#Strike! Shock Doctrine & enough labor movies for a film festival

…but online as a series, called Strike! after a) the topic, b) Sergei Eisenstein's first full length film, and c) the Skokie Public Library online list of labor movies that Anna Spiro recently posted to the adj-l listserv… a public PS to Anna: I found a free online pdf version of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine and full (also free) online versions for most of the films on the list...now to decide which one to start with this evening (making this Sunday movie time more soiree than matinee). PPS: feel free to suggest more movies 

Anna wrote:

Onz upon a time — before Reagan and Thatcher and Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics — there was something called Keynesian economics [+ a mercifully brief comparison of Chicago School and Keynesian theories] and unionization. I truly feel all of the lessons of the past have been forgotten by the present generation, who need to get out there and fight for what they deserve. 

Here are some movies that perhaps should be shown during adjunct week or fair labor practices week... that would make a lot of sense these days. The list is from the Skokie (IL) public library. The banksters and their ilk have had a free ride for long enough... It's NOT just adjuncts...but people who work for Walmart, etc.   

I also again recommend at least Chapter One of Naomi Klein's' The Shock Doctrine ~ horrific and revealing in how how rights continue to be taken away from us. (We are about to get cameras inside NYS trains...)

Strike! Movies about Labor Unions

following the money⁓one tiny question…maybe a few answers

…Ana Spiro started this with a not so tiny question on the adj-l listserv, one so often asked — punctuated by a reaction we all share;

How many schools are spending untold amounts on athletics and cheating the adjuncts who credential /educate the students? The money is there (spent on presidents, various non instructional staff, construction and landscaping and other projects—not teachers, books and learning!) 

Infuriating!

Who hasn't read about the mind-boggling excesses and studies, looked at graphs and other visualizations? We get (digital) front row seat following campaigns like UA Convergence complete with press coverage, protests, a petition and first rate street theater. Our adjunct heroes!

But what about others? Anna's question draws us away from both overarching (and overwhelming) big picture and the stunning exemplary tale. How can we learn about what lies in between — not big picture stats and charts but individual examples  —  and make use of our own as well as UA has?

#adjunct protest + a call for selfies

 …that would be Mary Faith Cerasoli's one-woman protest in Albany, the one Frank Reiser blogged, got activists (including but not limited to Keith Hoeller, Peter Brown and Anna Spiro), charged up on adj-l and involved getting coverage. That worked:"Without Tenure or a Home" by Cory Kilgannon, appeared in the NY Times. The story took off on social media. Then PBS showed up in Albany, filmed and wants more. So here's TL MackPico's Mary Faith update, with a call for selfies. In TL 's own write:

Mary Faith is on her way back to NYC. I just spoke to the PBS producer and told them how core activists were inspired by MF, live tweeting while she was doing her action and sending similar signs/selfies saying they support MF and where they teach from all over the country 

PBS now wants to pair MF's action/story with all of ours. I need more selfie signs to send them tonight! Can all of you get those? Please get this out everywhere ASAP. Send photos to tmackenglish@gmail.com 

Please reach out everywhere -- get your adjunct networks, groups, colleagues to make selfies and send them to my email As quickly as we can get them from as many as we can muster! This is a tremendous opportunity for the movement. 

Include these 3 pieces of info: I am Prof/Dr ...; I support MF; and location. Please make sure we get locations to stress how far apart we are. For example: "We are all Mary-Faith: exploited professors standing as One: Chicago, Illinois, Dr of English" + selfie (and similar variations) 

The producer is working with both of us. We have signed permissions, so if you can just get them to me that should work. I relayed the story of the movement's outpouring, pitching that folks  from all over countrywere sending signage supporting MF. That got all their interest, and they want to use it with what MF did today to show how widespread adjunct faculty exploitation is

#ForProfit HE Abuses

…by @USinjustice) HT @AnaMFores at #AdjunctJustice, replying to Dahn Shaulis on the adj-l listserv: "I thought of you when this "loan spigot" article came out in the NYTimes today: I will add these sources to the others on Adjunct Justice ~ thanks"

Is the goverment fleecing higher ed students for their selfish gain? They are largest lender, providing 73%. But look who profits: certainly not adjuncts! Quoting the NYT,

"At 149 institutes in 39 states (and online), ITT offers nursing, criminal justice, business, information technology and other programs to 61,000 students. Based in Carmel, Ind., the company generated $800 million in revenue in the first nine months of 2013, down 18 percent from the year-earlier period."  

Jan 19, 2014, at 8:44 AM, Dahn Shaulis <dahnshaulis@gmail.com> wrote:

Highlighting the challenges of contingent workers from nonfiction TV writers to housekeepers

… but apparently not those of the contingent faculty that the eponymous  ProfStaff  analyzed and wrote up. Dated June 30, 2012, this article predates the publication of ProfStaff's report but not the survey it was based on  Although not news to adjuncts, the article in the post title is still relevant, all the more so in the context of this and related discussions from "killing the American University in five easy steps" to the "new narrative" thread on the adj-l listserv. 

What is not news either but even more relevant in above contexts: the "other contingent workers" Sen. Franken refers to does not include adjuncts, contingent faculty, academic workers, tenuous labor, precarious academic labor or whatever the naming flavor of the week is. Perhaps just "other"?

Capitol Hill got a dose of reality today at a panel featuring entertainment insiders and lawmakers who discussed the perils of the freelance economy and revealed the behind-the-scenes challenges facing professional employees like writers in nonfiction television, as well as temps, subcontractors, and freelancers in nearly every industry, who lack the protections and structures of traditional employment. 

Sen. Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota and a member of three unions himself, opened the panel by noting the lack of employment protections he faced as a writer at the beginning of his career. He called attention to important provisions in the Rebuild America Act that would help protect writers and other contingent workers. [emphasis added]

Read the rest of "Highlighting the challenges of contingent workers from nonfiction TV writers to housekeepers." Then read more about the "Where is Professor Staff?"Report here (on this blog) or here at Campaign for the Future of Higher Education (CFHE). As for the "new narrative" discussion, you can follow it and participate by subscribing to the Contingent Academics Mailing List

CFP: Essays on #NTTfaculty Labor Issues

Attn: #newfac12 participants: Bring on the essays about the NFM Summit, @Josh Boldt's The Adjunct Project crowdsourcing pay and working conditions, NFM Foundation, our Framework for Change's TEACH Task Force, NFM Chapters, studies, surveys, other action projects and more. ¡No somos precari@s invertibrad@s! Let's see "How 'teaching conditions are learning conditions' does justice to both." Call cross posted from the Contingent Faculty List via Sandy Baringer. 

 

Call for Submissions:  Special Joint Issue of the ADE Bulletin and the ADFL Bulletin: "Non-Tenure-Track Faculty in the Modern Languages: Issues and Directions"

Another MLA Online Roundup « Post Academic

Still no personally crafted MLA Convention-from-afar round-up, instead I spent the day community blogging, researching a story on, would you believe, the local Chamber of Commerce (which displays the same stunning disregard for transparency as highered admin), setting up for and settling into a couple of open online classes/workshops, one an experimental online super-mega-class, a MOOC.

Both delivery and subject for this last course, Learning and Knowledge Analytics, have major implications for the future of highered and academic labor. Why am I doing it? Curiosity, it's free, definitely a change of pace and, unless you are into ostrich, relevant.

Anyway, back to Post-academic's excellent MLA Convention roundup...

I would have made this a Twitter roundup, but the #mla11 feed is admirably polite and professional, aside from concerns about cliquishness among a certain group. To which I say, this is a convention, not high school, so make your own group if you don’t like the dominant group. It can be done. It’s a large convention, not a cafeteria. Watch “Police Academy” or “Stripes” or any other inspiring misfit comedy, take some notes and call me in the morning.

Anyway, on to the roundup:

via postacademic.org

The message of the digression (yes, intended or not, there's a message, or subtext if you prefer): nice to hear about the convention, but we all still have lives. Haven't checked recently, but not much about #mla1 on the adj-l list, not even about the "Academy in Hard Times" opening day initiative. A different quantum universe.

Posted via email from Academentia