Red Emma Rocks On

In good company at the New York Historical Museum. Photo by Louis Tonkovich. 

Red has been spotted around town lately, with and without his post-brain surgery beret.  Some may have seen him at UCI, others at IVC where this week he joined the denizens of the LA building in celebrating the imminent arrival of somebody's twins.  Lots to celebrate lately. It's all good as the kids say. Huzzah! Rock on.

When we last took note of Red on the blog, it was to note UCI's capitulation to his demand for paid leave and benefits. (Thanks for all the signatures, cards, letters, etc. Solidarity forever, baby.)  Now, a couple months later, here's the latest, courtesy of his union, CFT/AFT:

How one career lecturer’s medical crisis is helping others win paid sick leave

"The victory for Andrew,” she [Mia McIver] says, “immediately had wider effects and teaching faculty on other campuses in similar situations were able to secure paid medical leave. Much of the credit for the momentum goes to Andrew himself, who spent decades building relationships as a teacher and organizer. This shows that, when we put those relationships at the core of our union work, they can transform into positive changes.”

Telling, Not Being the Joke

Q: Tell me, how long have you been working here?
A: Ever since they threatened to fire me.
That old cornball joke still makes me laugh, 50 years after I read it in a kids magazine. I understood it then as honest if everyday acknowledgement by the presumably once-lazy worker of his or her required acquiescence to power, and of isolation. But its splendid trick syntax and on-the-nose calling out of the coercive relationship of management to labor suggested more, even to a 10-year-old: cognizance of at least the potential inherent power of the worker — all workers? — to apprehend, to subvert, to jest, however fatalistically, cynically or — my own favorite — insubordinately.

Rock on.