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:
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 Streetand 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?
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.
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
Over the past week or so, there has been renewed attention to the ways in which Pennsylvania students — students in PASSHE and the state-related universities (Temple, Lincoln, Pitt, and Penn State) — have mobilized against Gov. Corbett’s cuts. In my conversations with some of the student organizers at KU and across the state, it is encouraging to hear that students are beginning to get a very real sense of their own power and ability to enact change. At a recent faculty organizing meeting and in numerous conversations, I have made the case that Corbett’s cuts represent a decisive moment in the history and future of public education in PA — K-12 and higher education. In the case of higher education, the ability to roll back Corbett’s cuts depends a great deal on whether or not students will mobilize.
It is true that students have already mobilized. However, there are nagging questions as to whether or not students will be able to expand their current organizing and show up at local and state-wide rallies in numbers that will give state legislators, PASSHE officials, and the Governor pause. It is also true that students have been contacting legislators and are increasing their presence in Harrisburg as part of lobbying days. And yet that nagging question that Rick Smith asked me on his show last week still hangs above us all (my apologies for the rough transcription – a good reason why you should listen to his show and listen to my interview at the link above):
ME: What we’ve got is a State System of Higher Education which is really like the last promises to the citizens of Pennsylvania that they’ve got a shot . . . This is like a last stand in my mind. What they’re after is a fundamental change in the “common” part of our Commonwealth.
Rick Smith: I absolutely agree with you…but…it says you had a hundred fifty – two-hundred people out there today. I’m curious why you didn’t have a couple of thousand and why across the state…when are we going to see this? Because this affects everyone of those kids right now and the high school seniors that are coming up and the families…this is a massive, 54% cut. 54%!
There is just no getting around this question. Why indeed were there not thousands of students out that first day? Why on the APSCUF led protests around the state this past Tuesday, were there not thousands of students protesting on each and every campus?
Don’t worry, I’m not going to go back on the spirit of my last post to “keep laments for better days.” I am not lamenting. As a matter of fact, I feel more politically energized now than I have been in a couple of years. The work that students at KU and around the state are doing to get the word out, to organize buses to Harrisburg for the 11:30 am rally on Monday, March 28th on the Capitol steps is incredible. The speeches students gave at the St. Patrick’s Day rally at KU were powerful and moving. My point is, rather, that I worry that the majority of students, their families, and the citizens of PA don’t yet get how serious the current situation is. I worry that by the time the seriousness of Corbett’s cuts hits, it will be too late. And, frankly, I think it will much more difficult to reinstate funds to public education once they are eliminated. Corbett and his new breed of slash and burn politicians, are playing for keeps folks.
The cold truth of the matter is that administrators, politicians, and cable news talking heads have made a sport of attacking teachers and professors for their personal gain. They have been successful in convincing a vocal segment of citizens that teachers and faculty are the problem, are lazy, or just that “we” have it better off than “they” do. And, when it comes to higher education, there are only about 6,000 faculty members and coaches in PASSHE. There are over 120,000 students. When you take into account students attending state-related universities you are talking about a group of people who can effectively shift an entire election — very much in the way students in PA did during the 2008 election. The fact is, “they” — politicians, state administrators, self-interested slash and burn talking heads, and even Gov. Corbett, are afraid of a mobilized student body.
Photo ID is a solution in search of a problem. What will it solve? Not voter fraud since there’s no evidence that there is any. In fact, we already have a range of sensible safeguards on the books. Every first-time voter in a Pennsylvania precinct has to show ID. Thereafter, s/he must be listed in the District Register/poll book in order to vote by regular ballot. An example of the voter’s signature is kept on record and compared to the new one every time the voter signs in on election day. Just in case anyone has the bright idea to bypass legal requirements by impersonating someone else in a federal election, they’ll face five years in prison and fines of up to $10,000, on top of state penalties. With all of the election reforms we truly need, does this sound like an area of the law that needs attention?
So, why the need for a new law? Sure, you can jump aboard the Daryl Metcalfe fear express and buy into his stated purpose for introducing the bill: to ” protect against corrupt politicians, groups and individuals who might attempt to undermine our elections through the old time, “vote early, vote often or from beyond the grave’ or more recent ‘get out the illegal alien/non-United States citizens voting programs subject to the rule of law.'” Or, you might pause for a moment and consider the very real implications of introducing new, seemingly redundant voting requirements just as we get ready to enter the 2012 election cycle: suppress voter turnout. As the national organization Election Protection shows there is a move to introduce new versions of voter ID bills in 32 states (as well as other new voter hoops in additional states). Such measures are proven to suppress voter turnout:
The Washington Post’s Peter Wallsten reports that Republicans in state legislatures “are pushing for new laws that would prohibit many college students from voting in the state-and effectively keep some from voting at all.” A bill being introduced in New Hampshire “would permit students to vote in their college towns only if they or their parents had previously established permanent residency there,” and others would end Election Day Registration where it already exists. Election Day registration is a an important reform that ensures that problems with registration, clerical errors, or arbitrary deadlines do not create a barrier to the ballot box. Wallsten also wrote that legislatures in 32 states have proposed measures that would add an ID requirement or proof of citizenship. These requirements are especially discouraging impediments to low-income voters, students, recently-naturalized citizens, and other minorities.
The current ID law allows students to use their official university ID as proof of identification. Metcalfe’s legislation would prevent that and require all voters to show an official PA voter registration card. You might ask, “what’s the big deal,” until you begin to think through some very practical issues.
Efforts to get more college students registered to vote often happen on their college campuses and elections happen, for the most part, when college classes are in session. If the goal is to encourage citizens to participate in the democratic process, then you want to make it easier for people to register to vote and to exercise that vote. Since many students live in legislative district outside of the district in which their college or university is located, it would be easiest for students to vote on campus — meaning they would register to vote in the university’s district. The easiest form of ID to show as proof of residence is your college ID. Sure, students could change their official address on their driver’s license every year, or under Metcalfe’s bill they could change their Voter ID address every year. But you know the realities of that as well as I do. Heading the DMV to get my license renewed or my address changed is not something I want to do unless I am forced to do it.
And that’s the key to the Metcalfe’s proposed legislation: to suppress voter turnout by introducing enough confusion and inconvenience so that people say “forget about it.” No one can accuse Metcalfe or any other politician who votes for the legislation of directly attempting to suppress voter turnout. They can rely upon the realities of human behavior to make it look like the individual’s fault. Presto.
Call me a conspiracy theorist if you will, but I am with USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham on this one. Once you begin to track the kind of moves that are being made in the same states whose Republican Governors and/or legislatures are going after collective bargaining, public education, public services, and workers’ right, you can see the writing on the wall. In writing about Wisconsin’s newly proposed voter ID bill, Wickham is on the money:
Walker’s bill is a shoot-the-wounded assault on the Democratic Party’s base, which when combined with a voter ID law that’s also being pushed through Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled Legislature, could put the Badger State firmly in GOP hands for decades.
The proposed ID law would restrict the right to vote to people with military IDs, driver’s licenses and a state-issued ID card. Passports and photo ID cards issued to college students (even those from state universities) would not be acceptable.
College students and public unions are pillars of the Democratic base. Wisconsin’s ID law would suppress voter participation among students. A 2005 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute study found that 82% of 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds did not have a driver’s license in the ZIP codes for neighborhoods near Marquette University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The study also showed that statewide, the majority of college-age blacks and Hispanics lacked driver’s licenses . . .
. . . Late last month, Texas’ Senate passed a voter ID law that requires people in that state to show a driver’s license, military ID, a passport, a state or citizenship ID card or a concealed handgun license before being allowed to vote. Over the past decade, Texas’ population grew to 25 million people. Hispanics were 65%, blacks 22% and whites just 4.2% of that population surge. Whites now make up less than half of all Texans and tend to be older. So not surprisingly, the Republican-controlled Senate made an exception to the ID law for people older than 70. Those voters need to show only a voter registration card to vote.
This is the nature of the war the GOP is waging. It’s a quest for political hegemony — and a fight Democrats cannot afford to lose.
A plan to dissuade college students from participating in the 2012 election> You bet. If you are going to wage a war on the middle-class like the Republicans in several states are doing – and like Gov. Corbett is doing — then you better find a way to prevent those folks who are pissed off the most from voting in the next election. To put in the words of comedian Lee Camp, “Evil People Have Plans” (thanks to Jay and his Best of the Left Podcast for including Camp’s rant in his most recent show).
Like I’ve been saying for a while now, we’re facing a game-changer folks. The outcome of our current struggles – in PA, WI, OH, MI, ID, IN, and around the country – will determine our immediate futures. Not only are we fighting for our individual well-beings, we are in the midst of deciding what kind of State and nation we are going to live in for the next generation. I’d love to hear evidence to the contrary, but that’s the way I see it at this point.
And, in PA, students are at the forefront of this game-changer. There are a lot of people saying their prayers every night that students will begin showing up in the thousands to rallies on their campus and in the State Capitol. We’ll have the next test on Monday, March 28th as students and faculty gather in Harrisburg to protest Corbett’s cuts. A bigger challenge that will confront students in the days to come will be whether they can sustain their efforts for the remainder of the semester and over the summer? The summer break has long been used by university administrators and politicians to disrupt and thwart student mobilizations. What is clear is that now is not the time for complacency. As Michael Moore put it during an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, “Everybody, up off the couch right now, please.”
I do want to be clear that I am not saying that resistance to Corbett’s cuts doesn’t require everyone to get up off the couch and get involved. PASSHE and other faculty should be showing up in droves on their campuses and in Harrisburg. Not only are our immediate livelihoods at stake, the nature of the institution that we have dedicated our lives to is under assault. And it’s true that university faculty are not the easiest bunch to get to show up either – even when their own jobs are at stake. So, we – faculty organizers – have our work cut out for us too. I mean, if faculty are not willing to fight a direct assault on higher education and, specifically, the very universities in which they work, then I am not sure what they would be willing to fight for. In my mind, organizing in opposition to Corbett’s cuts to higher education amount to a moral imperative for PASSHE faculty. A similar challenge is posed our AFSCME and SCUPA brothers and sisters.
However, in my gut I believe that our ability to resist Corbett’s cuts will succeed or fail depending upon students ability and willingness to mobilize.
I’ll close this post for now. I hope to write again later tonight about some of the serious problems with what I keep hearing from Democrats, Republicans, PASSHE officials and union leaders about decreasing the amount of Corbett’s cuts – I’m in the “no cuts to education” camp, not the “don’t-rip-off-both-my-arms,-just-my-left-one” camp. But for now, I’ll leave you with how the issue was framed in a recent editorial published in Public Opinion:
According to Associated Press, thousands of students and faculty staged demonstrations Tuesday at most of Pennsylvania’s state-owned universities. Our State System of Higher Education is targeted by Corbett to lose more than half its funding.
It was yet another example of the emerging push-back against a coordinated nationwide effort to use budget deficits as justification to enact highly ideological policy goals at the expense of the young.
Bear in mind, we’re talking about young people, the only demographic with the power to balance public policy favoring older folks. It’s also the only demographic to so consistently fail to vote, directly propogating the imbalance against its interests.
It’s usually considered a safe political bet to give them the shaft. But whenever students get agitated, politicians get nervous — because they’re used to safely ignoring their concerns.
Good. Politicians should be nervous. If they’re going to emasculate the business potential of our next generation of adults, they shouldn’t be allowed to rely on the standard election metrics.
We can only hope thousands more Pennsylvania students take inspiration from those already agitating for fairness, for shared sacrifice, for acknowledgment of their importance to our future.
We recommend they get to fighting now, because in a few months the moment could be lost.
Hey all! The Rick Smith Show just put up a new page devoted to the PA Budget Battle! My interview from St. Patrick’s Day about the Kutztown protest is the first segment posted. Check it out here and support the Rick Smith Show by listening in Monday-Friday 9pm-midnight on WIOO 97.9 FM and 1000 AM (Carlisle/Harrisburg) and WEEO 93.9 FM and 1480 AM (Chambersburg/Shippensburg).
Here’s a link to Rick’s PA Budget Battle page and to my interview:
Just in from state APSCUF concerning our current contract negotiations:
APSCUF Agrees to Negotiate Wage Freeze
HARRISBURG – On Sunday, the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF), the organization representing the 6,000 faculty and coaches at the 14 state-owned universities, agreed in principle to negotiate a one-year wage freeze as called for in Governor Tom Corbett’s March 8th budget address.
“We are prepared to negotiate a wage freeze this year in the context of similar sacrifice shared by our administrative and management counterparts,” said a motion passed unanimously by a committee comprised of representatives from the 14 universities.
“Our primary concern remains with our students to whom we have devoted our professional careers. We are united with them, their families, and all those who recognize the value of public higher education,” said APSCUF president Steve Hicks, “and we hope to fully concentrate our efforts on restoring the funding that is vital to helping our students achieve their dreams.”
“The Commonwealth must also recognize its obligations to Pennsylvania’s students. Pennsylvania’s state-owned universities are extraordinary resources that allow students of working class families to build a better future for themselves and for the Commonwealth,” Hicks continued.
In recent years, the Commonwealth has steadily reduced its support for the universities, and the burden of such reductions has fallen consistently upon the students, faculty, coaches, and staff of the state system. Students have paid increased tuition and fees, taken on more debt, seen elimination of their programs, and experienced a growth in class sizes. APSCUF faculty and coaches have felt the effects of decreased funding by accepting years without pay increases, paying more in healthcare contributions, absorbing the loss of both temporary and regular faculty, and taking on increased workloads.
“We want to do our part to support our universities and respond to the governor’s call for a one-year wage freeze. We want to be part of the solution,” Hicks said. “We hope the General Assembly does its part by meeting the Commonwealth’s obligation to the State System of Higher Education by restoring the critical funds necessary for our students to have the same opportunities their brothers, sisters, and parents had to improve themselves and to secure Pennsylvania’s future.”
If you haven’t already, you should check out the pics I posted of last week’s St. Patrick’s Day protest against Gov. Corbett’s cuts to education. If I haven’t said it enough already, I was incredibly impressed with the passion and energy of Kutztown’s students. They put together a powerful event that said in no uncertain terms: we will not stand for Corbett’s Cuts! One chant in particular stood out and will no doubt become the slogan for their continued protests: the future of Pennsylvania is standing RIGHT HERE!
At the event, I announced that APSCUF-KU would be sending at least one bus to Harrisburg on Monday, March 28th for APSCUF’s PA Senate lobby day. We will gather outside the State capitol with hundreds of other students and faculty from the 14 universities of the PA State System of Higher Education to make our voices heard. To make sure we are heard, I ordered a dozen vuvuzelas for the event. I would encourage my brothers and sisters from around the state to do the same or to bring their own “instruments” for an APSCUF Noise Band. I want to give credit to one of my students for putting the vuvuzela bug in my ear. One of my ENG 023 students is researching the history and use of the vuvuzela — it’s also called a grenade whistle (a bit shorter than the full-length vuvuzela) and has been featured on the Jersey Shore in addition to its well-known use during the World Cup.
Anyway, by the end of Thursday’s rally, we already had enough people to fill one bus…today we may very well fill a second. There are still some seats left, so if you’re from the KU community and you want a seat, contact the APSCUF-KU office asap. On April 6th, KU’s Student Government Board (SGB) and Association of Campus Events (ACE) will send at least four buses to Harrisburg for another PASSHE-wide protest at the State capitol. I am thrilled to see people pushing back. As I said in my interview last week on the Rick Smith Show, until Harrisburg begins to look like Madison, I have little faith in our elected leaders to do the right thing. When I hear legislators — Democratic and Republican alike — talk about “decreasing the amount of the cuts,” I become even more convinced that we need people in the street and at the Capitol every single day. The fact is, even the cuts are reduced to 25% instead of the Governor’s currently proposed 50% cuts, we are still talking about cuts that will fundamentally transform PASSHE — and not necessarily in the way that the Chancellor may have envisioned. The only appropriate response to what the Governor is trying to do is what I said at the St. Patrick’s Day protest: you don’t cut the future, you invest in the future.
The most encouraging aspect of KU’s St. Patrick’s Day Rally was the passion and energy hundred’s of students brought to Main St. But the day was more than a “day of rage.” Students used the event as an organizing opportunity to get more students involved and to organize for the next step in their struggle, in our struggle. I mean, let’s face it: the results of our efforts to resist Corbett’s cuts, will determine their future opportunities and, more general, their futures.
As amazing as the St. Patrick’s Day protest was, there was one thing that represented a significant disappointment. You’ll recall that last Tuesday, KU President Javier Cevallos held an open forum to discuss the impacts of budget cuts. Cevallos called for “unity” and suggested that we are “all in this together.” In support of his call for “unity,” Cevallos invited the presidents of all the unions on campus and the president of the Student Government Board to address the forum. It was a good move for the cameras, for sure. At the forum, I spoke briefly about Cevallos’s call for “unity.” I said that while I am all for “being in this together,” we have to be clear on what that means. In other words, I am going to fight to preserve higher education in PA and to defend KU and PASSHE against the Governor’s attacks. However, if “we” are going to do this “together” our administration is going to need to show some backbone and leadership too. That is, I am not willing to pretend that I, and my union, are on the same side at KU’s administration only do the grunt work and then get sold down the river when Cevallos decides to roll over and cut more faculty, staff, and programs. I made the same case later in the day at our APSCUF-KU Meet and Discuss.
As I discussed in an earlier post, I suspended the “normal” agenda of our Meet and Discuss meeting so that we could address the impacts of Corbett’s cuts. Here’s a small piece of that earlier post:
Over this past year, we–the APSCUF-KU Meet and Discuss team–have been pushing for the Kutztown University administration to articulate a coherent, transparent vision for the university. Such as vision does not consist of the kind of platitudes and hyper generalizations that our university president continues to articulate in public forums and in the local newspaper. A coherent vision for a university means that the administration has articulated a set of principles that guides decisions and the university. It also means a set of priorities that will determine how resources are spent, programmatic decisions are made, and which academic areas are considered “core” to the university. Such a vision is not self-evident, nor is it a by-product of the invisible hand of the academic market place. In the real world, people have to make conscious decisions and they need to take responsibility for those decisions. The absence of a coherent vision and an institutional leadership that is explicit about its priorities and guiding principles helps foster a dysfunctional culture–where rumor and half-truths stand in for principled discourse; where concern about the stability of one’s job is the white noise seeping into every office; and where one cannot distinguish between work that is critical to one’s individual success and the success of the institution from busywork or punishment.
As I lamented in that post, we — APSCUF-KU — have been pressuring the administration, president Cevallos in particular, to articulate a vision for Kutztown University that has some substance and that could withstand the demands of a first-year writing course’s requirements for detail and argument. At one point in our discussion, the Provost, Carlos Vargas, and I got into it a bit about the question of “leadership.” Vargas argued that I needed to understand that not everyone is a leader in the same way, that being confrontational (like I am) is not the only way to be a leader. I argued that I am not asking Cevallos to be “confrontational,” I’m asking that he fulfill the first item in his job description which says that he needs to develop a vision for the university. My argument was that Cevallos needs to demonstrate some kind of recognizable leadership, especially in this moment.
Corbett’s budget cuts presented Cevallos with an opportunity to “show us his leadership.” He had his public forum. The jury was out as to whether that forum was just another in a line of dog-and-pony shows, or if Cevallos was going to step up and put his administration behind defending public higher education in PA.
At first, I was encouraged when some of the student leaders who organized the St. Patrick’s Day protest told me that Cevallos had agreed to come to protest and be one of the featured speakers. The students agreed to move the protest from its original site — President Cevallos’s front lawn — to the front of Schaeffer Auditorium (right next to the president’s house). Apparently, there was some concern that holding the protest on the president’s front lawn could be misinterpreted as being a protest against Cevallos. From what I was told, the students agreed to move the protest because they didn’t have an investment in the front yard of Cevallos’s house, as long as the protest would still be highly visible from Main St.
The protest began and the numbers of students continued to grow. About 40 minutes to the protest, one of the organizers of the event, Manny Guzman, called everyone over to the podium set up for the event. People gathered around, but no sign of Cevallos. Speakers spoke, but no sign of Cevallos. The protest came to a close about 2 1/2 hours after it began. Still no sign of Cevallos. That’s right, despite telling students he would come to the protest and that he would speak at the protest, Cevallos was a no show.
I had to leave the protest early, because I had to teach. After my class, some students tracked me down by my office to let me know how the rest of the protest went and to ask me if they could put one of their signs on my office door. Then, they told me this story:
Toward the conclusion of the protests, students began to ask: “where is president Cevallos?” They had all expected him to be one of the speakers. Apparently, a rumor was circulating that Cevallos’s office had called some of the student organizers shortly before the protest to say he could not be at the protest, he had to be in Harrisburg. A couple of students didn’t believe this and went to his house and knocked on the door. Someone answered the door and told them he was not at home, but should check his office. The students went to Cevallos’s office. He was there. He came out, apologized and said he had a meeting with the Board of Trustees that he just found out about that morning. So, he didn’t show.
What the full truth of the situation was, I don’t pretend to know. What I do know is that president Cevallos had an opportunity to be a leader, to come out and help bring the KU community together behind the shared purpose of defending KU and PA higher education. That’s not even controversial. At least not among our students and the citizens of the Commonwealth who have come out 80% against Corbett’s cuts to school districts and 70% are against his cuts to higher education. Instead, Cevallos remained in his comfortable leather chair in his office.
So, to my counterparts at the Meet and Discuss table and readers of the XChange, I ask you this: If it is true that there are “different kinds of leadership,” what kind of leadership was president Cevallos exercising when he decided to tell students he would be there and then didn’t show? Call me abrasive if you will, but I’m having a little trouble understanding his leadership style. Please, enlighten us.
From a union perspective at some point a struggle becomes so critical, so dire that there is no space for the luxury of sitting on the fence; no place for misplaced, postmodern undecidability. You have to decide. We’re at that point. In the immortal words of Florence Reece, which side are you on?
Hey all…you may recall me talking up the Rick Smith show before. He did some fantastic reporting from Wisconsin and he’s been fighting the good fight here in PA since 2005. For those of you unfamiliar with his show, you should really check it out: The Rick Smith Show–Where Working People Come to Talk.
Tonight’s show featured newly elected State Senator, Judy Schwank (woo hoo! Congratulations again, Judy!!!); community organizer, political commentator, and Founder and Chief Education Officer of the Movement Vision Lab, Sally Kohn; member of the Wisconsin state legislature, Nick Milroy; and…yours truly. This is the second time I’ve been on Rick’s show. Tonight, we talked about the rally at Kutztown and Corbett’s assault on public higher education. Here’s the link to the show:
As readers of the XChange know, I am the chair of our faculty union’s Meet and Discuss team. Over this past year, we–the APSCUF-KU Meet and Discuss team–have been pushing for the Kutztown University administration to articulate a coherent, transparent vision for the university. Such as vision does not consist of the kind of platitudes and hyper generalizations that our university president continues to articulate in public forums and in the local newspaper. A coherent vision for a university means that the administration has articulated a set of principles that guides decisions and the university. It also means a set of priorities that will determine how resources are spent, programmatic decisions are made, and which academic areas are considered “core” to the university. Such a vision is not self-evident, nor is it a by-product of the invisible hand of the academic market place. In the real world, people have to make conscious decisions and they need to take responsibility for those decisions. The absence of a coherent vision and an institutional leadership that is explicit about its priorities and guiding principles helps foster a dysfunctional culture–where rumor and half-truths stand in for principled discourse; where concern about the stability of one’s job is the white noise seeping into every office; and where one cannot distinguish between work that is critical to one’s individual success and the success of the institution from busywork or punishment.
I cannot explain this administration’s refusal to articulate its vision. If leaders of an academic institution are unwilling or unable to do the conceptual work necessary to articulate an institutional vision, then we are in trouble. The fact is, the level of generality and undefined terms that seem to pass for an articulation of Kutztown’s mission, would not pass the muster for critical thinking and persuasive discourse that we demand of our students. As someone who teaches writing and who studies rhetoric, perhaps I am too sensitive to vacuous language and unsubstantiated claims. Perhaps you will find my criticism too harsh or will dismiss it by suggesting that “that’s just the way leaders of institutions talk.”
But that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? Isn’t that why we–faculty–are charged with demanding that a student essay does more than simply state a personal opinion? Do we not demand clarity? Reason? A sense of purpose? If we are not supposed to succumb to the discourse of “low expectations,” why on earth would we not demand the same from people who are hired or elected to represent us or to serve in a leadership capacity? But, perhaps, you are tired of hearing this line of argument. Perhaps you will say that it is not my job to demand–at the very least–that I hold the president of my university to the same standard that I would hold my students. Perhaps you would prefer that I limit the scope of my criticism to correct grammar usage and spelling.
Perhaps you disapprove of this rant.
I sat down to write tonight because, frankly, I can’t sleep. The magnitude of the impact of Governor Corbett’s proposed budget cuts are catastrophic. This afternoon we had our monthly Meet and Discuss meeting. This followed president Cevallos’s “open forum” to discuss the impact of Corbett’s proposed cuts earlier in the day. As chair of Meet and Discuss, I thought that there was really only one pressing issue that needed to be at the top of the agenda: where do we go from here? Earlier in the day, president Cevallos called for “unity” among faculty, staff, students, and administrators. He asked us all to work together. From my perspective, a critical issue for us at the Meet and Discuss table was the terms by which we–our faculty union–and the administration could work together in response to Corbett’s cuts. The issue that remained sticky and contestatory was the issue of a vision for the university. I am willing to own my part in making it a sticky issue. I think it is necessary–now more than ever–for the administration to be transparent and for there to be a common understanding of the university’s priorities. To make that more concrete, I see it like this: faculty members, staff, and students have a right to know what is in store for them come the fall. A junior faculty member who moved across the county with her family, deserves to know the likelihood that she will have a job come August. A first year student who made the choice to come to KU deserves to know how much he will have to pay come the fall and whether or not his program of study will be spared the Governor’s ax.
No, these are not easy questions to answer. No, we do not know with scientific precision exactly what the final budget cuts will be once the Governor’s proposal makes its way through the legislature. But that’s life. We make decisions all the time based up on probability and likelihoods. In the real world, people do not have the luxury to wait until all the facts are in before they begin thinking about different contingencies. But, thinking about different contingencies requires a set of priorities and principles by which to make those decisions. At my dinner table, my wife and I talk about the range of impacts these budget cuts will have on our family. I grapple, openly, with how much degradation of my working life can I sustain before it begins to further impact my mental and physical health? What are my career alternatives if Kutztown becomes little more than a job training site? We don’t know how real any one of the alternatives is, but we sure as hell are not going to wait until Kutztown is in shambles before we begin explicitly discussing our priorities and options.
But, perhaps you think I am being alarmist. Well, let me tell you some things we know at this point.
At President Cevallos’s open forum today, Cevallos told us the following:
Corbett’s budget cuts to PASSHE amount to a 56% cut in state appropriations. The 56% figure includes some line items in the bill in addition to the general 50% cut.
The cuts would mean a $26 million dollar reduction in Kutztown University’s budget.
If the Governor’s cuts stand, it would require a 32% increase in Kutztown’s tution in order to cover the short fall. The increase would average 33% across the entire 14 university Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education.
As an illustration (this was not a proposal or something that is being considered), Kutztown could close the entire College of Education and that would still not be enough to cover the funding gap.
Under Corbett’s current proposal, Kutztown would need to cut in the neighborhood of 25o jobs in order to cover the shortfall.
If that’s not enough for you, at today’s Meet and Discuss it became clear that Kutztown University may not even be viable as an institution if the Governor’s cuts stand. Did you get that? Kutztown. May. Not. Be. Viable. This did not emerge in our discussions as a threat. I completely believe that even the administration can’t figure out how it can possible function if Corbett’s cuts stand.
As management acknowledged at the table today, even if the PA legislature compromises and reduces Corbett’s cut by half, this is still a “game changer” for PASSHE. That is, what we’re looking at is a fundamental transformation of Kutztown University and PASSHE more broadly. I will try to write later today about “what we can do,” but for now, let me just say that the fact that Corbett has been booed at every event he attended in Pittsburgh is a hopeful sign. In my mind, we should be taking a page from our brothers in sisters in Wisconsin. In one word: RECALL!
During the fall 2010 semester, APSCUF-KU has asked that President Cevallos articulate a coherent vision for Kutztown University. We have argued that such as vision is all that more pressing given the administration’s on-going retrenchment of faculty, elimination of programs, and cutting temporary faculty lines. What started out as a process of retrenchment due to “budgetary concerns” now appears to be a reallocation of resources and reorganization of our university—especially in light of the budget figures that show KU expecting surpluses in the years ahead. President Cevallos has argued in the past that he is constrained by his job description when it comes to certain decisions. For example, the first item on his job description was to achieve AACSB accreditation. We would like to point out that that same item also includes, “identifying other academic areas of excellence and achieving external funding for implementing their development and growth.” In order to identify areas of “academic excellence,” it is critical that the entire university community knows the criteria by which such decisions will be made. In a time that the administration is actively eliminating areas of study and service such a vision is paramount. In the absence of such a vision, all faculty and staff are spending an inordinate amount of time and energy waiting for the ax to fall.
Let me underscore that we gave this document to management to deliver to Cevallos over a month ago. Before Corbett’s cuts. At the table today we asked if management gave the document to Cevallos. They said they did. We asked for his response. There was none. More precisely, they shrugged. Cevallos’s performance at his “open meeting” today already indicated that he did not take the document seriously, that he chose to disregard our requests, and that he has no intention to do the conceptual work required. At least we’re clear about that.
In the absence of a commitment by Kutztown’s president to do what he’s paid to do, I tried to make a case–again–for the need for us to articulate a vision. The Provost, Dr. Carlos Vargas, and I went back a forth a bit trying to understand each other. Let me be clear: I do not think that the Provost was being resistant to a discussion of a vision for Kutztown. I believe that a good portion of our exchanges today were sincere attempts to do very difficult work. In that conversation, I used a metaphor for why we need to articulate a vision and why such a vision is not a “recipe,” but an attempt to plan for a range of contingencies. I used the metaphor of a flood.
I had not planned on using a flood metaphor when I entered that room, nor had I thought of it ahead of time. However, since Meet and Discuss concluded, I’ve been mulling it over. And, tonight in my insomnia informed state, I drew my metaphor. Not unusual, actually. My students will tell you that I draw my concepts on the board all the time. Here’s a visual rendering of my argument:
Let me try to explain. The idea here is that there is an “island” that is Kutztown University. Everyone knows that there is a storm coming…and it’s a bad storm. However, there is disagreement about how severe the storm will be. Everyone agrees that there will be a flood, the debate is over how severe the flood will be. A plan still has to be developed. The graphic represents what it would mean to have a vision with clear priorities. You put those things that are essential on the highest ground.
The next layer down is a “survival” layer that consists of those things that are necessary to maintain the existing mission, or vision, at the most minimal levels.
Levels 1-4 represent priorities beyond the most skeletal requirements. Levels 1-4 are within range a possible flood resulting from a more typical severe storm (3&4) to a catastrophic storm (1). The key here is that everyone on the island knows where they are in the plan. Those in Layer 3 may choose to “stick it out.” Or, they might reasonably decide to get the hell out of the path of the storm (after all, they’ve seen what’s already happened to their fellow island dwellers in Advising, Nursing, the Early Learning Center, and Theater down their in Layer 4, for example. For those new to the trials and tribulations of Kutztown University, all of those programs were cut well before Corbett’s budget proposal).
From my perspective, this is what the administration needs to do. Ideally in conjunction with the faculty, but it must be done if there is any sense of doing what is humane and right left around here.
What does this mean from the perspective of the union? Well, we fight like hell to roll back Corbett’s draconian cuts. We fight for every job and we fight to preserve the quality of education at KU and the PASSHE system. We fight to ensure our students have access to affordable, high-quality education. We fight to defend public higher education. We fight the push to turn PASSHE into a job training institute for the natural gas industry and other corporations that Corbett and his new breed of Republicans have exempted from paying their fair share. We fight against diverting funds away from higher education and using those funds to build more prisons. That’s what it means to be a higher education union. That’s the side we’re on.
As we fight, we must also push Kutztown’s administration to commit to a humane and transparent plan. A plan that will allow all members of this community to know where they stand, to know their value to this institution, and to know how to plan for their immediate futures. This does not seem like a lot to ask. It seems to me to be the kind of work we’re supposed to be able to do as teachers, scholars, and higher education administrators.
Here’s another small thing you can to do to join in and support efforts to resist the kind of war on collective bargaining and unions we have seen in Wisconsin and Ohio and that is now rearing its head in Pennsylvania. Thanks to Ted Hickman for passing this along (I’ve slightly edited what he sent me):
Brothers Charles and David Koch, with a combined worth around $35 billion dollars, are waging a war against organized labor and middle-class Americans.
The Koch brothers are the majority owners in Koch Industries, America’ssecond-largest private company with revenues of $100 billion in 2009, and 80,000employees in 60 countries.
Koch Industries main source of revenue is from the manufacturing, refining,and distribution of petroleum. They are also major financiers of the Tea Party and right-wing fringe movements that seek to rollback all public services and turng them over to private corporations.
Do not allow your money to be used to sponsor attacks on the public sphere, organized labor, and the American middle-class.
Don’t buy these products! Products by Koch Industry/Georgia-Pacific Products:
Last Wednesday, March 9th, the Daily Kos published a graphic that makes it crystal clear what is going on nationally with the “budget crisis.” As I’ve argued may times before, what we are seeing in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Idaho, Michigan, and now right here in PA is nothing short of what Naomi Klein has termed, The Shock Doctrine. You also may recall reading noble prize award winning economist, Paul Krugman pick up on Klein’s argument in his Feb. 24th column in the New York Times. The graphic below shows the shock doctrine in process — a massive redistribution of public resources to private corporations. If this whets your appetite for more, check out the fantastic blog, Welcome to the Matrix, Charlie Brown. Here’s the Daily Kos introduction to the graphic:
This will be a very short diary. I just wanted to get this chart out there. I originally received it as a post by the Facebook group “The Christian Left.” This chart puts the class war in simple, visual terms. On the left you have the “shared sacrifices” and “painful cuts” that the Republicans claim we must make to get our fiscal house in order. On the right, you can plainly see WHY these cuts are “necessary.” The reason? Because we already gave away all that money to America’s wealthiest individuals and corporations.
This just mirrors what we’re seeing in Wisconsin, where Governor Walker (R-Koch) claims that ordinary public sector workers need to fork over at least $137 million to save the budget. Problem is, he just gave away $117 million in tax breaks for his corporate pals. This is out and out class warfare. The big corporations in America have decided that they can get even richer by raiding the public treasury. It’s time for the middle class to stand up and defend itself!
Like my friend, APSCUF brother, and fellow blogger, Seth Kahn, I am getting a bit worked up about all the requests for donations to the Democratic Party. Every time I get an email asking me to pledge more money, this video plays over and over in my head:
Mr. President and DC Democrats: are you telling me you don’t have a pair of comfortable shoes? Or are you trying to say that you can’t see the picket lines from where you sit?
If you are still trying to consume as much news as possible about what went down in Wisconsin (on Ash Wednesday, no less), it will be worth your while to give today’s Democracy Now a listen. The file below is an MP3 and should play in most browsers and on most media programs. The show begins with headlines, then turns to a discussion with Michael Moore. Make an effort to stay with it through the Moore interview.
Given the events of the past several weeks, I have been giving a lot of thought in how to make our work at the XChange more useful to the most number of people and to expand our work in preparation for the struggles ahead. Last night, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now interviewed Michael Moore and I am convinced that he is right: this is our moment — it’s time to get up off the couch. I didn’t take Moore’s statement to mean that “we” have the advantage, or that the “momentum is with us.” Rather, I heard him saying that we have a choice to make. If we don’t stand up and resist now, we might as well give up the game. Moore was right: This is a class war.
As readers of the XChange know, I’ve linked this blog to our facebook page and our twitter account. However, despite some very useful integration tools, not all posts appear in all places all of the time. For example, when I post a link to an article on twitter, it does not get posted directly to the main page of this blog — it gets posted to the twitter feed on the side bar. That is useful, however, it does not provide the easiest access to all the information for people who do not use twitter. By the same token, it would be both too labor intensive to post all the links to the blog.
To resolve the twitter issue, I was turned on to a little service called paper.li by the twitterers over at New Faculty Majority [@NewFacultyMajority]. Paper.li turns all the t weets from a particular account into a daily or weekly “Newspaper” of sorts. It displays each tweet as an article and provides easy access to links and media posted to our @kuxchange twitter account. I’ve created The KU XChange Daily, published every morning at 8am, for those who would like access to the info from @kuxchange but don’t want a twitter account. A nice feature of The KU XChange Daily is that you can subscribe and receive an email each morning notifying you that the latest edition is available [you’ll see the subscription button on the right-hand side under the KU XChange stats boxes].
Thanks to an amazing blogger from Wisconsin that I’ve connected with over the past few weeks, blue cheddar, I have been experimenting with an on-line radio station through BlogTalkRadio after listening to blue cheddar’s daily radio show, Solidarity Wisconsin. I hope to launch either a similar show or a weekly podcast over the next couple of weeks.
I am also exploring ways to raise money through the XChange to support protests across the county. I was able to send $50 for fruit and vegetables to the protesters in Wisconsin…I would like to do so much more. As some of you know, I have a zazzle.com site with t-shirts, bumper-stickers, and a bunch of other stuff. ALL earnings from that site will go to directly support protesters. You can also shop amazon.com through this link, and amazon.com will donate about 7% of your purchase to our efforts on the XChange. Amazon will not charge you anything extra and you can gain a little comfort in knowing that some of your purchase will go to help support protesters fighting for public education, collective bargaining, and workers’ rights. I will also be adding some additional ways that you can provide support.
I apparently picked the wrong evening to nurse an intense sinus headache by going to bed early. First, despite sleeping for 12 hours I still feel like crap. But, more importantly, last night–while I was sleeping–Republicans in the Wisconsin State Senate pulled a legislative trick in order to pass a bill stripping collective bargaining rights for most public sector workers. NPR reported on it this morning in a rather reasoned manner:
The Chicago Tribune and The Huffington Post reported on the subsequent takeover of the WI Capitol building by protesters following the quick Senate vote to approve stripping collective bargaining rights:
No matter how you cut it, the passage of bill stripping collective bargaining rights in the state that first gave us collective bargaining rights for public sector workers amounts to throwing down the gauntlet on an explicit war on workers and the middle class. Many of us have been arguing for years that a quiet war against workers has been going on for decades. This battle in Wisconsin shall go down as a key moment when Republican class warriors shed their pretenses and made their battle plans explicit. As you are no doubt learning by now, the only way the WI Republicans could pass a bill stripping collective bargaining rights for public sector workers was to remove all the financial aspects of the bill. The WI state Senate requires a quorum of 20 to pass any financial measure. By leaving the State, WI Democrats denied the Republicans their quorum by one vote. But, last night, the WI GOP reintroduced the bill as a non-financial bill. In other words, they had to admit in writing that stripping collective bargaining rights had nothing to do with the budget. NPR called this “outmaneuvering” WI Democrats. That might be so. However, that maneuver draws clear lines. If WI Republicans actually believe their initial argument that stripping collective bargaining rights is a budget issue, they have just broken the law…Wisconsin Constitutional law. If they now claim that stripping collective bargaining rights are not related to the budget–as we have been arguing all along–then the Republicans just announced “we are going after unions, workers, and the American middle class.”
This is what we can expect for the period leading up to the 2012 elections. In other words, it’s on.
Since Pennsylvania Governor Corbett announced his unconscionable cuts in education and public services while given enormous tax breaks to the natural gas industry on Tuesday, I have been disturbed by much of the reporting and some of the public statements from some unions and public officials who seem to downplay the impact of Corbett’s cuts. In several instances (I’ll have to write more on this later when my boy goes down for his nap), I’ve heard “this is not Wisconsin,” stated as a way of suggesting that Corbett, unlike Scott Walker in Wisconsin, is not going after collective bargaining rights in Pennsylvania. That somehow Corbett is simply balancing the budget. Frankly, it’s baffling to me. It is at best short-sighted or willful denial to suggest that just because Corbett’s budget cuts are not a carbon-copy of Walker’s that they do not represent the same battle-plan. If you follow the logic of Corbett’s cuts to their conclusion, you end up with a seat at the table right next to Walker. Sure, Corbett and Walker might have polite disagreements over tactics. But they’re sitting at the same strategy table.
I’m willing to be proven wrong from hindsight on this one, but from where I sit now, nothing short of the kind of protests we’ve seen in Wisconsin will stop the Republican war on workers and the American middle-class. It will benefit no one in Pennsylvania to “wait and see” what happens in the PA Legislature before we mobilize. If we “wait and see” it will be too late. This is the Shock Doctrine in action folks.
I guess I picked the wrong day to take my son to Lake Nockamixon to throw rocks into the lake. This week is spring break in the PA State System of Higher Education universities and I was taking one of those precious days to spend with my son. No phones. Unplugged. Just me, the boy, and lake.
I made the mistake of turning on the radio on our way home to hear that Pennsylvania’s new governor had just made his first budget address and used it to strike hard at public education in the state. K-12 and Higher Ed alike. As pieces of the details emerged, I heard it plain as day: PASSHE will take a 50% cut if the governor gets his way. I thought I heard it wrong. When I got home, I wired myself in (put Mary Poppin’s on for my son and threw together a pizza to go with last night’s soup for dinner). Yup, 50% cut.
I have only started reading news reports and will have to talk to our union president later tonight. In the meantime, here’s a link to an article on the budget in case you haven’t already heard.
Workers, students, teachers, police officers, firefighters, and citizens of all stripes have stood up and occupied the Wisconsin State Capitol building for the past two weeks. They are protesting to defend collective bargaining rights. As a member of a faculty union in a state that increasingly looking for ways to limit collective bargaining rights, it is critical to express support for the protests in any way you can.
At the XChange, we began a Virtual Rally in support of Wisconsin workers last week and we will continue to add participants as long as the protests continue. While not all of us can join in the protests in Madison, we can certainly take a few minutes out of our day to participate in this small gesture of solidarity and support. Check out current rally participants and join the XChange Virtual Rally!
As anyone who’s ever been involved in activism knows, mainstream media is rarely your friend. Earlier this evening I watched an ABC News Nightline report from 2/18/2011 on the protests, which left me a little sick to my stomach. As if it weren’t enough for the the anchor, Cynthia McFadden, frame the issue in ways that reinforces the “budget crisis” narrative championed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, her patronizing snarkiness just about got me to shut the TV off right then and there. Luckily, the actual reporter does a decent job for a mainstream journalist, even if he never challenges anyone about anything — straight up mainstream journalism: let “different” voices speak and provide no analysis or critical engagement. So much for the principles of journalism.
Alright…I have never made a video blog before and I don’t intend to make a habit of it, but my name is Anna, I am 22 years old and I live in Madison, WI and I’d like to address the current protests that are going on . . . I don’t believe that the national news cycles have been doing a very good job of covering this . . .
Anna the proceeds to lay out the actual case being made by protesters on the ground. While I can understand her desire not to make a habit of making video blogs, I hope she might reconsider. Impressive stuff. Here she is:
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:
. If you haven’t heard the interview, you can listen to it here (it’s about 19 minutes):
. You also may recall reading noble prize award winning economist, 
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Christina J. Steffy
Kevin Mahoney
Amy LB
APSCUF-KU xchange 