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The Depression hit bottom in 1931. More people were jobless there than in any other Nordic country. Unlike in the U.S., the Norwegian union movement kept the people thrown out of work as members, even though they couldn’t pay dues. This decision paid off in mass mobilizations. When the employers’ federation locked employees out of the factories to try to force a reduction of wages, the workers fought back with massive demonstrations.

via How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’ | The Indypendent.

It requires – and fosters – a broader class consciousness than a union system built wholly around those who currently retain employment. There may be wrinkles, administratively, in a developing this concept within a craft union model – not least, figuring out what it means to retain these unemployed members as workers? What is asked of them, what do they get out of it, and where do they fit into a system that has been built around a contract model?

Of course, the trade unions, with members who often work by the job, and retain union benefits and seniority between spates of employment, may provide some guidance. What might, for instance, teacher unions learn from this approach?

This strike, over waivers, which are a necessary element of making grad school accessible to those other than the wealthy (and, in Illinois, the well-connected), is clearly situated in a broader context of struggles over the future of public education, as recognized by Amy Goodman on today’sDemocracy Now!, where she was talking, in California, with some of those engaged in the struggle (with credit to Rich Potter of the GEO for making contact with Amy over this issue):

AMY GOODMAN: And Professor Roy, maybe you can comment on this and what is happening at the same time here at home with the state budgets, with our educational system. UC Berkeley is not the only one going through this. For example, the news from the University of Champaign-Urbana in Illinois: apparently, in this last week—let’s see if I can find the information—graduate teaching assistants at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign went on strike yesterday after the university refused to guarantee continuation of the teaching and grad assistant tuition waivers.

Strikes have many elements. There’s the ‘above the fold’ part, the most visible: the pickets, the rallies, and (in the case of the GEO) an amazing drum corps. There’s the bargaining: tedious, important in the formal process of getting an agreement that lets the strike come to an end. And then there’s so much background work. The people who planned and organized: both over the past months, and the many years of activism, work, and sacrifice that brought the union into being and made this week’s action possible, not only necessary. The people churning out press releases and materials, taking care of the administrative overhead and much more. Congratulations to my colleagues, my comrades, at the GEO, IFT/AFT 6300, for their success this week.

Graduate employees have been working without a contract since August, as the University offered regressive proposals in response to the union’s call for a living wage, protection for tuition waivers, and improved conditions for families. In recent meetings, as the threat of a strike has increased, the GEO has reached tentative agreements on a number of items, but the administration continues to refuse both a living wage and a guarantee that tuition waivers will continue to be a condition of employment. [The University tried to unilaterally remove waivers from those on 25% appointments earlier this year.]

Call Interim Provost Robert Easter and new BoT chair Christopher Kennedy this Wednesday, and urge them to reach a fair contract with the GEO. Then pass this message to colleagues and friends.

WHEN: Wednesday, November 11

WHERE TO CALL:
Interim Provost Easter: (217) 244-4545
Christopher Kennedy: (312) 527-7890 x7890

WHAT TO SAY:
It’s useful if you can put your message in your own words, but the following provides a basic template for you to use. (My text suggests leaving a message, but if you can talk directly with these men, even better.) Remember, what’s most important is that the message of support for the GEO position be communicated to administrators.

Hello, my name is __________. I’m a graduate of the University of Illinois, and I’d like to leave a message for [Provost Easter/Mr Kennedy.]

I want to urge him to reach a fair agreement with the Graduate Employees Organization, and ensure that graduate employees, who teach a quarter of classes at the University, receive a living wage.

Thank you.

OTHER POINTS YOU MAY WANT TO USE:
Graduate employees have voted for strike action, but there is still time to avoid that if the administration engages positively with the wage concerns of those employees.

The campus budget grew by 7% in FY09, but the percentage devoted to instruction grew by only 0.8%. I urge you to do everything in your power to ensure that the university lives up to its responsibilities as a land grant institution that serves the public good and is committed to high quality instruction and research.

The public higher education system has a responsibility to ensure accessibility to all. The GEO’s requests for  a living wage, secured tuition waivers, better health care, and better support for working parents, would increase access to graduate education and would also improve the quality of instruction and research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The technologies in use have changed through the years. When I started tallying, we collated the master tally on paper; within a few years, most parties were using Excel or similar. Sometimes someone would bring in a small portable television, and people of all parties would gather around it when there was a particularly momentous development relayed through RTÉ. In the last election or two there was an increasing amount of SMS messages and calls to friends in other count centres, as well as some activity on sites like politics.ie.

Fast-forward to this election, and how things have changed. Although I’m missing hanging out at the count, and the catching up with old friends that that entails, there’s been a constant stream of data online. I gather from disgruntled voices that RTÉ’s web presence has been far better than their (intermittent) broadcast coverage, so I’ve been able to keep up on the running totals of seats won by each party, and to drill down to individual councils if and when I desired.

Even better has been the coverage at IrishElection.com, where they’ve been collating a mix of twitter-style feeds and original content. Moderated, so none of the to-and-fro sniping and off-topic rambling you get on the more traditional web forums, but still with a bit of character to it. As Simon McGarr, in common with several others has noted, “it has outperformed any other source of information and original reporting in the entire country.” Pointers outward to various analyses of progress in different areas, or other bits and pieces. Also – and this brings us back to the technology issue – the feed includes pointers to Alexia Golez’s live video snippets from the Dublin count centre. Using Qik’s phone-to-web tool, she’s able to provide real-time streams of the results, which are then archived online. I leave the window open, and whenever she starts to ‘broadcast’ it starts up in my browser.

Between all of this, I’ve been able to keep a steady stream – or at least a steady drip – of information coming my way, and to have a mix of solid reports and the rumours and analysis that are such an integral part of the process. However, there’s only so much that the internet can do, which was why I was grateful to the friend who thought to call me late last night, after coming home from the Galway count (which finished around 3:30am), to give me an update from there, and share the free-ranging discussion and speculation that I was missing.

Some other thoughts:

• Some political junkies have complained about the lack of live coverage on RTÉ television, in particular, but also on the other broadcast outlets. I think there’s a role for more regular reports, but the play-by-play is mainly of interest to insiders and junkies, and will be of limited importance, compared to the final results, or the overall trends, once those results are finalized in a day or two. It seems reasonable to taper off the constant live coverage as the results from the counts turn to a trickle, while continuing to provide data on the web, or by SMS/twitter, as RTÉ, at least, has done.
• One shortcoming with the generally useful and comprehensive RTÉ data: they’re only reporting first count totals and candidate status (elected/eliminated) on the web, and then collating total party numbers by council and nationally. I don’t see why they couldn’t be including individual count totals (for the second and subsequent rounds) in their database, particularly since their reporters need to be listening to those numbers when they’re announced, in order to then report on who was elected or eliminated. It would allow those of us who want to drill down into the numbers to use the data for more sophisticated analysis, and build a pool of data that RTÉ could have available for future election coverage. The front end is fine, but I find myself wondering “why was that candidate eliminated?” and “how did those transfers scatter?” RTÉ, with their comprehensive coverage, are in a position to provide that information in a timely fashion.
• I should note that ElectionsIreland are now providing count-by-count updates for the European results. I’m guessing reporting the locals in real time was a bit beyond their reach yesterday. Another indication of what the organizations with paid staff can do, which the volunter-run spaces can’t….
• If RTÉ are the people who should be providing the comprehensive numbers, the web seems to be a better space for the analysis and speculation to thrive. It’s the junkies who want the ongoing coverage, and they are also often best placed to provide the speculation. Better that than constantly-revolving talking heads on TV (though the . A fair division of labour, it would seem to me….
• Counts have always been spaces where there’s been some interaction between the various political camps, as acquaintances (or even friends) who fall on different sides of the party line will often overcome those differences to swap updates and discuss campaigning experiences. That’s also the case in the online space, where activists are discussing updates in a shared space.

Of course, there’s also the substantive matter of the elections themselves. This looks to be a poor election for the left across Europe. We’ve seen a drop in support for PES parties over the past while, and that continues in this election.

Ireland looks to be an exception. Even though Ireland drops from 15 to 12 MEPs, we’re going to go from 1 Labour/PES representative (de Rossa in Dublin) to at least two (Childers in Ireland East), and possibly a third (my old Labour Youth colleague, Alan Kelly, in Ireland South). That last result depends on whether Alan can stay ahead of Toireasa Ferris of Sinn Féin – he was 500 behind her after the first count but is already 300 ahead after the second (thanks ElectionsIreland!). Given that they’re both on around 66,000 votes, and the quota’s over 124,000, there’s still a long slog to go, but I’m optimistic.

Joe Higgins, Socialist Party candidate, looks likely to take a seat in Dublin, and unseat Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald. Four seats out of twelve for the Left/centre-Left is good for Ireland. Fianna Fáil have had a bad election, dropping from 300 local council seats to something around 200 (196 at time of writing, with 67 still to be declared). The seat gains have been split fairly evenly between Fine Gael and Labour, though Labour is still sitting in third place, at 125 as I write. Fianna Fáil will also likely end up with 3 MEPs, tied with Labour and behind Fine Gael.

Declan Ganley, US defense contractor, and founder of the Libertas rag-tag band of reactionary candidates, is polling better than one might hope in Ireland North-West, but still looks out of the running for a seat. Looks like that will stay with the same 1FF/1FG/1IND split, though with a personnel change in Fianna Fáil that will necessitate a by-election sometime soon, if there isn’t a general election in the interim.

Speculation in some quarters that the Greens might pull the plug on the government, after a disastrous showing – they’re sitting at 3 council seats, down from 18 after the 2004 election. I don’t see that happening. They’re so tied into the government’s fortunes that they would be annihilated in a general election. More sensible from their perspective was Ó Brolcháin’s call for FG and Labour to make a proposal to the Greens for them to pull out of government, and create an alternative coalition without having to go for an election, though I’m not sure I see that happening either. It’s worth remembering that we’re heading into the summer months, and once we reach the Autumn, any parliamentary developments will require fresh events to provide impetus for the Greens to pull out of government, or whatever other changes we see.

I got in a little late – no surprise – but caught the talk from the Reclaim the Media speaker, Karen Toering, who talked about their use of events (film screenings, parties, play dates for parents) to draw in those who might not otherwise attend a ‘meeting.’ Just as I heard at last week’s AGEL conference (where grad union leaders met in Urbana) the reminder to capture names at each event seems very basic, but is a key point to building a network of activists and supporters. Leveraging links to established groups – building on their capacity and networks – is of course a delicate political balance on occasion (how do you reach out to those networks, in a way that’s seen as mutually beneficial, which relies I think on getting ‘buy-in’ from leaders and gatekeepers, so that they will grant access to mailing lists, or to speak at meetings, etc.).

The Q&A session at the moment is addressing the complicated question of how to mesh radical activists with more moderate participants within a single network. Again, links to other organizing in the response, as mention is made of the Gay Rights movement, where direct action and lobbying both played roles, even if different participants prioritized different events.

Tracy from The Media Mobilization Project had some great quotables. Noting the seeming paradox of almost unlimited potential for expression online paired with increased media consolidation: [This is] “ultimately making the right to be head more important than the right to free speech.” Her closing riposte: “Movements begin with the telling of untold stories.”

To which I would note that the organizing approach is all about listening to those stories, encouraging individuals to tell their stories to each other, and to use those stories to identify desired changes and actions.

Take Your Blog to the Airwaves – There is always at least one low powered community radio station near you. Take your blog and blog’s topic(s) to the local radio station and see if they have any slots open for you to have your own radio show based around your blog. Even if you can’t get on the local radio station, there are satellite stations that will broadcast your podcast.

Now, they’re a little optimistic in suggesting that LPFM is everywhere, and from my perspective I’d see community radio and online communication as mutually beneficial means of furthering substantive projects (rather than radio as a space for promoting a blog), but the notion of integrating community radio with other activism is something that, if not new or particularly innovative, does not reach ‘top 10′ lists of means of getting a message out as often as one might expect.

There is, of course, a challenge here for community radio stations. While writing this post I returned to my 1988 copy of ‘A Voice for Everyone” – a handbook from the Irish NACB – which stresses the role of on-air staff as facilitators rather than self-promoting personalities. Of course, the reality of community radio in practice is far more complex, and the manner in which community radio volunteers relate to their communities varies tremendously. Still, just as we often take steps to diffuse self-aggrandizement on air – at WRFU we require that people be part of a programming group of at least 2 people, both to provide redundancy and to place broadcasting within a cooperative framework – we should be aware to the risks associated with an individual using a show simply for promotion of their private interests.

As an example of the ‘synergy’ that can be generated from interaction between community radio and other activism, I need only point to my own show on WRFU, which I co-host with local activist Bob Naiman. Naiman works with Just Foreign Policy and we frequently use the show to draw attention to topics identified by that group, as well as local labour issues (Bob is also involved with Jobs with Justice, and I of course am involved with GEO and the local Central Labor Council). Of course, we see our discussion as growing out of our community and activist involvement, but the need to reflect on the goals of the show (and its benefit to the community, broadly construed) is, I think, constant.