trouble at home

There's a petition, started by members of my union but open to all, calling for Birgenau and other top corporate cronies to resign, following the culmination of their collusion to destroy the foundations of public education in which they authorized cops to beat students and faculty peacefully demonstrating on Sproul plaza last week.

As I wrote: Authorizing the violent beating and arrest of peaceful protestors (including its own students and faculty) is a betrayal of everything the University of California stands for, it betrays the purpose for which the UC was created in the first place, and betrays the best traditions of Berkeley and the UC. It is deeply incompetent and destructive and those responsible should resign immediately.

Please sign it! and forward widely.

you can do so here: http://www.change.org/petitions/dr-birgeneau-dr-breslauer-mr-legrande-mr-celaya-resign-effective-immediately

As the Yiddish Anarchists say

AWDU swept the entire Executive Board slate (which we ran for on the platform of ASAP decentralizing power within through collectivizing it, and decentralizing power away from through returning resources to local units and decision-making power to membership meetings and local units.

Here's the statement signed by many many many of us, from http://awdu.org

With Votes Counted, A Changed Union

We are excited to announce that our votes have finally been counted and our reform slate has won nearly 60% of positions on our UAW 2865 union Joint Council! The 80-member Joint Council is the highest elected body of our union with representatives from every campus.

55% of voters also cast their ballots for our Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (AWDU) reform slate for the UAW 2865 Executive Board – electing our candidates to all 10 positions on the Board, including President. The Elections Committee has certified these election results as true and fair. You can see the full results here.

The election itself and our struggle to count every vote has already transformed our union. The debate and struggle were contentious. But this struggle opened up a huge new space for thousands of our members to participate in deciding how to defend our interests as a union. Turnout in the election increased to about 3,400 votes from just a few hundred votes in the last Triennial Election for the Joint Council and Executive Board.

The struggle to count the votes also deepened member involvement in our union. Last Saturday, when three members of the election committee halted the vote count, abandoning the ballots of 1500 members regardless of their votes, UAW members spoke up. Thousands of members wrote letters, signed petitions, and made phone calls to demand that the votes be counted. Members organized to guard the ballots that the statewide officials abandoned in the UCLA office. Members rallied, marched, and sat-down at the UAW statewide office. It was an unprecedented display of member power and the result was the resumption of vote counting by the statewide officials.

Now it is time for us to bring this strength to our fight against the attacks on higher education. As a next step, we are calling on all graduate students and undergraduate tutors – no matter who they supported in the election – to come together for a statewide membership meeting of the union on May 21st to chart the way forward. We’ll get you more details soon. But high on the agenda is stepping up the fight against increasing class sizes, fee hikes, rising housing costs, new budget cuts, and UC management’s capping of funding for fee remissions and health benefits for graduate student employees.

We will stand together against the attacks on higher education, in real unity borne of fruitful discussion that includes disagreement. A grassroots, bottom-up union is strong when it provides space for open debate, and we hope that every member continues to express criticism when necessary. We also know that many members of the USEJ slate and many USEJ supporters never wanted to stop the vote count in the first place. We hope that the Elections Committee’s dismissal of the fabricated allegations by some of the outgoing union officers will help up us begin a more honest dialogue with each other.

The incredible diversity of our newly elected Joint Council and entire union is a vital strength that we must actively build upon. By working together, including with the new Joint Council members from USEJ, we will win historic advances for the rights of student-workers and the expansion of public education. We look forward to building a new kind of union together.

Wow. I didn't exactly expect that, or not so quickly. But the UAW actually backed down on this!

From the AWDU Berkeley Blog:

The elections committee of our local convened today at 12:30pm and agreed to restart the counting at 9am on Thursday (5/5)! This is a huge victory for rank-and-file members who joined or supported the sit-in at the statewide offices in Berkeley and LA and for everyone who helped with emails, media contacts, petitions and with securing support from progressive faculty and labor activists!! By drawing on the proud tradition of rank-and-file activism and direct action in the US labor movement, the tradition which built the UAW in the first place, members made clear that they would not stand by and allow themselves to be disenfranchised.

AWDU candidates and supporters look forward to the resumption of the count and will be present to help ensure it proceeds without unnecessary delays or suspensions. It has been our position all along that win or lose, AWDU is committed to an elections process that is free and fair, and that allows ordinary members to decide how their union should be run, and by whom. Given the extraordinary and outrageous circumstances in which the count was suspended, we plan to continue the sit-in until the voting process is fully complete and a certified result has been issued.

I'm writing this from inside our union office, we are sitting down in solidarity with our union members who are camping outside the room in UCLA in which our abandoned ballot boxes languish, waiting for voting to resume. The corrupt incumbents of UAW 2865 are attempting to destroy a democratic process, two days into vote counting they abandoned the vote rather than count the ~1500 votes left (around half) which would have concluded the first ever fully contested union election for the union representing graduate students, readers and tutors. After literally walking out of vote counting and
leaving the ballot boxes, the incumbents have circulated emails with bizarre and untrue allegations, and attempted to make deals and set conditions over when vote counting should resume. We are calling for counting to resume, under the normal procedures established by our local and we are not going to leave the office until the votes are counted.

Any public support anyone wants to make is great.

There is a petition here: http://www.awdu.org/count-all-of-the-votes
or if you want more info, or to make a public statement/open letter

Backstory and updates at http://awdu.org and search for AWDU - UCB on facebook and "like" us!

Below is an account from one of our members who was in the room when it all went down:

Dear friends and fellow union members.

This weekend I witnessed one of the craziest things I've ever seen in my life. On Friday the counting of votes in our union leadership election began in LA. I drove down with other Berkeley and Santa Cruz AWDU members when we heard that all of Berkeley's votes had been challenged (meaning they might be invalidated). We arrived in the early hours Saturday morning and were able to help count the votes for Santa Cruz, Davis, Irvine, San Diego, Riverside and Santa Barbara. by 5pm all of those campuses were almost complete--and AWDU actually seemed to be breaking even.

The elections committee called an hour recess--and three hours later came back to say that the count was suspended, the results so far calculated were certified, and the rest of the count (including all 1500+ votes from LA and Berkeley) and all of the challenges were passed on to the Joint Council--which doesn't meet until July! The elections committee then immediately fled the building and abandoned the ballots.

All the members at LA sat down in the union office to make sure the votes were secured and to start lodging our protests with media, union officials, etc.

Late last night we drove back to Berkeley, had a meeting, and are now sitting down (in good UAW fashion) in the statewide union office until the elections committee agrees to resume the vote count. We have one demand: COUNT OUR VOTES.

We cannot let our votes be thrown out! This is exactly why we were forced to form the Academic Workers for a Democratic Union more than a year ago, though these actions are almost incomprehensible in their disregard for union democracy and members rights. Please join us at the office as soon as possible (2070 Allston Way, Suite 205) or come to the rally at Sather Gate at 11:30 and march to the office.

A call is planned at 1pm today between incumbent leadership, AWDU members, the elections committee chair and our international representative from UAW. We need to show that our members will not allow their votes to be thrown out, that the count must be finished and new leadership instated.

For more info, including our responses to the attacks that have been emailed by Daraka Larimore-Hall, see: http://www.awdu.org/ and http://berkeleyuaw.wordpress.com/

In solidarity and struggle,

Mandy Cohen
Dept of Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley
Head Steward UAW 2865-candidate for Recording Secretary
Academic Workers for a Democratic Union

Those of you who tried to come on Thursday, I apologize - the police let several of us in and we were inside the building until police came and told us the chancellor was closing the building at which point we had to leave.

A question this course should lead you to ask is: by what right does the chancellor get to close Wheeler Hall? Whose property is it?

Know that this university exists because the land was donated by the state to the university in exchange for it providing free education to the citizens of California. In terms of labor theories of value, if the labor of teachers is part of the educational mission, at what point do teachers get to decide what happens on school property? If you believe, as I do, that students labor is also part of education - helping create what is learned by all in the classroom, what right do students have to make use of the spaces that were given as sites of education? If there is disagreement or diversity of opinion, who or what should arbitrate these rights?

I later got an email from the chancellor saying there was a "health and safety issue" in Wheeler which necessitated closing it. This seems odd to me. I also heard from a friend who was stopping by Wheeler (a volunteer medic) that police had pepper-sprayed and beaten protesters with batons while attempting to remove them from the area. (was that the health and safety issue? if so, I can think of a few ways short of closing the building that could have protected people)

I encourage you to think about the primacy of property rights in what happened at Wheeler Hall. Property rights in objects were supreme over rights over people's own bodies. The rights to bodily integrity of the students were not as important as the rights of the chancellor to control what happens in Wheeler Hall. Its true there may have been a concern about damage to the building - but during the first occupation a police officer smashed the hand (and nearly took off the finger) of a student who was participating in the protests (nonviolently and not causing property damage), and yet police are still allowed on campus. The costs and the harm of batons and pepper spray are not as much concern to the university as the right of the university to control property.

Whose rights are being protected by this? (note that we were carrying on our section without a problem until this happened, it was the police who were limiting access).

Of course there is the question of students right to pursue an education without protest. As above, who should be the arbiter between those different opinions about educational priorities in situations where protesters ARE disrupting classes?

But also, what happens if you include the rights of the students and former students, and also the janitors (speaking of keeping the building in good shape) who are no longer on campus because of the policies like fee hikes and the layoffs dictated by Operational Excellence? Did they have any rights? Milton Friedman (whom we read this week) would say no. But what about the founders of the UC system and its mission?

Also, the rights of nonprotesting students to pursue an education are affected anyway, because even despite the massive fee increases the resulting funds have not gone to education: class sizes are increasing, labs are cut, teaching resources are cut, class sessions are cut ( this course has four fewer classes than usual because of the cuts), libraries are closed, construction disrupts the campus as much as protests..

I hope this is food for thought and future discussion!

I guess that's incentive for me to finish my diss ASAP (actually, it seriously is)

The former Chief Financial Officer of the World Bank has been appointed UC Berkeley's vice chancellor of administration

http://www.dailycal.org/article/111579/campus_appoints_new_vice_chancellor_of_administrat

I can only assume we will shortly begin destroying our own sources of education and learning because we can import prepackaged ones that are cheaper from places with even fewer limitations on low wages & benefits & safety.. Oh wait, that's Edley (dean of the law school)'s other job as the coordinator of the new "Cyber-Campus."

it's really time to jump ship.. oy..

So the night I was coming in to Boston (on my much-delayed flight), my dad slipped and broke his hand. He's okay now, it's in a cast and such but it meant the days leading up to xmas (which we celebrate as gift giving and cooking a nice meal day) were rather hectic. Mom oughta retire. More because of the strain of commuting and the way she can't say no, than because of the work itself. She's a 35-year professor, she loves it and is good at it. But teaching, leading projects and committees, writing, and becoming dad's caretaker is starting to pile up. She says she'll retire the semester after next.. maybe..

but yeah, they are definitely old people now. Especially dad, he looks really old. Mom is still deceptively young and super-vital looking (I see where I get my youthful looks from). And it's hard to imagine what will happen next for them, and for me and them, but I'm going to have to soon, I think. sigh..

in more cheerful news, some gems from my students exams in Intro to Media Studies, where I had them analyze and discuss current coverage of the student protests and the Oscar Grant protests and wikileaks and file sharing...

"an example of FRAMING is the coverage of student protests at UC Berkeley over the increase of tuition fees. Media such as the San Francisco Chronicle focused on the police needing to use action, even up to flourishing a gun, to control the unruly protesters. By emphasizing the "violent" aspect of the protest and the validity of the policeman's action in brandishing a gun to protect the procession of the UC regents meeting, this episodic framing shaped public opinion to favor authority figures (police, Regents) over the protesters (students). By de-emphasizing the context and cause of the student protests (fee hikes) the media influenced readers to perceive the event as an unnecessary event caused by unruly students to disrupt the authoritative workings of the UC Regents meeting."

One exam question was asking the student to develop a campaign to spread the use of reusable water bottles, discussing techniques for making the idea attractive to people, to which one student said:
"Another technique would be to rely on authorities to market our reusable bottle through giving them free ones to use in public -  to target the Cal community... we could choose the Chancellor (maybe not the current one)..."

Last chance (last bleg) to vote for my SXSW panel: Music & Metadata: SXSW music  or SXSW interactive

And also, I uploaded a new mix - for those of you who missed the radio broadcast, check out Soundcloud for the Bass, Wobs & Zaps mix!

I forgot my phone in NY. "No Problem" I says to myself I says "I can afford Federal Express overnight shipping."
See if you can glean from below what is happening. My friend shipped it on Thursday the first. You can read the developments from the bottom up.