Click on the cartoon to see it bigger. Happy Labor Day!

Recently Al Robles, a figure prominent in the San Francisco Bay Area Filipino American community passed away.  Here is a short excerpt from a post I did on him:

Manong Al was a native San Franciscan and fought for the rights of the poor and the elderly all throughout his life.  During the 1970s he fought against the eviction of elderly Chinese and Pilipino American residents at the I-Hotel during which time the fight for the I-Hotel became a symbol of corporate greed and community solidarity across race and class.  While the elders were evicted from their homes and the I-Hotel was demolished, creating a crushing defeat and feelings of despair for the Chinese and Pilipino community in San Francisco Manong Al (like many others as well) did not give up.  He and the community continued to fight and kept the spot where the I-Hotel originally stood from being developed.  Finally, around four or so years ago the I-Hotel rose from the ashes and became a center of housing for low-income senior citizens and a space for community organizers and the Manilatown Heritage Foundation.

Throughout the years Manong Al continued to be an advocate for the elderly and especially for the manongs and manangs of the Pilipino American community; those folks who immigrated from the Philippines to work, hunched over with broken backs, in the fields of California.  As he would deliver meals to the manongs and manangs and provide other services for them he would collect their stories of joy and hardship, and he was ever the consummate oral historian, and in turn would put their experiences down in the form of poetry.  He also became something of a father figure for many community artists and activists at the Kearny Street Workshop and imparted his wisdom onto the many folks who walked through those doors as well.

We’re still at it!

Image description: Protesters in orange T-shirts reading "PJA" picket outside of a carwash.

This Sunday, May 3rd, the CLEAN Carwash Campaign and Progressive Jewish Alliance will be picketing the Vermont Hand Wash at 1666 N. Vermont Avenue from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Although no carwash in Los Angeles can be described as “good,” the owners of the Vermont Hand Wash in Los Feliz are among the worst in the industry. By protesting the Vermont Hand Wash, we hope to send a message to other carwashes throughout the city. For more information, visit cleancarwashla.org.

Please repost or link to this message on your blog, or forward this to any Los Angeles residents you might know.

Also, please leave a comment if you or someone you know plans to attend. Thanks!

Bean pointed out this story to me, from Eric Ruder in The Intelligence Daily:

In 2006, the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR) filed a suit on behalf of Ora Lee Hurley, who couldn’t get out of prison until she had enough money to pay a $705 fine. But she couldn’t pay the fine because she had to pay the Georgia Department of Corrections $600 a month for room and board, and spend $76 a month on public transportation, laundry and food.

She was released five days a week to work at the K&K Soul Food restaurant, where she earned $6.50 an hour, which netted her about $700 a month after taxes. Hurley was trapped in prison for eight months beyond her initial 120-day sentence until the Southern Center intervened. Over the course of her incarceration, she earned about $7,000, but she never had enough at one time to pay off her $705 fine.

“This is a situation where if this woman was able to write a check for the amount of the fine, she would be out of there,” Sarah Geraghty, a SCHR lawyer, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution while Hurley was still imprisoned. “And because she can’t, she’s still in custody. It’s as simple as that.”

Georgia also lets for-profit probation companies prey on people too poor to pay their traffic violations and court fees. According to a 2008 SCHR report entitled “Profiting from the poor”:

In courts around Georgia, people who are charged with misdemeanors and cannot pay their fines that day in court are placed on probation under the supervision of private, for-profit companies until they pay off their fines. On probation, they must pay these companies substantial monthly “supervision fees” that may double or triple the amount that a person of means would pay for the same offense.

For example, a person of means may pay $200 for a traffic ticket on the day of court and be done with it, while a person too poor to pay that day is placed on probation and ends up paying $500 or more for the same offense.

Last Sunday, sitting on the steps next to my container garden outside my Long Beach apartment, I heard a group of people singing in the next building. I thought of the seder I’d had a couple of nights before; my friends and I had sung the Ma Nishtana, which I only learned a few years ago and forget every year. Only two of the guests remembered the melody at first, but it only took a line or two for it to come back to the rest of us. I wondered if the neighbors could hear us. I’ve never had an anti-Semitic incident in this neighborhood, so I thought it’d be kind of cool if on the other side of our open windows, people were listening to us sing.

I watched families walking in and out of apartments, carrying children, greeting relatives. I smiled as I listened to the singing. Then I realized it wasn’t a hymn or some other Easter song - they were all singing a pop song. Blink 182 or something.

Oh. Well, it was still nice to hear singing. Yellow jackets buzzed around my bacopas. My bean seedlings were just starting to twine around the railing, and my lavender was blooming like the world was going to end.

***

According to the Slingshot Collective, “the modern world is the ugliest, saddest, dirtiest, and most stressful and dangerous place humans have ever created.” I don’t know if it’s the ugliest, the saddest, or the est of any of those other things, but many parts of it certainly are ugly and sad. I was thinking about that quote, along with various discussions I’ve witnessed about the “lack” of white American culture - whiteness as negative space - and white Americans’ need to appropriate more exotic cultures, when I tested a theory out on my husband: that the United States has one of the shallowest national cultures on the planet. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m finding the story about Susan Boyle, a “Britain’s Got Talent” contestant whose audition video has been very popular on Youtube, interesting.

The video (which can be found here) is great fun to watch, because Susan Boyle herself is very appealing, her voice is great, and because it’s always satisfying watching a high point in someone’s life.

But primarily, the video’s fun because everyone likes watching the underdog kick ass.

But the weird thing is, why is she such an underdog? Partly it’s because she’s not TV-pretty (Boyle herself was apparently dismayed by how she looked on TV), and TV has taught us for years that only thin, pretty people have any talent. Partly it’s because she’s heavyset (at least by TV standards, which are harsher for women than men), and partly it’s because she’s nearly fifty. I agree with Crowfoot, who in Shakesville comments wrote:

This has made me bawl my eyes out. I’m also fat and in my forties and feel ugly and I know no one would take me seriously as a performer. I also gave up on acting because of the sexism and the lookism. So watching her up there blowing them all away in the face of their bigotry.. *sniff* The sexism/sizism/lookism displayed by the audience and the judges just breaks my heart. How dare they laugh at her because she isn’t skinny and young and beautiful. Douchebags. How many people’s lives are diminished by this crap? We are a stupid stupid stupid species.

Even more than that, however, I think people were shocked because of the class markers she carries — in her voice, her attitude, and her hair and clothes. Ms Boyle’s presentation fairly screams “working class,” and people don’t expect working class to do good work. Colette Douglas Home writes:

Susan [was] roundly patronised by such mega-talents as [Britain's Got Talent judges] Amanda Holden and the aforementioned Morgan, who told her: “Everyone laughed at you but no-one is laughing now. I’m reeling with shock.” Holden added: “It’s the biggest wake-up call ever.”

Again, why?

The answer is that only the pretty are expected to achieve. Not only do you have to be physically appealing to deserve fame; it seems you now have to be good-looking to merit everyday common respect. If, like Susan (and like millions more), you are plump, middle-aged and too poor or too unworldly to follow fashion or have a good hairdresser, you are a non-person. [...]

She lived with her parents in a four-bedroom council house and, when her father died a decade ago, she cared for her mother and sang in the church choir.

It was an unglamorous existence. She wasn’t the glamorous type - and being a carer isn’t a glamorous life, as the hundreds of thousands who do that most valuable of jobs will testify. [...]

Then, when a special occasion comes along, they might reach, as Susan did, for the frock they bought for a nephew’s wedding. They might, as she did, compound the felony of choosing a colour at odds with her skin tone and an unflattering shape with home-chopped hair, bushy eyebrows and a face without a hint of make-up.

I’m not above judging people by their presentation. Presentation is one of the ways we assure each other that we know what we’re doing. If someone hasn’t learned how to present themselves professionally, we assume that they also haven’t learned how to do their work professionally. And sometimes that’s justified.

The trouble is, a “professional presentation” is bound up in a lot of things — voice, grooming, body shape, clothing — which are in turn connected to class, to race, to body shape, to gender presentation, to disability status, etc.. None of these are hurdles that it’s impossible for (say) a fat Black person auditioning, or applying for a job, to overcome, if they have sufficient talent and drive. But these are hurdles that well-off, abled, gender-normed, thin white men don’t face.

And for the judges and audience to be so utterly shocked that a woman whose presentation isn’t “professional” sings beautifully… it’s says something pretty sad.

But that Ms Boyle was such a hit — and that millions of people have viewed her on YouTube — maybe that says something optimistic. Maybe it says that there are a hell of a lot of us who are sick of the sick, slick standards TV promotes. That would be nice.

I just read this on Pandagon and had a sense of “Oh! Oh! Ohmigod! Oh!” — not so much because of it’s analysis of the breastfeeding issue speficially, but because I’d never thought of this aspect of how the middle class works before. For me, it was very enlightening, and just in case it works like that for anyone else, I thought I’d pass it on.

But it’s also because breast feeding advocacy has been structured around what Barbara Ehrenreich called the “fear of falling”—since middle class people don’t inherit wealth, but they do inherit opportunities, recreating the middle class every generation requires hard work and competition with each other. So parents are deeply invested in getting an edge for their children, and every little thing starts to loom large as the very trick that will put your kids a leg up over everyone else. That’s the carrot—and the stick is the fear that if you skip any of these crucial steps, your child will fail to recreate your middle class life. Breast-feeding also gives people the feeling of control over the situation, and it’s obvious that anything that can be packaged to give middle class parents the feeling that they know best and that they and only they have the power to set their children on the right path will be eaten with a spoon. (That’s why anti-vaccination sentiment—or even the unscientific “spacing the schedule” soft version—is so popular, despite being routinely disproven by science.)

In particular, this part — “since middle class people don’t inherit wealth, but they do inherit opportunities, recreating the middle class every generation requires hard work and competition with each other.” — was an enormous OH! moment for me.

–

Edited to add: Oh, and inasmuch as it matters what my take is on the breastfeeding issue (which is to say, probably not much), I’d like to second Chingona on what she said at Pandagon:

if we go too far in casting this as a purely individual decision, incentives to provide accommodations wither away and women actually end up with no real “choice” in the matter. That’s the situation many poor women and even middle-class women find themselves in right now, and I don’t think there’s anything feminist about enabling that status quo.

I actually think this should be the focus of the majority of feminist blogosphere conversations on breastfeeding. There may be some benefits to formula feeding for mothers who think that it may enhance egalitarianism in *their* (emphasis their) relationships, or for mothers who don’t want to breastfeed — not to mention those who can’t! But there are also definite, proven benefits to breastfeeding, and women of all classes, in all situations, should have access to them. There may be bad feelings going on for both sides of the Mommy War in this mess, but it seems like the structural issues are real screw yous to those choosing to breastfeed — who are challenged on their right to do it in public, and whose livelihoods are structured in such a way so as to make real choice impossible.

I suspect this is actually why breastfeeding advocates sometimes go too far with their rhetoric. They want to impress upon the public *just how necessary* breastfeeding is so that the public will be willing to try to help them ameliorate the structural issues that make breastfeeding difficult. I know personally that I’m appalled by how many of my otherwise-liberal acquaintances recoil at the notion of women breastfeeding toddlers. Those people need to understand that such breastfeeding has been a norm in certain times and places, and that it has benefits. They represent only one segment of an ignorant public that needs education.

So, since the breastfeeding advocates are arguing with such high stakes — stakes that affect real mothers and real children — I think it becomes easy to slip into rhetoric that contributes to the concept of total motherhood perfection. And I do sometimes feel alienated by that rhetoric, as a woman who doesn’t even have children, but who’s thinking about potentially not breastfeeding if I do.

But Chingona’s right in the core of what she says. All that’s basically an interesting, but superfluous, derailment from the real feminist heart of this issue, which should be making sure that as many women as possible have structural access to breastfeeding.

OK, that turned out longer than my original post. Sorry about that.

Cross-posted from The Mustard Seed.

Who wants to check out the raps of a pissed-off, punk-rocking, straight-edge, vegan eating, 31337 typing, Pilipino activist blogger and scholar?

I do!

And so you do you God damn-it! The power of the simulacra of Xst compels you!

Where else can you get the postmodernist ramblings of a blogger (studying for his masters in sociology) on Donna Haraway’s cyborgisms and Marx’s alienation of labor and its use for interpreting the mega-blockbuser dark comedy Robocop (it was pretty hilarious, in a dark movie sense, the way officer Murphy got trashed by all that lead).

Just checking out his sidebar is an exercise in Internet cheekiness. His del.icio.us sidebar is titled mas.a.rap (”delicious” in Tagalog) and his monthly achieves reads “B0Mb SCh3matiCs.”

So if your down for an exercise in postmodernist intellectualism and boots on the ground Sartean Marxian activism then head on over to the 50 Megaton Paper Tiger.

Cross-posted from Double Consciousness.

[Hat tip: xMabaitx and SF Chronicle]

The World Bank came out with a report today stating that the world economy would shrink, which is the most dire assessment that an institution of economists have come out with for the economic prospects this year.

The New York Times reports:

The World Bank said in a new report that the crisis that began with junk mortgages in the United States was causing havoc for poorer countries that had nothing to do with the original problem.

And in a press release the World Bank states:

Many of the world’s poorest countries are becoming ever more dependent on development assistance as their exports and fiscal revenues decline because of the crisis. Donors are already behind by around $39 billion on their commitments to increase aid made at the Gleneagles Summit in 2005. The concern now is that aid flows will become more volatile as some countries cut their aid budgets while others reaffirm aid commitments, at least for this year.

The report can be found here in pdf format.

From an article in Gourmet magazine:

Lucas’s “room” turned out to be the back of a box truck in the junk-strewn yard, shared with two or three other workers. It lacked running water and a toilet, so occupants urinated and defecated in a corner. For that, Navarrete docked Lucas’s pay by $20 a week. According to court papers, he also charged Lucas for two meager meals a day: eggs, beans, rice, tortillas, and, occasionally, some sort of meat. Cold showers from a garden hose in the backyard were $5 each. Everything had a price. Lucas was soon $300 in debt. After a month of ten-hour workdays, he figured he should have paid that debt off.

But when Lucas—slightly built and standing less than five and a half feet tall—inquired about the balance, Navarrete threatened to beat him should he ever try to leave. Instead of providing an accounting, Navarrete took Lucas’s paychecks, cashed them, and randomly doled out pocket money, $20 some weeks, other weeks $50. Over the years, Navarrete and members of his extended family deprived Lucas of $55,000.

Taking a day off was not an option. If Lucas became ill or was too exhausted to work, he was kicked in the head, beaten, and locked in the back of the truck. Other members of Navarrete’s dozen-man crew were slashed with knives, tied to posts, and shackled in chains. On November 18, 2007, Lucas was again locked inside the truck. As dawn broke, he noticed a faint light shining through a hole in the roof. Jumping up, he secured a hand hold and punched himself through. He was free.

What happened at Navarrete’s home would have been horrific enough if it were an isolated case. Unfortunately, involuntary servitude—slavery—is alive and well in Florida. Since 1997, law-enforcement officials have freed more than 1,000 men and women in seven different cases. And those are only the instances that resulted in convictions. Frightened, undocumented, mistrustful of the police, and speaking little or no English, most slaves refuse to testify, which means their captors cannot be tried.

The article also discusses tomato pickers who, although not enslaved, are nonetheless working in terrible conditions for extremely low pay. Workers have been able to make some progress by organizing:

Even though the CIW has been responsible for bringing police attention to a half dozen slavery prosecutions, Benitez feels that slavery will persist until overall conditions for field workers improve. The group has made progress on that front by securing better pay. Between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s, the rate for a basket of tomatoes remained 40 cents—meaning that workers’ real wages dropped as inflation rose. Work stoppages, demonstrations, and a hunger strike helped raise it to 45 cents on average, but the packers complained that competition for customers prevented them from paying more. One grower refused to enter a dialogue with CIW hunger strikers because, in his words, “a tractor doesn’t tell the farmer how to run the farm.” The CIW decided to try an end run around the growers by going directly to the biggest customers and asking them to pay one cent more per pound directly to the workers. Small change to supermarket chains and fast-food corporations, but it would add about twenty dollars to the fifty a picker makes on a good day, the difference between barely scraping by and earning a livable wage.

The Campaign for Fair Food, as it is called, first took aim at Yum! Brands, owner of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, Long John Silver’s, and A&W. After four years of pressure, Yum! agreed to the one-cent raise in 2005 and, importantly, pledged to make sure that no worker who picked its tomatoes was being exploited. McDonald’s came aboard in 2007, and in 2008 Burger King, Whole Foods Market, and Subway followed, with more expected to join up this year. But the program faces a major obstacle. Claiming that the farmers are not party to the arrangement, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, an agricultural cooperative that represents some 90 percent of the state’s producers, has refused to be a conduit for the raise, citing legal concerns.

The entire article is well worth reading. It ends with advice for people purchasing tomatoes; you should buy at Whole Foods if you can (they’ve made an agreement with the CIW), or if you shop elsewhere avoid tomatoes from Florida or Mexico.

Most of the comments following the article are reasonable, but one reader wrote:

I found your article “The price of tomatoes” by Barry Estabrook offensive. You are asking me to feel sorry for people who knowing broke our laws to send money home to Mexico. ARE YOU CRAZY?

Curtsy: Boing Boing.

Cross-posted from The Mustard Seed.

First read this on the e-mail list serve I’m on for the website Community Labor News. In an article by Mumia Abu-Jamal, he writes:

In Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County, there are 9 judges of the Court of Common Pleas. Two of them just pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to convict and sentence juveniles to a private prison, so that they could get kickbacks from the prison’s builders and owners.

…

At least 22% of their judges have admitted being corrupt, in the sordid business of selling the freedom and well-being of poor children for profit.

And the worst part is that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court originally rejected the petition to hear the case.

The media reports on this outrage and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court expresses a little interest. This is the nature of judging these days; when even kids are expendable fodder for the Prison Industrial Complex.

From the New York Times:

Prof. Marshall Grossman has come to expect complaints whenever he returns graded papers in his English classes at the University of Maryland.

“Many students come in with the conviction that they’ve worked hard and deserve a higher mark,” Professor Grossman said. “Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before.”

He attributes those complaints to his students’ sense of entitlement.

“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”

A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.

…

James Hogge, associate dean of the Peabody School of Education at Vanderbilt University, said: “Students often confuse the level of effort with the quality of work. There is a mentality in students that ‘if I work hard, I deserve a high grade.’ “

In line with Dean Hogge’s observation are Professor Greenberger’s test results. Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in their grade.

Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view.

“I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr. Greenwood said. “What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”

“If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?” he added. “If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher’s mind, then something is wrong.”

What else is there really than the effort you put in? Well… you know, there’s the finished product. The one thing that I, the educator, actually see? But that’s inconsequential, right?

Here’s the bad news - I originally wrote a pretty detailed response to this article, including both my outraged reaction as an adjunct who has experienced this sort of behavior, and a more thoughtful response on how race and gender play into student entitlement. But I found I couldn’t write it without divulging details about past jobs. So no commentary for you!

Instead, here’s an education-themed tab dump (it’s been a fertile week at NYT):

The humanities continue to have to justify their existence to college administrators. The best justification, in my opinion: the humanities explore what it means to be a human being. It’s true that you don’t need to go to college to do that, but college would be a pretty barren place without it.

18 students have been suspended from NYU following a sit-in. The students were demanding, among other things, an annual reporting of the university’s operating budget and the right of TAs to organize. Oh, the horror.

Speaking of university labor and operating budgets, coaches, star faculty members, and administrators can make millions of dollars a year while adjuncts and TAs - you know, the people doing the actual teaching? - subsist on salaries as low as $4,000. (That last part’s not in the article - it’s the salary I received my first year as a TA, after tuition was deducted.)

(Cross-posted at Modern Mitzvot.)

So continuing my Joss extravaganza I thought I’d review the Dr Horrible DVD, and most importantly Commentary! The Musical.

For those of you who don’t know, Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog was Joss Whedon’s internet musical phenomena of last year. I don’t think it’s Joss’s best work, but it has some very funny moments.¹

The DVD came out just before Christmas, and is absolutely awesome. It’s geared very much to the focused fan, with lots of very difficult to find easter eggs (I’m lazy so I just went on-line and found all sorts of pretty things). There’s everything you could expect a commentary and making of documentary.

But there’s also “Commentary! The Musical”, which is what you’re sound. If you’re a Joss fan I’d recommend getting the DVD even if you didn’t like Dr Horrible, because Commentary! The Musical is awesome. They rarely talk about what’s actually going on on screen, so it’s less a commentary and more a musical radio play, without much of a plot.

But the song are brilliant. Most importantly to me is the song about the writers strike. Clearly Joss songs about strikes are my favourite things.

Most of the rest of the songs are about the personas that various creative people involved take on. Felicia Day’s overactive brain is as hilarious as Zak Whedon’s who wants to be street wise. Although Nathan Fillion as a self-important asshole is funnier than bother of them (his song is called “Better than Neil,” and is just as great as you’d think it would be).

Like the greatest silly humour it’s extremely random - there’s a song dedicated to the iphone game Ninja ropes. And another song which is about itself (”It has internal rhyme, but not in every instance and the meter is occasionally a little bit bizarre).”

Most of the humour is silly and hilarious (there’s a great Nathan joke which revolves around the hammer being his bpenis). But there’s also some good satire. Maurissa Tancharoen (one of the co-writers and one of the groupies) sings “Nobody’s Asian in the Movies”, which I love as much for it’s faux resolution as anything else.

Although one of the people who co-wrote Commentary! The Musical, has executive produced 4 TV shows, and written and directed a movie. This gave him some power to determine how many Asians there were on movies and TV. Buffy was on for seven seasons and 144 episodes - and the largest recurring Asian part was Chao-Ahn, a Chinese potential slayer. One of Cordelia’s friends was played by an Asian actress, but she was a very minor character. And that’s it, in seven seasons (and if I’ve missed anyone it’s someone who was as part was as minor as the Cordette). Angel had precisely one recurring Asian character (Gavin) and Firefly/Serenity had no Asian characters at all (as far as I can tell from imdb - there might have been a small one shot). Writing funny songs about problems is a lot less impressive if you have had the power to do something about those problems and didn’t.

Then finally there’s Joss’s song about creation itself:

A CAVEMAN PAINTED ON A CAVE
IT WAS A BISON, WAS A FAVE
THE OTHER CAVE-PEOPLE WOULD RAVE –
THEY DIDN’T ASK “WHY?”
WHY PAINT A BISON IF IT’S DEAD
WHEN DID YOU CHOOSE THE COLOR RED
WHAT WAS THE PROCESS IN YOUR HEAD
HE TOLD THEIR STORY
WHAT CAME BEFORE HE DIDN’T SHOW
WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO

I think cavemen probably did get asked why they used the colour red. The division between artist and audience is a new concept, as it was only possible or expected due to the development of one to many technologies such as the printing press, radio, TV etc. That’s now been reversed by the many to many technology of the internet. To reify one sort of relationship as the natural state between artists and audience to ignore the material basis for these relationships.²

After listening to Commentary! The Musical, I’ve decided that should dollhouse fail I want Joss to make an internet radio show. That way I’d get my serial storytelling from him, and it wouldn’t need to be massively resource intensive, the way an internet (or actual) TV show is.

1. I’ve been thinking about Penny and the feminist implications of her character. I think I’ve decided I don’t mind the story from that point of view. Jane Espenson makes a great point on her blog that dramatic characters are intentionally funny and comedic characters are unintentionally funny. Penny makes jokes - she’s a dramatic character in a comedic series. For me that works with the idea that these ridiculous men are fighting over her (it just doesn’t make the story any more resonant with me). (back)
2. I still haven’t decided how serious this paragraph is, if I figure it out I’ll let you know. (back)

I strongly disagree with the way David Schraub described the York TA strike in his post on Alas. Given that the strike was only incidental to his point, I thought it would be much better to talk about the strike here.

I had been following this strike over at Monuments are for Pigeons for quite some time. Here’s what he said relatively early on:

Being on strike has also revived the socialist whipping boy: consciousness is contradictory. I was expecting angry students who feel they’re being ripped off, since they’re not going to class. There are some of those. It’s unfortunate: undergraduates already feel like cogs in a machine, and forcing the people who do 50% of the teaching to live below the poverty line isn’t going to help. If we get a good settlement, we’re happy and secure, and we teach better. But I understand why, if you’re paying close to $6000 a year for tuition, you feel like you’re buying a degree, rather than participating in a collective learning process, in which the workers who teach you deserve a decent standard of living.

However, I wasn’t expecting fellow grad students, walking the line with me, to believe that we’re not workers. According to some of them, our massive debt & below-poverty-line wages are a sacrifice for future jobs. I call it the ‘guild mentality’: just like an apprentice at a medieval guild, you think you’re getting training for future earnings.

The TAs were on strike with a university who refused to negotiate with them. The strike ended after three months because the government ordered the workers back to work. To me, that’s not a situation you don’t take a position on. As Howard Zinn said, you can’t be neutral on a moving train. If you’re not supporting the TAs you’re supporting the university (and in fact I think David Schraub did make it clear that he was on the side of the university with the way he worded his description of the strike). Anyway I’m a unionist, and I believe that one of the most fundamental part of any politics worth a damn is supporting strikes. So I didn’t want to let what David Schraub said pass uncommented on.

So as I said, I’m going to take a break from writing about abolishing prisons and ending violence against women, to write about something else, which is almost as important to me: Joss Whedon.

His new show, Dollhouse, airs tomorrow in the states (well technically it’s today, the timezones get complicated, anyway I’ll watch it in my tomorrow). So in honour of that I thought I’d put together some of the awesome things Joss Whedon has written or said - a ‘loving Joss for beginners’. There’s heaps more - I’ve kind of left out the funny and focused on the awesomely political. But I need to go to bed.

********

“But that’s not the point. There’s always a name. Lincoln. Hitler. Ghandi. The name can inspire terror, awe, sometimes great things. But there’s milions of people go into making a name. People facing things they couldn’t imagine they would. In the moments that matter even our own names are just sounds people make to tell us apart. What we are isn’t that.

The real questions run deeper. Can I fight? Did I help? Did I do for my Sisters? My comrades, children, slim slug clan… There’s a chain between each and every one of us. And like the man said you either feel its tug or you ignore it. I tried to feel it I tried to face the darkness like a woman and I don’t need any more than that.”
-The Chain, Buffy Season 8

“Dateline September 2007, things are looking grim in the negotiations between the writers and the studios. AMPTP spokesman Nicholas Counter says quote I will grind the writers guild into a fine paste cut it with baby powder and sell it to underprivileged kids end quote.”
Commentary the Musical (there’s a strike song, who knew I’d ever get a Joss strike song?)

“You know what? I was wrong. You are an idiot. My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it. Sometimes more than I can handle. And it’s not just mine. Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they’re too busy with their own.”
- Buffy, Earshot (I know Jane Espenson wrote the episode, but this speech was Joss)

“Get the word out, remind everyone that corporate greed (it’s nothing but) is hurting everyone in this country. Not just because they’re robbing people of entertainment (and, on occasion, art) and strangling an entire (non-writing) community, but because they’re sending a message to every union in the country: you’re next. The actors know that in their case, it’s literally true, but it’s also true for the concept of a unionized workforce. We get a lot of flack for being well-fed, glamorous, rich and powerful. We’ve worked hard to dispel that stereotype but in fact, a select few of us are wealthy and influential. And we have the support of some of the most famous and beloved (and wealthy and influential) people in the country: TV and movie stars! So the fact that the studios feel perfectly comfortable SPITTING IN OUR FACES in front of the whole world cannot bode well for any other union that works under them — or under anyone who sees how easy it is to deny the basic rights of workers even so public as we. This is bad for writers, bad for actors, teamsters, teachers, nurses, dockworkers… the shape of this country is changing. The middle class is being squeezed out. We’re trundling back to the middle ages, people, and all we can do is lie there and take it.

But of course, that’s not what’s going to happen. The studios mean to starve us out. They can’t. We know what’s at stake. We take care of our own, and those around us who aren’t our own.”
- At Whedonesque on the writers strike.

“It’s the only way. For our planet, for our people. For every mother holding her newborn child.

“I don’t want it to have my name on it if it doesn’t reflect what I want to say. Because once you get to the position of actually getting to say something, which is a level most writers never even get to, and is a great blessing, you then have to worry about what it is you’re actually saying. I don’t want some crappy reactionary show under the Buffy name. If my name’s going to be on it, it should be mine. Now, the books I have nothing to do with, and I’ve never read them. They could be, “Buffy realized that abortion was wrong!” and I would have no idea. So, after my big, heartfelt, teary speech, I realize that I was once again lying. But I sort of drew the line. I was like, “I can’t possibly read these books!” But my name just goes on them as the person who created Buffy.”
- Interview with The Av Club

“You have gross emotional problems and things are not OK between us.”*
- Willow, Innocence (I’ve always kind of wanted to say this to someone, which if you think about it is one of the most stupid ambitions ever. My life needs less emo dramas not more.)

Crochet Me interviewer: “So, crafty people often feel like they have to let their materials behave and become what they want to be, even if it’s not what we had in mind to begin with. Do you feel that’s somewhat similar sometimes in how you write characters and plot lines?”

Joss: “You’re going to need to meet the materials halfway. Yes, you definitely want every skein of yarn to do exactly what you have in mind, but they never will. And that’s part of what makes it beautiful. That’s part of what makes it not working in a factory. And every actor is going to bring something to the party, and I’m going to embrace what they’re bringing as fucking hard as I can as long as it doesn’t hurt the narrative, so that it becomes something more than just an idea I had that somebody acted out. You have to remember that if the thing isn’t slightly out of control, it ain’t art. Or [muffled] craft.”
- Interview with Crochet Me (I actually just included this one because I knit and it excites me to year of Joss talk of yarn)

“With me? You mean to say, as, sex? Hell with this. I’m going to live.”
-Kaylee, Serenity

“Well, you know, I’m sure I’m going to bring down News Corp with Dollhouse. Hmmm—maybe you shouldn’t quote that. I’m not a huge fan of Mr. Murdoch’s politics, God knows, or his methods. But I’ve been at Fox on and off for practically the whole of my career. Am I the biggest hypocrite in the world for taking their money? Am I doing any good? Or am I working for Wolfram and Hart?”
- Interview with Mother Jones (listen to it it’s awesome, even though the interviewer is idiotic enough to ask Joss who he thinks has suffered more the black man or the white woman).

“In every generation one Slayer is born because a bunch of guys that died thousands of years ago made up that rule. They were powerful men. (points to Willow) This woman is more powerful than all of them combined. So I say we change the rules. I say my power should be our power. Tomorrow Willow will use the essence of this scythe, that contains the energy and history of so many Slayers, to change our destiny. From now on, every girl in the world who might be a Slayer, will be a Slayer. Every girl who could have the power, will have the power. Who can stand up, will stand up. Every one of you, and girls we’ve never known, and generations to come… they will have strength they never dreamed of, and more than that, they will have each other. Slayers. Every one of us. Make your choice. Are you ready to be strong?”
- Buffy, Chosen (Shooting Script)

And finally there’s this:

(Transcript here)

I note with interest recent discussions to this paper about the recent failed coup and a Cylon-Human alliance.

I believe that these authors are asking the wrong questions, as if our only choice is an unelected president and military dictatorship, or a once elected vice-president and military dictatorship. The problems in our society run much deeper than that.

There are those who argue ‘not now’ and that the survival of humanity must trump any concerns of justice, equality and self-determination. Those who make these arguments are trying to cement their own power. Our responsibility is not just to survive, but to build a society that is worth saving.

I look at the few children within the fleet and despair for the world they are growing into.

Pilots who are in danger get all the resources of the fleet looking for them. Aboard the Tillium ship workers’ deaths are treated as inevitable, and speed ups continue despite the risk.

Women are using scarce resources and risking their lives to get illegal abortions. But if they do what the state supposedly prefers and continue their pregnancy, they get no support. Women suffering post-natal depression are just given more shifts and more drugs.

The power and the resources of the fleet are being used to maintain Caprican dominance. The military murder of Sagitarron citizens, is not just the result of one evil individual, but the reflection structural racism which the fleet is based on.

The ruling class have used the near extermination of humanity to cement their own power, and increase their control over anyone who challenges them. Neither a military alliance with some cylons, or a coup would change that. Zarek and Gaetna were no better than Adama and Roslyn. They were using the power of the military to attempt to make a few minor changes in policy.

Real change, the sort that builds a society that is worth saving, comes not from above but from below. Let the government make military alliances with the cylons, or not. Those of us who are fighting for another society that is indeed possible need to build relationships of solidarity with the cylons who are interested.

Chief Tyrall is a union man - Cylon or no. He has made clear, time and again, that he is fighting for something more than the unjust unequal society today. Colonel Tigh has made his position equally clear, he is for dictatorial power, and military control.

It is not enough to put up with intolerable inequality now, for the hope that things will change when we reach our mythic destination. Who believes that when we get to Earth those in charge will meekly give up the extra power that they have seized during this crisis? We must be organizing now among all who are willing to dream of a better society than this one.

[Illustration by Ratscape.]

It’s that time again!

Who: Progressive Jewish Alliance and the CLEAN Carwash Campaign. More importantly, though: YOU.
What: A picket line to protest a failure to pay minimum wages, a lack of basic health and safety protections, and numerous other workers’ rights violations in the Los Angeles carwash industry.
When: This Sunday, January 25th, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Where: Vermont Hand Wash at 1666 Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles.
Why: Although almost no carwash in Los Angeles can be described as “good,” the owners of the Vermont Hand Wash in Los Feliz are among the worst in the industry. By protesting the Vermont Hand Wash, we hope to send a message to other carwashes throughout the city. For more information, visit cleancarwashla.org.

Please repost or link to this message on your blog, or forward this to any Los Angeles residents you might know. Last time we protested, we managed to bring business to a standstill. The more support we have, the bigger a statement we’ll make - and the closer we’ll come to getting the owners to agree to meet minimum labor standards and allow their workers to organize.

I understand finding something to get excited about in the idea of Barack Obama being president (I don’t share it, but I can see where it comes from). I cannot understand anyone with any progressive tendancies not being appalled by his speech. The first commentary I read on the speech which made sense was Louis Proyect’s:

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

[Yes, they wrote books about that. They are called Horatio Alger stories and they are bullshit. Bill Gates got where he is by being born into one of Seattle's richest families and by exploiting technology that had hitherto been common property.]

The Daily Show also did pretty well

I don’t have time (or interest) to pick apart the whole speech, but there was one section that really stuck out to me¹:

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life.

I’m going to ignore the reference to Vietnam because that’s a whole nother rant, which I’m going to assume that the reader can supply themselves. I will quickly draw attention to the fact that this narrative of US history ignores anyone who was living there before European colonisation.

But my point is something quite different. People did toil in sweatshops, endure the lash of the whip and plow the hard earth. But they didn’t do these things because they wanted to create the world that exists now, they did it because the alternative was starvation or death.

Millions of people worked in sweatshops, were held as slave and farmed in difficult conditions. They did so with varying degrees of control and consent. To say they did these things to bring about the world that currently exists is obscene. Millions of people have millions of different dreams, struggles and views of the purposes of their lives. Maybe some people were aiming to create the world that currently exists. But I know that some slaves, workers and farmers had a different idea of the worlds that they wanted to create. I know, because I’ve read about them, that some dreamed of worlds much like the world I fight for.

To claim generations of people were struggled and were exploited because so they could help create the world that we live in now is both ignorant and arrogant

1. although can I just say his view of the unselfish worker who gives up his hours so his friend will keep his job made was despicable boss pandering. How about both those workers go on strike to keep everyone’s job and reclaim some profits from the bosses. I’m not saying I expect anything else from the president of the united states. I’m just saying that I don’t see how anyone could have seen Barack Obama’s inauguration address as doing anything but choosing sides with the rich and powerful (back)

All photos by Daniel Garcia.

This will be my first post in a short series over at my blog The Mustard Seed on the shooting, protest, and riots, over the execution of Oscar Grant at the Fruitvale Bart Station in Oakland, CA. Here is a short brief on how KTVU news described the incident:

[Grant] appearing to cooperate with officers…Moments later two officers can be seen moving Grant from a seated position against the wall and then onto the floor. Officers position Grant face first on the floor with one officer near his head, a second near his back, and a third officer standing near by. There appeared to be a brief struggle, then a two year veteran Bart officer stands, draws his weapon, and fires.

These were the last moments of 22-year-old Oscar Grant III, a peacemaker, a son, a father. Yet to the police he was none of these things, to them, he was just another Black male. And because he was just another Black male his four-year-old daughter will grow up without a father and more than likely will have very little memory of him to hold onto as she matures in her years: no happy father’s days, no piggy back rides, and no father-daughter dance at her wedding.

The rally was attended by (my estimates) over 500 people and possibly up to 600. The interesting thing about this rally was it was not dominated by “activist” and “organizer veterans.” There were quite a few people I talked to for whom this was their first major political rally, there were also quite a few families and children, the crowd was majority people of color, had a lot of high school and college youth, and even had some acquaintances of mine I thought I’d never see at a rally.

As I arrived at the rally at 3:30 pm there was about 200 to 300 people there at the time with many media vans and reporters as well as cop cars lined up all over the Bart station. The speaking area was pretty crowded and I couldn’t see the speaker (from the ANSWER Coalition) but I was able to jot down what he was saying:

This cop was doing his job, let me tell you. Because the police are trained to do one thing. To keep poor people in check!

(Continue reading at The Mustard Seed)