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Fellow Scholars and Workers:
1. Can anyone speak to the issue of presenting the problems covered in this journal to a convention of the Democratic Party, at either the state or national level? 2. The first article I read in 2:1 was Antony Dugdale's report from Yale. He asserts, and I agree, that the Yale Corporation, to achieve its purely financial aims, depends on keeping Graduate Labor invisible. Graduate Labor is invisible--to undergraduates, their tuition-paying parents, to faculty and administrators who don't want to see it, and to the public at large. Soenke Zehle from SUNY wrote about organizing with the community "beyond campus borders." I was especially impressed by Zehle's thoughtful discussion of the limits of the student-as-worker identity, and his unwillingness to give up on an idea of the student-as-member-of-the-community. 3. I think Grad-Labor could raise its profile in local communities by asserting its values in a national political organization. And I think we should try to do this. The Democratic Party has many members who might be in sympathy with our goals, but don't have any idea how "our issues" are their issues too. Zehle's article made me think of all the graduate students I know who devote so much time and energy to more nationally prominent Left/Liberal causes, like civil rights and reproductive freedom, all the while fighting their Grad Labor battles and living on a meager TA salary. 4. Cynthia Young wrote from Binghamton about the Republican Governor's desire to see tenured faculty retire in order to save money. Gary Zabel and Harry Brill recounted Republican candidate Cellucci's attempt in Boston to look like he was in support of workers on a picket line in order to pick up Democratic votes. I think that many in Graduate-Labor organizations would agree that those in the Republican/Right are generally our political opponents. So why not make common cause with our "enemy's enemy?" 5. I was pleased to read gregory Bezkorovainy's report from the MLA in which he stated that the organization will "draft model bills for distribution to municipal, state, provincial, and federal legislators, the media, and other higher-education professional organizations." Yet to my knowledge no attempt to bring graduate student labor and unionization issues to the attention of that national political party which identifies itself as a friend of increased educational spending, and of the labor movement, has ever been attempted. Has such an attempt has been considered by groups like those whose activities were covered in the previous issue of Workplace? What conclusions were reached? 6. I would not be surprised if members of the various graduate student labor groups held the belief that the Democrats, at the levels of true party power, are not really friends of Education, Labor, or the Left. I have sometimes thought so. But I think the Democratic Party may represent a cultural space where those who control many of the financial resources of academia have a vital stake and might be confronted effectively, and, thinking again of Dugdale's comment, VISIBLY. If mainstream Democrats are willing to fight for quality education, the right to organize, and a fair wage, they would support Graduate Labor in word and deed, and we would have allies. If they say they are, but reveal that they aren't, then at least hypocrisy would have another risk to recommend against it. Yours Very Truly, Virginia Schattman 6220 Locke Avenue
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