Unionizing issues: Self-conception of the Organizers.

The national union who's providing advice is giving us training, but it's the weekend before orientation, which is too late to revise the lit and get everyone "on message" for a big event.

I emailed the national union liaison, and stated my understanding of messaging, which she confirmed (I had listened carefully to her at the one strategy session she appeared at): you have one message of "would students be better off unionizing?", and everyone just has to agree on that, and you have a savvy face-to-face campaign that unites people around that.

But, as much as I'm trying to get people to think communications now, there's 2 members of the committee that have personal issues bound up in unionization, and they're trying to get that out there.

One is a self-styled student activist who came in under the new financial aid package (5 years at $19,000!) but wants to stick it to the admin, and wants to have everyone agree on that. He uses really inflammatory language, and makes a point of saying we're a "democratic" organization and "open to all voices", but I never feel like he listens to me when he talks, and usually it means that he wants to say what he wants using the organization as a platform... He doesn't seem to realize that unionizing and self-expression can be two values that can be at cross-purposes.

He's also a short, balding, kind of fat gay guy who's out to lunch and has inadequacy issues with being an academic... He's also also researching queer activism in another country - a tell-tale sign of trouble, b/c you can tell he's caught up in activisism as a self-conception, but will bear no real consequences if it fails (much like white liberals who were blase on health care; I wish I knew how to put the little accent mark over the last e in "blase").

He also gets caught up in organizing small stuff (e.g. discounts for union members at local restaurants!), but tries to put me off on the agenda when I schedule important stuff (e.g. do we have a coherent communications strategy).

The other guy is the son of profs but is all about being a "unionizer". He points out that our logos are "traditional union logos" (that use a shark), and he wants to sing union songs and talk about solidarity, but he doesn't realize that people find it weird and classist.

So, I had a conversation at the OrgComm (=Organizing Committee; I'm on it) meeting about postive and negative impressions about the union. The long-term members themselves came up with stereotypes, including:

- divisive/confrontational/aggressive.

- radical/Trotskyite.

- privileged complainers pretending to be hamburger slingers.

I thought it was helpful, but the chubby ugly gay dude wrote up the minutes and he had this in there:

How much should we raise ‘admin’ which sounds confrontational? Should we avoid mentioning it?

[the fat ugly gay dude's name, writing in the 3rd person]: but we do need to convince everyone that the administration is bad. We don’t need to go to the center, we need to move the center towards us.

The worst part is that he went on this emotional rant and talked over me, and he's not invested in the struggle, and he's leaving for anthro fieldwork in the winter, so he can fuck things up and just waltz out!

I think I will -

- talk to an ally on the committee and maybe a neutral member to see their impressions of the meeting.

- remember that we seemed to have consensus that literature is a neutral starting point.

- keep the long-term goal in mind of making sure angry rhetoric doesn't enter into meetings for incoming students, or any meetings at all.

- remember that I should wait until the AFT-IFT people talk, because maybe they have ideas.

Perhaps I was foolish for prematurely raising the issue and forcing the fat ugly gay dude into this public stance, but I needed to have some sort of messaging consensus to revise the literature!