caucuses in those arduous negotiations, Vinnie had to lie flat on his back on the floor, because the pain in his bad back was so intense he often couldn't stand up. He carried that strike because of the sheer force of his personality. He inspired those workers by his oratory and his commitment. He led them in a memorable march down the middle of Elm Street during Yale's commencement. He was the first of many of us beaten that day by the police and hauled off to jail.

The result, which no one but Vinnie thought possible, was a great victory-an extraordinary contract-and a revived Union. To this day, Vinnie is revered by the veterans of Local 35. It is gratifying -- but not at all a surpnse -- to see so many rank and file members of Local 35 and Local 34 here today, as well as Local 217.

I think, too, of the general strike he organized in New Haven in 1975, in response to a local judge jailing nearly 100 members of the Teachers' Union, because they went on strike.

Vinnie insisted that in his town we could not tolerate anyone going to jail for striking. As President of the Central Labor Council, he brought together all the diverse and often disagreeing parts of our movement. He gave one of the finest speeches I had ever heard, reminding us how the labor movement was built. We can't permit anyone to go to jail for stnking, he said, or else we will be next.

I don't think there had been a general strike in the U.S. for several decades-he put it together. We were set to go, all over town, for noon on a Tuesday Because the threat was real, the Board of Education settled and the teachers were freed.   ¶ 9:54 PM

  More on Fox and the ex-braceros here

(I figured out how to do photos!)  ¶ 8:53 PM

  Kirchick clearly gets off on and makes himself feel important by attempting to rile people who are involved in the struggle for social justice against capital and the state.

As such, I find it neither worthwhile nor particularly strategic to give him another arena in which to air his screed. The blog ring of right wing yale students and graduates is not a realm in which i want this project linked or mentioned. It wasn't intended as some sort of detatched forum for cold debate. Education In The Streets is a website for people who are ready to fight against racism, capital, sexism, homophobia, colonialism, and empire. I don't have the time to waste giving fascists-in-training like Kirchick a forum for their intellectual masturbations, so i'm not going to link to or discuss him or his blog anymore, and should i feel a necessity to mention any of his future ridiculously uninformed and arrogant YDN columns, you can bet it will involve a string of invectives and expletives.

Smash Yale.  ¶ 6:09 PM

  Another good article about GESO. What is the YDN coming to? Oh wait, I just read this editorial.

Opponents to Levin's appointment have used varied rationales. Some say his relationship to Bush is too cozy, noting Levin's previous stay in the White House and Bush's reciprocal stay in Levin's home. Others have criticized his inexperience with intelligence issues. (In fact, only one of the seven people who have so far been named to the committee have previous intelligence experience.)

We are baffled by the misguided nature of the protest. It seems the students were protesting for the sake of protesting, without giving adequate attention to the issue. Indeed, there seems to be a general misunderstanding of Levin's politics on campus. If all you know about Levin is that he is an economist and that he -- appropriately, given his position as president of Yale -- stood up for the University's interests in last year's strikes, it might be easy to assume he's a steadfast conservative. But Levin is more liberal than he is conservative, and we're not sure why campus liberals would oppose the selection of a fellow liberal to a committee to investigate gaps in U.S. military intelligence. We just don't understand why Levin's appointment, an honor for him and for the University, has spurred a round of liberal knee-jerk reactions.

I'm pretty sure i know more about Levin's politics that the YDN. I'm pretty sure I'm not a liberal (see below.) I'm pretty sure a union-busting capitalist pig like Rick Levin isn't my fellow anything. I'm pretty sure the committee is a sham and Levin is helping his buddy legitimate it. I'm pretty sure the NLRB has been stacked with right wing anti-union appointees. I don't think illegal trading in water rights or the sudanese civil war is particularly "liberal" (or at least "progressive") either, and we are going to hold levin and Yale accountable, regardless of whatever snide comments he and his lapdogs may throw at us.   ¶ 1:57 PM

  Well, James, i guess that would make you - what? Professional Elitist? Professional suck-up to union-busting, WMD hiding millionaires and their academic lackeys? Professional pompous spoiled brat who's never had to work a day in his life and yet somehow assumes the moral authority to tell the people who make his priviliged existence possible what they are worth?

I'd rather be a protestor.

And for the record, I'm not a fucking liberal. Neither is Thomas Frampton.

And, clearly, neither are you.   ¶ 1:42 PM

  "let's be clear, alek doesn't have sex" - Abbey Jane Hudson  ¶ 6:13 PM

  From the Detroit Free Press: maybe this is why Slick Rick is getting so chummy with the fascist in the white house...  ¶ 2:24 PM

  Check this out: 2000+ ex-braceros invade Fox's ranch...  ¶ 12:41 PM

  YaleInsider compares Levin on the WMD to Levin on the ALB.

Speaking of publicity stunts, just picked up the latest Inner-City News. Besides the usual republican black bourgeoisie rants about how welfare and affirmative action should be gutted in favor of "morality and responsibility" (ah the shifting significations of racial uplift) this issue, besides some decent content about Black History Month, is, as always, chock full of Yale-New Haven Hospital propaganda. Nothing beats last issue's front page story (with a color photograph no less) about new minister of propaganda Vin Petrini, but this week comes close. Besides the ridiculous "On paper, Donna works for the hospital. In her mind, she works for her patients." ad, and a quarter-page story about six YNHH employees being named "Dream builders", straight from Mr. Petrini and complete with a color photograph of the workers, Joe Zac, Marna Borgstrom, and Rowlandophile state rep Bill Dyson, (as well as a 1/8 page feature on the R.N. Refresher program, we are privileged with the debut of a brand new advertisement, accompanying an article titled "Race Matters - A Dialogue Where it Counts." The advertisement is the second in the "We make great neighbors series and features a photograph of an african american hospital cop with his arm around a smiling 7 year old. "Putting a smile on a kid's face," reads the caption, "That's my real paycheck."

the fact that he's in protective services at the hospital and that the word "smile" doesn't appear in his job description doesn't slow him down one bit.

Here's the kicker:

He doesn't turn that attitude off when he leaves the hospital either. George serves his church, his local community, even the state in a variety of official and unofficial capacities.
He gets involved because he genuinely likes helping people. And he's be the first to tell you that there are a whole lot of other people at Yale-New Haven who feel the same.
Aren't these exactly the kind of people we want living in our communities and as out neighbors? We think so.

Tell that to Fran Balamuth, Louise Camera Benson, Dale Lucas, Mike Cassaday, Adam Manny, Rosa Anna DeFillipis, Sara Saiano,or Willie Tart. Tell it to Velma Williams or Quinton White. Tell it to the tens of thousands still suffering from YNHH and YSM debt burdens, and tell it to the NHSB depositors who are losing their bank so that Joe Zaccagnino, Peyton Patterson, and Julia Macnamara can rake in the big bucks. Great Neighbors my ass. Joe, if you lived next to me and not in a gated community in madison, i would leave dog feces on your doorstep every day and slash your tires on a regular basis.  ¶ 11:55 AM

  Actually, Evan, i said "weapon of mass instruction." I heard they're gonna preemptively hit Koffee Too ("Strike them before they can strike us.")

In all seriousness, the Bush-Levin alliance of Neoconservative Fascism and Neoliberal Corporate Power terrifies me. It suggests, perhaps, a glimpse at the ultimate shape of Levin's "globalized university" and its relation to several different imperial projects. It also underscores for me the importance of fighting Yale and not dismissing the academic left and academic labor movement as somehow "reformist" simply because they are making demands on and fighting against structures which are seen as enclosed, elitist etc. As the Baca Ranch stuff shows, and as this latest news confirms, universities are only enclosures in the sense that they enclose upon the global commons and restrict access to the privileged. They are not enclosed in the sense that they are turned inward and blind to and disinterested in the rest of the world. Yale's money and power trace the contours of global capitalism, from Colorado, to Maine, to the Sudanese Civil War, and now to Iraq itself. Our resistance must be more global than Yale.

Michael Denning's new book, Culture in The Age of Three Worlds carries powerful suggestions about the ways we can conceive of these connections and histories of struggle, capital, and power. It is no coincidence that the book is dedicated to "the organizers of GESO," because GESO and the movement here in New Haven have articulated a vision of teaching and learning which charts the shaping of the social forces and the creation of the structures and policies which have made the Levin-Bush alliance possible, and themselves constitute part of the movement that must constitute its antithesis. GESO and the movement here are part of the Global Left that Denning charts, part of the global movement to smash the neoliberal project and instantiate a globalization form below.

And here's Lauren M. Burke, straight from the pages of the (Yale) New Haven Register

"What makes President Levin unique here, is he’s the only person on the panel who is decidedly nonpartisan," noted Minh A. Luong, assistant director of international security studies at Yale. "He’s going to be the honest broker. He’s the one person who is going to be the voice of reason and keep the commission honest."

That sentiment was not shared by the student protesters outside Levin’s office Friday.

A dozen protesters stood in the rain, chanting, "When it comes to intelligence, Levin knows jack!"

"It isn’t exactly something he knows about," said Yale junior Lauren Burke. "As far as being able to deal with things like labor negotiations, he seems to be more in line with Bush."  ¶ 1:36 PM

  Phoebe on the Levin WMD debacle

this ranks among the most important investigations in this country's history. and so bush is going to appoint his yale crony to investigate himself? it's a freaking circus. this is my university, and i'm embarrassed--outraged--that it is getting drawn into this. people are always talking about finding the connections between issues--you know, like labor and the war or whatever. so, ok, the big connection is rick levin?

Finished Culture in the Age of Three Worlds. It's great. Read it. More later.  ¶ 1:04 AM

  LEVIN IS ON THE WMD PANEL (GESO to be declared weapon of mass instruction.)

El jefe has named Rick Levin, fellow Yalie and most urgent petitioner for the most neoconservative NLRB possible, to his sham Weapons of Mass Decep -uhh, i mean Destruction Panel. What does this mean? I'm not sure yet, but i bet it has something to do with the class war.



Blog's been acting weird today. hit refresh a couple times if you need to and it should go back to normal.  ¶ 5:11 PM

  Supermarket Strike Updates

In New York, a thousand protested at the NYSE in support of the UFCW strikers. The bosses have rejected binding arbitration. Governor Schwartzenegger (gag) has volunteered to act as an intermediary  ¶ 1:59 PM

  Shockingly good editorial by the Yale Daily News today about Yale's need to provide adequate day care to its employees. Actually mentions GESo respectfully and takes the concerns they raise and the organizing they do seriously!

Maybe this paper is good for something other than holding over your head to keep the freezing rain from soaking your sweatshirt.

  ¶ 1:31 PM

  "Life is full of breasts" - Josh Eidelson on The Super Bowl  ¶ 10:27 PM

  Yesterday, poring over the Yale Daily News from 1967, looking for information on the new haven riots and the face of yale's workforce and relationship with the city in which they lived (i.e., teaching cops spanish so as to better police the skyrocketing puerto rican community in Fair Haven and the Hill,) i found a curious story. It seems that certain fraternities were in the habit of branding recruits. Yeah, like, pressing hot material against their flesh so it leaves a permanent mark kind of branding. The administration, of course, rather than taking any disciplinary action, said that it trusted the interfraternity council to halt this practice on it's own. Meanwhile on former president of DKE and current president of this festering shithole of a country, 1968, called the burns "insignificant, like a cigarette burn," and testified that they didn't hurt that much. Now we know where he got his policies on environmental and labor law violations from.  ¶ 11:49 AM

  The boycott is on.

Bob Proto on the DeStefano pact:

"It doesn’t address redlining. It doesn’t prevent board members from profiting and it doesn’t give depositors a say," Proto said.

Within the next seven days, a letter will go out to thousands of council members, calling on them to withdraw money from New Haven Savings and to refuse to do business with its successor, NewAlliance Bank.

"The bank didn’t give them a fair shake. They may want to go down in groups and withdraw funds. We’re just staying the course," Proto said.

Good. The gag rule is outrageous. This is exactly what needs to happen. If you're a depositor in New Haven Savings Bank, WITHDRAW YOUR MONEY. Don't let these corporate criminals get away with legal robbery.

Speaking of corporate criminals, Yale-New Haven Hospital is the subject of another lawsuit. Remember that groundbreaking legislation Looney got passed in the state senate last year that determines how and when hospitals can initiate debt collection and protects uninsured patients from things like wage garnishments? Well, YNHH doesn't.

The suit, filed last week, claims Y-NH is continuing to garnish the wages and bank accounts of patients after the hospital was notified the patients were applying for free-bed funds.

Wet-behind the ears hospital PR exec Vin Petrini blames it all on the union. This from a guy who didn't even know that YNHH workers had struck twice in a six month period last year, because he didn't know that there were unionized workers at the hospital, because he's a freaking parrot and his only line is to blame everything on the organizing drive even as YNHH continues to destroy people's lives with the assumption that its money and power affords it impunity.

Looks like Blumenthal disagrees.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said the claims in the suit are "fully consistent with very credible ongoing claims that Yale-New Haven Hospital is failing to fulfill its charitable-care obligations."

He said the state is awaiting a hearing date for its suit against the hospital, which was filed last spring. "For some period of time there seemed to be hope that there could be some agreement, but that seems to have dissipated."

This doesn't end until the debt peonage YNHH is imposing on working people in this city is consigned to the dustbin of history.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

In today's YDN Andrea Johnson puts Yale on the carpet for both not paying what it said it would pay and for profiting from the sale of water rights in the first place. Good article, well worth reading.  ¶ 9:58 AM

  Empire and the Academy

from CNN

"You are the future for an open, democratic, prosperous Iraq. The hopes of your countrymen and women are with you," Powell told the 19 men and six women.

He noted that veterans of the Fulbright program in Peru, East Timor and elsewhere helped promote transitions to democratic rule in their respective countries.

Only the YDN could turn an article about Yale's African American Studies Program into a backhanded attack on Yale's unions.

Yale African American studies major Lily Kolman '04 said there is a sense of "colleagiality" among the department's faculty because they are all "serious academics."

"Overall I have not felt the lack of the presence of someone like Cornel West," Kolman said. "I'm sure it would have been different in some ways, but -- if someone's well-known, it doesn't necessarily transcend into a connection with students."

West, who rallied Yale's unions during last September's three-week strike, is perhaps best known for stumping on behalf of political candidates Bill Bradley and the Rev. Al Sharpton and creating rap and hip hop compilations

Great job, Mr. Rucker, you must feel very proud. Your article really does justice to the Af Am department. (End sarcasm here.)  ¶ 12:51 PM

  A couple more things:

1)CCL sucks. Senior essay research reveals that it sucked in 1970 and it sure as hell sucks now. What were they thinking? The desks are in fucking swastika patterns!

2)Shout out to Julie Gonzales. We love you, dude.

3)Evan Cobb locates a REAL Yale Intellectualism in the context of the incredible social movement that workers, students, a couple professors, and the community are building together:

What I have found as intellectual at Yale are the many people - students, rare faculty, employees of all stripes, community members, who have an analysis, have a vision, and fight to put it into practice. Thoughtful inquiry becomes a moot point in the static world; intellectuality is located with those who create dynamism in the space around us.  ¶ 9:06 PM

  Phoebe and Josh pretty much said what i was gonna say about DeStefano's disgusting sell-out of the bank campaign and thousands of New Haven residents, as well as the more heartening news -- the kick ass GESO letter that appeared in today's YDN. All that's really left for me to do is congratulate The Honorable Ben Healey, chairman of the BOA's legislation committee. (Tell the mayor and Peyton Patterson what they can do with their gag order.) I suppose i ought to also try to figure out the YDN's continuing obsession with the policing of the dining hall and the dangers that this space where Yale's dependency upon New Haven becomes clear represents to their elitist and colonial constructions of postmodern urban spaces.

Note to Richard Levin: In response to your telling the Pan-Ethnic Coalition that you don't care if the bodies who advise you represent student concerns, saying that you don't want to meet with the Pan Ethnic Coalition because then you might have to actually talk to students, repeatedly reneging on your promises of holding open forums, that sole and hard won victory of the anti-sweatshop movement on this campus, refusing to discuss a fair process with GESO, disclose investments, or in myriad other ways work with students, workers, and the community to make yale and new haven better, - in the words of the negotiating committees for Locals 34 and 35 right before the strike to Yale's negotiator Brian Tunney

"Thank you for doing our organizing for us."  ¶ 8:24 PM

  It's here!

Speaking of Michael Denning, his new book Culture In The Age of Three Worlds has now hit the shelves.

It's dedicated to GESO!

More on this book, which every one needs to pick up, based on my skimming the chapter headings alone, as i get to read it.

Here's the blurb from the back of the book:

Before the midpoint of the twentieth century, culture as a subject was routinely relegated to the background of any period’s study. From the 1950s on, however, it moved very clearly to the foreground. Suddenly culture was everywhere: no longer the property of an elite, the masses had a culture and culture had a mass. Accordingly, the study of culture and the critique of culture became an increasingly central part of political and intellectual life—the cultural turn, as it came to be known in the humanities and social sciences. This book is a product of and a reflection on that cultural turn, which Michael Denning argues was a fundamental aspect of the age of three worlds, that short half-century (1945–1989) when it was imagined that the world was divided into three—the capitalist first world, the communist second world, and the decolonizing third world.

Recasting the legacies of British cultural studies and the radical traditions of the American studies movement in a global context, Denning analyses the political and intellectual battles over the meanings of culture, addresses the rise of a distinctive “American ideology” based on this short “American century,” and charts the lineaments of the global cultures that emerged as three worlds gave way to one.  ¶ 9:20 PM

  The Cali grocery strike continues, with support from California's AG and the Mayor of Los Angeles. Pressure on the CEO of Safeway to step down is increasing.

The backlash against Burd turned personal this past week when about 250 people marched to his estate in Alamo, an exclusive Bay Area suburb, urging Burd to resume negotiations with a more compassionate approach.

Burd sits on a private sector subcommittee of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

Michael Denning said in September that Yale's 13th strike was the "first great labor struggl;e of the 21st century." The second is unfolding at this moment in Southern California, and we need to take action to make sure that people like Steve Burd do not win it.
  ¶ 4:36 PM

  While YaleInsider called this blog "angry," i didn't understand why -- until i realized that this webpage has more references to Katie Krauss than it does to Katie Kline. I suppose that does suggest a certain rage lurking herein.

In other blog business, Josh has added Education in The Streets to his blogroll. I think he was holding off because of the alleged "Eidelson quota" on the quotations page.  ¶ 4:14 PM