Sunday Night at @UStream: #NatGat3 Recap: #Occupy’s 3rd National Gathering « @InterOcc

…another late Sunday Matinee but I'm keeping the tag for filing purposes. This comes from the InterOccupy newsletter, online following and subscribing information below. The collective weight of Gaza (dominating higher education discourse via the "Salaita Affair," drawing HE's academic and tenure discussions into the public sphere ~ when silos collide), the child refugees of the "border crisis," and now #Ferguson, make both light hearted  film and adjunct polemic seem equally inappropriate. Although we are all waste by-products of globalization., these marginalized are far more disposable and at risk than we are. 

PS please note the prescient emphasis on policing and police terror, as well as Palestine, voice and voicelessness...

Together We Rose!  Occupy's Third National Gathering

July 31-August 3 in Sacramento -- just ahead of COCAL XI in NYC, the Occupy movement came together for reflection, learning, planning, sharing—and yes, marching!  Despite drought and heat of 100°+, Occupiers from up and down the West Coast, as well as other areas of the country (and a few from elsewhere on the globe) shared 5 days of activism and discussion.

Watch the General Assemblies and more on these stream channels:

What Is a Gift?

…from a post that is not about adjuncts, precarious knowledge workers, NTT faculty, or whatever we call ourselves this week ~ but very relevant. Compare "gifts" as used here to similar gifts, perks, favors offered adjunct: more pay but not equity and the gap still widening, adjunct appreciation days, awards, being "lucky" to get hired at the last minute, impossible schedules, etc). From Keithpp's Blog:

As the holiday season fast approaches, it has come to our attention that some of our colleagues, managers and co-worker need help understanding the concept of “gift.”

Conferences Coming & Going: #LeftForum, #4C12, #SXSW, etc

A Rite of Spring Stravinsky would not recognize, conferences are how academics celebrate its coming. No excursions to Ft Lauderdale or other beaches.


March opened with NEA Higher Education Conference and AWP 2012, both in Chicago. Only the former participated in Occupy Chi / National  Day of Action for Education. L.A. followed with ACE 2012 annual meeting for higher ed administrators, university presidents and their ilk. Edu-geeks frolicked at SXSWedu in Austin, regular SXSW continues through March 19.  For the weekend the determined (perhaps demented) conference goer has CCCC in St Louis and Left Forum in NYC.

 

A March 1 "Virtual Sit-in"

Tomorrow, more on other #M1 actions, which we've tweeted today and will follow on Twitter tomorrow. For a good overview/ preview, see Angus Johnston on "Student The March First National Day of Action — What to Expect on #M1." Coverage includes linked background on2009 and 2010 March actions, which preceded and the Occupy movement. Check Occupy Colleges for lists and locations. The 2010 March Action included a Virtual Sit-In that involved logging into the UC portal and adding a pin with your name and location to a Google map. Presumably this version, details forthcoming shortly, will be different enough to avoid DDoS investigations, as in 2010.

UC San Diego issues a Call to Action for a Virtual Sit-In (truncated and snipped version, complete version online here)

 

March 1st is one day of action in a growing movement, but there are any number of ways to support it. This one is a call to VIRTUAL ACTION. UCSD cordially invites the citizens of the world to become actors in a performance of Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD) through a virtual sit-in that borrows tactics of trespass and blockade from earlier social movements, applying them to the virtual sphere. 

Electronic Civil Disobedience, as a form of mass de-centralized electronic direct action, utilizes virtual blockades and virtual sit-ins. Unlike the participants in a traditional civil disobedience action, an ECD actor can participate in virtual blockades and sit-ins from home, from work, from the university, or from other points of access to the Net. 

The virtual sit-in will begin on March 1st at 12:00 AM and end on March 5th at 11:59 PM. To participate, follow reclaimucsd.wordpress.com or send an email to march1stvirtualsitin@gmail.com. Details will be posted to the blog and sent out via email about how to participate....See you on the streets and the virtual networks of the world.

Reading Room: Omnivore on highered, academic publishing, online ed & more

Outlets for scholarly work

From the Village Voice's Education Supplement, a special issue on bursting the tuition bubble. The Occupy movement took hold at some campuses, and students are still holding their ground— but how strong is their will? A look at what the Top 1% of earners majored in. Every year, JSTOR turns away 150 million attempts to read journal articles (and more). Rather than restricting access to publicly funded scientific research, the rule should be — if taxpayers paid for it, they own it. Clever people have figured out that there is a growing demand for outlets for scholarly work; as a result, there has been a proliferation of new publishers offering new journals in every imaginable field. Kill peer review or reform it: It's only a matter of time before people rise up against the conventions of traditional journal publishing. Richard Price, founder of Academia.edu, on the future of peer review. Felix Salmon on Udacity and the future of online universities (and part 2). What you (really) need to know: The digital age has changed more than how we learn — it’s changed what we need to learn. Blogs vs. Term Papers: To raves and rants, blogging has become a requirement in everything from MBA to literature courses.

Shamelessly reposted in toto from Omnivore, the Book Forum blog. Best and smartest, eclectic curated collections of annotated links. Want more, from a cross section of popular and scholarly sources and on a variety of topics? Head on over, bookmark, subscribe, visit regularly.

Join Occupy College Feb 22-23 Teach-Ins

@OccupyColleges's National Solidarity Teach-ins are prep for Mar 1 ~ training, warm-up. Although not coming out for these, the AAUP and other organizations affiliated with the the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education (CFHE), of which New Faculty Majority is one, have officially endorsed Occupy Education and are promoting this year's upcoming March 1 Action. A recent AAUP letter to members and chapters urges participation and suggests activities very much modeled on Campus Equity Week (CEW). I am not entirely clear on the difference between the two groups, although OE seems more establishment and OC more in the streets, the former planning one day, March 1, and the latter a week of action ~ no matter really as long as they are headed in the same direction and work together.

Students on the Front Lines of Class War

So what does that have to do with #adjuncts, #academiclabor & #NFM's #highered mission? In my opinion, plenty. Perhaps Juan Cole's Truthdig essay How Students Landed on the Front Lines of Class War will help explain why we should be there with them. If not, then at least include it in discussions about our purpose and where it fits in the current cultural, economic and higher education landscape.

Joe Wolf (CC-BY-ND)

By Juan Cole

The deliberate pepper-spraying by campus police of nonviolent protesters at UC Davis on Friday has provoked national outrage. But the horrific incident must not cloud the real question: What led comfortable, bright, middle-class students to join the Occupy protest movement against income inequality and big-money politics in the first place?

The University of California system raised tuition by more than 9 percent this year, and the California State University system upped tuition by 12 perceity.


Follow the link to read the rest of How Students Landed on the Front Lines of Class War.


Juan Cole,  a celebrated Mideast scholar and the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, also blogs at Informed Comment. His Truthdig column appears every other Tuesday.

Reading Room: Patterns in Academia

Actions. Protests. Campaigns Occupations. Summits. Conferences. Conventions. You know the boundaries are blurring when cops pepper spray not Berkeley but UC Davis (the 2nd whitest UC campus in the system) students and there is a movement to Occupy MLA, about which most of the conversations take place on Twitter. You doubt? Then search and follow the OccupyMLA or OMLA with or without hashtags. See for yourself. 


Change and transgression are in the air. So why am I posting a collection on annotated links from a book blog? Easy... we need intel from multiple perspectives, not just the usual academic media, a few blogs written by academics and mainstream media. It's also a change of pace. We need that too

Cathrine Hasse and Stine Trentemoller (Academia): Cultural Work Place Patterns in Academia. Rex J. Pjesky (West Texs A&M) and Daniel Sutter (Troy): Does the Lack of a Profit Motive Affect Hiring in Academe? Evidence from the Market for Lawyers....

Occupy Colleges Now: Students as the New Public Intellectuals

Not adjuncts, not lecturers ~ students. That is the group Henry Giroux identifies as the "new intellectuals." How and why did we miss playing a central role? Have we been chasing the wrong brass ring? In my admittedly personal opinion, changing the world trumps "professional dignity" any day.

Police pepper spray students at a UC Davis demonstration on Friday, November 18. (Screengrab: asucd - Click here for video)

Giroux writes,

Finding our way to a more humane future demands a new politics, a new set of values, and a renewed sense of the fragile nature of democracy. In part, this means educating a new generation of intellectuals who not only defend higher education as a democratic public sphere, but also frame their own agency as intellectuals willing to connect their research, teaching, knowledge, and service with broader democratic concerns over equality, justice, and an alternative vision of what the university might be and what society could become. Under the present circumstances, it is time to remind ourselves that academe may be one of the few public spheres available that can provide the educational conditions for students, faculty, administrators, and community members to embrace pedagogy as a space of dialogue and unmitigated questioning, imagine different futures, become border-crossers, and embrace a language of critique and possibility that makes visible the urgency of a politics necessary to address important social issues and contribute to the quality of public life and the common good.

Time for contingent faculty to combine necessary and pragmatic goals of improving our economic and professional lot with crossing a few borders. It's written into our mission statement. Nor are the two mutually exclusive. The famous Hillel quote comes to mind, "If I am not for myself, then who am I for? If I am for myself alone, then what am I?" Not a bad start for our brand and explaining who we are.

AAUP National Elections

If you are an adjunct / contingent faculty and AAUP member, whether Bargaining Unit or Chapter, please think of yourself as potential candidate for the National Council. It's been a tough year. The previous was no picnic either. Yet waves of resistance to an unbearable status and recent statements favoring a greater voice for us give hope. Maybe I am wrong about a change in the climate. Retired and not a member, what would I know? Call it a hunch (but an educated one). Jeanette Jeneault, certainly more informed than I, agrees and writes, 

Greetings,

If you are an AAUP Collective Bargaining or Advocacy chapter would like to run for National Council or one of the other positions of the AAUP, please let me know. I am on the nominations committee, and would like to see more contingent faculty representation. If interested, please read the information on the Nominations Invited page, and if you have any questions let me know.

Thanks for considering this. You will need to attend two meetings per year. All expenses are paid. I am on the nomination committee and on council.

JJ

In case we are not wrong, then surely this is the time for as many adjuncts, contingent faculty and other non-tenurable academic knowledge workers to stand for the council, Then with a slate worth supporting, join and vote it in. There is an advantage to being in the majority, even an exploited one, but not unless we seize it. Now.

still writing & occupying but why

I'm working my way through blogs, FB pages and Twittiverse and have the outlines of a Why I Write blog post in hopper ~ unless I burn out before getting to it. Today, after all, is National Day on Writing and composition adjuncts are legion in the academy. Ethan has been addressing numbers in his series but not yet by discipline. Just getting counted is the first step. In the meantime, there is still OWS. This ~ Occupy Mordor, below ~ caught my fancy. There are clever posters but not enough much humor, the price of earnestness.

#CEW Cookbook: Spice up #TeachIns

Not part of #CEW2011, but organized by UNM's Peace Studies Program to support #OWS and supplement 'burque's iteration, activities planned for this event certainly could be adapted for Campus Equity Week. Teach-ins and poetry. Lectures to livestreamed. Video night. I wouldn't be surprised to hear live about live music being added, especially with slam and hip-hop already on the bill. The overall structure is familiar: added performance elements spice it up, and livestreaming delivers it to a larger audience.

Adjuncts and contingent faculty scheduling non-violence training might give admin pause though. OK scratch that one. Teach-in topics as listed do not directly address higher ed issues, let alone confront contingency. Although no faculty speakers are specifically identified as adjuncts, some could be. Members of G.E.T., the UNM graduate student employees organization will be filling some slots. 

Professors' #OWS Petition Taking Off

"Professors support Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Movements Everywhere" and more petitions... don't sign just one! If you know of others, send us the links.

Target: The 1%

Sponsored by: Marc Blecher, Steve Crowley, Chris Howell, Steve Volk; Oberlin College

We, the undersigned college and university professors, stand in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movements in New York City, around the country, and around the world. We do so in the knowledge that the dramatic increases in poverty, joblessness and economic insecurity in our society are directly related to the extraordinary rise in inequality, particularly the wealth captured by the 1% of our population, which has deeply corrupted our political system. We stand united with the 99% to take back our economy and government from the 1%.

See also: 

Five Things That #OccupyWallStreet Has Done Right

What can can adjuncts, contingent faculty and other marginalized academic knowledge workers learn from Occupy Wall Street about organizing and building a movement that we can't from either marketing strategies or by the book union methods?

"#OccupyWallStreet protests are now well into their second week, and they are increasingly capturing the public spotlight. This is because, whatever limitations their occupation has, the protesters have done many things right."

1. They chose the right target.

2. They made a great poster.

3. They gave their action time to build.

4. They created a good scenario for conflict.

5. They are using their momentum to escalate.

"... the fact that #OccupyWallStreet has not relied on established progressive organizations ends up being a strength. Its independent participants are inspired by the increasing attention their critique of Wall Street is getting, and they are willing to make greater sacrifices now that their action has begun to capture the public imagination."

Read more about the Five Things That #OccupyWallStreet Has Done Rightat Talking Union .Rephrase the above statement, making judicious substitutions for "Occupy" and "Wall Street." Start thinking about how we could adapt them, scale them down for CEW.

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