May Day, Things Change; Things Stay the Same...

I was looking through my old May Day activities, and I came across this letter I had written to my petition followers two years ago, in 2014. Back then I had a little over 4000 signatures, yet today we have 10,141. 

Has that made any difference? Unfortunately, no. 

Indeed, what is a stark awakening — when looking at this piece from two years ago — is that conditions are eerily similar, if not worse. Though more people seem to know about our conditions, more people seem to condone them too, or look the other way. 

We must not give up. We must keep fighting, struggling to make a difference, a change for the better. 

I am a Man: Mural Design Artist Marcellous Lovelace
Based on Civil Rights movement, Sanitation Workers' Protest March, Memphis, 3/28/1968
photograph © Ana M. Fores Tamayo

Just in Time for MLA in Austin...

Just in time for the MLA Conference in Austin from January 7th through January 10th, I am adding these articles, trailers, and information about Ayotzinapa, cronica de un crimen de estado, so that if you happen to go to Austin for the conference, or if you live nearby, you can check out and see this impactful documentary in Spanish with English subtitles at Monkey Wrench Books on Friday, January 8th, at 7:30PM.

Thank you once again to my intrepid colleague Vanessa Vaile for putting this list of articles together. And if you are a filmmaker, do not overlook the STUFF Film Festival links: Robert & Mariella Perez will be reviewing new films now for their next festival Mundo de Sueños in September and then the 2016 STUFF film festival a few months after that! 

 Trailer Ayotzinapa Cronica de un Crimen de Estado en EU - YouTube

 "Ayotzinapa: crónica de un crimen de Estado", en A Contracorriente. Rompeviento TV 28/5/15 - YouTube

 AyotzinapaLaPelícula (@AyotzinapaDocu) | Twitter

 Cine Ayotzinapa - YouTube

 filmfestival

 Mundo De Sueños Film Festival - FilmFreeway

 STUFF 2015 Film Festival by South Texas Underground Film Festival

STUFF: Independent Filmmakers' Delight!

When adjunct faculty, grad students, and others are looking for venues to expose their creativity and art — especially when it comes to film — they should look no further than STUFF, the South Texas Underground Film Festival, located by the beautiful southern beaches of Corpus Christi, Texas.

Robert and Mariella Perez, the masterminds behind STUFF, worked harder than ever to present their fourth dazzling weeklong festival, and it showed in the unique, varied, and intriguing choice of films presented throughout the week of November 30th through December 6th, 2015, all free of charge. These films came from all over the world, and while some were personally presented by its directors or creators, others were shown with as much fanfare, though directors from Australia, Finland, or places in South America could not attend. 

Union County College & Others in the Hot Seat

Right now ugly things are happening not only at Union County College but also all around NJ as well as throughout all universities in Higher Education. 

It has not been an easy time for faculty or shared governance, but especially for adjunct faculty, who are suffering dire retaliation when they struggle to gain rights for fellow workers. As adjunct faculty, then, we should be putting pressure on our union representatives at @AFT and elsewhere.

Write to everyone, share these articles and links on your own networks, email listservs and social media. Pressure all you know.

Dr. Margaret McMenamin will get bent out of shape because if too many articles come out about malfeasance at her university, and these links become shared and shared again ad infinitum, she loses control. Therefore, we need to let her know she does NOT have the control she thinks she does! 

Thank you, Vanessa Vaile, for getting this list together.

So let Dr. McMenamin know she does not live in a bubble… Please SHARE, and thank you! 

 College Is Accused of Exploiting State Labor Law to Trample Faculty Rights - The Chronicle of Higher Education

 AAUP Report Alleges Shared Governance Violations by Union County College | Inside Higher Ed

United Adjunct Faculty of New Jersey Local 2222 | Stateweb

UCC Chapter of United Adjunct Faculty on NJ

 Union County College responds to adjunct complaints | Union News Daily

 Union County College adjuncts petition school for 'living wage' as contract is negotiated | NJ.com

 Adjunct Alternative or Union Busting? | Inside Higher Ed

 Public Sector Cuts Workers' Hours in Response to Obamacare | National Review Online

 Kean, UCC adjuncts feel disrespected | Union News Daily

 Union News Daily | Union County's Local Source

 Universities Hire More Adjunct Professors and Pay Less | Video | NJTV News

Keith Hoeller Gives Tribute to David Heller, Adjunct Philosopher who Meets Death Too Soon

David Heller, an adjunct philosophy instructor for years, just died at the age of 61 from complications from an untreated thyroid condition. Longtime adjunct activist Keith Hoeller wrote a few words about him — and with his permission — I wanted to share his words with you here, so that all could see and thus also share. 

Make sure you also read about our colleague in the linked article, because we are all in this together... 

Rest in peace, David Heller.  

David Heller stands in front of the bookstore where he worked
Photo Credit by Charles Fischer

Joe Berry's COCAL Update included several stories about Washington state. I wanted to highlight one of them that deals with the death of an adjunct at 61: 

"Adjuncts Struggle to Balance Dreams of Teaching with Low Wages" http://www.seattlemag.com/article/adjuncts-struggle-balance-dreams-teaching-low-wages

It is about the death of David Heller, who taught philosophy as an adjunct at Seattle University. My colleague Jack Longmate is quoted in the article. 

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

"A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness." 

Robert Frost

Yesterday, on August 1st, Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken had 100 birthdays. How many moments of joy multiplied have we enjoyed from "a homesickness, a lovesickness"? 

Looking at the night sky through a clearing in the woods
Somewhere in Pennsylvania, 2015
© Ana M. Fores Tamayo

I just returned from our own long cross country trip, and as my family camped out in a myriad of places across America, I kept thinking about our choices in life, about our "roads not taken", or the paths that we have chosen instead. 

So this trip reminded me that there is much to learn, always, in everything we do, in every journey, metaphorical or physical, intellectual or emotional. But the most important thing I have learned is that in every little change, we find ourselves evolving. 

If we flow with these changes, these alterations — just like the "lump in the throat" — it can become beauty, and thus, we can grow and transform into that diamond in the rough, that road "less traveled by, And that has made all the difference"! 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Sonnet LXIX by Pablo Neruda

Today is Pablo Neruda's birthday, and since he is one of my favorite poets, I dedicate this post to him, my translation of Sonnet LXIX  from 100 Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor

Life, love, longevity, forgetting and remembering... these apply to so many things, not just poetry, not just love songs, not just pain. Life is about living, about picking up books and flowers and cobblestones, about the wind in our hair but the sweat in our brow and the tears in our hearts. 

And we go on, whether in the field, or the classroom, or the road. 

Happy birthday, Pablo Neruda: you have enriched my life! 

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long." Pablo Neruda 

Budding Rose: Red or Golden?
© Ana M. Fores Tamayo

Perhaps not being is being without your being,
without your cutting the noon day
like a blue flower, without your walking
later, through the fog and cobblestone,

May Day...Will Adjunct Faculty Become Human Rights Activists Working Together?

A while ago, I found a quote from our petition, "Better Pay for Adjuncts," that has been lurking in the back of my mind all these months. 

"I've decided to abandon any hope of being a college-level instructor because I do not want to trade in my blue-collar poverty for a poverty with airs of white-collar sensibilities."

So as I get ready to write something about May Day, and how this day of labor involves adjunct faculty, I also want to take stock of what this writer implies. It has haunted me for quite some time now. 

I have wanted to get all my dispersed thoughts together, a not-so-easy task. 


I began writing this particular piece after the City Hall meeting in Grapevine, Texas, concerning evidence of the fact that police will not release a video of them shooting an unarmed man on February 20, 2015, Rubén Garcia. Seeing all the brown on one side looking up at the white — sitting in their pedestals above — made me think there would never be any justice here in Texas.

The stark difference of the all-white "judges" sitting above listening
gave a somber note to proceedings...
© Ana M. Fores Tamayo

And sure enough, it is already May, and nothing yet is closer to releasing the official video. 

There is an unofficial passersby video released that directly conflicts with what the police are saying, but officers still hold fast to their own story...

So why do some folks want to taint the man?

New School, Old School? The New School Fiasco, Again and Again

ACT-UAW Local 7902's rally, held on March 16th, with adjunct faculty, graduate assistants, students, union workers, officials, & supporters at The New School in New York City
© ACT-UAW Local 7902

In mid March, The New School was having problems with its contract negotiations, and Brian Caterino, who had taught there years before as a contract worker -- though he was paid the same measly compensation adjunct faculty were paid -- commented that this was nothing new. 

I asked him if he would write something about this, and he did...



A few weeks ago, part time faculty at The New School held a day of protest over stalled contract negotiations and work conditions. The part timers who teach 85% of The New School courses have been without a contract since August 2014. The current proposals included reductions in health care benefits to part time faculty and other cuts. Part time faculty want -- among other things -- better health care benefits, adequate payment for online courses, and job security. They point out the discrepancy between the wages of part timers and the extravagant salaries paid to some faculty and administration while others just scrape by. 

While part time faculty make about $16,000 per year, the President of The New School, David Van Zandt, earns over $700,000, and Vice President and CEO James Murtha over $1. 2 million. The New School also opened a new building at the cost of $352 million.

The University Center at The New School
© The New School

These compensations continue the precedent set when ex US Senator Bob Kerrey became president. Not only did he get over $900,000 yearly salary, but also he received a $1.2 million golden parachute when he left in 2010 and continued getting a six figure salary as emeritus president. 

All You Want To Know About Ayotzinapa & the Caravana 43!

I decided to collect articles and videos from Dallas as the Caravana 43 contingent from Ayotzinapa came through our city. 

Trying to place them all together in one place for easy access, my colleague Vanessa Vaile from Precarious Faculty -- an invaluable educator and friend -- helped me incredulously in getting this huge list together. 

Vanessa Vaile & me

But I am sure there are a lot more articles and other telling bits of information. 

Please let me know what they are: post them here, add to our growing list, so that we have a repository for the great activism and awareness we so need to achieve -- the movement we are trying to bring forth -- so that everyone becomes aware that the disappearance of 43 students is now much more than these 43 students. It marks the disappearance of these 43 plus 25 thousand more. And with them, it also recognizes that over 100,000 have been lost to the horror of drug-related violence and crime. 

But what is worst is that this travesty is condoned, accepted, even propagated by those in power. 

This movement, Ayotzinapa with the Caravana 43, concerns the insolence of a government that made the mistake to think that its people -- because they were poor -- could be bought. 

Ayotzinapa's Caravana 43 USA: Calendar of Events

Our Dallas For Ayotzinapa T-shirt,
representing the central region: always fighting, ¡en pie de lucha!

The Caravana43 is well on its way through the country, taking its different routes, making news in Spanish media as well as English. By the time they finish, they will have stopped in over 40 cities nationally.

This is a quick post giving you the rest of their calendar schedule for the three segments of the caravana: west going up California, central going through Texas and north, and east going up through New Orleans to the east. They will eventually all converge in New York City and Washington, DC.

USA Welcomes Caravana43: Todos Somos Ayotzinapa!

I want to let you all know that finally the Caravana 43 will enter the USA with the parents and students of the disappeared normalistas of Ayotzinapa.

They will be crossing the border on Thursday, March 19th, and then they will break off into three contingents to drive through the country.

After NAWD & NAWW: The Struggle Continues, Together...

Thinking about the events of last week and NAWD/NAWW — National Adjunct Walkout Day and Week — I have become introspective. 

So I began looking through my old writings, and I came across this piece I thought I had lost, from the fall of 2013, when my youngest daughter was beginning her last year of college. I remember feeling ambivalence yet excitement. 

And as I read it now, the words tumble back and my feelings exude that sweet pain that yet tingles vibrantly, not letting go, because it is still very much present. 

Will we ever let these emotions go? Will we ever stop worrying, stop musing over our children,  our loved ones, our students, our peers? 

Aren't we supposed to keep on going in our struggle, daily? 

------------

Beginning our eastbound journey, wet soaking rain piercing the days
© Ana M. Fores Tamayo

I am getting ready to leave for two weeks on the second half of my road trip: I went to California before, and now to the northeast—this has been my cross-country summer. We are moving our youngest daughter to a house this year, her senior year in college, and though on a personal level I am happy and sad and ecstatic and also feeling a wee bit old, I am waxing philosophical. 

Why? 

As faculty, we want the best for our students. We do the most we can; we give them those critical thinking skills they need to think about the future, to forge ahead and make waves into tomorrow, to look at the big picture, to conquer it all. 

As a parent, though, I quiver. 

The Boys Behind the Symbol: Ayotzinapa

Where are the Ayotzinapa 43?

I first mentioned Ayotzinapa when I wrote about the tragedy of September 26th, 2014 in my other blog. Our loose group of grassroots activists had the first online encounter with the normalistas from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers' College, who had 43 students go missing from Iguala, in the state of Guerrero, Mexico.  


So, as I have been saying for some time now — after the 43 students of Ayotzinapa were disappeared — and after the government tried to quiet the parents with bribes and threats and impunity and all sorts of bully tactics (which adjunct faculty know only too well!), some of the parents decided that the next step was to come to the United States to seek justice and awareness for their cause.


Some of the other parents decided to go to Europe, that way raising awareness worldwide.

The president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, came and went to the United States at the beginning of January to also ask for assistance for the opposite cause — to have us help him get his government back under his control. What kind of control would you call that when almost 10,000 deaths have been reported in his administration alone, even when Mexico was already rampant with dirty drug wars, crime, corruption?

Yet still the parents and remaining students persisted, as is their right.

"We want our children back: give us the truth! Vivos se los llevaron; vivos los queremos. Alive they were taken; alive we want them back."

In DC, on January 6th protesting Peña Nieto's visit to the United States
© Ana M. Fores Tamayo

    I went to DC when Peña Nieto was here at the beginning of January, and it seemed quite the farce, all the antics both governments played together. What have we come to when our government condones the actions of a corrupt regime? Are we in league with the devil? Are we the devil? Why are we so eager to downplay the obvious ties to an unscrupulous system, a narco-government that gives no value to human life?

One of the things I ponder as I look through all the photographs and videos of the parents of the disappeared, is how venerated these students have become, yet how human they still remain.

New Year, New Beginnings

The Maize God as Scribe: The Maya Book of the Dead. 
The Ceramic Codex, University of Virginia Art Museum 

A couple of months ago, I began to write about a metamorphisis taking place within me, and with Adjunct Justice.

"During the next few weeks, my transformation will continue; from words my metamorphosis will transcend to the visual, and our forum will rise as from the ashes, or it will be rediscovered, much like the Mayan codices are deciphered day by day." 

I said that my blog Adjunct Justice did not only apply to faculty, but it also related to so many more marginalized populations.

Because of this, I want to depict this transfiguration, and to envision that we are not part of an old world, but now we shape this new and changing society, where things are always in upheaval, though there are characteristics that may remain constant.

In the 17th through 18th centuries in the Yucatán, Mexico, there were discovered certain books -- Miscellanies -- that described the coming together of both Spanish and indigenous thought. These books seemed the perfect blend, using the Mayan language, yet also the Latin alphabet. People say these manuscripts were written by a man called Chilam Balam. He seemed to have mysterious powers, as a chilam was a priest who phophesied the future, while balam was the name given to a jaguar.

What kind of magical creature was this Chilam Balam, who embodied such conflicting traits, and what intuition did he have?