Workers of the world pt. 4
There are many chants one may offer during a protest. Many.
There's "no contract, no peace", the whole "wherever we go, people want to know"; there's "When I say Students you say first. Students! First!," "Hey hey, ho ho. Romly's plan has got to go!" and so on and so forth. But each of them has their merits and flaws.
For instance, in a circle of 30 people, there really are only about 4 real chant leaders and they will be expected to do all the work. A chant like "When I say students you say first!" is a grueling ordeal after only a few iterations. "No Contract, no peace" is better but it requires variation, which implies imagination, hard to muster when you've been walking around a circle for three hours. "No contract, No peace! No Healthcare, No peace! No Fair wages, No peace!" Inevitably the chant would start stuttering. "No contract, no peace. No contract, no peace. No uhmmm....health care, no peace!" No, if you want to keep up a wall of sound, you need to have community involvement on every syllable. Keep it symbol, keep it repetitive, keep it up. You don't disrupt the university with a tamborine. You need a bullhorn.
And we had a bullhorn. Josh is a great guy and he walks out into the middle of our circle and he begins to belt out his message of unity, but a minute later, some minion of a minion came out and took his bullhorn away. Took it away! That's what happens when you get a union of intellectuals--no brick bats, no arm and arm lines of defense. The powers that be need only send down the janitors to take away your bullhorn. I thought, 'what we need is a cadre of goons dressed all in camo.' But we didn't have any cadres. We had no major domos. There was no Hoffa to lead the rally. Only us intellectuals walking in a circle and rather than being overcome with our solidarity, being intellectuals, we were all questioning our rhetoric.
Some people were wondering why we were walking in a circle on an empty campus in the first place. Others didn't understand the central message of our chants. There were quite a few who wondered out of the circle to have a smoke and never came back. There was a little letter writing enclave off to the side and due to its nature as writing, it attracted English people slowly away from the circle itself. Some people showed up early, others late. No one was really sure what it was that we were trying to accomplish beyond shutting down the school. I think I should be included among the latter group. No one was going to classes who didn't have a midterm that day, what did it matter of a bunch of English grad students walked in a circle. Make the administration walk around and count empty classrooms. I walked for an hour and my feet were tired. Other's complained of blisters.
But let's get this straight, if we made a mistake in what we decided to do after we had demolished the school's business as usual, that's minor compared to the fact that we stopped our school from operating for a day. Walking in a circle may have been a waste of our time--it may not have been, but we sure as shit proved that the school operates because we, the 2,000 or so grad students (each with about 24 students in our classes) decide that it will operate. And that ultimately was the point of all this. It wasn't whether or not we could get more than 40 people walking in a circle.
Besides, we managed to walk in our circle in front of one gaggle of parents touring the school to determine whether their children should come there next year. That may have been worth all that lame chanting.
At noon, we all walked down by the pond (no boat in sight) and had a free lunch while hacky sack players hackeyed and a band played and some stuff was said on a bullhorn. We were given an update on our union's progress, all of which sounded good, and we were finally able to see all the grad students who had been marching in circles elsewhere on campus or who had shown up at noon for a free hotdog and a band. There was probably about a thousand of us.
I found Jed at that point and asked him about what was going on with the cops. He was in a hurry, being the V.P. of all this, but he did have time to answer me. There was a police acadamy graduation down at the Mullins Center. What I had seen was the future of Massachusetts State Trooper-hood. The vehicles were a display for the visitors. The tank/tractor/snow plow would not be coming up the hill to bust up our fun. In fact, the state troopers are union and so they supported what we were doing (so long as we kept off the grass).
I will say this though. There were a 1,000 people out on that grass. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people who saw all the cop cars and kept on up that hill to walk in their circle and yell stupid slogans sans bullhorn. I'm imagining that for everyone who showed, there had to be another person who decided they didn't want their heads cracked that day and went back home, and each of us have 24 students.
I am a member of the union, but unlike my gung ho brethren, I'm a little more realistic. To convince the administration that they should give us a raise, and not take away our benifits (which is really what this thing's about after all; we're not asking for more, we just don't want stuff taken away), the banter and the walking in circles isn't necessary. If I'm right with my figures (and I'm pretty sure I am), we hold between 24,000 and 48,000 grades in our hands. That alone should say "don't fuck with us." That's the grades of graduating seniors and students who's parents will call administrators should they be unhappy with their child's grades. That's a lot of reasons not to come to UMass-Amherst should the graduate students be forced to flex their muscles.
In the end, you don't have to shout, "no contract, no peace." The reality of our shutting down the school for the day should be enough to deliver this message. I'm actually somewhat confused why the administration would force these kinds of negotiations. They're forcing action by the very people who make their university run and he need really only flex their muscles to shut the whole thing down.
There's "no contract, no peace", the whole "wherever we go, people want to know"; there's "When I say Students you say first. Students! First!," "Hey hey, ho ho. Romly's plan has got to go!" and so on and so forth. But each of them has their merits and flaws.
For instance, in a circle of 30 people, there really are only about 4 real chant leaders and they will be expected to do all the work. A chant like "When I say students you say first!" is a grueling ordeal after only a few iterations. "No Contract, no peace" is better but it requires variation, which implies imagination, hard to muster when you've been walking around a circle for three hours. "No contract, No peace! No Healthcare, No peace! No Fair wages, No peace!" Inevitably the chant would start stuttering. "No contract, no peace. No contract, no peace. No uhmmm....health care, no peace!" No, if you want to keep up a wall of sound, you need to have community involvement on every syllable. Keep it symbol, keep it repetitive, keep it up. You don't disrupt the university with a tamborine. You need a bullhorn.
And we had a bullhorn. Josh is a great guy and he walks out into the middle of our circle and he begins to belt out his message of unity, but a minute later, some minion of a minion came out and took his bullhorn away. Took it away! That's what happens when you get a union of intellectuals--no brick bats, no arm and arm lines of defense. The powers that be need only send down the janitors to take away your bullhorn. I thought, 'what we need is a cadre of goons dressed all in camo.' But we didn't have any cadres. We had no major domos. There was no Hoffa to lead the rally. Only us intellectuals walking in a circle and rather than being overcome with our solidarity, being intellectuals, we were all questioning our rhetoric.
Some people were wondering why we were walking in a circle on an empty campus in the first place. Others didn't understand the central message of our chants. There were quite a few who wondered out of the circle to have a smoke and never came back. There was a little letter writing enclave off to the side and due to its nature as writing, it attracted English people slowly away from the circle itself. Some people showed up early, others late. No one was really sure what it was that we were trying to accomplish beyond shutting down the school. I think I should be included among the latter group. No one was going to classes who didn't have a midterm that day, what did it matter of a bunch of English grad students walked in a circle. Make the administration walk around and count empty classrooms. I walked for an hour and my feet were tired. Other's complained of blisters.
But let's get this straight, if we made a mistake in what we decided to do after we had demolished the school's business as usual, that's minor compared to the fact that we stopped our school from operating for a day. Walking in a circle may have been a waste of our time--it may not have been, but we sure as shit proved that the school operates because we, the 2,000 or so grad students (each with about 24 students in our classes) decide that it will operate. And that ultimately was the point of all this. It wasn't whether or not we could get more than 40 people walking in a circle.
Besides, we managed to walk in our circle in front of one gaggle of parents touring the school to determine whether their children should come there next year. That may have been worth all that lame chanting.
At noon, we all walked down by the pond (no boat in sight) and had a free lunch while hacky sack players hackeyed and a band played and some stuff was said on a bullhorn. We were given an update on our union's progress, all of which sounded good, and we were finally able to see all the grad students who had been marching in circles elsewhere on campus or who had shown up at noon for a free hotdog and a band. There was probably about a thousand of us.
I found Jed at that point and asked him about what was going on with the cops. He was in a hurry, being the V.P. of all this, but he did have time to answer me. There was a police acadamy graduation down at the Mullins Center. What I had seen was the future of Massachusetts State Trooper-hood. The vehicles were a display for the visitors. The tank/tractor/snow plow would not be coming up the hill to bust up our fun. In fact, the state troopers are union and so they supported what we were doing (so long as we kept off the grass).
I will say this though. There were a 1,000 people out on that grass. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people who saw all the cop cars and kept on up that hill to walk in their circle and yell stupid slogans sans bullhorn. I'm imagining that for everyone who showed, there had to be another person who decided they didn't want their heads cracked that day and went back home, and each of us have 24 students.
I am a member of the union, but unlike my gung ho brethren, I'm a little more realistic. To convince the administration that they should give us a raise, and not take away our benifits (which is really what this thing's about after all; we're not asking for more, we just don't want stuff taken away), the banter and the walking in circles isn't necessary. If I'm right with my figures (and I'm pretty sure I am), we hold between 24,000 and 48,000 grades in our hands. That alone should say "don't fuck with us." That's the grades of graduating seniors and students who's parents will call administrators should they be unhappy with their child's grades. That's a lot of reasons not to come to UMass-Amherst should the graduate students be forced to flex their muscles.
In the end, you don't have to shout, "no contract, no peace." The reality of our shutting down the school for the day should be enough to deliver this message. I'm actually somewhat confused why the administration would force these kinds of negotiations. They're forcing action by the very people who make their university run and he need really only flex their muscles to shut the whole thing down.
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
9:47 AM
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