A Potential Strike by the California Faculty Association

As many of you know, I'm a lecturer at Humboldt State University, teaching logic.  While my position is temporary, and I will likely be working elsewhere in the spring, I am proud of my position and my line of work.  I am passionate about teaching - I do not count the hours I put in and I devote a lot of care when working with my students and planning my lectures.  As many of you do not know, there is great potential of a massive strike by all faculty in the California State University system, including tenured professors, assistant professors, lecturers, librarians, etc. etc.  I am in support of this action if things don't change from the way they are right now.

What is going on?

First and foremost, the Chancellor of the CSU system, Charles B. Reed, has not been managing the CSU budget appropriately.  The average salary of a CSU President has gone from roughly $173,000 a year in 1998 to 300,000 in 2011.  Also, the number of administrators for the CSU has increased by a lot since Reed became Chancellor.  Administrators, as increasingly different from the faculty, do not participate in educating, but are rather responsible for the corporatization of the University: finding funding from businesses, privatizing classes through the increased offering of 'extended education classes,' cutting costs which usually means hiring more part-time faculty and not extending tenure to professors, enhancing higher education's utility to businesses, gaining control over the intellectual property of professors in order to generate revenue for the University, and the lessening of department control in hiring faculty.  The focus of administrators is to increase revenues and decrease costs.  Administrators have been hired in abundance since Reed's becoming Chancellor.  Additionally, students have been asked over the last five years to pay more for less.  Student class-sizes have gotten larger and there have been less offerings.  In short, the CSU is being run more and more like a for-profit business, with no benefits extended to students or faculty.

The CSU faculty had to forego a wage increase in 2008/2009 and are being asked to do so again now.  The reason being used is that California's budget is in crisis, and the money is simply not there.  The California Faculty Association is fighting against this, and as part of the bargaining process, hired two different independent fact-finding commissions, both of which recommended that the Chancellor settles with their modest proposals (a 1% increase in pay for all CSU Faculty).  The Chancellor is not obligated to take those recommendations, and he exercised his right in refusing them.  A strike is therefore imminent.

Example of a Double-Standard

In July of this year, Reed approved the salary of new San Diego State University President Elliot Hirshman with a 12-3 vote from the board of trustees.  It is $350,000 a year plus housing and $1,000 per month for a car allowance.  He'll also get $50,000 a year from the university's foundation.  The President before him, Stephen Weber, made $300,000, so this is a substantial increase.  It comes at the same time that students are asked to pay more tuition as, according to Reed, "The enormous reduction to our state funding has left us with no other choice if we are to maintain quality and access to CSU."  Reed also noted that, according to studies, CSU presidents, even given Hirshman's salary, are paid less than comparable institutions.  This only indicates to me that there is a more systemic problem - other institutions have likely mimicked the incredible increase in average salary for administrators over the last ten years.  It does NOT indicate to me that $400,000 a year in salary is reasonable.

Presumably, Hirshman has been hired to increase the quality of education at San Diego State University. That has to be in the rhetoric of hiring him at such a price.  A great double-standard unearths at that point.  As faculty (those who interact personally with students, who supply the content and the feedback, who grade the performance, who design the curriculum) are asked to go years without a pay increase, a high level administrator is given 25% more than his predecessor, in an effort to maintain high standards of excellence at the university.  At the same time, students are asked to pay more for less.  We must remain very critical of such attention to quality given the increasing struggle teachers and students face to perform.

The Challenge for the California Faculty Association

The CFA is in a bad position - they are asking for more money at a time of economic crisis.  Public perception will surely be critical.  Therefore, it is crucial that the CFA pays attention to the narrative they are creating.  The corporatocracy we live in has perfected a line of approaching goals that is hyper-attentive to the narrative.  Before progressive arguments are even made, they are already in a losing battle of defending their principles because of the media framing of the issues.  This will be the case with CSU faculty here.  The narrative is already being established by the Chancellor that teachers are being unreasonable - "in an environment of economic hardship, they are asking for more money from unemployed tax payers."  CSU will fall right into this line of thinking if they continually reference a 'raise'.

Teachers are not asking for a raise.  They are asking for a cost of living adjustment.  As not receiving any additional compensation since 2008, and as the cost of living has increased since then, teachers are making less money now.  Additionally, with budget cuts, the slashing of tenure tracks, the hiring of part-time workers, the increase in class size, and the additional administrative responsibilities for departments, they are making less money and working more.  Even as the Chancellor's narrative will attempt to simply reduce the terminology of a "cost of living readjustment,"  the CSU faculty needs to resist such a reduction and fight vehemently.  In actuality, a 1% increase in pay is not a raise.  It's also less than the 3% increase in pay UC faculty receive every year.  Also, CSU faculty are the only state workers who do not have a cost-of-living adjustment built into their contract.  That needs to be made clear to the public.  Whether in economic hardship or not, state workers receive this adjustment in salary, but CSU faculty do not.

It's imperative that, in the event of a strike, or in the case of demonstrations, all CSU faculty get involved, from tenured faculty to lecturers.  A variety of ages need representation and there needs to be a mass of people.  The success of a demonstration relies on making the Chancellor look bad.  He needs to be embarrassed.  That will bring him to the bargaining table.

As professors are ridiculed in the media, think critically of the narrative that will come out.  Think critically about available CSU funds and budgeting.  It's the faculty that delivers the education, that helps develop the critical thinking capacity of students, that help in the development of America's future.  They need to be paid respectfully and with attention to quality and retention.

Matt the Electrician: Great Music Coming Out of Austin, Texas

The 'legend' of Matt Sever is that, living in Austin, Texas, he worked as an electrician.  He busted his ass in the intense sun, sweating bullets.  When he got off work, he had just enough time to head straight over to the plethora of open mics in town, strap on his guitar, and play.  Grimy and dirty, he excused himself by explaining that he was an electrician.  He became known as Matt the Electrician.

I saw Matt play a set at Humboldt State University, which is fitting because back in the 90s, he was a student there.  He actually wrote a song about it, and if you read through the lyrics, you can get a sense of his humor.  Check them out:


I owe thirty-five dollars to the library
At Humboldt State University
But I dropped out fifteen years ago
And I never paid it and I'm still not gonna

I never got my report card
But I didn't go to class and I didn't work hard
So I didn't wanna know how bad I did
But I know I never made the dean's list

And college is a waste of time
If you wanna be a baker or a candlestick maker
You still have to wait in line
At the bank drive through and the train tracks too
Behind people like me with no degree
'Cause I know the conductor and he knows me
You might have a nicer car, but I've traveled pretty far
And all I have is an old guitar

Forty bucks for a bag of weed
In the summer nineteen ninety three
Forty dollars is all I have
And it isn't mine, it belongs to my parents

Oh, five hundred points for a roll of cookie dough
In the cafeteria they got sloppy joes
And the sloppy joes cost three points
I won't eat in the spring but hey, cookie dough

And college is a waste of time
If you wanna be a diver or a big rig driver
You still have to go to the store
And share the road with a wide load
Who's taking up all three lanes
And you can't get around him it's a big pain
And the driver hasn't slept in three whole days
But he knows one thing and that's freeways
He's got a Gatorade bottle where he goes pee
And you're behind him with your college degree

I owe thirty-five dollars to the library
At Humboldt State University
But I dropped out fifteen years ago
So I never paid it and I'm still not gonna.. 

Matt expressed concern that Humboldt State would take that $35 right out of his paycheck, but that remains to be seen.  

Matt described the difference between folk music and pop music as this: in pop music, you sing songs for yourself.  In folk music, you sing songs for other people.  Following that explanation, he divulged that he's really only written one true folk song, a song called "For Angela", which is a song addressed to Walmart customer service, thanking the kindness and helpfulness of a car repairwoman named Angela.  Despite company policy, she hooked Matt up with a battery installation for his broken down car in time for him to make his gig.  At the end of the song he advised Walmart to #1, give her a raise; #2, allow her to unionize; and #3, allow her to claim sexual harassment when appropriate.  

My favorite song of Matt's is "Osaka in the Rain", which captures the sweetness and the nostalgic sentiment of his music.  It's gorgeous, and I included a video of it below.  Another highlight was "Ghost Story", a song co-written by Matt with a Danish lady in a 16th century haunted castle in Denmark set aside for co-writing music.  Yes, Matt participated in a project where musicians from Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and Texas all come together to live in this castle, trading places and intensely co-writing songs together night and day.  A documentary has been made about it - click here to see a preview for it.  In my mind, the idea is a beautiful example of collaboration, music, and art, and it produced a great piece of work on Matt's new album, Accidental Thief.  

I can't say enough about Matt the Electrician.  His three piece band is solid and they harmonize perfectly, he exudes sentimentality in his music and in the way he talks about it and talks about being a working musician, and his songs are quirky and interesting with great lyrical play.  Check out his website and his tunes.  Below are some videos.  And if he comes to your town, go see him.  You won't regret it!

More Pictures from the Great Outdoors!

I posted some pictures a while ago here.  This is the second installment, all pictures from along the John Muir Trail.  Enjoy!

King's Canyon, California 

King's Canyon

Tuolomne Meadows, Yosemite

King's Canyon

King's Canyon

Rae Lakes, King's Canyon

Mather Pass, King's Canyon

Leconte Canyon, King's Canyon

Muir Pass, King's Canyon

Muir Pass, King's Canyon

John Muir Wilderness

Devil's Postpile, Ansel Adams Wilderness

Virginia Lake, John Muir Wilderness

Perfection

Where is the Real in the Housing Crisis?

What can we make of Alain Badiou's "This Crisis is the Spectacle: Where is the Real?"?  Well, let's see...

When we turn on our TV's to find out about the global financial crisis, what do we see?  Bailouts of hundreds of millions of dollars, European countries aiding Greece with hundreds of billions of dollars, the battle cry: "Save the banks!", and stimulus packages of hundreds of billions of dollars to help us get back on track.  We hear politicians, listen to economic analysts, and we read the articles accompanying our crumbling stocks.  Badiou calls this the spectacle, meaning these are the symbolic representations our media has to offer us to help us understand our crisis.  But what does a hundred billion dollars mean?  Can we really comprehend that kind of volume?  Badiou says, "I have to admit it: when I see all these figures circulating - and like almost everyone else, I have no idea what they represent (just what does 400 billion euros look like?) - I trust them.  I have every confidence in the fire-fighters.  If they all act together, they can do it,  I know they can, I can feel it.  The banks will be even bigger than before, and a few small and medium-sized banks that initially survived only because they were saved by the benevolence of states will be given to the bigger ones for next to nothing,  The collapse of capitalism?  You must be joking" (92).

This is the common reaction to the spectacle.  But what happens when we turn our attention to the everyday people perceiving the spectacle?  It is there, Badiou contends, that we find the Real.  The Real is a term stemming from the tradition of Lacanian psychoanalysis.  It refers to life prior to its being carved up into a symbolic order, prior to the spectacle - the experience.  It conditions the spectacle.  It makes possible the media representation.  It's the other side of the coin.  As we watch 400 billion euros stream across the screen, it's in the comparison of that figure to the resources owned by the common family or person.  For instance, the spectacle presents us with the housing market crash: thousands of people agreeing to contracts too big for them to chew, irresponsible families taking on a mortgage they couldn't afford, people defaulting on their debts, people walking away from a promise, banks and their risk flying back in their poor faces - Bail them out!  Prior to the spectacle, we have a mass of people who cannot afford to live anywhere.  Badiou writes, "Ultimately, all this came about because tens of millions of people are on such low incomes - or non-incomes - that they cannot afford anywhere to live.  The real essence of the financial crisis is a housing crisis.  And the people who cannot afford anywhere to live are certainly not bankers.  We have to go back to the lives of ordinary people" (98).

After inspecting the startling statistics displayed on progressive channels marking the increasing disparity between the rich and the poor, we get back to the people's lives: it's getting harder and harder to afford a house, to conceive of retiring, to raise a family.  The spectacle continues: "Reform Social Security", which means to get rid of it or seriously cut it back.  A leading candidate in the presidential race describes social security as a ponzi scheme.  So, the spectacle tells us the banks are more important than providing care to senior citizens.  Imagine a call for 400 billion dollars to bail out social security.  What a political risk - maybe political suicide.  But we live in a world where it's politically safe to call for 400 billion to bail out the banks.

And then we turn again to the real: masses of people who, without social security, would be living below the poverty line.  Women fair far worse than men in that category.  We live in a world where social security is keeping 14 million seniors above the poverty line, and it's politically safe to call for its abolishment or its "reform", which means major cutbacks, or to call it a "bad investment".

Badiou argues that we need to think beyond the spectacle and get to the Real.  Examine the lived experience of the people (the proletariat).  He says, "We must, as many experiments have tried to do over the past 20 years, organize a very different kind of politics... It begins with the real, with a practical alliance with those people who are in the best position to invent it in the immediate: the new proletarians who have come from Africa and elsewhere, and the intellectuals who are the heirs to the political battles of recent decades... It will not have any organic relationship with existing parties of the electoral and institutional system that sustains them.  It will invent the new discipline of those who have nothing, their political capabilities, and a new idea of what their victory might mean" (99).  So, for those who, caught int he spectacle, argue that bailing out the banks was necessary, and saved the multitudes, the answer is: what sort of saving was this?  The number of people living in poverty in the United States is the highest it's been in 51 years?  Bankers are ok.  They weren't the ones who couldn't afford a house, and they are the ones who came out of this ahead.  The answer is not to react, but to invent.

Badiou, with Zizek, argues that a big hurdle to overcome is the bias that we live in a post-ideological era.  The call to save the banks is Capitalist ideology in its purest form.  The political safety of that call reveals the ideological grasp Capitalism has on the populace: even as the worker slides deeper and deeper into poverty, he will defend the Capitalism that offers him his opportunities.  In contrast to this, "We will contrast the wicked spectacle of capitalism with the real of peoples, with the lives of people and the movement of ideas" (100).  And with that, a grassroots politics will begin, far different from the current ideology, and this will be our redemption - not a bailing out of banks and certainly not a reform of social security.

Badiou, Alain.  The Communist Hypothesis.  Trans. David Macey and Steve Corcoran.  New York: Verso, 2010.

The Israel/Palestine Conflict

Not too long ago, I posted an article about Israel.  I've come to see it as expressing "The Israeli Narrative."  That is, my musings were based on Israeli scholarship and a story that makes sense in a lot of ways, but doesn't ever come from the point of view of the 'other' - that is, the Palestinians who were pushed out of modern day Israel and currently live under, for all intensive purposes, Israeli-controlled territorial islands.  According to the Israeli Narrative, their plight is the result of having willfully left when Israel claimed statehood, followed by a year of war.  But it's hard to imagine, from the perspective of the other, that 300,000 Arabs would have fled Israel with a clear conscience.  And this is where the Israel Narrative breaks down.  I have outlined here three major inconsistencies with the Israeli Narrative, and you can draw from it what you will.

1) According to the Israeli Narrative, land was acquired for Zionist Jews both peacefully and lawfully.  This is true, but only from a Western-European paradigm (a colonialist and capitalist thought-process with particularly western ideas of land ownership).  That is, in colonialism, a differing culture exerts its rules and standards on another culture.  That is the case with the "peaceful and lawful" acquisition of land for Zionists.  Palestinians have historically lived a rural life where peasant laborers grew crops as a means of feeding their families.  The land was run like a cooperative.  It was "owned" communally.  But as the Ottoman Empire was starting its disintegration, a foreign concept of individual land ownership was imposed on the Palestinian people in an effort to raise more revenues for the Ottoman Empire (with individual ownership of land, you can easily impose property taxes).  So, Palestinians now needed a clear title or deed of ownership to farm the land they'd been farming for centuries.  The peasants, unable to afford this, registered their lands with wealthy investors who would pay the property tax.  With no paper trail, this also insured the Palestinians that their children wouldn't be conscripted by the army.  Most of these landowners were absentee landlords.  The peasants continued to work the land as they'd done for centuries, but as a motivated Zionist population set its sites on the Holy Land, land was easily purchased and inhabited.  Was this lawful?  Absolutely.  But by who's laws?  The indigenous population did not agree to it, and they suffered terribly from it as they were cast off the land their families cultivated for generations because new Zionist owners did not want them living on it.  Was it peaceful?  Absolutely not.  With the influx of tens of thousands of Jews upon an indigenous population, the seed of a Palestinian nationalist movement was planted, and displacing a people is never a peaceful affair.

2)  The Israeli Narrative blames the Palestinian refugee problem on anti-semitism and a willful exodus on the part of the Palestinians.  This has been a recurring issue because Hamas has in its platform the requirement that Palestinians have the right to return to their homeland, while Israel claims they were never forced out but lost that right by willfully leaving.  The Palestinian exodus has to be understood with regard to the war between Israel and the Palestinians starting right after the UN declared the state of Israel.  The Palestinians went on the offensive and Israel defended itself.  Little outside Arab resistance came to support the Palestinians, and due to Israel's superiority in military training and organization, the virtually leader-less Palestinians did not stand much of a chance.  There were tragedies and extreme brutality coming from both sides.  Israel eventually went on the offensive and made an extreme and notorious attack at Deir Yassin.  Between 100-200 men, women, and children died despite the village's non-aggression pact with the Jewish Defense Force, Haganah.  What followed was a propaganda campaign terrorizing Palestinian communities.  Scholar Gregory Harms writes, "As Arab radio stations broadcast news of Deir Yassin, Zionist forces in trucks with loudspeakers further terrorized Arab peasants and villagers with threats of similar violence" (94).  Shortly thereafter, 300,000 Arabs had fled their homes and Israel had a refugee problem still causing strife today.

3)  According to the Israeli Narrative, the international war following the Civil War was like the story of David and Goliath, where a united and bellicose Arab league fought a vastly outnumbered 650,000 Jews, and the Jews came out victorious.  What actually happened was that the invading countries - Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon - sent around 23,000 troops and met Israel's 30,000-40,000 troops (96).  We should not downplay the anti-semitism pouring out of these Arab countries at the time (and today), but these countries were not all united, and they were locked in rivalries of power themselves.  Suffering from struggling economies, political instability, and competition for being the leading Arab nation, they were reluctant to fight Israel, and put in a half-hearted effort.  Harms writes, "As one might predict, with a lack of cohesion, no plans, and insufficient troops, the Arab countries did not fare well in the conflict" (98).  When the Israelis won, approximately 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes into Arab-held Palestine or surrounding Arab countries.  Thousands and thousands of these Palestinians fled to Arab-held Gaza and the West Bank.  In the 1967 war, opposing numerous cease-fire orders issued by the UN, including Security Council Resolution 233, Israel tripled its size and acquired for its own both Gaza and the West Bank, coming to control 1.1 million Palestinians.  According to the Israeli narrative, this was all justified with respect to their need for defense, which finds its footing on the David and Goliath analogy.  So long as the surrounding Arab nations are seen as equipped, trained, thirsty for blood and revenge, and united in its desire to destroy Israel, the David and Goliath story stands, and the acquisition of these territories seems justifiable.  But the surrounding Arab nations have not had this united front, and as a whole, they've been more respectful of UN resolutions than the Israelis have.  They've been far more open-minded in negotiating with Israel than Israel's been, but, in fairness, that's perhaps because they have more to gain from it and less to lose.  But even that is not altogether clear.  What does Israel have to gain by separatist policies?  Palestine and Israel have been in a state of conflict since Zionism began its work in Palestine, and so long as Israel imposes heavy-handed restrictions on a Palestinian state, no end of the violence is in sight, which begs the question: is Israel safer with the wall they've constructed?  Is it really in their best interest to (not) negotiate peace treaties with as much arrogance and lack of diplomacy as they have?  Does it make the lives of Israelis better?  Or safer?

For peace in the Palestine-Israeli conflict, it seems that the Israeli Narrative needs to be critically examined.  Its ideas are consistent and reasonable, but only from within the colonialist perspective.  The indigenous perspective needs to be given much more respect and attention in the peace process for the good of both parties.

Harms, Gregory and Todd M. Ferry.  The Palestine Israel Conflict, a Basic Introduction.  2nd ed.  New York: Pluto Press, 2008.

Slavoj Zizek: Living in the End Times

I wrote a review of Zizek's book, Living in the End Times, over the course of a couple months, and I wanted to include a "Table of Contents" to help guide your reading, if you're interested.

Follow the links to get "the full story":
(i)  The Introduction
1)  Denial
2)  Anger
3)  Bargaining, Part I
4)  Bargaining, Part II
5)  Depression
6)  Acceptance

And here is an introduction to Slavoj Zizek

And below, some interesting videos of Zizek: