#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

On #PSLF: Public Statement to US #DoE on 30 hour rule

…guest post by Meg Feeley, originally posted to the adj-l listserv, Contingent Academics Mailing List, October 23, 2014

Please consider clicking through to the comments page for the U.S. Department of Education. Tell them you reject their '30 hour' rule for academics as outside the industry norm, and support a 'one class' rule: anyone who teaches one class (and is not employed full-time elsewhere) should be eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. You may submit comments anonymously.

Spread the word! You have until Nov 4th to submit comments here (click the "comment now" button):

Here is the public comment I submitted which has not yet been published.

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.

An #adjunct, @MMStrikesBack, writes @nytdavidbrooks

Shirley Temple, The Little Princess*

…about his op-ed,The American #Precariat, in Sunday's @NYTimes…

 Dear Mr. Brooks,

You may have noticed a new phrase emerging in academic circles sweeping higher education journals, newspapers, websites, twitter and blogs. Precarious, contingent, or adjunct faculty are living in poverty like low wage service employees. Adjuncts are forced into this new economic climate to accept jobs offering semester only contracts (if that) and low salaries as well as few opportunities for health insurance and retirement benefits.

Recently our classes have been cut even further by universities insisting they can’t afford the cost of insuring us with the new health care law. And now we have the cuts in food stamps which is eroding our ability to sustain our families that helped us survive our low wage higher education teaching jobs. We happen to be teaching all over the United States in every academic discipline you could imagine. As 79% of the professors employed, you can imagine this is causing some of us adjuncts to stand up and organize for better working conditions and a more viable future for our colleagues as well as a better learning environment for our students.

David Brooks Phones It In

 In sociology and economics, the precariat is a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare, and also means a member of a proletariat class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and must sell their labor to live

All of us who work under these definitive conditions have one thing in common. We, like you so cleverly noted, are forced to “rely on friends and family” and “we lack faith in American possibilities.” Not now, we don’t.

an #adjunct reflects on living

…Dear Mr. Atkinson

…I am one of the Adjuncts you speak of in your editorial “The Invisible Professor” published in the Boston Globe on February 2, 2014. As part or full time instructors, we want to be able to participate in our own departments. We want a chance to be recognized for our contributions as human beings, as highly skilled teachers who put every ounce of our energy and passion into our vocation as university educators. 

The funeral is the end of the story – what comes before is more important to me.  It’s the living part that you missed. We want to live.