Category Archives: Labor

Rouge Forum Update: Class Conscious Resistance and More!

Dear Friends,

Remember the closing date for nominations for the Rouge Forum Steering Committee is September 1. Email nominations to RF Community Coordinator Adam Renner at: arenner@bellarmine.edu.

Our No Blood For Oil, complete with those good-for-the-rest-of-your-life No Blood For Oil and Pyramid of the Capitalist System posters is updated. And the latest Rouge Forum News is now on our blog.

The core issue of our time is the relationship of rising color-coded social and economic inequality challenged by the potential of mass class-conscious resistance.

On The Perpetual War Front:

On The Social and Economic Collapse Front:


On The Education Agenda is a War Agenda and the Education Stim is a Merit Pay Stim Front:

On The Maybe Foucault Was on to Something After All Front (and don’t forget Debord):


On the Coming Soon–the End of Detroit Front:
Michigan’s Democratic Governor appointed Bob Bobb a Broad Foundation employee active earlier in Oakland and D.C. to run the finances of the Detroit Public Schools, awash for decades in corruption and incompetence. Bobb interprets his mandate as, “everything.” He’s fighting with the inept but elected School Board over who holds power while the district collapses around all of them. Bobb is surrounded by small crooks at every level, true, but the bigger crook is Bobb, whose job is to restore some sense of order, get the books in line, and to fashion a black school system that will produce children fit and willing to fight in imperialist wars or accept bad jobs, no jobs, or jail. Still, Bobb has some ethical problems of his own. He awarded his former employer a near $1 million no-bid contract. More on Detroit’s collapse soon.

On the Fight Don’t Starve Resistance Front:

Please Note This Important Education Resistance Meeting:
Resist Taking the California Star Test. Freedom in Education Meeting. Fresno State. 11 to 6 on August 29th. Lunch and Dinner Provided. Contact Joe Lucido: 559-225-1888. Join Us!

Thanks to Susan, Adam, Gina, Amber, George and Sharon, Tina, Bob A, Tommie, Donna, Linda, Candace, Della, Teeyah, Victoria, Bill B and G, Sandy and Van, MrJ, Wayne, Perry, Steve, Marc, Curry, Melinda, Sherry, Elvira, Patsy, Ricky, Chuck, Joey, Johnny B, Kim, Kelly, Marisol, Enrnesto, Keenan, Reggy B and Ina Y, Denny, Bruce, Debbie, Alan, Jim, Arelia, Jim O, and Dr. Divine.

Good luck to us, every one.

r

Rouge Forum Update: NEA Rep Assembly, Chicago’s Miracle, and More

Dear Friends,

The Rouge Forum No Blood For Oil (with those good-for-the-rest of your life posters on sale!) is updated.

On the Madness and Boredom Front:
Substance News is carrying reports from the National Education Association’s Representative Assembly, running through Monday.

On the Educational Miracles Front:
Substance has exposed the Chicago Miracle, the reason Arne Duncan holds his position as Ed Boss, for years. However, here is another expose, from an unexpected source.

On the What Do You Mean We Had Something to Do With that Coup and What Do We Know About the School of the Americas Front:
http://www.soaw.org/

On the Everyone Can Make it in America Front, the Jobless Rate Hits a 26 Year High:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/02/us-unemployment-june-467000

On the Someone is Actually Doing Something About all of This Front: The San Francisco Freedom School is open for summer:
http://educationanddemocracy.org/SFFS/2009program.html

Russian Students are Resisting:
http://www.rferl.org/content/Russias_New_Standardized_Exams_Fail_The_Public_Test/1761799.html

You can do something too. There is one organization in North America, rooted in education, that connects the wars, unemployment, de-industrialization, class struggle, and the crises in schools: The Rouge Forum. Next week we will circulate a call for nominees for this year’s Rouge Forum Steering Committee. We urge you to join us. Please spread the word.

Thanks to all the courageous delegates at the NEA RA who spoke to me and gave me so much information. You’ll see it in print in the coming days. If you are still at the RA and we have not met, please email me asap, or we can talk when you get home.

Thanks too to Amber, Wayne, Adam, Bob, Colleen, Tammy, Christina, Katie and Greg, Bill, Joe, Sally, Sue, Donna, Kathy Y and E, Gil, Tony, Jill, Eric, Marcie, Isabella, Victoria, Donnie, Tally, Shawndre, Teeyah, Pete, and Doug.

Good luck to us, every one.

r

Call for Papers: Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions

Call for Papers
Special Issue for Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions

The neo-liberal restructuring of national education systems is a global phenomenon and represents a major threat to the possibility of a democratic, public education committed to meeting the needs of working class and oppressed groups. Teacher unions, across the world, despite all the attacks on them, represent perhaps the most formidable obstacle to neo-liberal restructuring. Teachers remain highly unionized and although they have suffered many setbacks in recent years, their collective organizations generally remain robust.

Despite the significance and importance of teacher unions they remain largely under-researched. Mainstream academic literature on school sector education policy often ignores teacher unions, even in cases where scholars are critical of the market orientation of neo-liberal reforms. Two recent exceptions to this tradition are the contributions of Compton and Weiner (2008) and Stevenson et al (2007). The strength of Compton and Weiner’s excellent volume is the breadth of international perspectives. However, individual chapters are largely short ‘vignettes’, and the aim is to offer fairly brief and readable accounts, rather than detailed and scholarly analysis. Stevenson et al offer a series of traditional scholarly articles, although the emphasis is largely on the Anglophone nations (UK, North America, Australasia), and the collection fails to capture the full breadth required of an international perspective. In both cases, and quite understandably, these contributions were not able to take account of the seismic developments in the world capitalist economy since Autumn 08 in particular. These developments have significant implications for the future of neo-liberalism, for the development of education policy in nation states and for the policies and practices of teacher unions. There is now a strong case for an analysis of teacher unionism that is detailed, scholarly, international and able to take account of current developments.

This special section of Workplace will focus on the ways in which teacher unions in the K-12 sector are challenging the neo-liberal restructuring of school education systems in a range of global contexts. Neo-liberalism’s reach is global. Its impact on the restructuring of public education systems shares many common characteristics wherever it manifests itself. That said, it also plays out differently in different national and local contexts. This collection of papers will seek to assess how teacher unions are challenging the trajectory of neo-liberal reform in a number of different national contexts. By drawing on contributors from all the major world continents it will seek to highlight the points of contact and departure in the apparently different ways in which teacher unions interface with the neo-liberal agenda. It will also ensure that analyses seek to reflect recent developments in the global capitalist economy, and the extent to which this represents threat or opportunity for organized teacher movements.

Compton, M. and Weiner, L. (2008) The Global Assault on Teachers, Teaching and their Unions, London: Palgrave.

Stevenson, H. et al (2007) Changes in Teachers’ Work and the Challengs Facing Teacher Unions. International Electronic Journal of Leadership for Learning. Volume 11.

Submissions
Contributions to Workplace should be 4000-6000 words in length and should conform to MLA style. If you are interested, please submit an abstract via Word attachment to Howard Stevenson (hstevenson@lincoln.ac.uk) by 31st July 2009. Completed articles will be due via email on 28th December 2009. All papers will be blind peer-reviewed.

Fourth International Conference on Education, Labor and Emancipation

Fourth International Conference on Education, Labor and Emancipation

This year’s Theme: Manifesto for New Social Movements: Equity, Access, and Empowerment

It will be help in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil on June 16th – 19th 2009.

Scholars, teachers, students and activists from various fields and countries will convene in Salvador, Bahia (Brazil) to compare theoretical perspectives, share pedagogical experiences, and work toward developing a global movement for social justice in and through education. We invite proposals from the following perspectives: indigenous, feminist, postcolonial, Marxist/neomarxist, queer theory, critiques of neoliberalism/globalization, CRT, liberation theology, anthropology, comparative/international education, etc. Visit our website for more information. http://academics.utep.edu/confele

We appreciate if you can forward this invitation to others who may be interested.

Please do send in your proposals, here are the guidelines:

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
We are currently witnessing the emergence of a new context for education, labor, and emancipatory social movements. Global flows of people, capital, and energy increasingly define the world we live in. The multinational corporation, with its pursuit of ever-cheaper sources of labor and materials and its disregard for human life, is replacing the nation-state as the dominant form of economic organization. Faced with intensifying environmental pressures and depletion of essential resources, economic elites have responded with increased militarism and restriction of civil liberties.
At the same time, masses of displaced workers, peasants, and indigenous peoples are situating their struggles in a global context. Labor activists can no longer ignore the concomitant struggles of Indigenous peoples, African diasporic populations, other marginalized ethnic groups, immigrants, women, GLBT people, children and youth. Concern for democracy and human rights is moving in from the margins to challenge capitalist priorities of “efficiency” and exploitation. In some places, the representatives of popular movements are actually taking the reins of state power. Everywhere we look, new progressive movements are emerging to bridge national identities and boundaries, in solidarity with transnational class, gender, and ethnic struggles.

At this juncture, educators have a key role to play. The ideology of market competition has become more entrenched in schools, even as opportunities for skilled employment diminish. We must rethink the relationship between schooling and the labor market, developing transnational pedagogies that draw upon the myriad social struggles shaping students’ lives and communities. Critical educators need to connect with other social movements to put a radically democratic agenda, based on principles of equity, access, and emancipation, at the center of a transnational pedagogical praxis.
Distinguished scholars from numerous fields and various countries will convene in Salvador, Bahia (Brazil) to compare and contribute to theoretical perspectives, share pedagogical experiences, and work toward developing a global movement of enlightening activism. Issues related to education, labor, and emancipation will be addressed from a range of theoretical perspectives, including but not limited to the following:

Critical Pedagogy

  • Critical Race Theory
  • Postcolonial Studies
  • Marxist and Neo-Marxist Perspectives
  • Social Constructivism
  • Comparative/International Education
  • Postmodernism
  • Indigenous Perspectives
  • Feminist Theory
  • Queer Theory
  • Poststructuralism
  • Critical Environmental Studies
  • Critiques of Globalization and Neoliberalism
  • Liberation Theology

Proposals may be offered as panel presentations or individual papers. Please indicate type of proposal with the submission.

Individual paper proposals should contain a cover sheet with the paper title, contact information (e-mail, address, telephone number, and affiliation), a brief bio, for each presenter, and an abstract of no more than 250 words (not including references). Please indicate whether you will present in Portuguese, Spanish or English. Presenters who wish to present in Portuguese should nevertheless include an English or Spanish translation of the abstract with their submission.

Panel proposals must include a cover sheet with the panel title and organizers’ contact information (e-mail, address, telephone number, affiliation), as well as an abstract of the overall panel theme (no more than 400 words, not including references) and abstracts/bios for each paper included in the panel. Please indicate whether panel members will present in Portuguese, Spanish or English. Proposals submitted in Portuguese should include translations (either English or Spanish) of the panel theme with each individual abstract.

Please submit proposals by E-mail only to: confele@utep.edu . THE DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS IS March 1st, 2009. Proposals must be accompanied by your conference registration in order to be considered.

Following the tradition of the last three conferences, a book will be produced comprising the most engaging papers from CONFELE 2009, as selected by an editorial board. Presenters wishing to be considered for this volume should submit full papers (in APA style) for review by August 1st, 2009.

CFP: Academic Labor and Law

CFP: Academic Labor and Law
Special Section of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

Guest Editor: Jennifer Wingard, University of Houston

The historical connections between legislation, the courts, and the academy have been complex and multi-layered. This has been evident from early federal economic policies, such as the Morell Act and the GI Bill, through national and state legislation that protected student and faculty rights, such as the First Amendment and affirmative action clauses. These connections continue into our current moment of state and national efforts to define the work of the university, such as The Academic Bill of Rights and court cases regarding distance learning. The question, then, becomes whether and to what extent the impact of legislation and litigation reveals or masks the shifting mission of the academy. Have these shifts been primarily economic, with scarcities of funding leading many to want to legislate what is considered a university education, how it should be financed, and who should benefit from it? Are the shifts primarily ideological, with political interests working to change access, funding, and the intellectual project of higher education? Or are the shifts a combination of both political and economic influences? One thing does become clear from these discussions: at their core, the legal battles surrounding higher education are about the changing nature of the university –the use of managerial/corporate language; the desire to professionalize students rather than liberally educate them; the need to create transparent structures of evaluation for both students and faculty; and the attempt to define the types of knowledge produced and disseminated in the classroom. These are changes for which faculty, students, administrators, as well as citizens who feel they have a stake in higher education, seek legal redress. This special section of Workplace aims to explore the ways in which legislation and court cases impact the work of students, professors, contingent faculty, and graduate students in the university. Potential topics include but are not limited to:

  • Academic Freedom for students and/or faculty
    • Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights
    • Missouri’s Emily Booker Intellectual Diversity Act
    • First Amendment court cases concerning faculty and student’s rights to freely express themselves in the classroom and on campuses
    • Facebook/Myspace/Blog court cases
    • Current legislative and budgetary “attacks” on area studies (i.e. Queer Studies in Georgia, Women’s Studies in Florida)
  • Affirmative Action
    • The implementation of state and university diversity initiatives in the 1970s
    • The current repeal of affirmative action law across the country
  • Benefits, including Health Benefits, Domestic Partner Benefits
    • How universities in states with same-sex marriage bans deal with domestic partner benefits
  • Collective Bargaining
    • The recent rulings at NYU and Brown about the status of graduate students as employees
    • State anti-unionization measures and how they impact contingent faculty
  • Copyright/Intellectual Property
    • In Distance Learning
    • In corporate sponsored science research
    • In government sponsored research
  • Disability Rights and Higher Education
    • How the ADA impacts the university
  • Sexual Harassment and Consensual Relationships
    • How diversity laws and sexual harassment policies impact the university
  • Tenure
    • The Bennington Case
    • Post 9/11 court cases

Contributions for Workplace should be 4000-6000 words in length and should conform to MLA style. If interested, please send an abstract via word attachment to Jennifer Wingard (jwingard@central.uh.edu) by Friday, May 22, 2009. Completed essays will be due via email by Monday, August 24, 2009.

Student Protests Sweep Italy

While Americans waste their time discussing what position they’ll be in as they continued to get screwed by the bank bailouts and/or tweaking the reactionary education reform mess of No Child Left Behind students in Italy are saying “NO” to the Berlusconi government’s plan to impose business models on public services such as schools and universities that will see the disappearance of nearly 100,000 teaching positions in the next three years:

This “euthanasia of the universities”, as Gaetano Azzariti, professor of constitutional law at Rome university, calls it, was a political decision, sacrificing teaching and research to sectors of the economy. It means that for a university to hire a new lecturer now, two others have to leave its payroll. And it means more private sector funding in universities and higher tuition fees, leading to increased levels of debt for the poorest students. And on August 28, education minister Mariastella Gelmini presented another executive order, setting out budget cuts and plans to return to single teachers in primary schools (each class is normally taught by several different teachers), meaning a shorter school day for children (and reducing parents’ ability to go out to work). Other measures aimed to revive old practices, such as marks for behavior up to secondary level.

Since the start of the school year in September 2008, a national movement of parents, teachers and students resisting the neoliberal reforms of the Berlusconi government formed under the banner of “Non rubateci il futuro” (Don’t steal our future) and have spawned huge demonstrations and university occupations and general strikes.

“What’s developing is the self-organization of university students and casual workers,” explained Aliocha, a literature student at La Sapienza university who is also a casual in a bank. “Some people combine being casual workers and students or researchers, others are just casual workers. Together with the rank and file unions, we started the October 17 strike, and organized it in workplaces where job insecurity is an everyday reality.”

See Serge Quadruppani’s article at CounterPunch.

Workplace #15 (New Issue Announcement)

The editors of *Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor* are proud to announce our latest issue, which is now available online at http://www.cust.educ.ubc.ca/workplace/. The issue begins with a special “Mental Labor” section, which was generously compiled and guest edited by Steven Wexler. We express our heartiest gratitude to him, as well as to web designers Stephen Petrina and Franc Feng.

The lead section includes:

(I’m)Material Labor in the Digital Age
by Steven Wexler

Autonomy vs. Insecurity: The (Mis)Fortunes of Mental Labor in a Global Network
by David B. Downing

Extreme Work-Study, or, The Real “Kid Nation”
by Marc Bousquet

From the *Grundrisse* to *Capital* and Beyond: Then and Now
by George Caffentzis

Ideology and the Crisis of Capitalism
by Thomas A. Hirschl, Daniel B. Ahlquist and Leland L. Glenna

Gender, Contingent Labor, and Our Virtual Bodies
by Desi Bradley

Our regular segment of “Feature Articles” contains the following:

Capitalism, Audit, and the Demise of the Humanistic Academy
by Charles Thorpe

Troubling Data: A Foucauldian Perspective of “a Multiple Data Source Approach” to Professional Learning and Evaluation
by Mark C. Baildon

And our “Book Reviews” section, edited for the final time by William Vaughn, features four new entries:

*Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire: Towards a New Humanism*
Reviewed by Dana Carluccio

*Taking Back the Workers’ Law: How to Fight the Assault on Labor Rights*
Reviewed by William Vaughn

*Three Strikes: Labor’s Heartland Losses and What They Mean for Working Americans*
Reviewed by Philip Eubanks

*Teachers as Owners: A Key to Revitalizing Public Education*
Reviewed by William Vaughn

The editors are extremely thankful to William Vaughn for years of fine work with the Book Reviews, and we are sorry to see him go. We are pleased to report, however, that Steven Wexler will take on the role of reviews editor in the coming issues.

Thank you for your continuing support of the journal, and please keep *Workplace* in mind as a venue for your future scholarship. Send submissions to cscarter@ou.edu or wayne.ross@ubc.ca.

Solidarity,

Chris Carter
Wayne Ross
Stephen Petrina
Co-editors, *Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor*

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON EDUCATION, LABOR AND EMANCIPATION

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MANIFESTO FOR NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: EQUITY, ACCESS, & EMPOWERMENT

The Conferences on Education, Labor and Emancipation are always exciting, one of the best conference experiences you’ll ever have, I highly recommend you check out the 2009 conference, which will be held in Salvadore, Brazil.

June 16-19, 2009
Hotel Othon, Salvador, Bahia (Brazil)

We are currently witnessing the emergence of a new context for education, labor, and emancipatory social movements. Global flows of people, capital, and energy increasingly define the world we live in. The multinational corporation, with its pursuit of ever-cheaper sources of labor and materials and its disregard for human life, is replacing the nation-state as the dominant form of economic organization. Faced with intensifying environmental pressures and depletion of essential resources, economic elites have responded with increased militarism and restriction of civil liberties.

At the same time, masses of displaced workers, peasants, and indigenous peoples are situating their struggles in a global context. Labor activists can no longer ignore the concomitant struggles of Indigenous peoples, African diasporic populations, other marginalized ethnic groups, immigrants, women, GLBT people, children and youth. Concern for democracy and human rights is moving in from the margins to challenge capitalist priorities of “efficiency” and exploitation. In some places, the representatives of popular movements are actually taking the reins of state power. Everywhere we look, new progressive movements are emerging to bridge national identities and boundaries, in solidarity with transnational class, gender, and ethnic struggles.

At this juncture, educators have a key role to play. The ideology of market competition has become more entrenched in schools, even as opportunities for skilled employment diminish. We must rethink the relationship between schooling and the labor market, developing transnational pedagogies that draw upon the myriad social struggles shaping students’ lives and communities. Critical educators need to connect with other social movements to put a radically democratic agenda, based on principles of equity, access, and emancipation, at the center of a transnational pedagogical praxis.

Distinguished scholars from numerous fields and various countries will convene in Salvador, Bahia (Brazil) to compare and contribute to theoretical perspectives, share pedagogical experiences, and work toward developing a global movement of enlightning activism. Issues related to education, labor, and emancipation will be addressed from a range of theoretical perspectives, including but not limited to the following:

* Critical Pedagogy

* Critical Race Theory

* Postcolonial Studies

* Marxist and Neo-Marxist Perspectives

* Social Constructivism

* Comparative/International Education

* Postmodernism

* Indigenous Perspectives

* Feminist Theory

* Queer Theory

* Poststructuralism

* Critical Environmental Studies

* Critiques of Globalization and Neoliberalism

* Liberation Theology

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Proposals may be offered as panel presentations or individual papers. Please indicate type of proposal with the submission.

Individual paper proposals should contain a cover sheet with the paper title, contact information (e-mail, address, telephone number, and affiliation), a brief bio, for each presenter, and an abstract of no more than 250 words (not including references). Please indicate whether you will present in Portuguese, Spanish or English. Presenters who wish to present in Portuguese should nevertheless include an English or Spanish translation of the abstract with their submission.

Panel proposals must include a cover sheet with the panel title and organizers’ contact information (e-mail, address, telephone number, affiliation), as well as an abstract of the overall panel theme (no more than 400 words, not including references) and abstracts/bios for each paper included in the panel. Please indicate whether panel members will present in Portuguese, Spanish or English. Proposals submitted in Portuguese should include translations (either English or Spanish) of the panel theme with each individual abstract.

Please submit proposals by E-mail only to: confele@utep.edu. THE DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS IS March 1st, 2009.

Following the tradition of the last three conferences, a book will be produced comprising the most engaging papers from CONFELE 2009, as selected by an editorial board. Presenters wishing to be considered for this volume should submit full papers (in APA style) for review by August 1st, 2009.

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor (Issue 14): Beyond the Picket Line: Academic Organizing after the Long NYU Strike

The fourteenth issue of *Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor* is now available online at http://cust.educ.ubc.ca/workplace/

“Beyond the Picket Line: Academic Organizing after the Long NYU Strike” features essays gathered by Michael Palm (Chair of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee at New York University), all of which address the implications of graduate worker activism for the future of higher education. The graduate union at NYU has the distinction of being the first to bargain a contract at a private university, and the first to see negotiations terminated by a private university administration. *Workplace 14* provides various critical accounts of the administration’s renunciation of the union, and a series of in-depth analyses of the strike that followed. Written by the strikers themselves—with one important contribution by a unionist at the City University of New York—these articles comprise one of our most urgent releases to date.

Contents include:

“Introduction to the Special Issue”
by Michael Palm

“The Future of Academia is On the Line: Protest, Pedagogy, Picketing, Performativity”
by Emily Wilbourne

“The Professionalizing of Graduate ‘Students’”
by Michael Gallope

“Making It Work: Audre Lorde’s “The Master’s Tools” and the Unbearable Difference of GSOC”
by Elizabeth Loeb

“The NYU Strike as Case Study”
by David Schleifer

“Armbands, Arguments, Op-Eds, and Banner-Drops: Undergraduate Participation in a Graduate Employee Strike”
by Andrew Cornell

“Another University is Possible: Academic Labor, the Ideology of Scarcity, and the Fight for Workplace Democracy”
by Ashley Dawson

The issue also contains six new book reviews (edited by William Vaughn) as well as Wayne Ross’s *Workplace Blog.*

We are pleased to announce that Stephen Petrina (http://cust.educ.ubc.ca/faculty/petrina.html) has joined *Workplace* as a general editor. Stephen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum Studies at the University of British Columbia where he teaches courses in research methodology, curriculum theory, cultural studies, new media, and technology. His research explores the interconnections among cognition, emotion(s), and technology, concentrating especially on how we learn (technology) across the lifespan. Stephen was co-editor of *Workplace* 7.1, “Academic Freedom and IP Rights in an Era of the Automation and Commercialization of Higher Education” (http://www.cust.educ.ubc.ca/workplace/issue7p1/), and his recent articles have also appeared in *Technology & Culture*, *History of Psychology*, *History of Education Quarterly* and the *International Journal of Technology and Design Education*. Welcome Stephen!

Special thanks go to Stephen and to Franc Feng for their tremendous design work on the current issue. We welcome Franc as a member of the Workplace Collective.

We also want to express our gratitude to Julie Schmid for her continued editorial assistance.

Look for issues on “Mental Labor” (headed up by Steven Wexler) and “Academic Labor and the Law” (edited by Jennifer Wingard) in 2008.

(Please note that from this release forward, the journal will forgo the point system [1.1, 1.2, 2.1, etc.] and number according to our total collection of issues thus far. Although the last issue was 7.1 [the thirteenth release], we number this issue 14.)

Thanks for your continued support.

Solidarity,

Christopher Carter
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Oklahoma
Co-editor, *Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor*

E. Wayne Ross
Professor
Department of Curriculum Studies
University of British Columbia
http://web.mac.com/wayne.ross
Co-Editor, *Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor*

Oaxaca update: Protest Reaches Mexican Capital (2 stories)

El Universal: Protest Reaches Mexican Capital

Protest Reaches Mexican Capital
By John Gilber/Special to The Herald Mexico

El Universal – October 10, 2006

Juan Pérez, a thin, 25 year-old teacher from Jocotepec, Oaxaca, has been walking for the past 19 days. He wears rough leather sandals, jeans, a hand-woven straw hat, and a shirt with “APPO: a dream in construction” painted in orange letters across the front.

“No revolution is going to come from behind a desk,” he says as he swings his small backpack over his shoulders and sets out from Nezahualc’yotl on the final 8 miles of his journey.

“For the government, the voices of the people don’t count,” he says, “that is why we have to take to the
streets, to do something with the impotence we feel.”

Pérez and several thousand of his colleagues from the Oaxaca Peoples Popular Assembly (APPO) have walked from Oaxaca City over 250 miles and through four states to bring their demand that Gov. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz be ousted.

The march, which left Oaxaca City on Sept. 21 and arrived in Mexico City on Monday, comes on the heels of a four-month struggle to force the Ruiz Ortiz out in response to a failed attempt on June 14 to violently break up a teachers strike in Oaxaca´s central plaza.”This is an example of people’s having reached the
limit of patience with decades of neglect,” says César
Mateos, one of the march’s organizers.

“The movement in Oaxaca seeks deep structural changes,
and the first step in these changes is the exit of
Ulises,” he says. “But we want to achieve these changes
through a peaceful movement, which is why we have done
this march. This is the true face of the APPO.”

The march began with over 4,000 people, dipped to
around 1,000 on the last few days, but then swelled to
at least 10,000 as it entered Mexico City.

The APPO protesters walked an average of 8 hours a day,
through both rainstorms and blistering heat, over
mountains and through valleys, enduring chilly nights
of mosquito bites and scorpion stings.

They were often met with support along the way,
including much needed nourishment from sympathetic food
and juice vendors along the highway.

“The support kept me motivated even though my feet
hurt,” said Betty, a 40 year-old preschool teacher from
San Mateo on the Oaxaca coast. “I cried twice, not from
the pain, but because there was so much support from
people.”

The marchers, carrying handmade signs, puppets mocking
Vicente Fox, and cardboard coffins for Ulises Ruiz,
walked down busy avenues leading to the Z’calo,
blocking traffic and enduring the full force of the
late-summer sun. Hundreds of people from nearby
neighborhoods and street-side markets lined the streets
to hand out water and sandwiches along the way.

They plan to set up a protest camp in front of the
Senate and have vowed to stay in Mexico City until
Ulises Ruiz is forced from office.

==========

Oaxaca, Mexico Overcoming Crisis

Prensa Latina – October 10, 2006

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=D54D366B-AC36-4652-A306-015DEE52F221)&language=EN

Mexico

Following eight hours of talks, the teachers’ union,
the Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO) and the
Mexican Secretariat of Government finally agreed to
solve the ongoing conflict in that Mexican state via
legal procedures.

They decided to put public security in the hands of the
municipal and state police, led by a federal level
undersecretary.

Until Friday, APPO will hold consultation sessions on
handing over the capital of Oaxaca while teachers
promised to put the question of returning to classes to
the rank and file.

Removal of Governor Ulises Ruiz, the main demand of the
social movement, will be processed by the Senate, also
in charge of ruling on elimination of powers.

Meanwhile, a caravan of Oaxaca teachers and grassroots
activists arrived Monday evening in the Federal
District to stage a sit-in in front of the Senate to
demand the removal of Ruiz, which they consider the
only possible out of the conflict.

==========