“Occupy Education” shuts down University of California Santa Cruz, but John Dwyer thinks you can change the world every day, in the simplest of ways.
Just when it seemed that the Occupy Movement dropped off the radar, it squeaks out a little more life, this time acting as the “squeaky wheel” in education policy. The Occupy Wall Street Movement has endorsed an Occupy Education movement, and shut down most of the University of California Santa Cruz. Occupy Education had supporters across the spectrum, but it seems so far to be primarily California based.
This continues California’s trend of being the main bastion of the Occupy Movement within education. You might remember in November the clash at UC Davis which got sticky, or maybe you merely remember the meme it spawned.
While I still have trouble with the efficacy of the Occupy Movement in all its memetic variations, there is much to protest within education. Whether you’re seeking employment or education, not being able to find it makes you question your self-worth as a man (or woman!) – an issue I have personally been struggling with since returning from overseas work with Peace Corps.
And even those who have work, here I will use the group I have the most familiarity with – teachers – aren’t getting paid commensurate to the work they do. For many employees, salaries reflect how much they are worth to their employers. Why then, is education any different? You have to attract talent, not depend on some mythical calling.
To tie this together, the Occupy Movement is once again showing its utility in highlighting issues that are in danger of falling to the wayside as contraception and other issues take center stage in the GOP primaries. Sadly, though, like a meme, the Movement is doing little beyond simply grabbing attention.
Excuse the inner hippy in me coming out, but if you want to take a small step today, go out and take action. My small plug: yesterday, March 1st, was Peace Corps Day, exactly 50 years since Kennedy took action and signed the executive order creating the organization. We’re all dealing with self-worth anxieties, so go out and tell a teacher how much you appreciate him/her, or find a Volunteer and thank them for spreading peace without an M-16. If Occupation is getting us nowhere, it’s time to change tactics and show a little love.
Photo: Ray Abrams/AP
About John Dwyer
The students at UC Santa Cruz have some unusual flexibility in their coursework, so they may be better able to protest than students in other schools. The UCSC grading system does not use the standard number or letter grades, so don’t expect too many students to be risking F’s by spending time protesting and not studying. I have no doubt that some of those protestors are able to work their political activities into class assignments and possibly even get class credit for it. Don’t assume that political protest at UCSC is very nonconformist or academically very risky. Far from it.
Peter.
As regards teaching, my wife is a retired teacher, my DIL and her two sisters and mother are or were teachers,as is my daughter. So was my mother.
Do the math. Salary plus gold-plated benefits in our state, MI, amount to a goodly piece of change. So much so that many states are looking at not having the money, since the wink/nod negotiations didn’t involve funding future obligations as actual corporations are supposed to do.
Given my wife’s dedication and talent, she was underpaid. Given the same of some of her colleagues and some of my kids’ teachers, they were overpaid.
Unlike, as somebody said, a hamburger joint that can be closed down for making somebody sick, neither schools or teachers suffer under that accountability.
Second math problem: If a school is spending a not-uncommon $10k per kid, then a classroom of thirty kids generates $300,000. Presume the teacher is getting $45k in salary and $15k in costs for benefits. Where’s the other $240,000?
I was on campus in the Sixties and watched various demonstrations. No idea what the goal was, for the most part, outside of provoking police reactions. Stop the war. End final exams. Free tuition. Free marijuana.
Tantrums do not a coherent message or program make.
Richard, in your opinion how should a large group of people organize to best make an impression on their elected leaders when they see grave injustices, either financial or militaristic? Because what I see are people who vote, people who sign petitions, write letters and are aware that the power of multinational corporations that influence how lobbying works in the US political system are not going to listen and change without some level of radical action.
Perhaps Occupy isn’t the best way. Then what is?
“Perhaps Occupy isn’t the best way. Then what is?…write letters and are aware that the power of multinational corporations that influence how lobbying works in the US political system are not going to listen and change without some level of radical action.”
Vote for Ron Paul. Seriously. You have a democracy…use it. Don’t vote for the incumbent.
I am not a big believer in “radical” actions. And I don’t believe in the intelligence of crowds. Crowds and mobs are stupid as shit. Mao’s cultural evolution was radical. Hitler was radical. Enough. I prefer the thoughful to the radical.
The unfortunate fact for the UCSC protest is that has been stirred up and organized by one of the on-campus employee unions. While in principal I agree with many of the issues the protestors are addressing, the unfortunate truth is is that they are being used by the unions for contract negotiations. The simple truth is, is that there is no money. And the greedy and powerful (banks, corporations, unions), are playing all of us as pawns to ensure they do not lose the power and control they once had/have. I would happily join their ranks if I knew I wasn’t being used by a larger organization to solidify their own existence.
I wanted to chime in on what Julie said, because I think at the heart of your question is the seed of the answer. Occupy has been an interesting (not placing value, good or bad here) start to the conversation of middle and lower income issues. As with any conversation, you can get “talked out,” and the next step is action.
Some Vietnam era protests were equally disjointed and fruitless. The “teach-ins” and marches raised awareness, but results happen through actions, or even inactions that then impede actions you are protesting.
Here is an interesting timeline of the protests, and I think you can draw conclusions from what actions are taken when over 52% of the population polls against the war, both what actions are taken by protestors and what actions are taken by authorities.
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/life_09.html
“Some Vietnam era protests were equally disjointed and fruitless. The “teach-ins” and marches raised awareness, but results happen through actions, or even inactions that then impede actions you are protesting.”
Fruitful in what sense? You talk about change but to what? Something better or something much worse. This is one of the problems I have with the protest movement. The second is the reflexively left wing stance. But this leaves me cold because I am NOT left wing. So the occupy movement isn’t something I support or something that reflects my thinking.
One thing I have never understood about the left. Shouldn’t the failure of communism have provoked some sort of a rethink? I mean it seems like lefties just kept going as if nothing happened. Left wing regimes have been disasterous world wide.
There are also White Power activists who support radical change. They also hate political lobbyists and are trying to fight against what they perceive as injustice. What is the difference between them and the Occupy movement? Ultimately its all about the end results they are trying to get.
But is the end result better than what we have now? This is the real question and its seems to me the article writer presumes the answer without really giving any argument for it.
Organize? First, you need a thought. Yelling “banksters”, or “wall street” isn’t a message. Recember who bailed those people out. Where did Tim Geithner go after confessing Turbotax was too much for him?
See Gibson Guitar. Six months, no charges. Their CEO was unwise enough to give to republicans, while the major competition’s CEO was a dem donor.
Here’s the deal: The more the government can do, the more it can do. And some of it you might not like. You may think that the government is going to use the new tool wisely, or at least only screw people you don’t like. But it’s a machine, controlled by whomever gets hold of the levers. This is a lesson activists never learn.
It isn’t a matter of controlling who gets hold of the levers. It’s a mattter of the machine existing in the first place.
Obama and company bailed out the UAW, stiffing the bondholders who, under bankruptcy law, are supposed to come first. This means bonds carry an additional risk, that the feds might decide that laws don’t apply, and so issued bonds will require higher interest rates to cover investors for the risk that some political shenanigans might cost them their money, loaned in good faith and with confidence in the law. That means it’s harder or more expensive for businesses to raise capital, to expand and to employ more people.
Hell of a price to pay for geting the taxpayers to pay off Obama’s constituency.
Bankruptcies can be orderly. See American Airlines. GM and Chrysler–is the latter owned by Fiat? I forget–could possibly have come through this without bail outs, without breaking laws having to do with bondholders and bankruptcies. But that wouldn’t have bought Obama his union loyalty. Which he may lose anyway. I gather the Volt production has shut down and 1300 are laid off. So those Volts which have not yet burst into flame will probably not have spare parts, or much company on the road. Whose idea was the Volt?
A simple example. There are more.
The other thing is for the OWS folks to recall that, for the most part, they’re semi-educated kids who know something less than half of jacksquat about very much at all and their belly rumbles do not a coherent, or practical, or feasible, or moral program make. They are not our best and brightest. They are still in the stage where they should contemplate that there are people who might well be listened to, even if they disagree.
Oh, yeah. And for PR purposes, they could pick up after themselves like the Tea Party does.
Few thoughts about how occupy could make something of itself:
Organisation: This is a no brainer, the leaderless non-hierarchical model isn’t working. I really think its possible to delegate and specialise while still remaining fundamentally democratic. If it isn’t, we’re all screwed anyway because their ideas will still have to be scaled up to 6 bn people.
Tent cities: Get rid of them. The tents, the toilets, the cooking shacks, the barricades, the fences, take them all down. Apart from the psychological them/us divide that they create, these protests are taking place right in the middle of cities with millions of beds, toilets and kitchens but very few public and green spaces. There’s no need to annex the few that are left, which brings me to my next point:
Sustainable protest: Permanent vigils have a strong protest value. They create a real sense of dedication and sacrafice. This is eradicated when the protesters try to bring their home comforts to the protest. Occupy would be thoudsands of times more effective if the protesters did their thing on a rota, maintaining a constant and unobtrusive vigil working in shifts which still allowed public access to the spaces they’re using. This would also remove the argument that they’re “professional protests” and allow regular people with jobs and families to take part.
Hell, if they did all that I’d give them a few hours.
*by unobtrusive I don’t mean invisible, I mean that the protest should allow other people to use the space.
Peter.
All good advice. I note you didn’t suggest having a coherent message. Maybe that’s a toughie, better left for another day.
I’d file that under organisation.
If they can’t decide what they stand for and what they want then there really isn’t much point in camping.