Monday #Adjunct Notes…Happy Birthday #AdjunctJustice

The Daily Notes idea I proposed last Friday, got lost over the weekend. I'm not ready to say that it's not working out and will try again. Maybe it's just not for weekends. There's not really a plan but if there were, "post more often" would be the short version. More content (posts) leads to more visits, develops the blog as a network hub and (hopefully) encourages checking out features (blogrolls, pages, news feed ticker, archives, video bar, widgets for Twitter, Facebook and blog feeds ~ and morw). We really do have a lot of comment even without posts.

Like frosting like on a birthday cupcake, bringing us to ~

...a happy announcement and call for a digital party. Yesterday +Ana Maria Fores Tamayo's Adjunct Justice (on Tumblr) turned one year old (you might not have noticed from just the post title) Celebrate by visiting the blog and following. PS plans are afoot to add a comment feature too because we all know how much Ana enjoys conversations with visitors to the Adjunct Justice Facebook page.

3 ways to get on the solidarity bus & darker October thoughts

…about the bus part…I've been following, Facebooking and tweeting +Ana Maria Fores Tamayo's campaign supporting immigrant issues and calling the marginalized—social and geographical outliers—to stand together. Her campaign is both online at Adjunct Justice and @AnaMFores and on the ground at protests and all the way to border detention centers. Of the many powerful and moving pictures she has taken documenting protests (sometimes carrying a sign bigger than she is) and trips to the border, I am particularly take the solidarity bus. Maybe because it's public art on wheels or I'm having a 60's flashback, but the solidarity bus sure looks good for my next Precarious Faculty cover image. Besides, Vanessa is butterfly in Greek.

That's one way to get on the solidarity bus. The other two are National Adjunct Walkout Day and Meg Feeley's Adjunct Student Loan Debt / PSLF Fairness Campaign

❝@AnaMFores' People's #Petition: #AdjunctJustice demands Better Pay for #Adjunct Faculty

…how it all started…When I first began my petition, Vanessa Vaile was the first to pick up on it and post it. I can't find that link offhand, but I do have one of her first few emails that began our friendship and collaboration, dating back to April 2012. It seems only yesterday, but a lot has happened since then, in our movement, and in our lives. I think I will save that for another blog, though...

I remember when I began my petition for Adjunct Justice, demanding better pay for adjuncts; it was a day of desperation, as my college had given me an ultimatum: either teach Writing Composition classes with 35 students each or do not teach these particular classes at all. It was my choice. 

I gave them an unequivocal no. 

I would be remiss in my duties as an effective educator were I to teach students under such untenable circumstances. How can we teach that many students at the same time, and have them learn anything of value? 

That semester I taught only two classes, thus beginning my quiet revolution against what I saw not only as the exploitation of adjunct faculty but also the diminution of student learning. 

These past two years I have persisted, so the petition has gone forward little by little. We now have over 8300 signatures. I have met online friends and colleagues, groups of grassroots activists who have helped me nurture it and bring it forward. I have become friends with higher ed academics all across the United States: adjunct, tenured, and untenured alike.  

❝@DomesticWorkers: #takeaction to protect kids & families at the #border

Many petitions, especially for the #childrefugees at the border, land in my mailboxes. Lately, I'm making an effort to sign more of them than usual. And the ones for the children? I sign all of them. 

Plus I've been following, supporting and sharing +Ana Maria Fores Tamayo's unrelenting efforts on their behalf. This morning I broached the idea of collecting these petitions on a single to facilitate signing to the adj-l list. Cooperation does make a difference. 

If no one steps up, then I'll do it on my own. Here's a start with today's petition from the National Domestic Workers Alliance:

In/scribing the #adjunct as scribe…@AnaMFores writes

… My good friend and colleague Vanessa Vaile, of @PrecariousFac fame and/or notoriety (depending on what you think about the Facebook impasse still going on), has asked me for quite some time to write up something about the image I have consistently employed since I started my petition for Adjunct Justice two years ago now, which I continue to use on my site, as well as in anything I formally write. But one thing has led to another, and I have never gotten around to it.

The other day, however, I was perturbed by an article I read at Chronicle Vitae, "Sharecroppers. Migrant Workers. Adjuncts?" by David Perry. I thought the author might have been referring to my page, Adjunct Justice, when he wrote about the slaves of Egypt. Although he cited another piece, he left me thinking that I should clarify my use of metaphor and image, and that I should please my friend while I was going about it — hence my explanation for my use of the scribes in Egypt.

The image I employ in Adjunct Justice are scribes, the best paid of Egypt's society. Yet as a modern society, many of us do not know this. Many of us do not appreciate this fact now — the knowledge these scribes had — though we do appreciate what is left behind from their learning, and their teaching.