a potpourri of intentions, including #DigiWriMo

…always good, more often paving stones and cul de sacs. Walking the road, we make it: if not, then not. 

Looking at the date on the last post this morning, I realized it's coming on two weeks between posts. October been a busy month, with #CEW2015, a month of social justice actions and a handful of conferences behind us.

In drafts, I have three different Campus Equity Week posts: two farewell posts (random observations and link bundles) and one about sausage making for the CEW Archive Project (2001-2015 ~ not limited to this year's event). My intention is to explain the process as clearly as possible: it's a fishing lesson too. The more of us collecting and sharing information the better. During CEW, I ran the archive feed here, at the top of the left sidebar, but recently changed it out for "adjunct" with the intention of rotating topics.

October Days of Action—from teachers to #adjunct faculty #CEW2015

…and points/days between. Earlier this month, when I started getting ready for CEW and developing a CEW Archives project, I noticed there seemed to a lot of such days this month. So I made a list ~ with links, of course. That's what I do. What does the list below seeing all those social, environmental and economic justice movements and days of actions side by side, tell us?

From World Teachers Day to Campus Equity Week (leaving Keith's Equality question aside for now) October is loaded with social justice days for speaking out. However important raising public and internal group awareness is, we damn well better do more than show up to table, hang banners, pass out flyers and wear buttons for a few days out of the year.

#RaiseYourVoice: listening, connecting

…with #adjunct/precarious labor advocates and allies, #EdBlogNet, #dlrn2015 participants and others

Today is Blog Action Day, hashtagged #BAD2015 but using the theme hashtag in the subject line even more. This year's theme, reflected in the #RaiseYourVoices hashtag, silenced voices is relevant to adjuncts and other socially and economically precarious communities. 

#adjunct/ion Oct2015 #2, 13 links

~ Adjunction = adjunct collection. Collected on OneTab through October 13, 2015: adjunction Oct2015 #2, 13 links, saved to Diigo and rss reader, posted to the Precarious Faculty online Reading Room. Focus includes academic labor, workplace, media, actions, adjunct stories.

tags: adjunct contingent faculty adjunct-stories academic labor #PFR adjunction Adjunct-OneTab-Archives

•   Adjunct Stories, #Adjuncts’ Stories of Job Insecurity | @PSC_CUNY.... 
•   Student-Worker Alliance protests outside DUC for adjunct rights | Student Life 
•   Creative writing program most recent to suffer from major cuts- The GW Hatchet 
•   Experts and Adjuncts: The New Model for Higher Education | The Academe Blog 

checking in/catching up

…but not a return of that the prodigal blogger redux post. Still, this is the longest MIA stretch yet -- from just past mid July to almost mid October -- and 2015 likely to be its thinnest blogging year. Reports, however, of its death have been grossly exaggerated. A modicum of explanatory catching up is in order. Short version: the ripple effect of major life changes.

Mid June I moved from Mountainair, New Mexico, to Yuma, Colorado -- sight unseen. Both are small, rural communities, very different despite commonalities. Just like a comparison / contrast essay prompt: that's another post for another time, another blog. I posted about moving on Work and Life (another blog) and G+ (#clmooc Community)

Here as elsewhere, that ripple effect pushed changes, changed intentions and shifted focus. I'm also looking for more intersections with the rest of my life and other interests. 

Reading from #adjunct, #EdBlogNet, etc blogs…featuring @PlashingVole on public #media #education

…and more from the PF blogrolls including (but hardly limited to) Dave Greene on How AFT blew it, Rich Moser on The Green Party and the 2016 Election, Bryan Alexander on How students choose majors during recessions and Steven Krause on Twitter, tenure and what students don't know (nor the general public either). All domestic...

The vole's Bye Bye Beeb takes it global, addresses #ShockDoctrine too in case anyone has been sleeping through the international news and still doesn't realize all the assaults on public education or anything smacking of the public good are happening everywhere. 

The Plashing Vole writes:

oh noes not more #COCAL_Updates, #archives & #adjunct ppl who just don't get it

Time to move on. That's why I did (please read my December 2013 statement). The collected Precarious Faculty pages, blogs, collections (manually curated, aggregated by algorithm or a combination thereof), and social media streams/platforms — not just this blog — are an independent information network. Obviously, that mean unaffiliated with any organization or group and working independently. Nor are areas of interest narrowly limited to adjunct advocacy. The "information" part comes from a firm conviction that being well informed -- and informing well -- are the best defenses in our mental arsenal.

But first, as I promised Joe, I'm working on the archives. It's still a work in progress, but here's where I am so far:

• The separate Precarity Dispatches Tumblr page lists all the links to public locations. There still is no Tumblr tag feed for Updates as the tag is still giving me fits. 

• The next link, the complete InoReader clip, displays all Updates with feeds from all public locations, with them most recent displaying at the top and updating automatically. Searching older posts is less convenient. 

• The rest of the links in the first section go directly to Updates collections at individual locations

• Following the comprehensive list of public archive links, the next group of links are to posts about Updates and archiving them.

A call for public #adjunct discussion of #COCAL_Updates + Sunday Matinee

…because reactions to "adios Updates" post are not landing in comments on blog post or social media. Although about making resources public and open, comments and discussion have not been. Likewise, the original notice ("...in addition to Joe Berry’s regular COCAL updates"), posted publicly went without comment.

On Facebook, discussion appears to be 100% backchannel via pm and closed group -- or groups. Elsewhere, I have no idea, but transparency and open discussion would be more productive. So I'm working on an "Updates Update" Precarity Dispatches post to clarify and (I hope) encourage open discussion, even volunteers for a collaborative Updates Archive Project

the #adjunct blogging #happydance gif post

…animated no less: +Laura Gibbs, you've been warned…

Dancing Laurel & Hardy

I've been looking for just the right "happy dance" animated gif to celebrate COCAL Updates moving from Precarity Dispatches to a new home online at Majority Rules, NFM's long overdue but finally launched blog. Two Updates, here and here,  have already been posted. That's another happy dance occasion. Another gif?

These express both the gravitas of the occasion and my own jubilant relief.

"We are the leaders we've been looking for" @GraceLeeBoggs

…in American Revolutionary, the Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, a P.O.V. documentary, Peabody winner, Detroit about Born in 1915. Philosopher. Activist. [R]evolutionary. There is more ~ more interviews, videos, transcripts, and links, but I'm starting here and the 2007 Bill Moyer's Journal interview below.

Bill Moyers Journal: Grace Lee Boggs from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

return of the dilatory #adjunct blogger…redux

…my last post here, March 4, signaled a return to a blogging routine that dipped during the buildup National Adjunct Walkout Day (and week and all the other names it went by) that did not happen, at least not here, on this specific blog, one of many. It happened on the others: check the feeds on the sidebars and at the bottom of the page. Content is continually refreshed but does not show up on feeds or appear on social media…there but invisible. How very adjunctly. If it's not Facebook, it didn't happen.
to and during

Recurring "going out of business" sales and comeback tours come to mind. Here's hoping this is neither. Just in case though, I'm introducing #returnredux tag. The month of March was like being there while not being there. I needed a longer NAWD recovery period than anticipated. Then came après NAWD recovery. A Rashomon Effect post is in the works. And others. #afterNAWD is, after all, the new NAWD genre.

#NAWD endnotes…resuming regular blogging #afterNAWD

…and the intense experience of participation and immersion in social and digital media surrounding what was an epic event. Everything else, including this blog. went on hiatus or minimal maintenance, depending on how involved it was with event support and coverage. Stories and posts are still coming in. The National Adjunct Walkout Day Tumbler is still open and accepting submissions.

In addition to processing submissions. I'm still sorting and organizing -- literally -- hundreds of NAWD related links on OneTab, bookmarking permanent link bundles and individual links to Diigo. The last bundle bookmarked is dated January 30, 2014, which should give you some idea just how far behind I am processing those links. It's an easy guess falling behind bookmarking coincided with starting the Tumblr and social media traffic picking up. Links saved to OneTab but not bookmarked to Diigo are current.


There's more ~ we are all still processing the experience and thinking on post NAWD directions. I've got all those links -- a independent history -- that I want to organize into events, resources, media (multiple categories), blog posts, videos, Storifys, graphics -- even by region --- and all public. But that could take a while, and it's time to pick up the threads on other projects (including blogging more regularly). For now, I need to save the bundles to permanent public pages and bookmark them.

Here's just a small sample of the link bounty,

On the Teach-In, teaching #NAWD & some history

…a revisited and only moderately updated 2011 newsletter article that, given distribution and placement, I should have blogged here in the first place. So now, thanks to #NAWD and revived Teach-In interest, I'm getting to it. Defend Public Education emerged in 2009, grew, peaked in 2011 and then seemed to fade into Occupy ~ now in eclipse as well. The teach-in / walkout connection is clearer now. 

Not all walkouts are strikes, nor are all labor related. Social injustice, not labor, is the real connection. Students are among likeliest out-walkers. Google walkout and you get more students than unions. Considering workplace inequities, labor practices are a natural target. The last major U.S. walkout was by students in Wisconsin in 2011. 

By way of the sit-in (which also connects to occupy), there's a clear walkout/teach-in connection. I'm somewhat puzzled by the paucity of meaningful online material on both but chalk it up to Eli Pariser's filter bubble. We are not encouraged to remember these connections. Somewhat more history follows below. For the complete newsletter, see the link at the bottom of the post. A more extensive collection of resource links is being bundled and will appear later -- but still in time for teaching-in later this month.

March 2011 was a month of action, in part planned by Defend Public Education and other groups as a coordinated series of actions supporting public education continuing and expanding on those of October 7, 2010 and March 4, 2010. This round, Wisconsin upped the ante. March actions, spreading into April and beyond, moved from previously planned to reactions supporting a broader cause. The massive attack on collective bargaining, public services workers, and public services was not limited to public education. Proposed legislation called for cutting public services drastically and, as part of budgetary package, dismantling or severely restricting collective bargaining.

In March we watched the actions on TV, followed it live online, web streamed and tweeted, and participated when and where possible. Protest manifested in petitions, rallies, marches, demonstrations, and teach-ins, with one California campus holding a "ramen-in."

(Update Notes)
The best covered and recorded, at least in terms of what has lasted, yields results to searches, 2011 Teach-In would have to be the April 5, 2011, National Teach-In on Debt, Austerity, Corporate Greed and What Can Be Done. Like the Defend Public Education page (which would have made a splendid model for NAWD), the event website is gone. The FB Event page infested with spam and bad links. Teach-In coverage remains on The Guardian and elsewhere as well as on a full set of YouTube videos. And now here too.

(back to the original article)

HT @OnlineCrsLady for #MLK Day 2015 edition #EdBlogNet

…media, 2014 review, 2015 intentions, community colleges, CFHE Gathering, #NAWD, COCAL Updates and other posts can wait. Today we honor a human rights and social justice activism icon and model. Laura Gibbs writes in Online Course Announcements: Martin Luther King Day edition: 

I've created some posters with AutoMotivator in honor of Martin Luther King Day! You can see a random poster here each time the page reloads, and below is a Flickr album [slide show]. Then there is a list of all the quotations, with a link to the poster for each quotation along with image information.

...from the WikiMedia Commons File: Mural of Malcolm X, Ella Baker. Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass. Source: "We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest," photo by Tony Fisher. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License:

Mural on the wall of row houses in Philadelphia. The artist is Parris Stancell, sponsored by the Freedom School Mural Arts Program. Left to right; Malcolm Shabazz (Malcolm X), Ella Baker, Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass. 

The quote above the pictures,"We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest", is from Ella Baker, a founder of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee), a civil rights group. which amongst other contributions, helped to coordinate "Freedom Rides"in the early 1960's.

Test #fail for the #EdBlogNet html clip

…embed code to display and share feeds for EduBloggers (FB) blogs from InoReader. I'm getting a "Stream not found" message. Oops. Back to the drawing board...or rather looking for help...tomorrow, that proverbial "another day" though, not tonight.

This is one of several Precarious Faculty Information Network projects underway ~ what I have been doing instead of blogging. So far I have 127 EduBlogger Network (WP) blog feeds in the reader folder and OPML file bundle. There are 200 bloggers in the network, so I still have a ways to go. I am also bookmarking EdBlogNet blogs on Diggo as I go ~ 161 of those as of this afternoon's session. Tentative plans include tagging individual posts #EdBlogPost to join the #PFR linkroll in the Reading Room. Viewer clip pages on other PF Network blogs is another possibility.

The other major project involves doing the same for adjunct blogs, with 121 in the reader and bundled. The adjunct blog collection is more scattered. Many links are already on the blogroll here, some are bookmarked in Diigo and others, bookmarked earlier, are on Delicious. This is just the start of reorganizing the entire precarious faculty information network.


What comes next? I haven't the foggiest but will let you know as soon as I do, but first I have to find that damned stream. Finishing that late December post about 2014 bloggery is on hold. Here's the short version: counting post in all the adjunct blogs, I passed my 2012 post record around the middle of 2014.

Oh, and by the way, in case you missed the Creative Commons license at the bottom of every page ~ that means all these resources are here for anyone to use and share.

#MLA4Adjuncts—searching #MLA15 program for #adjunct relevance

…tag sounds like a candidate for extreme oxymoron. This won't be as elaborate as the #MLA14 post ~ just the naked program search results. There's more on #MLA15's  MLA Convention and MLA Commons pages.

Elsewhere: #subcon2015 is on, with its strongest (imo) offerings today (program); #Ferguson2MLA protest is Friday; and Marc Bousquet dba #mlademocracy started an MLA $23.01 Campaign protesting. I'm especially looking forward to watching Keith Hoeller's MLA Subconference presentation with Jack Longmate and Frank Cosco on contingent faculty organizing ~ hope MLA Subcon livestream sound is better today. Just remember though, it's the free one that feeds you too (if you can afford to get to Vancouver). The MLA, which could afford high quality livestreaming for sessions, does not. Ever wonder why?

Anyway, back to the #MLA4Adjuncts version of the MLA 2015 Program: