Shock Turning to Anger and Mobilization at Clarion University – “We’re going to be as rowdy and unpleasant as possible.”

Note: On Monday of this week I posted an article about plans to cut 40 jobs, including 22 faculty members at Clarion University of Pennsylvania. Earlier today, I posted another article on the situation at Clarion on Raging Chicken Press. This article features an interview with the President of the Clarion chapter of the faculty union, APSCUF. An excerpt is posted here. You can continue reading the entire article by clicking the link at the bottom or go there now. 

In the wake of the devastating cuts proposed by the Clarion University administration and President Karen Whitney, it took a few days for faculty, staff, and students to shake off the initial shock and disbelief. Shock and disbelief has given way to a mobilization effort to save the three programs slated for immediate cuts and to prevent the firing of 22 faculty and 20 staff members. On August 15th, shortly after students learned of the cuts, a “Save the Clarion Department of Music” facebook page was created by students to “join music education and music business students past and present, and all who participated in performing organizations at Clarion University, so together, we can unite to Save the Department of Music.” Shortly afterwards, Clarion University alum, Jed Millard, started an on-line petition to urge Whitney to put a halt to the cuts. As of this posting, the petition already has 2,021 signatures.

Yesterday, faculty launched a “Faces of Retrenchment” campaign, as a way to highlight the fact that President Whitney’s “bold, ambitious workforce plan” has direct, material consequences for real people with real families. Many of the 22 faculty slated to lose their jobs have been at Clarion for years – some for decades. In the next several days and weeks, Clarion University’s campus will be bustling with activity and not just from the annual arrival of thousands of students on “Move-In Day.” Clarion University will be bustling with the sounds of organizing.

What the Hell?

If Clarion President Whitney’s slash-and-burn workforce plan shows a disdain for the academic mission of the university, the process by which this plan became known to the university community is down-right sickening. I wanted to know more about how people first learned about Clarion’s new workforce plan, so I called Beth MacDaniel, Chair of the English Department and President of Clarion’s chapter of the faculty union, APSCUF. What MacDaniel told me should set off alarm bells for anyone who gives half a damn about shared governance and democratic process.

When I asked MacDaniel if Clarion’s administration had given any indication that such drastic cuts were on their way, MacDaniel said:

Absolutely none. In fact, a couple of weeks ago we were at State APSCUF for a State meet and discuss [regular meetings between leaders of APSCUF and PASSHE administration in Harrisburg]. They didn’t give us a single clue that it was going to be anything like this. It was…it was…it blew my mind.

MacDaniel did not learn of the university’s “bold, ambitions workforce plan,” until the morning of August 15th when she and leaders from all the other unions on campus were called to special meetings with the university President and Provost ahead of a previously scheduled meeting.

The president has what she calls “university governance meetings,” where she meets with the leaders of different unions on campus. That was set for 1 o’clock this past Thursday. She was told that contractually she ought to meet with the leaders of each of the unions prior to that so they could see specifically what was happening with their bargaining unit members. And so, at 9 o’clock in the morning I met with the President, the Provost, the HR guy, and the financial guy. I had asked two other APSCUF leaders to go with me…I figured it wasn’t good for me to go by myself.

We were given copies of the workforce plan – that’s the first we saw of it. And then we were asked if we had questions.

We [APSCUF] went at 9, AFSCME went at 10, and SCUPA went at 11. At 1 o’clock in the afternoon, all of us met together with the President and Provost at the meeting that had already been set up. People who hadn’t received the workforce plan were given copies of it and then they asked for questions. People were pretty much still in a state of shock.

If you have not checked out the actual workforce plan yet, you should. It’s a 32-page document filled with charts and graphs and a fair share of inconsistencies. And, there is some rather oddly placed happy talk. For example, on page 5  just before the plan calls for the elimination of Academic Enrichment – the department that runs academic support for students who may need tutoring or mentoring – it says, “the plan is intentionally broad and shapes the workforce across all areas of the university in order to ensure the unique culture of learning at Clarion where we believe in the potential of every student, and strive to help our students achieve their academic and career goals.” Really? Really!?!?!?!?

Or, how about this gem on page 12. The administration identifies the BS in Music Entrepreneurship as a potential growth area. Clarion does not have a BS degree in Music Entrepreneurship and the “proposed program” has not made its way through the university’s curriculum bodies. That’s a BS degree for sure, just not one you can get a job with – especially given that the plan calls for cutting actually existing music classes.

“They couldn’t have come up with this overnight,” says MacDaniel. That’s not to say that the administration had not expressed concerns about “budget shortfalls.”  It was no mystery that Clarion, like most of the other 14 universities in the PA State System of Higher Education, was hit hard by deep cuts in State funding thanks to a Governor and right-wing Republican dominated state legislature seemingly hell-bent on destroying public education from kindergarten through higher ed. In an upcoming article on Raging Chicken Press, I will report on some of the root causes of PASSHE’s “budget crisis” that raise troubling questions about how seriously the Board of Governors, University Trustees, and university presidents are taking their fiduciary responsibilities. MacDaniel and other members of the union’s local meet and discuss team had been trying to have frank conversations about the President’s plans for dealing with a projected $8 million budget deficit.

Well, I think that this President and Provost have a particular idea, a vision of what they think the university should be. We kept asking at local meet and discuss, “what’s your vision. What’s your vision.” And all they did was parrot back the vision and mission statements of the university posted on the web page. They had to have had an idea all along…for several months at least…about how extensive they wanted this to be. And they didn’t give us a clue. They kept on saying, “we don’t know the numbers, we don’t know, we don’t know, we don’t know. Clearly they knew.

And it seems President Whitney was committed to keeping anyone outside of her inner circle in the dark. In an August 8 prepared statement, Clarion Provost Ronald Nowaczyk delivered the smoke-and-mirrors:

The university is still reviewing any cuts in personnel or related actions, and no decisions have been made.  President Karen Whitney confirmed the changes that will be made will not impact students who attend Clarion this fall.

While the university’s prepared statement indicated that the Provost had “met with state APSCUF leadership, along with the associate vice president for finance and administration and members of the chancellor’s Office of Labor Relations, to discuss the status of the university’s workforce plans, as required by the collective bargaining unit,” no one in that room on the faculty side left that meeting with any indication that Clarion was about to drop a bomb.

When asked whether he had any indication that Clarion was about to see a 10% cut in its faculty and over 40 jobs lost, APSCUF Vice President, Ken Mash said no way. “We were really blindsided,” he said. “We were not sure that they were going to have to retrench at all. Nobody saw 22 coming. It’s not like we’re stupid. They were at meet and discuss and they did not give any indication that they were looking at anything quite like this.”

Give credit where credit is due, however. Clarion’s president was not hiding the fact that she had no interest in hearing from faculty, staff, or students as she was preparing her “bold, ambitious workforce plan.” The administration was pretty clear in that August 8 prepared statement that it was going to issue changes by decree:

Leaders of the various employee bargaining units have not been involved in the process, but Nowaczyk said they are being advised on the status of the process via regular meetings with the president.

Presumably, “advising” means parroting back the vision and mission statements from the university’s web page.

Read the entire story on Raging Chicken Press

Hear Beth MacDaniel, Clarion-APSCUF President on the Rick Smith Show

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Board of Governors, Here We Come!

It’s about 3:30 am and I am up preparing for today’s PASSHE Board of Governors meeting in Harrisburg. I am printing out the last faculty letters to the Chancellor that I received late last night, reviewing my notes for my 90 seconds before the Board of Governors, rechecking Google maps directions to ensure I can return to KU in time for my office hours and afternoon class, and hoping that enough faculty members from our 14 university system will make the trip to Harrisburg today to pack the Board of Governor’s meeting. As an academic – especially one that teaches writing and advocacy rhetorics, I am compelled to accept the persuasive power of rational discourse and I hope that the words of my colleagues and I will have some degree of impact on the Chancellor and the Board of Governors. I want to believe that we can help convince PASSHE administrators to bargain in good faith and help us secure a good and lasting contract.

However, the activist in me, the labor unionist in me, is also compelled to recognize that the persuasive power of words – yes, even in an academic context – have power only insofar as they are backed by people willing to act up on those words. Words, by themselves, are constrained by context – e.g. if there is no one listening, or a decision has already been made, or there are no institutional rules that require those in power to listen. If words are not empowered to be meaningful in any given institutional context, then their source of power must come from outside that institutional context. As Frederick Douglass memorably put it:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

For sure, Douglass was no slouch when it came to a commitment to the persuasive power of words. However, he was also no fool. His direct experience with slavery and racism taught him otherwise.

Late yesterday we found out that the Chancellor’s Office has limited the public comments section of today’s meeting to three speakers. Each speaker will be limited to three minutes. Then, that’s it, comments are cut off. The Chancellor’s Office limited public comments to three speakers at least once before – when cafeteria workers from IUP, represented by SEIU, were protesting the Board of Governor’s meeting because of Sodexo. The take away? When workers in the PASSHE system – from cafeteria workers to academic workers – seek to make their concerns part of the official discussion, the Chancellor’s Office turns off the mic after providing just enough time for comments so they can claim to have been “open” to public concerns, but not enough time for any substantive discussion. It’s not about discussion after all. It’s about control.

I will be splitting my time with our local APSCUF-KU President, Paul Quinn. Before hearing that the Chancellor’s Office was going to limit debate, each of us had three minutes. But, we’ll take what we can get. I will deliver faculty letters and I will make some brief remarks. But, in the end, what will matter is if the Chancellor and the Board of Governors see that they are not up against three or four faculty members, but hundreds. The power of our words will be measured by the number of faculty members packing the meeting room and manning the picket lines outside the Dixon Center.

I prepare to drive to Harrisburg knowing full well that the Chancellor’s Office has already stacked the deck against us. That the only reason I am  being given time to speak is because the Chancellor’s Office needs to appear to to be open to public comments. I don’t have any illusions about that portion of today’s meeting. I am going to Harrisburg to stand with my colleagues from across the state who, through their physical presence, are saying, “Enough!” I am going to Harrisburg to provide the Chancellor’s Office with a small taste of what a picket line looks like. I am going to Harrisburg to begin a process of demonstrating what gives a union power at the negotiations table  – not simply the negotiation skills of the people at the table, but the collective power of our more than 6,000 members across the Commonwealth. I am going to Harrisburg to begin a process of putting limits on the aspirations of would-be, petty tyrants.

 

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Raging Chicken Press on PASSHE: Smashing Apples

For those of you who don’t know, in the spring of 2011 I launched a progressive media site called Raging Chicken Press. While I described the site as a “side project,” it is really more of a place where my teaching and scholarship meet in practice.  For example, this semester I am teaching ENG 316 Rhetoric, Democracy, Advocacy and next semester I will be teaching a Special Topics class ENG 390 Activists Writing Media: Composing Democratic Futures. I’ve published on activist rhetoric in  Democracies to Come – co-authored with Rachel Riedner of the George Washington University, as well as articles on “Viral Advocacy” in Reflections: A Journal of Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing, and Service-Learning and rhetorics of labor advocacy in Seth Kahn and JongHwa Lee’s fantastic collection, Activism and Rhetoric. I’ve always had the need to do more than teach and write about rhetoric. I’ve found it critical to also be a practitioner. In fact, I would argue, my teaching, scholarship, and practice are all intimately related and in dialogue. Raging Chicken Press has been my latest site of practice and it has taken off faster than I could have imagined.

Last week I launched a new series called “Smashing Apples: Shock Doctrine for Public Education.” The series focuses on the attacks upon public education in PA and across the region and nation. I wanted to let readers of the XChange know for a couple of reasons. First, I am always looking for new writers, photographers, videographers, cartoonists, and podcasters interested in contributing to the site. Given APSCUF’s continuing contract fight, I thought there might be some of you out there who have got some things to say, and who are looking for a place to say it. While our APSCUF-KU efforts are currently focused on letters to editors and to the Board of Governors and Chancellor, Raging Chicken Press might give you a space to contribute in different ways.

Second, I wanted to let you know of some of the articles we have recently published in which you may be interested. Here you go:

• “The Industrialization of PASSHE: Where the Public Good, Its Students, and Its Faculty are Auctioned Off to the Extraction Profiteers,” by Bloomsburg U faculty member, Wendy Lee
• “You Can Tell A Lot About a College by the Way It Treats Its Adjuncts,” by Kutztown U faculty member, Amy Lynch-Biniek (first appeared here the XChange)
• “Smashing Apples: Shock Doctrine for Public Education – That’s What It’s All About!,” by yours truly
• “Pennsylvania Higher Education: Privatized and Sold-Out by House and Senate,” by Kutztown University student, Sean Kitchen
• Rick Smith Files | “Sherri Magunson of the Harrisburg Education Association on Defunding Harrisburg City Schools  to Make Room for Profiteers.” 

Hope you find some these articles compelling and if you’re mad as hell and can’t take it any more, consider submitting to the Raging Chicken

 

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What is Chancellor Cavanaugh’s Vision for PASSHE?

In a new blog post, APSCUF explores the question: Where is the Chancellor?

Chancellor John Cavanaugh sits on the Governor’s Commission for Post-Secondary Education. He testifies annually in front of both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees about the State System’s budget request. He is the leader of State System and should be its biggest advocate. So what is his vision for PASSHE’s future?

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Monday we get to see what the Chancellor thinks of PASSHE faculty

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Empty Pockets for Management: Budget Crisis Fictions

Some of you may recall a couple of posts I wrote a ways back about the budget crisis myths that the Kutztown University administration had been circulating as truths. For years, President Javier Cevallos claimed that KU continued to face budget crises, even though the numbers didn’t quite add up (check out APSCUF-KU’s “Show Us the Money!” presentation from spring 2011).

KU managers have also continued to claim that they have not received any raises in years. Sure, we know President Cevallos got his nice increase, but the official line has been that managers as a whole didn’t receive raises. Welcome to the wonderful world of half-truth and myth.

At this past weeks’ meet and discuss, APSCUF-KU received a document showing managers salaries for the past several years. AND???  Well, turns out TECHNICALLY managers have not receive raises. TECHNICALLY managers from contract specialists to executive directors to chiefs of staff have received JOB RE-CLASSIFICATIONS that have given managers increases of nearly $17,000 in a single year. Some individual managers have received over $20,000 increases due to job reclassification since 2007.

So, you see? Managers didn’t received any raises. It was magic, magic I tell you! In the real world, we ask to see the proof. Here’s what reality shows us:

Manager RAISES since 2007

Got that warm and fuzzy feeling yet?

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February Issue of Raging Chicken Press Is Up! Happy Birthday Wisconsin Uprising!

It seems like getting the February issue out took FOREVER! I don’t know if that’s what it felt like for all of you out there, but it was certainly my experience. But, the important thing is that it’s out!  And, it’s kind of cool that we published the February issue on the one year anniversary of the first mass protest of the Wisconsin Uprising against governor Walker’s attack on working families. We are STILL Badgers! I’ll give you a little sense of what’s been going on behind the scenes; but, for the moment, here’s what you’ll find in the February issue:

• Wendy Lee, “The Unholy Alliance of Big Energy, Big University, Big State: My Exchange with Terry Engelder”
• Dustin Slaughter, “Is It Time to Occupy Big Media?”
• Sean Kitchen, “This Is What a Police State Looks Like”
• The Rick Smith Files: “Living in the ’80s!: Corbett’s Attempt to Send Public Education Back 25 Years” (Interviews with PSEA President, Mike Crossey and APSCUF President, Steve Hicks)
• Editor, “Sustaining Activist Media: An Appeal Just in Time for Corbett’s Assault” (Feb. 7)
• Michelle Sayles, Cartoon, “Monopoly”
• Democracy Now: “On First Anniversary of Wisconsin Uprising, Gov. Walker Fights Recall Effort by Energized Movement”
• Drew Simonovich, Raging Chicken Press Intern, “The State of American Liberalism: Thoughts on the 2012 PA Progressive Summit”
• Karen Samuels, “Reading, PA: A Socialist Town”
• Aaron Barlow, “Lessons for Academics: What Journalists Know about Gatekeeping”
• Lee Camp, “How to Destroy the Environment, Steal Money, and Look Good Doing It” MOC #112

Reminder: Subscribe and Be Entered in the RCP Monthly Give-Away!

I want to make sure to remind everyone out there to subscribe to Raging Chicken Press. If you subscribe by Monday, February 20th, you will be entered in this month’s Subscriber Give-Away! This month’s Give-Away includes two books hot off the presses: John Nichols’s book, Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest from Madison to Wall Street and regular contributor to Raging Chicken Press, Lee Camp’s new book, Moment of Clarity: The Rantings of a Stark Raving Sane Man. All you need to do to subscribe is to enter your email in the subscription form on the right-hand side of the page. Subscribing doesn’t cost you a thing, but it does ensure that you will receive notifications of all new Raging Chicken Press content right in your inbox. Really, can you think of a downside?

Fundraising Campaign: Can You Help? 

I’ve been squawking about this for a while now, but we’re into the thick of it now. Twelve days ago, we launched our first ever fundraising drive on a web platform called WePay. We are attempting to raise $25,000. Yes, that’s what I said, $25,000. I’ve gone back and forth as to whether I should even try to raise this kind of money at this point. It’s a lot of money, I know. But, here’s the deal. I’ve said from the very beginning that I am building Raging Chicken Press for the long haul and I intend on building it in away that is both realistic and sustainable. That is, up until this point Raging Chicken Press exists on whatever money I can stash away, sales in the Raging Chicken Press store, and the affiliate programs we are using. While these sources help, they are by no means sufficient for developing a serious progressive, activist media site.

The $25,000 number comes from thinking about what I’d like to do with RCP in the next few years and what it would take–financially–to make that happen. I’ve talked about some of these projects before, but here’s a flavor of the kind of things I think Raging Chicken Press can do if we get the support:

• Annual Best of Raging Chicken paperback book and eBook, featuring the best articles of the year. Ideally, we can have the first edition ready for our one year anniversary in July.
• Three paid internships a year: 1) a fall internship on issues in PA public and higher education; 2) a spring issue focusing on PA policy and budget issues; and, 3) a summer internship on PA environment and sustainability.
• “Broadside” editions of each issue of Raging Chicken Press to be distributed to regional coffeehouses, bars, hangouts, etc.
• Annual presence at the PA Progressive Summit and Netroots Nation.
• Payment for contributors to Raging Chicken Press based upon similar progressive publications’ payment structures.
• Press passes for Raging Chicken Press reporters.
• Promotional materials including a banner, fliers, and Raging Chicken Press swag.
• Shifting t-shirt sales from our Zazzle.com store to locally produced, union printers (the issue here is that in print t-shirts locally in unionized shops, we need to buy larger quantities of shirts and to keep stock on-hand. Buying large numbers of shirts is a chunk of change).
• Establishing a brick-and-mortar presence on Main Street (or close to it) in Kutztown as a base of operations, meeting space, and store front for t-shirts, buttons, posters, books, and other progressive materials.

This is not a comprehensive list, but representative of some of the major initiatives I’d like to move on in the very near future. Some of these items will require on-going fundraising and grant applications (which I am also working on). The brick-and-mortar presence is a perfect example an initiative that needs up-front money AND a fairly predictable budget.

There is an additional reason for beginning a fundraising drive at this point. I’ve wanted to avoid having to go the advertising route as a way of sustaining Raging Chicken Press. I think the potential strength of this project is dependent upon a decision progressives in our communities deciding to support the development of this progressive, activist media site. In short, I need to know if progressives in PA and beyond believe this project is worthwhile. Are you willing to help build this site? Do you think it is valuable to build progressive alternatives to mainstream media? Do you think it is valuable to have media site that gives progressive writers, videographers, podcasters, artists, and activists an outlet for their work? Those are questions that I don’t have the answer. I need to know from you: Can you help? Can you help build a regionally focused progressive, activist media site?

You can contribute any amount over $2. EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS! We hope that there are enough of us out there who want to join with us to help build progressive media alternatives. I, for one, think we are going to need it.

Call for Submissions for March Issue

Yeah, I know we just published the February issue, but I’d like to get a jump-start on the next issue. Give the deep cuts being proposed by PA governor Tom Corbett and the ramping up of the election cycle, I want to put out the call for the March issue sooner rather than later. Here’s the deal:

Deadline for Submissions for March Issue: Saturday, March 10th. 

If you think you’ve got something to send our way, check out our submission guidelines. If you still have questions, drop me an email at ragingchickenpress@gmail.com.

Wrapping Up for Now

I’m going to leave things there for now. There are a couple more things that I want to tell ya, but this post is long enough already. I will say that I will be looking for your input for the 2011 Best of Raging Chicken Press book pretty soon! Look for your chance to help pick which Raging Chicken Press articles will make it into our first-ever “Best of” book!

Bread and Roses,

Kevin Mahoney
Founder and Editor Zero, Raging Chicken Press

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Strategic Imagination: Comments on KU Strategic Plan

A few moments ago I sent my comments/suggestions on last week’s Strategic Plan Open Forum to the task force’s co-chairs as requested. Last week’s open forum was the university community’s final opportunity to comment on the strategic plan that will guide the university’s direction for the next several years.

For the past several weeks, I have been meeting with a group of students, faculty, and staff who have been thinking concretely about how to bring change to the university and build strong networks with the surrounding community. Our group, Occupy Kutztown, meets every Tuesday at 11am in Bear’s Den coffee house in the student union building (meeting will restart at the beginning of the spring semester).  The three suggestions I sent to the Strategic Plan Task Force attempt to get the university to enact policies of material support to the community. Here is the full memo I sent:

To: Co-Chairs, Strategic Planning Task Force
From: Kevin Mahoney
Re: Comments/Suggestions for Strategic Plan

Date: December 7, 2011

I am writing to follow up on last week’s Strategic Plan open forum. As you may recall, I made a few  suggestions about the implementation of the Strategic Plan that I believe would provide KU with some concrete goals toward implementation. These suggestions are focused on reinforcing the spirit of the mission and goals of the university in ways that also help build strong connections with our surrounding communities.

I want to express my thanks to the Strategic Plan Task Force for their great work. I believe that this strategic plan represents the first coherent vision for the long-term success of the university I have seen since joining the faculty in 2002. As the outside consultant, Dr. Stephen Reno, stated

as a result of this process, you all have a wider responsibility for this campus.  So, you should be looking at this plan and asking yourself, “what’s my part in it? What piece of it can I pick up and take up and work on?”

These suggestions represent the kind of work that I and others envision as the parts of the process that we are willing to “pick up, take up, and work on.” So, as requested, I am sending you these comments/suggestions to you to include in your deliberations.

The three suggestions I have relate directly to Objective 2.1 Develop, Promote, and Sustain Strong Community Partnerships, in particular (but not limited to), Initiative 2.1.2. The goal of Initiative 2.1.2 is to “Establish and strengthen reciprocal relationships with regional businesses and community groups.” The two desired outcomes are: 1) identify and establish relationships with businesses and community groups aligned with KU programs; and, 2) Expand our networks of approved internship sites.

The current economic climate continues to strain communities and families that surround the university and from where most of our students come.  It would seem both appropriate and strategically smart for the university to act proactively to support our communities materially. These three suggestions could have a significant material impact in our communities and strengthen our ties with our communities.

1. Bank Locally

   Currently, Kutztown University does its banking with Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo was one of the “big banks” that contributed to our current economic crisis and continues to be plagued by ethical and legal violations. I propose that Kutztown University moves its money out of “big banks” and into a community based bank. Fleetwood Bank, for example, is a local, community based bank that would be an ideal candidate. By banking locally, we are supporting the local economy and maximizing the local impact of our banking practices.

2. PA Sourcing of Office Supplies and Related Materials

   While Pennsylvania has been spared the worst of the current economic crisis, jobs are still quite difficulty to come by and PA families are struggling. As a state institution that is owned by the taxpaying citizens of the Commonwealth, it would make sense that we should maximize our economic support for PA industries. I propose that Kutztown University enact a policy of buying at least 50% of all office supplies and related materials from PA industries with a unionize workforce.

3. Sourcing Food Locally

   Similar to #2, I propose that Kutztown University enact a policy of sourcing at least 50% of the food served on campus from local farms. Given the sheer size of Kutztown University, we would provide significant direct support for local economies. Furthermore, given the increasing number of food related crises connected to large-scale, global food sourcing (arsenic in apple juice, E. coli in meat and pre-packaged salads and vegetables) buying food locally is also a health issue.

I fully recognize that none of these proposals could be enacted over-night. I also recognize that enacting these proposals would require both work and a different way of thinking about how we fulfill our mission. As President Cevallos said at the open forum, these proposals lead us into “long and complicated” discussions and there would be “difficulties.” The group of people that I am working with on these issues are more than willing with work out the “difficulties.”

I believe that we can “think big” with this strategic plan and create a set of practices that can build strong relationships with the community through material choices the university makes as to how to spend and invest its money. As President Cevallos said, budgets and the use of resources are “choices.” The three choices I outline above are choices that can help demonstrate to the community that we can not only talk the talk of community engagement, we can walk the walk, too.

Thank you in advance for you consideration. Feel free to contact me via email @ mahoney@kutztown.edu or by phone. I would be happy to meet to discuss any of these issues further.

Sincerely,

Kevin Mahoney
Assoc. Prof., English

Along similar lines, our group has been discussion ways to build progressive networks on campus and to provide a site for activist education. We decided to begin a “Free University” @ KU that will run for nine weeks during the spring semester. More details will be coming.  In the meantime, here is a copy of the “syllabus.”

the Free University | brought to you by Occupy Kutztown

Kick off: February 13th.

Week 1: Intro to the Economic Collapse (6pm)

• Film: Inside Job
• Discussion:

Week 2: Best Democracy Money Can Buy

• Film: We the People, INC – Bill Moyer’s Journal
• Discussion:

Week 3: Rigging the Game

• Film: Koch Brother’s Exposed 
• Discussion:

Week 4: Intro to Community Agriculture

• Film: Fresh
• Discussion:

Week 5: Frankenfood

• Film: The Future of Food
• Discussion:

Week 6: Corporate Supper

• Film: Food, Inc. 
• Discussion:

Week 7: Blowing Up Appalachia

• Film: The Last Mountain
• Discussion:

Week 8: Frack This!

• Film: Split Estate
• Discussion:

Week 9: Fire in the Water

• Film: Gasland
• Discussion:

If you are interested in working on any of this stuff, check out the Occupy Kutztown facebook page or drop me an email.

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Raging Chicken Press @ 10,000

In the wee hours of this morning, Nov. 29, Raging Chicken Press achieved a milestone of sorts: 10,000 all-time views. We could not be more thankful for the generous support we have seen and the willingness of readers to pass the word, send links to articles to their family and  friends, comment on articles, and subscribe. We hope you will be even more pleased with Raging Chicken Press in the upcoming months.

As you may have already read, the December issue will feature a video interview with Noam Chomsky. We also intend on introducing more audio components to the site including interviews and commentary in the coming months. In January, we will welcome our first Raging Chicken Press intern, Drew Simonovich  – what we hope to be the first of many to come.  In addition to our monthly issues, Raging Chicken Press has also been able to donate to Dustin Slaughter’s David and Goliath Project in support of his coverage of the Occupy Movement. We have dropped off supplies to Occupy Allentown.  We donated money to help fund the launch of the “Occupy Wall Street Journal” back in October. We have also deepened our connections to other activist/progressive projects such as the Rick Smith Show, Occupy Kutztown, and Lee Camp’s amazing “Moments of Clarity.” Just last week we announced our first “subscriber give-away” winner of the Raging Chicken Press “Must Read” of the month. The subscriber give-away will be a regular monthly feature (so subscribe!!!!). The December and January issues will feature several new contributors – both solicited and unsolicited which promises to further diversify the progressive voices we seek to amplify and support.

The next big challenge ahead will be fundraising. We’ve been able to earn a little bit of money from our on-line store and from a few donations from supporters. Revenue from those sources will allow Raging Chicken Press to cover its web-hosting and domain name fees and purchase some equipment such as a tripod and USB drives. However, if we are going to take on all that we want to take on, we are going to need to raise money more aggressively. At this point, it is most likely that we are going to make a strong push in the beginning of 2012 through Kickstarter. If we are able to raise the funds we need, we will be able to fund paid internships for the next couple of years, issue the first paperback edition of the “Best of Raging Chicken Press” in the summer of 2012, launch a small-scale progressive publishing house in cooperation with a local, union-shop printer, and begin to host monthly or bi-monthly progressive meet-ups to facilitate activist networking.

To think that just seven month ago Raging Chicken Press was simply a “cool idea” and now we have just crossed the 10,000 all-time viewer mark after only five issues is pretty remarkable. Once again, I want to thank everyone who has helped make this project possible…from our regular contributors, to our “Raging Chicken Army” who send out links to their networks when each issue is released, to the notes of support and critique we receive from readers. Raging Chicken Press is off to a blazing start thanks to you.

Bread and Roses,

Kevin Mahoney
Editor Zero, Raging Chicken Press

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November Issue of Raging Chicken Press: Right Here, Right Now

Yes, the long wait is over. The November issue of Raging Chicken Press is up. I am hoping that you will think it was worth the wait. As you might imagine, the Occupy/99% movement takes the lion-share of the space this month. In fact, so much has happened and happened so quickly, that we had to drop a one article that had become outdated and we added in a “part two” to Dustin Slaughter’s piece on Occupy Philly because events moved fast this past week.

As a testament to how fast events are moving, we have not had a chance to begin to digest last night’s forcible eviction of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in NYC, the court order that allowed OWS activists to return to their encampment, and the hundreds of arrests that seemed to continue into the night. In addition, the Mayor of Oakland let it slip that she had a conference call with mayors from 18 U.S. cities with Occupy encampments to coordinate crackdowns and evictions. There is now doubt that we’re entering a new stage of the Occupy/99% movement…what that stage is, however, is undecided at this time. Raging Chicken Press looks forward to covering the continual development of this amazing movement.

This months issue features the following contributions:

• “Occupy Philadelphia Faces a Crossroads,” by Dustin Slaughter
• “The 99%: A Return to E Pluribus Unum?,” by Glenn Richardson
• “What the Occupations Have Taught Me: Lose the Fear,” by Dustin Slaughter]
• Rick Smith Files | Interview with Erik Loomis: “How General Strikes and Direct Action Build Solidarity”
• Rick Smith Files | Interview with Desire Grover: “PA GOP and Corporations Stealing Our Children’s Future”
• “Occupy Well Street: Frack the Keystone XL,” by Wendy Lee
• “Occupy Allentown,” video from the field
• “How Far We’ve Come: Eroding CUNY’s Mission One Test at a Time,” by Aaron Barlow
• “Kim Kardashian, Occupy Wall Street, and Credit Default Swaps,” Lee Camp | MOC #93
• Musical Interlude | Fuel for Resistance

We’d also like to remind you that you have to the end of this week for your chance to win Raging Chicken Press’s “Must Read” book of the month. All you need to do is subscribe to Raging Chicken Press by entering your email address in the box to the right and click “subscribe.”

Finally, for all you musicians and singer-songwriters out there, check out our first ever song contest for your chance to win Raging Chicken Press gear and our “Must Read” book of the month.

That’s it for now. Happy reading!

Kevin Mahoney

Editor Zero, Raging Chicken Press

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Calling all progressive musicians and song writers: Raging Chicken Press song contest

Like to write music? Progressive? This might be for you:

The November issue of Raging Chicken Press will be out soon (hopefully by Monday–we’ve been a bit sick here).  I know, the waiting game sucks.  Well, Raging Chicken Press has got something for at least some of you to do while you are waiting for the next issue.

Raging Chicken Press announces its first ever song contest! More specifically, song parody contest. Frankly, if I had the musical talent, I would have been on this over the summer. But, we all have to accept our short-comings. So, I thought this would be a cool project to push out to fans and friends of Raging Chicken Press.

Have you ever seen Disney’s version of Robin Hood? Well, I loved it as a kid and now my three-year old son loves it too. As I was watching it over the summer, I began to see the possibility of repurposing some of the songs on the soundtrack for our current struggles against right-wing attacks on collective bargaining, public education, social services, and our democracy. I began to think about casting our “beloved” governor, Tom Corbett as “Prince John” the “phony King of England.”  In particular, I was thinking about the song “The Phony King of England.” Listen to this song and replace “John” and “England” with “Tom” and “Pennsylvania” and you’ll get the idea:

Got it? If you check out Chris Priest’s repurposing of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (see below) you’ll get the sense of what we’re thinking about here at Raging Chicken Press.

So, we’re going to try a little experiment: We are calling on readers and friends of Raging Chicken Press to submit parodies of the song “Phony King of England” to Raging Chicken Press. All entries will be posted to Raging Chicken Press and readers will have a chance to vote on the best version. The top three entries (if we get that many) will receive their choice of t-shirt from the Raging Chicken Press store.  The winning song will also receive Raging Chicken Press’s “Must Read” book of the month.

Here’s the rules:

• Song must be a rewritten version of the “Phony King of England” that appears in the video above
• Song should replace “John” with “Tom” and Tom should refer to PA Governor, Tom Corbett. Likewise, “England” should be replaced with “Pennsylvania”
• All entries must be recorded in MP3 or .wav format.
• All final recordings must be loaded up to YouTube. Ideally, the final video should include images to political protest against Tom Corbett and the PA Republican’s austerity budget and other attacks upon working families and the Commons.
• Once songs are uploaded to YouTube, an email should be sent to ragingchickenpress@gmail.com including a link to the video, the name(s) of the song writer(s), and contact information including email and mailing address.
• All entries should be submitted by November 29th.

Entries will be posted to Raging Chicken Press as they are received. Voting for best parody song will begin on November 30, 2011 and the winner(s) will be announced in December issue.

Any questions? Send email inquiries to Kevin Mahoney, Editor Zero, Raging Chicken Press @ ragingchickenpress@gmail.com. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

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Got Something to Say? Deadline for November Issue of Raging Chicken Press Approaching

A reminder that the deadline for the November issue of Raging Chicken Press is approaching quickly.

November marks a kind of unofficial start of the 2012 elections. There is more at stake than election of a president. Across the nation and increasingly here in Pennsylvania, state legislatures are rolling back workers rights, gutting funding for public schools and services, signing over huge tax breaks to corporations while slashing jobs, and making exercising your right to vote more difficult than ever before. PA Governor Corbett’s proposed electoral college change would effectively hand the bulk of PA’s electoral votes to the Republican candidate in an end-around the will of the people (see Richardson’s article in the October issue).  We are looking for people who are willing to put on their wonk hats and expose the radical right’s agenda. This becomes even more important as millions and millions of dollars is pouring into PA from right-wing front groups such as ALEC and the American Federation of Children.

We welcome all submissions that seek to give voice to progressive, activist communities of resistance. Become a Raging Chicken.

If you are interested in submitting your work, you can do so by sending an email to ragingchickenpress@gmail.com.  Please take a few minutes to review our Submission Guidelines to familiarize yourself with the kind of work we publish and the purpose of our publication.

Deadline for the November issue is Monday, October 31st [extended from 10/28…Halloween seemed more appropriate!]. 

As always, the earlier you get us your submission the better. We look forward to hearing from you!

Kevin Mahoney | Editor Zero, Raging Chicken Press

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It begins

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Occupy Kutztown Off to a Strong Start!

I could not have asked for a better way to start my day. As I drove in to work this morning, I swung by the local Wells Fargo Bank on the corner of Whiteoak and Main Street to see if the Occupy Kutztown action had gotten underway. Despite the rain and cooler weather, there were already at least a couple dozen people in brightly colored rain ponchos, homemade signs, and an energy that seemed to light up that little corner of Kutztown. I honked my horn, put down my passenger-side window and yelled “I’ll see you all in a little bit!!!”

What a way to start the day.

After I get done with my first round of office hours this morning, I am going to head down to Occupy Kutztown and and my voice to the protest as well as gather some stories and photos for Raging Chicken Press. I wish I could be there all day.

I am hoping that my colleagues, union members, union leaders, and students will take some time out of their days to join Occupy Kutztown in front of the Wells Fargo Bank on the corner of Whiteoak and Main. After today’s action, the question will be where do we go from here? I have a host of ideas for what we can do locally to nurture this emerging social movement. After all, the Wall Street created economic crisis is not limited to a few blocks in New York City as we are well aware.

Bruce Levine, author of Get Up Stand uP has given me some ideas about the need to rebuild solidarity and our self-respect. Levine appeared on the Rick Smith Show back in April and I just transcribed the interview and published it in the October issue of Raging Chicken Press. Levine uses the example of the Populist Movement in the 1880s to get at the kind of organizing that needs to take place today to get back our self-respect and confidence.  Here’s a bit of what got me thinking:

But what they did—Populist organizers—was real smart. They realized, hey, our guys are getting ripped off by the banks and they’re getting ripped off by the railroads—that was the oligarchy of the time that was screwing them—the grain elevator operators. Why? Because they had to go into debt to plant their crops and when they finally got around to getting their crops sold, they couldn’t get enough money to pay off their debts, and so they were going deeper and deeper into debt, and losing their farms and all that. So, the great organization of that era was called, the short term for it was the Alliance, and what they did was they did some thinking about it. How could we come up with some kind of economic, self-help here that we could pull off that doesn’t take a lot of money, that could reduce these folks’ pain economically. And what they did was they just came up with the first, gigantic scale, working peoples’ cooperative where they basically cut out the middle-man. These farmers got together and they pulled their crop, cut out the middle-man, got great prices for their crop and word spread—they didn’t need twitter, they didn’t need facebook—word spread in a hurry that this was a great deal, this Alliance. They weren’t just an organization preaching at us, they were taking away our pain, giving us back our self-respect, giving us confidence.

The Occupy Kutztown action opens the possibility for a collective discussion about how we–right here where we live and work–can retake the reigns of the future by looking at alternatives to the mantra of “budget cuts” and manufactured “fiscal crisis.”  We shall see how the Kutztown community responds to the question posed by Eminem — a question that has been ringing in my ears for the past several weeks:

Look…If you had…one shot, one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted…in one moment, would you capture it? Or, just let it slip?

The opportunity of a generation is here. An opportunity to begin to retake the initiative, to right decades of wrongs, and to gain back our confidence to do more that throw our hands up in the air and say, “there is nothing I can do.”

I hope to see you today at Occupy Kutztown.

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October Issue of Raging Chicken Press is Here!

In case readers of the XChange missed the launch of the October issue of Raging Chicken Press, here you go!

It’s amazing what can happen in a month. When people gather together and say “Enough!” another world seems possible once again. Since the September issue of Raging Chicken Press the #OccupyWallStreet movement has exploded to more than 1,173 cities nation-wide. That’s not a typo. One thousand, one hundred and seventy-three cities. By the time you read this, the number will have probably increased once again. Does the Occupy movement mark the emergence of a new social movement that can meet the challenges of the 21st Century? Will we see the birth of a mass-based movement that will finally stop the corporate profiteers in their tracks? What we know at this point is that laboratories of democracy are popping up across the nation and for the first time in decades, everyday people are relearning deliberation and democratic praxis.

This issue of Raging Chicken Press was initially billed as Part II of our Back to School issues. It seems that school has moved out of the classrooms and into the street. The Occupy movement has taken a more central place in this issue. In completely unpredictable ways, the Occupy movement has emerged in answer to several questions posed by writers from our last issue.  Given the rapid development of the Occupy movement, we will be focusing much of our November issue on the movements and the traditions of radical democracy with which they are in dialogue.

The October issue of Raging Chicken Press introduces a new feature: The Rick Smith Files. Beginning this month, each issue will feature at least one interview or segment from the Rick Smith Show. We believe that the work Rick Smith and his crew are doing is critical to helping build new social movements. Thanks especially to Rick and Brett for jumping with us into this experiment in networked media.

This issue also features several videos from other sources that help contextualize the Occupy movement and begin to respond to some critiques–especially those critiques coming from the left. We hope you’ll take the time to watch them as we think they represent important contributions to how “we” make sense of what’s going on.

Here’s the rundown of this month’s issue:

• Dustin Slaughter, “Scrambling to Cover the Occupy Movement: A Front Lines Journal”
• Rick Smith Files: “Interview with Bruce Levine: Why We Need to Get Some Balls, Solidarity, and ORGANIZE!”
• Rick Smith Files: “Interview with Tony Helfer, President UFCW Local 23: Victory at Kroger, Building Solidarity, and the Need to Keep Pushing Back”
• Glenn Richardson, “Corrupted Capitalism and Despoiled Democracy: The GOP Attack on Voting Rights and Worker Rights”
• Michelle Sayles, “Leaks” (cartoon)
• Wendy Lee, “Fracking, Floods, and Fools”
• Aaron Barlow, “The ‘He Said/She Said’ of Education”
• Lee Camp, “The Truth About Occupy Wall Street: MOC #80” (video)
• Amy Goodman/Democracy Now, “Naomi Klein: Protesters are Seeking Change in the Streets Because it Won’t Come from the Ballot Box”
• Countdown with Keith Olbermann, “Cornell West and Tavis Smiley Discuss Occupy Movement”

I want to thank all our contributors for their excellent work on this issue. I also want to put in a special plug for Dustin Slaughter’s David and Goliath Project Media Fund. Dustin has been traveling up and down the East Coast–from Philly to Boston to New York to DC–covering the growing Occupy movement. Any contribution you can make to the Fund will help make it possible for Dustin to continue his work and will help fund the documentary film about the Occupy movement he is working on. You can donate here: David and Goliath Project Media Fund.

You will probably be hearing from me a little bit more over the next couple of weeks as I get ready to take Raging Chicken Press to the next level. In the meantime, please don’t forget to take a peek at the Raging Chicken Press Store. We have all sorts of political swag for your progressive soul–t-shirts, bumper stickers, posters, and more. All purchases help fund this project. I’ve been surprised at the number of people from out of state-Wisconsin, Boston, Chicago, Florida, and even Maine–who have picked up some gear at our store. I can’t thank you enough. Every little bit helps build independent, progressive media for PA and beyond.

Oh! For readers in Kutztown or the surrounding area, I just got word that students are organizing an Occupy Kutztown event on the corner of Whiteoak and Main (in front of Wells Fargo) at 11 on Wednesday, Oct. 12.  If you can come out, please do. Look for me and let me know what you think of Raging Chicken Press!

Bread and Roses,

Kevin Mahoney
Editor Zero, Raging Chicken Press

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Occupy Kutztown Rally Tomorrow!

That’s right folks! The cornfield and picturesque campus were no match for the Occupy movement. It’s here.

Here’s the details:

• When? Tomorrow! Wed. October 12 beginning at 11am
• Where? Wells Fargo Bank on the corner of Whiteoak and Main, Kutztown
• What? A rally of the 99% . Here’s the official call to Occupy Kutztown:
• INVITE EVERYONE!We are the 99%. Stand up to Wall Street, stand up to the Banks. Stand up to the 1% of the population that have been destroying the American Dream.Since we can’t leave campus because of class, why not bring it to Kutztown. Meet outside the Wells Fargo on main street. A company that took 25 billion dollars from the American Tax Payers. They continue to take people’s homes. They support the 1%. Who do you support?

  For more information about the movement please go to – www.occupytogether.org

  please note this is to be a peaceful demonstration.

• Word has it that the Reading Eagle will be there along with 69 News. And, of course, Raging Chicken Press will be covering the event as well.

Hope to see you there!

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October issue of Raging Chicken Press on the way…and some thoughts on Occupy movement

Hey all,

just thought I would pass on the info. Next Raging Chicken Press out this coming Monday.

K

We are living during an incredible moment in history. Finally, after years of taking it on the chin, sucking it up, and keeping heads down a movement is emerging, giving oxygen to the deep embers of rage that decades of class war have left in the hearts of Americans. The financial collapse, the trillions of public dollars to bail out Wall Street criminals, and the relentless destruction of the fabled American middle class have finally led to a visceral, collective, and material cry of ENOUGH! The Occupy Wall Street movement was initially dismissed through cliché talking points by Mainstream commentators. Since Occupy Wall Street began on Sept. 17th the numbers of people joining in this collective act of resistance has only grown. And spread. Occupy groups have sprung up in over 274 U.S. cities.

What will the Occupy movement become? Will it be the spark that will transform into the kind of social movement capable of wrestling the power away from a handful of billionaires and their political cronies in Washington? We shall see and Raging Chicken Press will not only be there to cover what’s going on, we will be taking part in helping build this movement. We are well aware of a range of critiques that have emerged about the composition of the Occupy movement, its insistence upon consensus as an organizational principle, the claim of representing the “99%,” the fact that the movement did not begin occupying Wall Street with concrete set of demands, the list goes on. This movement cannot shy away from such critiques. However, Raging Chicken Press believes that the Occupy movement has opened a crack in history that offers the concrete possibility for collective deliberation–a democratic process for constructing communities of resistance that move beyond the politics of factionalism and ideological purism–especially on the left. The stakes are too high. The future will belong to those willing to get their hands–and their ideologies–dirty in this workshop of resistance.

The October issue of Raging Chicken Press will be out on Monday, October 10th.  Raging Chicken Press has been lucky to have one of our contributing bloggers, Dustin Slaughter of the David and Goliath Project, on the ground in NYC, Boston, and Philly. The problem we have faced in covering the emergence of the Occupy movement has been that events are moving along so quickly. This issue will feature several of Dustin’s reports as a kind of time-elapsed journal.

In the October issue, we will also introduce a new series: The Rick Smith Files. If you haven’t listened to the Rick Smith Show yet, click here and get started right away. It’s activist fuel. Beginning with the October issue, Raging Chicken Press will feature transcriptions of at least one of Rick Smith’s interviews with activists, labor leaders, policy analysts, and authors who have made it their business to stand up and fight back.

As for the rest of the issue, I’m going to keep you guessing for now. 🙂

I want to encourage all readers of Raging Chicken Press to become an email subscriber. As an email subscriber, you will receive an email when new content is added. Subscribing is easy. On the right-hand sidebar you will find our subscription widget. Just enter your email and click subscribe. It’s really that easy.

I hope to see some of you at the Occupy Philly action this weekend. The action begins tomorrow, Thursday at 9am @ City Hall. Look for the Raging Chicken t-shirt!

Kevin Mahoney

Editor Zero, Raging Chicken Press

 

 

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Returning to the XChange

It’s been a while since I’ve posted exclusively to the XChange and a lot has changed.  A couple of weeks before the beginning of the fall 2011 semester, my daughter Scout was born. In addition to the sheer joy of welcoming her into our family, lack of sleep has been a constant companion. Readers of the XChange also know that I stepped down as Vice President this past year in anticipation of the birth of my daughter.   This fall marks the first time since 2002 – the year I started teaching at Kutztown – that I have not been an elected representative for our local chapter of APSCUF.  It’s a bit odd, I have to say.

While I know I made the right decision to focus on my family this year, I am also keenly aware of how easy it is to fall out of the loop. Doing union work, especially at the Executive Committee level, means that you are intimately involved with micro-battles every single day. The administration’s decision to cut programs and retrench faculty last year meant that the bulk of my days were dominated with the practical and emotional weight of fighting an administration that had no intention of looking for alternatives to their slash and burn approach to the “budget crisis.” I’ve been astounded how “easy” my job feels now – a 4-4 teaching load, and ONLY a 4-4 teaching load, actually feels like a break. How messed up is that?

Stepping down from APSCUF leadership for a bit has allowed me to do quite a bit of thinking about where I want to put my efforts and how to best build some kind of sustained resistance to the budget cuts and assaults on public, higher education. Last year I oscillated between intense frustration and cynicism because I could not understand why faculty and staff at Kutztown University and the other PASSHE Universities were not flooding the streets of Harrisburg and their communities to defend their institutions and the promise of public higher education. I still don’t get it, but I think my experience this semester is helping me understand better how it’s just so much easier — at least in the short term and before the pink slip shows up in your mailbox — to just focus on teaching and let someone else worry about the future of public higher education.

Much of my “free time” is now spent on building my independent, progressive media site, Raging Chicken Press. October will be our fourth issue.  I’ve been kicking around the idea of an autonomous or semi-autonomous organization/institute/center for quite some time. At least two of my conference papers over the past five years have suggested the need to develop extra-curricular institutions for advocacy rhetoric and training citizens for participation in 21st century democracy. In my writing and research, I’ve grown more and more pessimistic about the ability to do the kind of progressive, democratic work that many in my field feel lies at the core of literacy education within the terms of the curriculum. That does not mean that I think there is not room for courses that can contribute to progressive, democratic projects. I only mean to suggest the university and most faculty do not see their work as being primarily concerned with public education’s charge to train the next generation of democratic citizens.

For better or for worse, faculty and curricula tend to be primarily focused on job preparation and more traditional disciplinary concerns. There was a time that I thought it was a worthy struggle, a worthy expenditure of energy, to attempt to shift the curriculum more toward citizen training. And that still may be worthwhile.  However, given the intensity of the attacks on the public sector, workers’ rights, collective bargaining, voting rights, environmental protections, and women’s rights and the rather timid response from faculty, staff, and students in Pennsylvania’s state and state related universities, I have felt an urgency to find more direct means to network and build citizen-based movements in the State.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that faculty, staff, and our unions were silent. I personally made four trips to Harrisburg, organized two bus trips with faculty and students to Harrisburg for rallies, and APSCUF and the other education unions were doing some great work responding to Governor Corbett’s slash and burn budget.  All that is good.  However, to my knowledge, there has been no recognizable, sustained organization effort to push back the budget cuts. When it comes right down to it, people still lost their jobs, students still had a hefty tuition increase, and PASSHE Universities still saw almost 20% of their budgets gutted. These are all losses by any measure. We should be learning from colleagues in Wisconsin, Ohio, New York and others who have organized mass mobilizations–and occupations of their state capitals. These states have now almost nine months of organizing under their belts and are building strong coalitions moving into the 2012 election. Hats off to them.

It has been striking to me that Kutztown University didn’t see a version of #OccupyWallStreet this past year, especially given the administration’s smoke-and-mirrors “budget crisis.”  As readers of the XChange know, APSCUF-KU has been contending for a long time that the University was not being straight with it’s numbers.  President Cevallos was persistent in his claims that Kutztown faced perpetual shortfalls.  However, as I wrote in a post here on the XChange and in the first issue of Raging Chicken Press, we found out that Kutztown University has been sitting on $29.1 million that could have been used to save programs and jobs. Put another way, stripping faculty of their tenure, jobs, and programs was a conscious calculated choice, not an unfortunate, unavoidable consequence of a force of nature as the administration would like us all to believe.

But, as a community, our defense of our retrenched colleagues and efforts at building an organized resistance has been lackluster. I say “as a community,” not “as a union” purposely. Anyone on Kutztown’s campus  who’s been paying even partial attention is well aware of charges that the “union didn’t do enough” or that “the union should have done X instead of Y.”  What baffles me is why people are more willing to criticize their union or stick their heads in the sand instead of organizing.  I’m not suggesting members should not criticize their union.  As a matter of fact, I think member involvement and critical participation is essential to any effective union.  Rather, I am saying criticism does not stand in for action. I mean, think about it. If I was criticizing my union while I was joining together with my colleagues to resist the administration’s attacks that’s one thing. Any community worth its salt comes to the aid of other members of the community out of a commitment to that community.  It does not wait to be told what to do.  It does not wait for others to do it for them. It just acts. Because it’s the right thing to do.

I know this is very ranty and scattered…it will take me a little while to get my XChange groove back. I’ve still got a lot to say about where we go from here and fights we are going to face down the road.

For now, I have to go teach.

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Call for Submissions: “Back to School” issues of Raging Chicken Press

As most readers of the XChange know, I’ve spent a good deal of time this summer working on my latest project, Raging Chicken Press.  I am happy to say that the July and August issues have been quite a success and we’ve gotten some excellent feedback and responses.  We are now looking to the beginning of the school year. Here is the Call for Submissions for our September and October “Back to School” issues. I hope readers of the XChange will consider contributing, or will pass the word to friends who would be interested in doing so. Here’s the call:

Raging Chicken Press is now accepting submission for the September and October issues.  We are dubbing these two issues the “Back to School” issues for a couple of reasons.  First, this will be the first academic year since Corbett and his Republican cabal gutted public education from kindergarten through college. Students returning to school this fall face increased challenges as class sizes increase, favorite teachers were given walking papers, and extracurricular activities have been slashed.  In short, this fall will be the first year of the Corbett model of education: fend for yourselves.

But we are calling these issues the “Back to School” issues for another reason.  Here at Raging Chicken Press, we believe that it’s time for progressives, activists, and organizers to rethink effective political action.  The right-wing wave that began in Wisconsin and has swept through Republican dominated states during the first part of 2011, shows the bankrupt nature mainstream political action.  As Dustin Slaughter argued in the August issue,

We often cling to the misconception that real change comes from parliamentary measures and the ballot box.  But in so doing, we each shoulder a forgetting that meaningful reform, be it in labor struggles or the civil rights movements of our past, were not accomplished through legislation.  Reforms were, and will always be, achieved by direct action. In spite of itself direct action has at times turned violent (as the struggle for labor rights illustrated), but just as often it manifests its message in non-violent civil disobedience: sit-ins, marches, boycotts. The machinery of government is slow, and it suggests through its impotence the need for responsive measures. The groundwork for peaceful, radical reform techniques has already been paved for us in historical stone. We as a people now need to find the courage to throw ourselves at “the machine.”

We couldn’t agree more. In a sense, it is critical that we go “Back to School” to remind us that meaningful change and effective resistance requires us to take a stand, draw lines, and fight back.  Rational discourse can only be effective when bolstered by organized “communities of resistance,” as Rachel Riedner and Kevin Mahoney argued in Democracies to Come: Rhetorical Action, Neoliberalism, and Communities of Resistance. But going “Back to School” does not mean retreating to libraries; it means relearning the lessons of struggle through involvement in concrete struggles happening right now.

As this call for submissions goes out, 45,000 Verizon workers enter the twelfth day of their strike, right-wing PA Republicans are holding hearings on anti-union “right to work” legislation, Corbett and PA Republicans are handing over large stretches of public land to the natural gas industry. The list goes on and on.

If you are interested in submitting your work for one of these issues, you can do so by sending an email to ragingchickenpress@gmail.com.  Please take a few minutes to review our Submission Guidelines to familiarize yourself with the kind of work we publish and the purpose of our publication.

Deadline for the September issue is 8/31/2011.

Deadline for the October issue is 9/28/2011.

As always, the earlier you get us your submission the better. We look forward to hearing from you!

Bread and Roses,
Kevin Mahoney
Editor Zero, Raging Chicken Press

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Second Issue of Raging Chicken Press is Up!

Hey all…I’ve been storing up a whole lot of stuff for the XChange.  Ever since Cevallos sent his “update” to the faculty I have wanted to get cranking on the XChange again.  But, I had to get this little project together before I turned back to the XChange.  So, here it is:

The second issue of Raging Chicken Press is now up!  In my experience, the second issue of a new publication is always difficulty to get out.  A lot of energy gets spent mobilizing for the launch of the inaugural issue and just when you think you’ve got a little breathing room, deadlines for the next issue are just around the corner. I am quite pleased at how well this issue came together.  Not only did we get some stellar submissions, all the contributions this time round are interconnected. I hope that you like our second issue as much as the first!

This issue of Raging Chicken Press features:

• “History Demands Nonviolent Resistance from Us,” by Dustin Slaughter
• “‘Accountability’ Isn’t Enough [Some Angry Language],” by Seth Kahn
• “Those Fracking Letters to the Editor,” by Wendy Lee
• “One Big Company Town: Frack the Future,” by Kevin Mahoney
• “Book Review: Naomi Schaeffer Riley, The Faculty Lounges,” by Amanda Lynch Morris
• “A Letter to America and Her People,” by J. Rizzo Mertz
• “This Video is for Rich People Only | MOC #65,” by Lee Camp
• “No Need for Conspiracy Theories: The Inside Story on Why Cenk Uyger Left MSNBC,” by Kevin Mahoney
• “Don’t Frack Your Mother,” graphic by Michelle Sayles

I hope this issue will generate as much excitement as our last issue.  I’m also already looking forward to our September issue which will be a “Back to School” issue.  The call for submissions for the September issue will be out very, very soon.

We’ll also be rolling out some exciting new things for the fall.  Beginning in September, Raging Chicken Press will be holding monthly “meet-ups” the week after an issue is published — locations to be announced, so stay tuned.  These meet-ups will allow Raging Chicken Press contributors, fans, family, and friends to have a chance to talk and network. From the beginning, Raging Chicken Press has sought to contribute to building progressive, social movements not just write about them.

In the coming months I will also increase my calls to help support the work of Raging Chicken Press.  As you know, you can help contribute to our work by using the links on the right side of our site to give donations, pick up some Raging Chicken Press gear, or simply shop at Amazon.com or Powells.com.  I hope we can keep Raging Chicken Press a community supported independent, progressive media site.

So, let us know what you think!

Kevin Mahoney

Editor Zero, Raging Chicken Press

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