I thought that I would take the time to write a brief end of the year posting. Most likely, I won't have the time or inclination to do this tomorrow, so I might as well put something up tonight. It's been a curious year. At the local level, this year has seen the success of the reform movement in the grad student movement, quickly moving from the challenges to the last contract to a strong, state-wide movement that successfully won all positions on the union's executive board. From there, the local has been at the center of the attempt to revive the movement to defend public education. Schools across the state have been involved in occupations, demonstrations, and disruptions. The most notable actions occurred in Davis and Berkeley, but all the schools with heavy AWDU contingents have managed substantial political actions. The local still needs to make up for the years of neglect in regards to its workplace organizing. I still think that this is going to be a lot of work, particularly without any real models for the kind of work we are involved, but I think that we can still produce a strong rank and file union by the time the contract is up in a couple years.
At the national level, the 'occupy' movement seems to present an opening for counter-systemic movements that doesn't really have an equivalent in my life time. The movement has its obvious origins in the Arab Spring, but that impetus quickly translated into a method to fuse a number of disparate struggles. The closest comparison might be the anti-globalization movement, but it never produced a linkage between the local, the national, and the international that we see here. Additionally, the protests are remarkably popular. Repeatedly in polls, over half the population supports the basic aims of the movement, giving the movement a popularity that the ant-war movement certainly didn't see. The shift from the encampment structure to the attempt to protect houses from foreclosure seems to be a potentially powerful shift for the winter months. I can see two potential points of collapse. 1. A collapse of the delicate structure of alliances, between radicals and liberals, anarchists and socialists, veteran activists and new recruits, as well as a diversity of racial and ethnic groups. 2. The presidential election is going translate into some pretty substantial attempts on the part of the democratic party to translate the movement into a prop for the Obama election. I don't know whether these potential crises will be negotiated or not, but they represent the potential of the movement, in the form of previously unimaginable political assemblages and through a movement that is large enough to potentially change the fate of presidential elections.
The productive problems of both levels of struggle gesture towards the need to reconsider the second type of knowledge as discussed in Spinoza's Ethics, common notions. We need new forms of organization, new forms of communication, and new ways of communicating. I don't know what those new forms are, or if we are capable of producing the kind of novum implicit in these new commons. I think that we need to try to hold onto a little more theoretical modesty in regards to these questions. If these new forms are created, they will be created collectively and in struggle. In this context, we must take up Hegel's demand that we 'tarry with the negative' in order to produce new concepts, that is, the need to refuse the desire to synthesize antagonisms, to flatten ambiguities, and to accept the existence of the unknown. Experimentation and failure are crucial to social movements, no matter how painful they are at times. I'm looking forwards to finding out what happens in the next year, along with finishing a dissertation.
Showing posts with label current events. Show all posts
Showing posts with label current events. Show all posts
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Friday, December 3, 2010
On The Results of the Vote (UAW Graduate Student Union 2865)
The advocates for the recently ratified contract between UAW 2865 and the University of California are claiming the recent vote shows a resounding support for the process. At an initial look, that may look correct. After all, the "yes" vote received a rather substantial 62% of the vote. However, this doesn't take a number of things into account. I'll begin by taking the numbers at their face value, and then bring up some potential problems with the numbers. Even if we take the numbers at their face value, the percentage of yes votes is considerably smaller than earlier contracts. This points to substantial structures of opposition that exist to the current contract. Additionally, the campuses that had students on the ground, organizing to reject the contract, overwhelmingly rejected the contract. 78% of Berkeley graduates students voted against the contract, 90% of Santa Cruz graduate students voted no, and 57% of Irvine graduate students voted no, which means the campuses that got to hear a genuine debate over the quality of the contract tended to vote against it.
Additionally, there are a number of suspicious aspects to the voting totals that came out of the election. The victory for the contract largely came out of massive votes for the contract at the San Diego, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara campuses. Each of these campuses voted for the contract at a rate of over 90%, and more significantly, the voting percentage of members was above 40%, with San Diego at 41%, Los Angeles at 43%, and Santa Barbara at a remarkable 49%. This means that the schools who voted yes, brought in about 4% to 21% more votes than schools that voted no. This is particularly striking given the fact that the schools that supported the contract have a reputation for not being active union campuses, contrasting with the strong activist traditions such as Berkeley and Santa Cruz. The difficulty is that there is very little positive evidence for any accusations for vote rigging. There have been some problems with the voting process. In one location, a voting box was clear. There have been some problems with union officials advocating too close to the voting table, but most of these issues have been relatively minor, probably are tied up with the informalities taken in earlier elections, and don't really translate into any sort of substantial rigging of the ballots in and of themselves. Perhaps, there are revelations that will appear in the next few days, but without such material, it will be difficult to translate these suspicions into any substantial allegation. Here is a link with some of the concerns.
So the question that is put before us at this point is what is to be done at this point? There has been some muttering on the interstices about a decertification campaign. I can understand folks frustration about the process, but that is a dangerously bad idea. It would put the entire history of our bargaining process in jeopardy, in ways that union officialdom could only pretend about the current contract process. Additionally, for all the problems that have occurred within that process, the problems that we have with our union are relatively minor. One need only look at the precautions that dissident Teamsters had to take to challenge the official union line at the beginning of the Teamsters for a Democratic, often risking physical violence and death. I heard of similar circumstances with the custodial workers during my years as a student janitor. I don't intend to bring up those stores in order to dismiss our current situation, but to point out that organizations such as TDU have been able to make substantial reforms in their unions under much more precarious situations.
So as you might guess, I think the way forward is through the TDU model. We need to create and develop a reform organization within the union itself. We can use this to challenge the leadership in the upcoming elections, through a reform slate. We can use this structure to produce a new set of activists dedicated to a stronger, more participatory vision of the union. Most significantly, we can use this as a way to put ourselves in a position where we have activists overlooking the elections for all the campuses, as well as having a more militant voice on all the campuses. After all, whatever the reason, the absence of such forces on most of the campuses led to the passing of the contract. We need to capture the remaining energy from the vote no campaign, and use it to create the long term structures needed to work towards a more democratic and participatory union. There is an interesting example of this structure in Washington. (Here is their blog. Additionally, there is a organization in Berkeley.) We need to recognize that we need structure and resources to transform this small revolt into something that crosses at least the majority, if not all campuses. Unions are, at their heart, democratic centralist organization. We need structures to make sure that the leadership is accountable to an active and engaged rank and file membership.
That being said, I am by no means dismissing the remarkable activism that occurred in this campaign. Comrades from Berkeley and Santa Cruz came out with excellent material defending a no vote, and Brian Malone was particularly tireless in countering the nonsense from the leadership. (I'm probably ignoring the labor of a lot of folks who were just as tireless, I apologize, but I probably don't know you as well.) At Irvine, a small group of activists came out day and night for four days, and probably led to the campus voting no. My advocacy of organizational formality is no means a dismissal of that substantial labor. Instead, I see it as a way of creating structures and networks of communication that would allow for that labor to accomplish even more than it did. Additionally, it would give us a venue to produce a coherent counter-vision to the current business union model of the UAW, a vision that would challenge the logic of privatization that lets the top administration get millions of dollars in bonuses, while workers' salaries are cut and tuition goes up. When the union accepts the logic of the 'crisis', it legitimates the consolidation of class power that occurs under the name of 'crisis.'
Additionally, there are a number of suspicious aspects to the voting totals that came out of the election. The victory for the contract largely came out of massive votes for the contract at the San Diego, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara campuses. Each of these campuses voted for the contract at a rate of over 90%, and more significantly, the voting percentage of members was above 40%, with San Diego at 41%, Los Angeles at 43%, and Santa Barbara at a remarkable 49%. This means that the schools who voted yes, brought in about 4% to 21% more votes than schools that voted no. This is particularly striking given the fact that the schools that supported the contract have a reputation for not being active union campuses, contrasting with the strong activist traditions such as Berkeley and Santa Cruz. The difficulty is that there is very little positive evidence for any accusations for vote rigging. There have been some problems with the voting process. In one location, a voting box was clear. There have been some problems with union officials advocating too close to the voting table, but most of these issues have been relatively minor, probably are tied up with the informalities taken in earlier elections, and don't really translate into any sort of substantial rigging of the ballots in and of themselves. Perhaps, there are revelations that will appear in the next few days, but without such material, it will be difficult to translate these suspicions into any substantial allegation. Here is a link with some of the concerns.
So the question that is put before us at this point is what is to be done at this point? There has been some muttering on the interstices about a decertification campaign. I can understand folks frustration about the process, but that is a dangerously bad idea. It would put the entire history of our bargaining process in jeopardy, in ways that union officialdom could only pretend about the current contract process. Additionally, for all the problems that have occurred within that process, the problems that we have with our union are relatively minor. One need only look at the precautions that dissident Teamsters had to take to challenge the official union line at the beginning of the Teamsters for a Democratic, often risking physical violence and death. I heard of similar circumstances with the custodial workers during my years as a student janitor. I don't intend to bring up those stores in order to dismiss our current situation, but to point out that organizations such as TDU have been able to make substantial reforms in their unions under much more precarious situations.
So as you might guess, I think the way forward is through the TDU model. We need to create and develop a reform organization within the union itself. We can use this to challenge the leadership in the upcoming elections, through a reform slate. We can use this structure to produce a new set of activists dedicated to a stronger, more participatory vision of the union. Most significantly, we can use this as a way to put ourselves in a position where we have activists overlooking the elections for all the campuses, as well as having a more militant voice on all the campuses. After all, whatever the reason, the absence of such forces on most of the campuses led to the passing of the contract. We need to capture the remaining energy from the vote no campaign, and use it to create the long term structures needed to work towards a more democratic and participatory union. There is an interesting example of this structure in Washington. (Here is their blog. Additionally, there is a organization in Berkeley.) We need to recognize that we need structure and resources to transform this small revolt into something that crosses at least the majority, if not all campuses. Unions are, at their heart, democratic centralist organization. We need structures to make sure that the leadership is accountable to an active and engaged rank and file membership.
That being said, I am by no means dismissing the remarkable activism that occurred in this campaign. Comrades from Berkeley and Santa Cruz came out with excellent material defending a no vote, and Brian Malone was particularly tireless in countering the nonsense from the leadership. (I'm probably ignoring the labor of a lot of folks who were just as tireless, I apologize, but I probably don't know you as well.) At Irvine, a small group of activists came out day and night for four days, and probably led to the campus voting no. My advocacy of organizational formality is no means a dismissal of that substantial labor. Instead, I see it as a way of creating structures and networks of communication that would allow for that labor to accomplish even more than it did. Additionally, it would give us a venue to produce a coherent counter-vision to the current business union model of the UAW, a vision that would challenge the logic of privatization that lets the top administration get millions of dollars in bonuses, while workers' salaries are cut and tuition goes up. When the union accepts the logic of the 'crisis', it legitimates the consolidation of class power that occurs under the name of 'crisis.'
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Part I: On the initial proposal of the Deficit commission
I had initially intended to write about the Deficit Commission proposal and the Pacifica situation in the same posting, but it struck me that these might be slightly more digestible as separate postings. Here is the first of them with the material on Pacific to follow in a couple seconds. Here is part two.
Some of you may have taken note of the recent proposal by the bi-partisan Deficit commission created by President Obama. For those of you who haven't, here are a couple descriptions of the initial proposal. From the standpoint of the vast majority of the country, workers and future workers, the proposals are devastating. The commission has proposed major cuts to social security and medicaid, as well as proposing removing a number of tax benefits for the middle classes and the poor, including tax credits for parents with children. Additionally, the commission proposes to make substantial cuts to domestic spending. At the same time, the commission has proposed to reduce corporate taxes and continue tax credits for research. Precisely at the moment when the world is in the largest economic crisis since the depression because of the policies of neo-liberalism, we offered more neo-liberalism.
We should recognize the proposals for what they are, a project of class domination. Not only do we need to recognize this reality, we also need to respond in kind. Within the context of where I am, the context of the university, this really can take two forms, introducing the conversation to students in the form of education, and bringing up the issue within our events and protests. Most substantially, we need to link this issue to the fight over fees and tuition that began last year, and continues this year. However, the ability to respond effectively is ultimately dependent on the trade unions and the less venal players in the non-profit sector and community organizations. The trades have already begun to respond, but that response has to break out of the stultified, bureaucratic forms that it currently feels are safe. Real social movements are participatory and democratic. The same reality must occur within the community groups and ngos (those that are on the sidelines of the what some have called the industrial complex... we need to get another term to describe that, really.)
Some may question why the urgency for a proposal that 1. is only in its initial stages, and 2. highly unlikely to pass in the form that it is in. My response is simple. This bill sets up the topography of struggle for the next couple of years at least, and we need to make it clear that taking away these resources can only occur at a substantial cost. We need to take a page from our colleagues in France and England and recognize these benefits as our rights gained from struggle, or perhaps in the language of Sylvia Federici, as forms of the commons created in the struggle against Fordist capital. Our inability or unwillingness to do so allowed the government to destroy the welfare infrastructure, strip our ability to organize ourselves into trade unions, and the ability to attend a university without amassing extraordinary debts. Each of these was enacted with only the faintest of whispers on our part, and has produced the conditions in which attacks on policies and institutions that benefit the majority of the country have been naturalized and enacted by both political parties. Without action, that process will continue.
We also need to recognize that the attack on the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society has largely been legitimated and structure by white supremacy. The attack on welfare programs has been legitimated as an attack on the Black body, as has the increased power of the police and prison systems. White activists additionally have to recognize that this structure of white supremacy is not a simple enactment from above, but is linked into social fabric of whiteness, particularly through the social policies of the New Deal, although the history is much longer. The current Tea Party movement also marks the extent that unthought white supremacy is linked to the defense of austerity measures. At its heart, a project of class recomposition has to confront this dimension of the conflict, neither denying nor minimizing it.
Perhaps Marx phrases it best in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, when he notes that the fight against the proletarian class in the struggle of 1848 was organized on the platform of "property, family, religion, order" as a sign of conquest. This platform is equivalent to the platform of Reagan, Thatcher, and continues to today for practical purposes. Within this context, the attacks on women's rights, on the GLBT community, etc. are the cultural face of this new platform of class domination. At the practical level, this means that we must continually approach our struggles through an intersectional lens, and make our actions and programs continually engaged in these questions. This also requires breaking out of the generalizations that I am currently engaged in, and thinking about struggles at the institutional level, and the history and terrain of struggle within those institutions. I'd be interested in hearing from folks about what they have been involved in within this context, and also from fellow students and university workers on their thoughts on how to incorporate this into our struggle around privatization, and how to link this into a larger anti-austerity struggle.
Some of you may have taken note of the recent proposal by the bi-partisan Deficit commission created by President Obama. For those of you who haven't, here are a couple descriptions of the initial proposal. From the standpoint of the vast majority of the country, workers and future workers, the proposals are devastating. The commission has proposed major cuts to social security and medicaid, as well as proposing removing a number of tax benefits for the middle classes and the poor, including tax credits for parents with children. Additionally, the commission proposes to make substantial cuts to domestic spending. At the same time, the commission has proposed to reduce corporate taxes and continue tax credits for research. Precisely at the moment when the world is in the largest economic crisis since the depression because of the policies of neo-liberalism, we offered more neo-liberalism.
We should recognize the proposals for what they are, a project of class domination. Not only do we need to recognize this reality, we also need to respond in kind. Within the context of where I am, the context of the university, this really can take two forms, introducing the conversation to students in the form of education, and bringing up the issue within our events and protests. Most substantially, we need to link this issue to the fight over fees and tuition that began last year, and continues this year. However, the ability to respond effectively is ultimately dependent on the trade unions and the less venal players in the non-profit sector and community organizations. The trades have already begun to respond, but that response has to break out of the stultified, bureaucratic forms that it currently feels are safe. Real social movements are participatory and democratic. The same reality must occur within the community groups and ngos (those that are on the sidelines of the what some have called the industrial complex... we need to get another term to describe that, really.)
Some may question why the urgency for a proposal that 1. is only in its initial stages, and 2. highly unlikely to pass in the form that it is in. My response is simple. This bill sets up the topography of struggle for the next couple of years at least, and we need to make it clear that taking away these resources can only occur at a substantial cost. We need to take a page from our colleagues in France and England and recognize these benefits as our rights gained from struggle, or perhaps in the language of Sylvia Federici, as forms of the commons created in the struggle against Fordist capital. Our inability or unwillingness to do so allowed the government to destroy the welfare infrastructure, strip our ability to organize ourselves into trade unions, and the ability to attend a university without amassing extraordinary debts. Each of these was enacted with only the faintest of whispers on our part, and has produced the conditions in which attacks on policies and institutions that benefit the majority of the country have been naturalized and enacted by both political parties. Without action, that process will continue.
We also need to recognize that the attack on the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society has largely been legitimated and structure by white supremacy. The attack on welfare programs has been legitimated as an attack on the Black body, as has the increased power of the police and prison systems. White activists additionally have to recognize that this structure of white supremacy is not a simple enactment from above, but is linked into social fabric of whiteness, particularly through the social policies of the New Deal, although the history is much longer. The current Tea Party movement also marks the extent that unthought white supremacy is linked to the defense of austerity measures. At its heart, a project of class recomposition has to confront this dimension of the conflict, neither denying nor minimizing it.
Perhaps Marx phrases it best in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, when he notes that the fight against the proletarian class in the struggle of 1848 was organized on the platform of "property, family, religion, order" as a sign of conquest. This platform is equivalent to the platform of Reagan, Thatcher, and continues to today for practical purposes. Within this context, the attacks on women's rights, on the GLBT community, etc. are the cultural face of this new platform of class domination. At the practical level, this means that we must continually approach our struggles through an intersectional lens, and make our actions and programs continually engaged in these questions. This also requires breaking out of the generalizations that I am currently engaged in, and thinking about struggles at the institutional level, and the history and terrain of struggle within those institutions. I'd be interested in hearing from folks about what they have been involved in within this context, and also from fellow students and university workers on their thoughts on how to incorporate this into our struggle around privatization, and how to link this into a larger anti-austerity struggle.
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