No more unionizing for me.

At least for now.

I went to the formal communications training, which was great. It made me realize that all the communications stuff I've been thinking about (e.g. fliers) is actually a step 2 or 3 question, and the student union is at step 1 (=gathering lists of students in different depts. to enter into a database so you can keep track of who is how committed, just like for a political campaign since, after all, your ultimate goal is to turn them out for a union election).

But, it also made me realize that we have to depend on active listening, and the core group of 3-4 people can't even state why they make the conversations I'd be having harder by all their angry rhetoric, which is very counter-productive in my dept., and I'm not sure that productive overall.

I also brought that up at length with the real union people, as well as what kind of stuff we need on our agenda, since I felt the student union's decisions were a little whack (e.g. they'd prioritize stuff like write letters to mayoral candidates for support, but never do charting exercises to figure out with which depts. we have links!).

Afterwards, I realized I was doing that because I wanted to the real union people to serve as a referee since the student union people weren't really listening to my complaints... I realized that when the chubby-ass gay dude was listing off the points I had put down as stuff to talk about, and he completely summarized them from some whack perspective, though he's always spouting off rhetoric about active listening and being pro-active and having a place for everyone etc.

So, I decided not to participate for now, since if the main people can't even listen to me, how can they successfully have the conversations that will allow the group to expand?

I feel bad since the real union people seemed to like me, even when I was asking them challenging questions about organizing (they pushed back, and convinced me that a lot of what I thought wasn't right for right now! - how refreshing to have a substantive discussion), and the real union lady said to take it on faith and have these conversations, and that's what'll convince people if you have a real conversation and the rest of the bullshit is secondary and can be done later and you'll never have a perfect flier anyhow ("I can tell that you're a fixer," she was like, "And I am too"), but oh well, I can't sink time into what seems right now like a losing organization.

It's really funny, there's this Egyptian-from-Egypt masters student from my program who wears a veil covering all her hair and a long dress always but is really radical, and comes to meetings to observe since she wants to help unionize in the Middle East. I always thought that was cool, but she seemed to be going with the flow always, and to tell the truth, that struck me as a little naive.

But, after the real union training, me and her had a heart-to-heart, and she had pretty much the same impressions I had.

"Do you think that they are not actually a union, but students that the administration planted in order to create confusion and dissension and prevent true resistance?", she was like. "I know that seems crazy, but I am from the Middle East, that happens all the time there."