Sunday Matinee: "Degrees of Shame"

Today is another movie day on the blog ~ BYOP(opcorn). Leading up to #cocalXI ~ or #altCOCAL, even both, depending on your inclinations (but that's another post), the current Sunday Matinee series focuses on Barbara Wolf's films about adjunct academic labor, which have been closely associated with COCAL since the first Campus Equity Week in 2001, where Degrees of Shame: Part-time Faculty: Migrant Workers of the Information Economy was shown in Chicago (and became a CEW staple). The afterword to A Simple Matter of Justice was taped at COCAL IV in San Jose, CA. In the picture to the the right, Barbara Wolf is handing out flyers in Chicago.

See also Barbara Wolf's bio and other posts in the series. Barring the unforeseen, next Sunday's Matinee will be that very San Jose afterword and more links, of course...now, Degrees of Shame

#Adjunct/#AFT14 in brief & Sunday Night Late Show: Starting a #PTFaculty Union

…because it's far too late for a Matinee…Chicago seemed a particularly setting apt for this weekend's feature because of an announced CACHE Chicago event, The Pursuit of Truth, Friday July 11. I can't say how it went because haven't heard more

That might have been because the AFT convention in L.A. was also this weekend. It saw more contingent friendly resolutions than usual. Twitter covering for and posting on National Mobilization for Equity as well as a pre-convention AFT in the news special issue on Precarious Dispatches added more to the usual online busy.

K-12 issues usually dominate both AFT and NEA deliberations, leaving higher ed somewhat to the side and contingent faculty even more so. This year's battle was Common Core, not irrelevant to higher ed but that's for another time. For now, I'll go with +George Station who says it best: "no one will be pleased.").

Our news: the new Contingent Faculty Caucus organized by Bill Lipkin (yes, our Bill) held its first meeting at yesterday. Bill standing in front of the meeting sign smiling says it all.

On with the show, the final chapter. Next week will be with the Afterword filmed at COCAL VI in 2001 or a back track to Degrees of Shame, Barbara Wolf's first adjunct video and a perennial Campus Equity Week staple. ICYMI, catch the previous episodes in the series here. 

P-FAC: Starting a Part-Time Faculty Union (Chicago) from Adjunct and Contingent

In Chapter 6, of A Simple Matter of Justice, the part-time faculty at Columbia College in Chicago organized themselves into a union in an institution where the full-time faculty is not unionized. 

Sunday Matinee: Chs 4 & 5: Organizing Boston & California

Barbara Wolf, Workplace 4.2

#adjunct organizing is A Simple Matter of Justice (Barbara Wolf, 2001). This Sunday's videos examine two noted cases and still relevant organizing models for regional and state, respectively.

Each Chapter focuses on the barriers, opportunities and organizing approaches being undertaken in a different situation. For example, Boston part-timers, through COCAL-Boston, are organizing on a regional basis because of the vast number of schools there, which may be the first US example of "metro strategy" later described by Joe Berry in Reclaiming the Ivory Tower. 

California community college part-time faculty, CPFA (California Part Time Faculty Association), are shown organizing statewide to change state laws. Sadly, the Boston page is gone, leaving no more than a a description in a Kairos article and dead link to a no longer existing website. The last Wayback Machine snapshot was May 1, 2003.  CPFA is still going strong: website, discussion list, quarterly journal, blog, Twitter, etc

COCAL-Boston: Regional Organizing (Boston) from Adjunct and Contingent on Vimeo.

About Boston Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor 

Sunday Matinee reruns: #LastProfessors revisited + next Barbara Wolf installment

…opens with taking our in-house Wayback Machine to Sunday, May 5, 2013 for movie break…last of the profs aka the great train wreck featuring the #adjunct as Gunga Din. Donoghue, interviewed about his 2008 book, says it's too late to turn back and that we've already passed the tipping point. Asked at the beginning of the interview above to describe last profs in ten words or less, he replies, "a train wreck with no survivors." The playlist is keyed to follow with parts 2 through 4 of the video interview. 

See also: Donoghue chapter in Keith Hoeller's Equality for Contingent Faculty and Stanley Fish on Last Profs, Opinionator, NYTimes 2009. PS...Henry Giroux interview on the corporatization of American education follows 

Now for our weekly pre-COCAL XI video from A Simple Matter of Justice series, accompanied by Chris Carter's 2002 Workplace Interview with Barbara Wolf, director of Degrees of Shame  (1997) and this series. This week's matinee closes with Chapter 3, "APBU: Joining a Full-time Faculty Union" (Canada). In many locations in Canada, part-time faculty are joining the full-time faculty union, but beginning with separate bargaining units. Next week's destinations Boston and Chicago

Movie Marathon: #Labor & #Adjunct Organizing…#NormaRae & #KeithHoeller

…A film festival! Let's make a marathon out of it. More from Barbara Wolf's A Simple Matter of Justice, plus classic labor movies. Here's a 2013 list from Freelancers Union by Sara Horowitz: 

... [of t]he best labor-related movies that'll make you want to fight for the underdog. Who doesn’t love movie night? People often ask me about my favorites, so I’ve put together a list of my top labor-related movies. Many of them are based on actual events. Of course they’ve been dramatized, Hollywood-style, but they're still great stories. Documentaries will come next. Enjoy!

.... Norma Rae (1979), this one's for @mmstrikesback

Sunday Night at the Movies…#Adjunct version

…which is to say, free viewing and BYOP. Depending on what I find in the vault. I'm thinking double feature. One socially/movement relevant but the other not in the least, just for fun. It's already been a serious day, what with a new #StandwithMaryFaith article on Democracy Chronicles about the fundraiser (donations, no #selfies please).

Whether or not you are going, COCAL XI is coming. With that in mind, movie night kicks off screening Barbara Wolf's 2001 A Simple Matter of Justice video series.

Introduction: Political & Economic History

Introduction: Political & Economic History from Adjunct and Contingent on Vimeo

BYOP: Degrees of Shame

Welcome to #CEW2011. Past midnight, Campus Equity Week is now officially underway. What could be more appropriate than to start the week with the film that is probably a CEW signature event. If your group is hosting an information table, set up a laptop to screen Degrees of Shame and other videos. A large HD monitor, if you can finagle one would be a plus. 


And if there is no table or special campus activity, don't let that stop you. Why not do something on your own or with a few colleagues? CEW originated as a grassroots, local initiative event. Share the video (and others ~ we'll be posting a playlist), blog it, host an informal movie night, ask your local Occupation to show it, email the link to the press with a cover letter (to the editor) and / or to legislators ~ and elsewhere.

Degrees of Shame from Barbara Wolf on Vimeo

In 1960 Edward R. Murrow made Harvest of Shame a television documentary about the plight of migrant farm workers. To Barbara Wolf the economic situation and working conditions of adjunct professors suggested an information economy parallel to migrant farm workers. 

Following the logic of Harvest of Shame, Wolf interviews a variety of adjunct faculty to make visible the working lives of these least respected but absolutely vital faculty members who now do more than 40% of the teaching in America's institutions of higher education. Interviews with university administration officials, union leaders, legislators, and other observers document both the problem and possible solutions.

Murrow concluded Harvest of Shame by asking his viewers to cultivate “an enlightened,aroused and perhaps angered public opinion” and to demand a change. Wolf sees her documentary as both informational and, in Murrow’s tradition, as a tool for change.