Joe Berry's COCAL Updates 20March12

Email joeberry@igc.org, to subscribe to regular updates in brief and links by email. More about Joe Berry.  

Updates in Brief and Links

CHICAGO

What does it mean to do progressive work today? What are the core qualities of successful organizers? How do we build the organizations and movements that these times call for?

For folks in and near Chicago, Eric Mann of the Strategy Center and Bus Riders Union in LA will be in Chicago March 22, 5:30 - 7:30 PM, at the Jane Addams Hull House on the UIC campus to do a talk   on Transformative Organizing: A Theory and Practice for a Social Justice Revolution. He will talk about his new book, Playbook for Progressives: 16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer, a very good book distilling his 40 years of organizing experience. He has been very supportive of contingent issues and one of his children is a contingent faculty person.

 About: Eric Mann is the director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles and a founder of the Bus Riders Union. The Strategy Center is a "think tank/act tank" that trains organizers and initiates high visibility environmental justice, mass transportation, and civil rights campaigns. The BRU is the largest mass transportation group in the U.S. and the subject of Haskell Wexler's feature length documentary: Bus Riders Union. 

He has written seven books and is the co-host of the weekly radio show, Voices from the Frontlines, on KPFK Pacifica 90.7FM in Los Angeles. He has published more than 200 articles that have appeared in the New York Times, L.A. Times, Boston Globe, Boston After Dark, Worldwatch, Socialist Register, Black Agenda Report, Black Commentator, AhoraNow, and The Nation. 

Union staff job opening (organizer) for grad union, AFT 6300, at U of IL, Chicago

WEST COAST

More on CA Fed Of Teachers deal with Gov. Brown on dropping the Millionaire's Tax for a compromise with his less progressive initiative, Labor Notes

INTERNATIONAL

• Mexican private universities growing fast, quality concerns [not sure how many of these are for-profit or who the faculty are exactly, but I can guess] World University News
• In Columbia debate of private higher ed, both non-profit and for-profit.  World University News 
• In Russia private higher ed expanding. World University News
• Research paper on contingent academics in Australia  [We are the majority there too.]

Research Project, Teacher Unions, Outsourcing

• Appeal for info for research project on grad employees:  Nancy Poole, LIS/Educational Studies, UNC at Greensboro, is collecting stipend.tuition/responsibilities information for graduate assistants at all levels, nationally. I would like to include our Canadian colleagues as well. Please visit the The Graduate Assistant Project site and fill out the form (it can be as anonymous as you want ;=) You can see the results of all the data collection at once by clicking on the spreadsheet link.  Please pass this on to all of your graduate assistant contacts.  This information is open to all who may have a need to be informed.

• Romney says taking on teacher unions is Feds role. AFL-CIO blog

• Universities moving to outsource instruction to outside private entities, not just hiring contingents internally on second tier. [This is a serious threat, which Fox, of course, really likes. No longer having the institution as the employer would make organization of these faculty much harder] Fox Business News  

Email joeberry@igc.org, to subscribe to regular updates in brief and links by email. More about Joe Berry.