Come on down! It's Critical Mass!!

Frederick's Critical Mass makes its 41st monthly ride this week and it is going to be awesome! Dozens of cyclists and bike riders will gather at the fountain in Baker Park at 6pm in Frederick, Maryland for a raucous ride through the streets of Frederick. There will be music, fun, and even a tall bike.

Critical Mass started in the early 1990s in San Francisco and was known as Commute Clot. It has since become a world wide phenomenon. In Frederick, Critical Mass was started up as a way to have a fun ride, make friends, and reclaim the streets. Popular slogans include, "Whose streets? Our streets!" and "We are traffic!"


Critical Mass or Critical Mass-type rides often accompany large protests. For example, the 2004 Republican National Convention saw a huge Mass (a Mass that also faced huge repression) and in October 2007 and March 2008 an Anti-Capitalist Bike Brigade wound its way through Anti-War demonstrations in Washington, DC. Frederick, too, has seen this pairing. Two Earth Day celebrations included Critical Mass rides through the city.

So all of you in Frederick should come out with your bikes, ride around, and have a wonderful time!!

No isn't on the ballot!

Announcing: Radical Rush Week

Students for a Democratic Society is putting together a Radical Rush Week: a week of fun, consciousness raising, action and empowerment to get our peers, faculty, and staff involved in social change and to build a more engaged campus community. College Park Students for a Democratic Society in partnership with other organizations will hold a week of events including media, discussion, performance, and parties to draw the campus together and foster social consciousness and political participation.

September 14-20 in College Park, we are going to work hard to bring together many different parts of the University community to have an incredible week of fun and social engagement. Events planned include a free picnic, a teach-in answering the question, "Who owns this University?", an awesome punk show, dance parties, a RAD poetry slam and more.

One of the best parts of Radical Rush is that it seeks participation from and cooperation between all of the organizations that foster student activism on this campus. This week is about two things, empowering our peers and building our movement. More specifically, Radical Rush is trying to

• expose and involved new and returning students to alternative political ideas and activities
• show (by doing) that being socially conscious is fun
• build coalitions between students, student organizations, and faculty
• educate and raise awareness about important issues in our community
• empower students to use their education towards social change

This wouldn't be the first Radical Rush to happen in College Park. Back in 2003 a group of student activists put on a three-day rush with a a series of workshops, a concert, and a sleep-in on McKeldin Mall. According to the organizers, however, it seems that too few people ending up doing too much work and instead of taking time to do real outreach were swamped coordinating events.

Similarly named events occur at many campuses around the country. Often, however, the Radical Rush is more a glorified tabling session with lefty students groups in attendance. This Fall, SDS hopes to put on an event analogous to a the Greek Rush (minus the forced binge drinking, psychological and physical torture, and enforced sameness, of course) in terms of the opportunity to quickly get seriously involved in campus organizations.

College Park SDS is dedicated to making this week super-rad and would love your help. Shoot me an email if you or your group wants to join us by co-sponsoring an event. Sigma Delta Sigma 4ever!!!!

No Logo

More than 40 people, including students, faculty and even one administrator, Joe Ebaugh, met today to watch and discuss Naomi Klein's film No Logo. Community Roots and Feminism Without Borders sponsored the event.

Klein explains in the film the role branding plays in our lives. She argues that we aren't presented the choice to not consume. Rather, corporations, and, as an extension, the government present us with different things to consume.

Following the film there was a discussion about corporate influence in the University. Joe Ebaugh, the director of licensing at the University of Maryland, was challenged by FWB members Mary Yanik and Daniela Vann. The companies which T-shirts, sweatshirts, travel mugs, and other assorted garbage wearing the UMd. insignia (often alongside their own, corporate logo) pay the University for the right to use its name. These companies often manufacture their items in factories with inhumane working conditions. FWB is asking Joe Ebaugh and President Mote to sign the Designated Suppliers Program to condition use of the UMd. logo on companies abiding by fair labor standards and monitoring.

Ebaugh brushed off the concern, saying that he understands the problem and ought to take an "evolutionary" approach to the problem. FWB sees his solutions, using current measures, as a band-aid and a failure to address the structural problems with the apparel industry.

My concern, and I talked about it during the discussion, was the Universities growing role as a research farm. So much of what is being done on the northeast side of campus is wholly owned by transnational defense contractors. The technology being developed is . . . profit corporate elite. What's worse is that a great deal of the research is weapons or military technology research. We should be so proud that our university is so deeply connected with the military-industrial complex.

These connections are deep and longstanding and have serious, pressing consequences. Glenn Martin, for whom the Martin Institute of Technology here on campus and the Martin Aerospace Company (now Lockheed Martin) are named. The corporate sponsors of engineering school have hands covered in blood. The weapons they develop and sell to the military kill people. The wars being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan can only occur because of the availability of this technology. Future wars in different parts of the world (or the same, the U.S. has attacked Iraq three times) are dependent on deadly new weapons that provide no benefit to humanity.

As students of this University, we are responsible for what it does. This research is happening under our watch and in our name. What does it say about our priorities or our values?

More than just the research that is sponsored by the University, the way it invests its money shows how deep its corporate ties go. The University System of Maryland Foundation, Inc. is the not-for-profit company that is in charge of the combined endowments for all of the institutions in the system. In total, USMF directs about $1 billion. We don't know where it goes. USMF claims that it has established certain confidentiality agreements with fund managers which it cannot break.

So for now we can only imagine: not only does our University do research for war profiteers, but it funds them!

UMd. Strategic Plan: 68 For, 5 Against

The University Senate voted today to approve the Strategic Plan, a document prepared by Provost Farvardin and his Strategic Planning Committee mapping the next ten years of the course of the University of Maryland. (See 1 May post "The Strategic Plan is . . ." for more info.)

Below is coverage and analysis from the Senate's debate today:

Playing it safe and being content with the status quo is the path to decline

-Provost Farvardin

With University President Dan Mote present the University Senate approved with minor amendment the Strategic Plan today. The Strategic Plan is the result of

Several amendments were offered for the Senate's consideration - all but one by faculty Senators. Three of these amendments were particularly contentious and rejected by the Senate, including amendments rejecting a framework for a future general education program, changing the creation of a process for reducing compensation of tenured faculty to a study to assess the need of creating that process, and striking from the proposal or changing a reallocation process for University resources. Other amendments scrutinizing the particular language of the plan such as removing limiting qualifiers.

An amendment to remove the specification of the three dimensions of a future general education program until a new general education program is developed offered by Prof. Claire Moses was rejected by the Senate. Those three dimensions, a framework to underpin the development of a new general education, are "Pathways to Knowledge and Creativity," "2020 Perspectives," and "Ways of Thinking" (p. 22 Strategic Plan.) Jim Wallace, Professor of Engineering and Director of the Gemstones program, argued that the three dimensions are important to guide the formulation of a new general education program. Prof. Ira Chinoy supported inclusion of 2020 perspectives calling it "bold and gutsy."

Marshall Grossman indicated that the amendment addresses a procedural change so that the substance of future general education programs can be debated at a time dedicated for that purpose. Claire Moses explains that the amendment is nothing more than waiting to develop a general education plan before approving its substance.

Speaking for the amendment, Undergrad Senator Elliot Morris argued the importance of a liberal education, saying that current programs offer a, "fine tuned to make it in the work force with little education in the other facets of life." Morris's comments are on-point, we, as a university community haven't asked the question: What is a liberal education? As a consequence, students are left with programs churning out middle managers and engineers instead of programs fostering participation, critical thinking, and dissent.

Morris is absolutely correct in arguing that we cannot really develop an effective general education program until we really examine the purpose of the University? Is the University of Maryland a Defense Department research farm or is it a place to grow as and learn as a community?

Professors Clyde P. Kruskal and Chau-Wen Tseng offered an unsuccessful amendment to change the paragraph below to read "The Senate will investigate whether there exists a need to establish . . . " in what Prof. Kruskal characterized as an attack on tenure.

A policy and a fair and equitable mechanism for reducing compensation will be established for use when performance improvement goals that are set following an unsatisfactory post-tenure review are not subsequently met. The policy will be developed in cooperation with the Senate and will include stringent safeguards to ensure that this mechanism is not abused. (p. 30 Strategic Plan)

"It is suicidal to go down that path" urged Prof. Vincent Brannigan in favor of the amendment, arguing that adopting the language as proposed throws the protections of tenure into the hands of the State legislature and opens the door to the elimination of tenure.

Ann Wiley, Assistant President and Chief of Staff, speaking against the amendment, said there are tenured professors that do not perform and renege their responsibility to the institution and, in order to protect tenure the senate must establish a policy to deal with those faculty members. Other faculty Senators and student body President Andrew Friedson concurred, arguing that the protections of tenure are in small cases abused and require a process for disciplining those offenders.

Professor Boden Sandstrom offered an amendment unanimously approved to include benefits for domestic partners to University employees.

Professors Marshall Grossman and Maynard Mack offered four unsuccessful amendments to remove from the proposal a policy for resource reallocation within the University. Grossman argues that reallocation will result in gutting funding from some programs and unfairly preferring others.

Ann Wiley, against the amendments, argued that the only way to find the funds to implement the Strategic Plan and other new initiatives is through reallocation. Mentioning that Provost Favardin urged "strongly" to reject the amendments saying that "if these amendments are approved the strategic plan becomes meaningless." Without reallocation, the University will not be able to respond to external forces and will require downsizing of programs. Deans of ARHU and CMSC argue that to leverage more funding from the state government the University will have to demonstrate that it can effectively use what little state funding it receives.

I agree that resources ought to be reallocated, but that the areas and programs to which funds are directed must be carefully scrutinized. I.e. terrorism studies and the engineering school do not need new funding and LGBT, Persian Studies, Latina/o Studies, etc do need new funding.

No amendments challenging broadly the motivation or goals of the strategic plan were made. The Strategic Plan was written as a framework for the growth and development of the University. The nature of the University as a place for industry R & D and a recruiting station for military officer corps and Central Intelligence Agency is something foundational to the idea of strategic planning. It is also something that the Strategic Planning Committee failed to address.

Following the vote on the strategic plan, Prez Mote so eloquently addressed the body describing the Strategic Planning process as "a remarkable experience in governance and in planning" and lauding the Senate and its "best meeting" ever. The Diamondback this morning reported that "parts of [the plan] could be implemented over senate opposition."

Despite Farvardin's rhetoric about status quo and the University's decline, we cannot overlook the political systems and ideologies at work in the plan. The neo-liberal project and the military industrial complex are, and with the implementation of the strategic plan, will continue to be key parts of the operation of the University of Maryland.

The Strategic Plan is . . .

. . . a document outlining the next ten years of the University of Maryland's future. A "road map" so to speak.

. . . available here for your reading pleasure/pain.

. . . something I didn't put due diligence into learning about, understanding, or being critical of. The process of review and revision was a great forum to raise questions about business ties to the University which wasn't taken advantage of.

. . . a plan for "elevating [Maryland's] rank among world-class universities."

. . . something that "will transform the institution, enhancing its contributions to society and elevating its rank among world-class universities."

. . . a strange tome summoned by the Provost Nariman Favardin and his band of Strategic Plan Committee'ers.

. . . full of some great rhetoric which, if adopted and if Mote and the University administration are held to - by the letter - is a powerful resource in moving this university in the direction of a democratically run, socially conscious institution that is a space for both political education and activism.

. . . a compendium of values, missions, strengths, threats, weaknesses, priorities, initiatives, priorities, enablers, strategy. In particular, the plan values diversity, inclusiveness, ethical actions, creativity, civility, openness, and accountability. Oughtn't we demand that the University toe its own line.

. . . a call for greater collaboration with the military-industrial complex, with big business, and with the Federal government.

. . . something I will post about next week after the University Senate votes on it.

The Death of Worker's Rights

Feminism Without Borders staged a funeral for worker's rights Saturday during the 10th annual Maryland Day to urge University of Maryland President C. D. Mote to sign on to the designated suppliers program. The action is part of a sustained campaign to stop university support for sweatshop made clothing. To learn more go to http://www.workersrights.org/dsp.asp.

More than a dozen students representing Feminism Without Borders, Students for a Democratic Society, Students and Workers Unite, and Community Roots solemnly proceeded down McKeldin Mall on campus eulogizing worker's rights and humane labor practices as a result of the University's current licensing policy. The group urged and encourage onlookers to urge President Mote to sign on to the designated suppliers program. The Maryland Day crowd includes current and prospective students, alumni, faculty, staff, neighbors, and relatives of the University - all with a small bit of power over Mote and University policy.

Meanwhile, Feminism Without Border's campaign continues. A petition is circulating (which y'all should sign) and communication to the University administration continues. More importantly, though, is the building momentum and student acceptance behind this campaign. At its core is the issue of the corporatization of the University. Whose interests dictate University policy: those of the students or those of Nike and Jansport and the administrators, regents, and trustees stock portfolios?

The influx of the corporate voice is easy to understand. The University and its logo, mostly because of its successful sports teams, has become commodity. The Maryland seal and name, just like the name and seal of many other universities, appear beside corporate logos and account for millions of dollars or revenue for both the school and the company. We must remember, however, that these items were likely manufactured in deplorable working conditions, in factories that allow neither breaks nor unions and deprive the people who work there basic human rights.

Previously Feminism Without Borders has delivered balloons, FWB: "Hey Mote!", letters, and even a Valentine to Mote in an effort to get him to sign on the the DSP. From 4 April:

The designated suppliers program was envisioned by the Worker's Rights Consortium and United Students Against Sweatshops as a way to leverage university logo licensing rights towards livable working conditions for the people producing clothing bearing university logos. The DSP is a set of standards clothing manufacturers must follow when producing university licensed clothing. The standards define a set of fair labor practices that must be followed in textile factories.

Media work shines the Sun on CP-SDS

The answers - good answers - will only come about through a whole lot of people thinking about it and talking about it and trying stuff. And that's what participatory democracy is about.

A great article on Students for a Democratic Society quoting College Park SDS's Jon Berger appeared in the Sunday 13 April issue of the Baltimore Sun.

This is a pretty significant article. This is one of the first profiles of SDS in the Washington-Baltimore area from the mainstream press. In the article, SDS is portrayed as positive, youthful, and intelligent. Written by a student, the piece speaks to sympathies for SDS and student activism from the student body. Even though there are a couple of misquotes, incorrect facts, the article very accurately expresses our commitment to change, our patience, and our hope for the future.

The resurrected organization has a long way to go before becoming a mass student movement. For now, members are focused on internal discussion and reaching out to other students. And they're willing to be patient.

Jon Berger, a College Park freshman, said, "A big part of this is education, it's hosting speakers and showing movies and having discussions. ... Because we don't have all the answers and we don't pretend to have all the answers.

To my dismay, SDS is shown as powerless in the article. This is really unfortunate, especially because SDS is really about building student power, i.e. fighting the disempowerment that is both a symptom of a corporate university and a prerequisite for its existence. I guess its mostly our fault - neither College Park nor DC chapters have made much of an impact on policy or practice of the powers that be.

Media work is hard work. Radical organizations have been positioned outside the mainstream and the for-profit media has a history of vilifying activists - yet we all want our work to garner the attention of the public eye. Communicating effectively with the media is necessary to get press. The cliche, "there's no such thing as bad press" might be valid for celebrities and politicians, but is less than kind to people or organizations trying to build a movement and gain support. How than can we organizers and activists not just get press, but the press we want? By communicating strategically with the media.

What is strategic communication? From the interviews for the Sun piece and from previous interactions with the media, my sisters and brothers and I have learned a few things about what it means to communicate strategically.

1. Present a focused, deliberate message
Before any interview, especially group interviews, sit down with everyone involved and have a conversation about what is going to be discussed and why. Ask questions like: Why are we being interviewed? What do we want people who read/see/hear the story to know? Where is our experience? What do we know? What are we comfortable talking about? Use the answers to distill something concrete and accessible. Something that can be reduced to a short quote in a newspaper or a soundbite on TV or radio and still make sense.

2. Less theory more action
Reporters and readers don't really care about the theory behind our organizing. It doesn't make headlines. It doesn't sell papers. It often requires book-length explanations. The media wants Who? What? Where? When? How? and we should give it to them.

3. Stick to talking points
Interviews can be really stressful and reporters are really good at making you talk. It is your job to give them only information you want to be printed. Try thinking about it this way: the less you say, the less reporters have to choose from when they are picking quotes to print. This is where you can take control, by determining in advance the information you want to convey and the way in which it will be conveyed.

4. Be cordial
Even though the corporate media is not really your friend you should be nice to them. They are trying to sell a story - but it is your story. If reporters walk away angry or scared, expect those reactions from people reading the subsequent article.

5. Be consistent
Know what you are trying to say and don't contradict yourself. If an issue is ambiguous or the organization's position undecided either don't mention it or say, "that's ambiguous," or, "we're undecided." Consistency is critical to credibility. Sounding like you know what you're talking about is almost as good as actually knowing what you're talking about.

Dead-on Sponsors for Clark School Part 2

BAE Systems is a Partner sponsor for this year's Maryland Day, a corporate sponsor of the Clark School of Engineering, and the 3rd largest global defense contractor. BAE Systems is famous for its warplanes: Typhoons, Tornadoes and newest F-35C and munitions, including cluster type and depleted uranium rounds. Based in the UK, BAE Systems was, until Thatcher, nationalized. Now it serves more than one-hundred clients globally with new and deadly methods for wreaking havoc and destruction.

Thanks BAE Systems for your generous support! I am glad the University of Maryland is comfortable with the blood money it accepts. More so I am glad the student body accepts that their education is being funded, in part, through death all around the world.

Dead-on Sponsors for Clark School Part 1

Still Flying Close to the Sun?

A review of Cathy Wilkerson's memoir, Flying Close to the Sun, a critical analysis of the new-left, and a look at the next left using Wilkerson's analysis as a lens:

Cathy Wilkerson's recently published memoir is a text full of nostalgia for the spirit of the US New Left (c. 1960s) and also criticism of its practices and organization. Wilkerson was intimately involved in Students for a Democratic Society(SDS), a student-based organization fighting for global justice and one of its successors, the Weather Underground, a militant revolutionary organization known best for their bombings buildings occupied by the repressive forces (NYC Police Headquarters, Marin County Hall of Justice, Sacramento and San Francisco Department of Corrections), the U.S. government (U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon) or war profiteers (ITT, Gulf Oil, Anaconda Copper).

She begins with the story of her childhood, highlighting her parent's divorce, her jaunts in the woods near her home, and her adolescence at a Quaker summer camp. She writes, "The Quaker meeting made sense to me. I felt connected as part of the community . . . I thought, it was only in the freedom of the trees that people within a community could really feel God's presence." (Wilkerson 35). Wilkerson's Quaker roots brought her to Swarthmore College where she connected to student activism.

Her first experience as an activist was block organizing in Chester, Pa. She worked with residents to improve their quality of life, dealing with housing rights, access to education, etc . . . It was here she was first arrested, participating in a boycott of a mostly Black and underfunded school in Chester. Her activism continued: she acted as the DC regional organizer of SDS, an Editor at New Left Notes, the SDS journal, and as a member of the mysterious Weather Bureau.

After her work as a block organizer, Wilkerson wondered if that kind of activism was effective; she wondered if she could make a difference through established means as well, so she signed on to a congressional campaign. Of the experience, she writes:

By late September I concluded that Congress was not a strategic place to work to change public opinion about the war because congressmen constant had to worry about getting reelected. While they could attempt to educate their constituents by providing a reasonable analysis of, for instance, the war . . . they were battling an increasingly efficient mass-media campaign waged in the name of patriotism by proponents of the war. No, I thought, the energy and the leadership required to get the facts out in the face of all this misinformation had to come from the movement, and SDS was one organization trying to do that. (Wilkerson 97-98)

It is here that her dedication to SDS became apparent and she began to involve herself more deeply in the organization - finding an understanding of both the tremendous strengths and tremendous weaknesses of the organization. Many scholars, and Wilkerson's writing concurs, argue that SDS's failure was because of an intersection of its racist, sexist, and classist analysis. Anti-war movement activists, using the moniker "The Mobe," organized in a way completely male dominated and ignorant of gender dynamics. After anti-inauguration demonstrations, Mobe'ers attending a rally booed and cat-called a woman speaker off the stage. (Wilkerson 242)

The struggle with the structural problem of sexism continued into the Weather Underground. Weatherman dogma prohibited monogamy. "They argued, existing monogamous relationships between men and women held both people back from new challenges." (Wilkerson 268-269) Unfortunately, this analysis came from men, the reality of an anti monogamy stance, however was that the men in the movement had free access to sex with any women in the movement, eliminating any agency women in the movement thought they had.

Whiteness and racism dealt another blow to SDS's effectiveness. Although emphasized less in Wilkerson's work, relations with the Black Panther Party never amounted to real collaboration. Both the Black Panther Party and the Weather Bureau considered themselves revolutionary organizations, neither stepped back to reconcile the differences in their respective analysis or compromise to a degree that would have enabled close collaboration. SDSers unable to deal with their whiteness, with white privilege, prevented close working ties with the Black Power movement, alienated Black youth and doomed SDS.

Today's SDS is plagued by the same difficulties. Our membership is still disproportionately white northeastern men. However, people have realized that an important way to deal with privilege is to recognized its existence and think about how it effects your life and the lives of others. Sexism and racism still exist and only through a sustained, vigorous commitment to recognizing and interrogating the systemic inequities and their effects on people can the new SDS hope to be successful. Steps are being taken in that direction. Coalitions are being made across lines of color and class. Identity-based caucusing is an integral part of SDS decision-making. Much of these efforts find root in contemporary thinking on identity politics and cultural studies.

Is the new New Left still flying close to the sun? The temperature is getting hotter, the movement stronger, calls for revolt louder - but are we paying enough attention to systemic inequity and its role in the struggle? Collective liberation is possible: the legacy of the old SDS can inspire the course of the new.

In early 1976, like a house of cards, the organization disintegrated rapidly . . . What endured among all of Weatherman's members was a continued commitment to work for peace, justice, and change . . . Despite the mistakes and rancor, we had all tried the best we could to realize our fullest humanity during times of terror and great upheaval. (Wilkerson 377)

Wilkerson, Cathy. Flying Close to the Sun. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007.

FWB: "Hey Mote! . . .

. . . should really sign the DSP!"



Students from Feminism Without Borders, the Black Student Union, Students and Workers Unite, and Students for a Democratic Society delivered 41 balloons, several letters and a direct response to his deputy's criticisms of the designated suppliers program (DSP) today. The action, organized by Feminism Without Borders (FWB) as part of their sustained campaign to stop university support for sweatshop made clothing.

The designated suppliers program was envisioned by the Worker's Rights Consortium and United Students Against Sweatshops as a way to leverage university logo licensing rights towards livable working conditions for the people producing clothing bearing university logos. The DSP is a set of standards clothing manufacturers must follow when producing university licensed clothing. The standards define a set of fair labor practices that must be followed in textile factories.

Other organizations, such as the Fair Labor Association have joined with WRC and USAS to advocate for these changes.

The action today is a part of a the sustained lobbying campaign that FWB is organizing to try to get the university administration, President Mote, in particular, to act for workers rights and recognize the importance of a fair and safe workplace. Unfortunately, unless FWB can secure serious media for these creative, but small and quiet actions Mote and his handlers will be able to simply brush off the campaign.

FWB needs to up the pressure with each letter it delivers, bringing more students each time and continuing the creativity if the campaign is to be successful. More important, I think, to sustaining and growing the DSP campaign on campus is to connect it with issues that surround students every day. This is the hard part. There is a lot of privilege on our campus (and most college campuses) and it is hard to understand. I think empathy is very important. FWB has held a number of events to build that empathy and humanize the sweatshop worker. Even that isn't enough, though. What stake do we students have in the plight of workers in Guatemala? A more just world? True, but very abstract.

The point I am getting at is the very way students think is problematic. It is our jobs as organizers and activists to work to change that. The stake that students have in the plight of sweatshop workers is simple: we buy the clothes that pay for their bosses to bust their unions. We wear the clothes that were made in abusive working conditions. We continue to consume without considering where all this stuff comes from. That is problematic. We need to think critically about where and who and why and reevaluate our own patterns of consumption.

Graduate Employee Collective Bargaining and Student Power

Maryland Teachers and Researchers http://www.mtrumd.org/

The TAs, adjuncts and other graduate students also employed by the university are not allowed to form a union. Thats not entirely true, graduate students can form unions, however the university doesn’t need to recognize the union or accept any collective bargaining from graduate students. Consequently, grad students have very little power in the university’s decision-making about hours, wages and leave. Grad students are put in a sore spot because the only way to improve the terms of their employment is through collective action.

Unions have the potential to put power over workplace decisions in the hands of workers. They only work if people participate. They only work if people care. They only work if people are willing to band together and assert their agency. Unions are commonly conceived as useless siphons for hardworking people’s wages. To a large extent this is true. Unions like the United Auto Workers consistently cave to pressure from industry and government, selling the livelihoods of thousands of working people. Some unions, like the Detroit Federation of Teachers, have the will to resist pressure from management and demand decent, respectable working conditions. Moreover, an effective, spirited union will not be afraid to use their power, the power of the strike to effect change in the workplace.

On Thursday 21 Feb, Scott Bruton of the Rutgers graduate student association spoke with a full room of grad and undergrad students about obtaining collective bargaining rights.

In 1973 graduate employees organized at Rutgers and formed the second graduate student union in the country. As a result, the graduate employees gained collective bargaining with the university administration and the same contract as the faculty. Now, in the United States, most public research universities have graduate student unions.

Many of the University of Maryland’s peer institutions have graduate student unions. University of Wisconsin, Madison, the first university with graduate employee collective bargaining, the University of California System ( e.g. UC Berkeley), University of Illinois, Rutgers and many others. Undergrad and grad students alike can improve their education by making the classrooms a better learning and working environment. A union allows graduate employees, most of whom are students, an opportunity to exert a greater influence within the university. Decisions that are made must pass muster with not just faculty, trustees and the regents, but now with graduate students.

In Annapolis there is legislation before both bodies in the General Assembly which would recognize the right of graduate employees to form a union and force the University to negotiate with a union as a collective bargaining agent. I think this legislation is potentially powerful. So does the University. I will keep y’all posted about what is going on in this struggle and what you can do about it.