Time for Bob Lonsberry to be replaced

It’s really time for Lonsberry to go

 Rochester is plagued by racial tensions deep seated inequality and persistent poverty. It has one of the highest concentrations of poverty in the nation, a high rate of childhood poverty and a history of maltreatment of racial minorities. The gap between the richest suburbs and urban poverty are vast. Yet throughout much of its history elite Rochesterians and today suburbanites have had an air of superiority. In the title of the famous book by Curt Gerling.  The old Rochester is a Smugtown. Its leadership has little use for the working folks of Rochester

Unfortunately local Rochester broadcast media haven't been of much constructive use in helping Rochesterians address and understand the problems it faces. News here is mostly infotainment, Remember back in the 80's and 90's when Rochester was shedding jobs the media promoted happy talk and a Pollyanna mentality. I remember news features like positively Rochester trumpeting all the good things about our area and telling people prosperity was just behind the next door, These pieces were not news but civic boosterism and entertainment, Their job was not too inform but to distract and avoid the real social and economic issues

In the meantime the middle class was disappearing and poverty rising, Sometimes negativity, if it is based in reality is a good thing, It forces one to act to change the situation or to do something constructive, But for the elite of Rochester, negativity was not desired. It was bad for business, and any though the masses of Rochester folk might start to want change was scary as hell.

There is of course a dark underside to the happy talk. It doesn't really convince anyone, but acts as a form of official censorship again critical thinking. People who aren't happy in Rochester are told they don't have a case and left out of the conversation.

Still someone or somebody has to be to blame for our discomfort and distress and the poor and minorities make a great scapegoat. Personally I have never met a poor person who laid off several thousand people, moved a plant to a foreign country or gave one his crony friends a sweet government job or a no bid contract, yet the poor  became the target of the and tool a lot of blame for the country's woes.

Rochester has sunk a long way in its racial attitudes. Once the home of Frederick Douglas and other abolitionists, and an important stop on the underground railroad the greater Rochester area has become its opposite, a hotbed of racial intolerance. A recent article I read found that upstate New York was one of the areas with the greatest indications or racist attitudes. I don’t really know the whole story of how Rochester turned away from its abolitionist heritage, but one part of the story has to include Rochester’s patron saint George Eastman, He thought that African Americans did not have the intelligence and discipline to work at Kodak and hired few if any at his burgeoning industrial complex. This refusal was one among many reasons (police brutality was another) fueling the race riots in the early 60’e that shook staid Rochester to its core.  Despite some reform efforts racism and its partner economic inequality

The rise of hate radio has played a large role in creating this climate of blame. Figures like Rush Limbaugh arose and targeted liberal ideas and vulnerable people or groups like feminists and gays who are seem to threaten the conservative values.

Originally the media were seen as public property. No one owns the airways. Licenses for radio and broadcast TV are not ownership of the frequency but groups are granted use of a frequency based on the public interest. To be sure that notion of the public interest was never very well developed or realized but it did provide a small bulwark against the worst offences through the fairness doctrine and the notion that broadcasters had to provide coverage of controversial public issues. Even this weak public interest standard along with a number of others was eliminated in during the Reagan administration and the deregulation continued under Clinton, THe argument was basically economic. The fairness doctrine had according to this argument been based on the scarcity of frequencies. The limited number of frequencies limited competition necessitating regulation. But the expanded number of outlets along with cable (at the time later the internet would be invoked) created an abundance of outlets thus cancelling the need for regulation. Of course the fallacy of this argument is apparent. It doesn’t matter if there are an expanded number of channels if they are controlled by just a few people and if ordinary folk don’t have the resources the capacity or the influence to use them. As deregulation increased the limitation on the number of stations one company could own in a market were lifted and the number of total stations a corporation could own giant conglomerates like Clear Channel were able to own thousands of stations nationwide and localism in radio declined, and as localism declined so did diversity both in opinion and in ownership. Few women or minorities were represented in ownership and on the air. THe rise of talk radio would have been impossible without the deregulation that left the fairness doctrine in abeyance. Otherwise every time a Rush Limbaugh went on a diatribe about liberalism feminazis or Obama a station would have to grant equal time to those discussed. We shouldn’t think either that talkers like Rush stepped in and got an immediate audience, They were creations of the market power of the large conglomerates created after deregulation, Stations owned by the mega companies were forced to run Limbaugh who then immediately had a captive audience market for that national advertisers would get onboard,

Along with national figures like Limbaugh and for time Glenn Beck spawned a host of local programs, and Rochester has its own hate radio platform on WHAM a 50,000 watt superstation and host Bob Lonsberry. Just like his bigger cousins, Lonsberry has a history of racially insensitive comments, Back in 2002 when a young African American boy had been shot by police and raised tensions Lonsberry criticized urban teens who were "raised like animals, groomed as predators” and called the victim “genetically a man, but socially a wolf.”2003 he called the African American mayor of Rochester, William Johnson an orangutan. He was suspended and subsequently fired for this transgression. Somewhat chastened he made a public apology and returned less than a year later promising to take sensitivity training,

While it is the American way to give people second chances, Lonsberry has long since squandered it and more. He quickly showed his promise to be more sensitive and inclusive to be empty. Over the years he has continued to disparage people of color women gays and of course liberals. Like Rush Limbaugh you cannot really have a discussion with Lonsberry He will just call you a name an Obama supporter and hang up.

Lonsberry may have learned to be a bit more subtle in his racism although only a little. Lonsberry sells merchandise call FUBO (F*&# You Barack Obama) and his disdain for this African American president along with African American mayor of Rochester (and a women to boot) drips off his microphone. He continues to use racially charged rhetoric and thinly disguised racial stereotypes. He has extended his racism to included Latinos.

If you were to listen to Lonsberry you would find a consistent thread running through his diatribes. There are two kinds of people in this world. The hard working people who earn and create wealth and the takers. All our problems like poverty, taxes and even inequality derive from this divide. The takers are the lazy no good ones who live off the dole. We all know who Lonsberry has in mind here.

In the genteel language we academic types sometimes use this view is basically crap. It reverses cause and effect, the results of economic inequality and racial prejudice are transmuted into its causes.  We don’t live in a Horatio Alger world where everyone succeeds by pulling themselves up form their bootstraps, but one in which mobility and climbing up the social ladder is harder than ever. Our society is one of small individual enterprises but one dominated by large corporation and interests who hold an inordinate amount of power. Here economic barriers to mobility are multiplied by institutional racism. The upshot of this is kind of bankrupt moralism in which the others lack of character we “honest and hard working” people possess. It averts out gaze from the larger social issues.

Back in 2008 Lonsberry made fun of Rochester Urban League awards horning students who achieved a B average in schools for its low standards and made also made light of another program honoring teen mothers for graduating from high school. His response telling them to keep their pants on seem a bit ironic coming from a Christian conservative with several failed marriages but this seemed lost on Christian warrior Lonsberry.

These actions led the Rochester School superintendent jean Claude Brizzard to call for Lonsberry's removal amidst a threatened boycott of his advertisers. He survived this storm too,

More recently you can read in Lonsberry's blog he views that the real problems in racially charged areas like Ferguson is the disrespect African American's have for police. He was more worried about the ruined life of policeman Darren Wilson than Michael Brown who lost his life. Clearly black lives don't matter to Bob.  More recently he has upped the rhetoric again. In wake of the recent resignation of the President of the University of Missouri for his inattention and insensitivity to racial and ethnic hate on campus, Lonsberry claims that the students who protest are petulant spoiled brats who can't take criticism, They are instituting a new wave of repressive PC that threaten our universities. If course having attended Brigham Young University, Lonsberry is no doubt an expert on the campus climate in our nation, Had he ever wonders in a P stupor onto one of our local campuses say for example SUNY Brockport he might have noticed that racial tensions often simmer just beneath the surface of campus life,

However, in recent days Lonsberry has visited his crusading wrath on the whole of Islam in the wake of the terrible even in Paris. Islam is a "gutter religion." that has to be eliminated. Of course Obama gets roped into this too.  Obama's careful considered response lacks the understanding of the world historical clash that is occurring, Rather than an attack on humanity, it humanity (short for godless humanist or non-Christians) that are at war with beleaguered Christianity. He seems to be advocating a new Crusade by Christians against the heathens. Luckily we have some advanced mathematics to create new war technologies that were facilitated a long time ago by the mathematical discoveries of these uncultured heathens,

I think Bob Lonsberry has had enough chances to show he can be a voice for community dialogue and discussion of important issues. he provides little substance or thoughtful considerations of issue. He is more concerned with keeping his profile high and expanding his audience to find a regional or even national base than helping us address crucial issues.

This was illustrated in an article in the Syracuse Post discussing Lonsberry’s expansion to the Syracuse Market in 2012 a move that according to the article gives him a chance to become "the region's most powerful radio commentator/

Joel Delmonico a vice president of Clear. Channel in Syracuse, the radio conglomerate that owns WYSL in Syracuse WHAM in Rochester along with thousands of other stations nationwide thinks that Lonsberry is a good host because he inspires intense followers an intense dislike. THe important thing for him is that a radio host shouldn't be bland, Lonsberry he says attracts listeners who think he is a 9 and who think he is a 1. This is apparently the criterion for successful talk radio in his view the creation of outrage.

While it might be useful for talk show hosts to provoke listeners to think there is a major difference between a provocation that leads to discussion and provocation that is designed to stop it. As in Rochester Syracuse listeners quickly found that only certain opinions are allowed on Lonsberry’s after first being dismissed with the usual thank you mister Obama, the same caller on his next try got a simple hang up another time he was told we don’t want the same type of caller as Jim Reith (the previous local Syracuse middle of the road host let go in favor of Lonsberry) Sandwiched between Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity in Syracuse and ahead if both of them in Rochester. The aim of this block of shows is not to educate and inform but to disinform. It is in the business of playing on the fears and anxieties of working folks and to inculcate authoritarian and dogmatic patterns of thinking,

 

I don’t make this claim lightly.  the dumbing down of the American citizen has been a topic in the news in recent years While there may be a number of causes, certain high among them is the deliberate disinformation provided through hate radio and outlets like Fox News, It has long been remarked that Fox News viewers are less informed than other viewers and are more likely to believe conspiracy oriented ideas such as President Obama was not born in America and is a secret Muslim or that global warming is a liberal conspiracy. One recent study claimed that watching Fox News makes one less informed than watching no news at all. Surely studies of hate radio listeners would come to similar conclusions. No doubt it contributed to the deepening political polarization of our country and the local Rochester region too.

 

 

Even in times when public interests standards are on the decline, we still can make headway against hate radio.  An organized nationwide boycott of sponsors of Rush Limbaugh has had an effect. The number of stations running Limbaugh has declined. Equally as important in many major markets he has been dropped from high profile stations, and is running on low rated low profile stations, and advertisers are fleeing Limbaugh in the wake of the boycott and his increasingly intemperate remarks,

 

Rochester can’t afford to continue on as a bastion of hate radio. We need forums for a serious discussion of the issues facing Rochester and the nation and radio that provides information not disinformation, and sows prejudice both petty and large. Lonsberry has been on the edge for a long time subject to firing and boycotts, he may seem like he is Teflon but he is not invincible. A concerted and sustained effort to remove Lonsberry will succeed if local groups take up the issue again and press both advertisers and WHAM executives to change. Public interest arguments can have an effect.

We have to make the argument for better public interest standards and press stations to live up to the public interest obligations and call to account those who are supporting hate Radio in Rochester. One of the pressing needs in our community is intelligent discussion and thought our dilemmas not ignorance and bigotry. We can’t settle for less.

 

The worst town in the nation

 

The worst town in the nation -- part 1

What would you think of a town in which every decision of the town board had been unanimous for at least a dozen years, and in which town board members are allowed no public dissent at meetings, and none is ever expressed? A town in which it was virtually impossible to get a meeting with the town supervisor? One where citizens who express any dissent were met with either silence or disdain? You would probably think you were living in the pre perestroikan Soviet Union, or Mao’s China but you would be wrong. You would be living in Greece New York, the worst run town in the nation.

 

Greece is a large suburb of Rochester New York with a population of almost 100,000.  If you live outside of New York you might think of the whole state as an extension of New York City liberal and democratic.  Would that it were the case. Upstate New York outside of the City of Buffalo and now the City of Rochester is solidly Republican. As far back as I can recall the town of Greece has been run by republican as was the City of Rochester up the mid 70’s. However from the seventies onward there was always some dissent, At least one democrat held one of the four town board seats. By the 1990’s however that began to change. As happened in many   parts of the country politics became more mean spirited and adversarial. Without downplaying the extent of differences in the past, the republicans in the county and the democrats in the city were able to cooperate on a tax sharing plan that helped the city stave off fiscal disaster in the previous republican administration. However that relationship deteriorated once the new republican leadership of Steve Minarik and Jack Doyle took over as party leader and county executive, Following the blueprint of the Reagan era for demonizing of the poor and minorities, a strategy which gave cover to neo-liberal restructuring of the economy, the new republican leaders in Monroe had to face the deindustrialization and declining fortunes of workers in// Rochester industries like Kodak Xerox Bausch and Lomb and GM. They responded to this crisis with the politics of hate and fear. Instead of addressing the nature of the economic changes that were devastating the middle class they scapegoated the poor and the outsiders and the minorities, In the midst of these tough times the republican message said, these people are taking your hard earned money, The lazy no good black folk and the democrats who support them are making you poor and raising your taxes. More than this the Minarik/Doyle party specialized in the use of personal attack and degradation of the opponent. It wasn’t just that democrats were wrong they were corrupt immoral and degraded people. The worst example of this occurred when the African American mayor of Rochester ran for county executive, proposing consolidation of city and county services. The very thought of the black folk invading suburban schools and the hardly subtle racist campaign run by the Republicans insured a huge defeat.

 

The strategy of hate and division was a big success. The republicans came to totally dominate in the suburbs of Rochester. Besides winning the county executive, republicans regained and expanded control over the county legislature. But the worst thing about the rise of new republicans was there authoritarian autocratic style and rigid top down party discipline. Every republican in the county legislature had to tow the party line and support all the decision of the leadership. When 2 legislators once went against the party on a matter they were immediately stripped of committee positions and were replaced in the next election, No dissent allowed. This party discipline was also reinforced by an extensive spoils system. Most positions in the county government were filled by political cronies, often those who served on town boards. Other jobs were filled by wives, children and relatives of these town politicians friends and large contributors, While this may be seen as just corruptions it served a crucial role in maintaining discipline, Those who are dependent on the political leadership for their livelihood are unlikely to stand up to it.

 

The county leadership looked not only to control the county political apparatus but the larger towns in the area. With this in mind county leadership pulled a coup in the town of Greece and forced out the town of Greece supervisor and replaced him with their own man, John Auberger, who had previously been the leader of the county legislature. This didn’t happen by an election or decision of the town republican party or the town board. The county republicans basically took over the local party and in midterm made the incumbent supervisor leave. It happened without warning. I was working for local public access at the time and we were called one morning to show up at town hall for an announcement with no indication what it would be.  This gave the new supervisor a decisive advantage, Without needing to get elected, the new supervisor could run as the incumbent in the next election with all the benefits that conferred, This was a trick the local republicans would often use to advantage over the years. The effect was to make political office more like an inherited right than an elected office controlled by the people.

 

 Now the previous leader was no great shakes but he did allow discussion and dissent, and the town board meeting often featured contentious debate of current issues. All that changed when Auberger got in. He took the authoritarian top down style of county government and intensified it with own tyrannical paranoid outlook.  All town communication had to come out of his office and under his name and imprimatur. As part of our programming at the public access channel at which I worked we would often before Auberger have town officials on to address issues and even have call in shows in which they would answer questions from the public, When there was property revaluation the town assessor would be there, An ice storm or other weather damage would get a visit from public works. Other times people from zoning or even the deputy supervisor would be on. These were often useful and informative.  Once Auberger took over he instituted a dictatorial style. No one outside of his office was allowed to speak or voice an opinion in public. Once he was able to consolidate power and defeat the democratic town board members this dictatorial style extended to public meetings as well. Town Board meetings were reduced from twice a month to once a month, all votes were to be unanimous 5-0 votes with no dissent or discussion with any policy content allowed. He even passed a referendum that his term of office was extended for two years to four to double the time he could serve before term limits kicked in.

 

Greece officials often defended this policy of unanimous votes by claiming that they had discussion of the issues at the more private agenda setting meetings held a week before the town board meetings. This had two problems, First of all it wasn’t true, and People who had attended these meetings said that there was in fact little or no discussion of agenda items. Much like the public meetings the initiative came from the supervisor and his heads of the Greece bureaucracy. There was little indication that town board members had any input into town policies. Second even if it were true, it contains a strong anti-democratic cast. If democracy is a matter of public deliberation in which reasons for decisions are deliberated together in public, then that element is totally missing. The public, unless one was a special interest like a developed in on the game, had virtually no input on these matters and one would struggle in vain to hear any reasons why decisions were made. Many town boards introduce controversial matters and discuss them with the public and in public with members of the town board, before voting. Decisions were often reserved. The only time this ever happened in Greece was in matters of zoning where public hearings were mandated by law. Even then while the public was “allowed” to speak, the town board members never publically debated differing views. Property issues were very important to the board, protecting the property of residents from the invading city hoards, or accommodating the interests of developers. Most of us, democrats non –parry republicans and the publically unaffiliated, came to see the town board as a political puppet show. On cue the puppet master would pull the stings and all the hands would go up,

 

My uncle, who still lived in the city of Rochester used to chide me that I lived in communist Greece (not the country). He wasn't that far off. THe town of Greece under Auberger often seemed like a Stalinist cult of personality. Auberger’s picture was all over the place. When you entered town hall there was a picture of Auberger on the door. When you got any piece of literature from the town even one about leaf pickup it had Auberger’s visage. THe summer concerts were renamed John Auberger’s summer concerts. It was clear he considered himself regal ruler and owner of the town. It was John Auberger’s town of Greece. To mix metaphors a bit, republican rule in Greece took on a royalist tint. Only the republican’s had the right to rule almost by divine right. THe mere  that a democrat might actually might hold office in greece was seen as an affront and the mere fact of running a serious candidate was an act of usurpation to be met with personal attack and degradation,

 

Trying to meei however with the supervisor of Greece to discuss any matters proved daunting to the average citizen proved daunting. It was a bit like trying to get hold of the character Major Major in Catch-22. If he was in, he was out.  A call to the supervisor would get his administrative assistant, who was little more than a glorified political operative disguised as a public official, She would maybe call you back and give you an answer but you would never get to see the supervisor, give your view or hear his reasons. In the few cases where you would see the supervisor he was never alone, He was always accompanied by his assistant/operative to protect him from misstatements, He had come to have a profound distrust of and paranoia about the public, and seemed to think that he couldn't trust the public to have an open and honest discussion.

 

In all of these examples a common theme is present: the notion of public and democratic accountability is absent. Not only was the Auberger administration totally unaccountable in its own actions, the supervisor did everything he could to limit accountability. Isn't the elimination of such accountability really to essence of authoritarian and dictatorial rule? Clearly Auberger thought of Greece as one party state, in which the party apparatus speaks for us all.

 

Like the old centralized soviet model, the Auberger administration set out not only to centralize control of the political administrative apparatus in his own hands, it worked hard just as in the old soviet union to erase the distinction between the government and civil society, Community associations and groups, which are often important to localism and citizen participation, and often provided paths to politics, had to comply with the party line or the Auberger administration would try to delegitimize and eliminate them. Even traditionally republican groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club came to have either Auberger’s administrative assistant, his deputy supervisor, or town board members in positions of power where they were able to oversee these groups and monitor and direct their decisions. The real ire of Auberger was directed at community groups like local neighborhood associations which threatened to organize citizens and take views which dissented from their own, Worse yet they might invite politicians to speak and ask them hard questions,

 

One group that I was familiar with a local neighborhood association in the area in which I lived was quickly subject to surveillance and harassment once they threatened to show some degree of independence. This neighborhood association was by no means a party affair, the president for most of the time I was around it was a staunch republican, as were other members of the association, but there were democrats and even democratic party members in it who raised questions and issues Auberger did not like. This was enough for the Auberger operatives to spring into action. No non-governmental institutions which were independent of the town were to be tolerated. In the local blogs and in everyday discussion this group was labeled as “political” and likened to a plot by the democrats to take over power. Because it had democratic on the board it was for that reason alone, illegitimate. It was as if the judgement of the democrats is always not only biased but dangerous and threatening, They had no right to participate, unless they bowed down to the views of republicans, Republican office holder began to refuse to appear in any context in which they might be questioned, and republican operatives began to join the group to try to steer it away from any concerns that were unacceptable to Auberger, There was to be no dissent in civil society in Auberger Greece.. Only the Republican Party and its leadership was allowed to speak “for us.”

 

Even members of the public trying to express dissent at a town board meeting found it was risky proposition. Citizens who were not familiar with procedures, occasionally came to town board meetings hoping to engage in a dialogue with their public officials were often stunned to find out that while they were allowed a very short period several minutes to make statements or ask questions, the supervisor nor anyone else ever replied. THe public forum was not really a forum for discussion or debate. Thus for the most part, few if any comment in the public forum. Town Board meetings which were once well attended were only sparsely populated. There was no reason to attend. The sole exception were for meetings where a new police officer was sworn it or some citizen got an award, But after the ceremonies the family and well-wishers would file out before any actual business was begun leaving only the echo of an empty room. Occasionally Auberger did comment. When the leader of the Democratic Party spoke on an issue of public concern, the supervisor stepped to identify the speaker as a Democratic Party member and several others as members of the democratic committee. Now their comments on this issue had little or nothing to do with the issue. The implication was that what they were saying as “democrats” was deceptive and illegitimate. In other cases the supervisor it to shut down a questioner who had preceded him at several meetings on matters of public and private misbehavior/ When some of us protested the treatment of this citizen the board simply adjourned the meeting. so we could not talk  The town then changed the rules of the forum to limit what you could say, Of course this big lie technique is not without its irony, THe auberger government was perhaps the most partisan and political of any I have ever seen

 

And they call it democracy

 

More to come

The neighborhood I grew up in – a story of decline

The neighborhood I grew up in – a story of decline

 

            Things have changed a lot and not for the better in the neighborhood I grew up in it’s a more gloomy stagnant place than it was when I grew up. The sense of decline is palpable There are empty houses and others in foreclosure, While the houses still are mostly well kept the neighborhood has an empty decaying feel. There is no there there, No sense of hope and no future.

           

Like many after the war my parents moved to the suburbs a year or two after they married in the late 1940’s, They were lured by the promise of having their own home in a more peaceful setting at a reasonable price, They didn’t have much money but with the help of the VA loan program they were able to buy a house and start families. The houses in these postwar suburbs were not that big sometimes bland and cookie cutter and not as expensive as today’s suburban mansions, but they did provide the spur to the growth of suburbs in America.

 

I can’t say I loved the suburban life I grew up in. There were many ways in which it was narrow parochial and small minded. I was never comfortable and didn’t fit in. But it was however, if in a modest way prosperous and active. There was a sense we were on the way up. Many of the families in our neighborhood worked for Kodak. A few ran small businesses like plumbing and service stations that prospered in the decade after the war. It was mostly working class with a couple of white collar workers. For a working class area, people were doing well. A number had boats they used in Lake Ontario and a couple even could afford second home cottages along the lake shore. There were lots of children in the neighborhood and we played baseball on the streets in the summer touch football in the fall, made snow forts in the winter, and shot hoops in our driveway basketball courts. There were lots of school yards and other lots to play ball as we got older. We played in high quality high school bands and others in high school sports and were well regarded. Despite the fact that we had some decent schools, living in the oldest part of my suburb advancement through education was not really emphasized. Most ended up staying in working class jobs like Kodak until they started cutting back or other similar jobs, The girls didn’t generally go to college in my immediate neighborhood and married boys of similar background and aspirations, Short of one family that moved out before high school, I am the only one of my neighborhood to even go to college. (Other newer built parts of my suburb had a higher percentage of college bound students) Still for the most part life in the suburbs was isolated and comfortable and if way too homogeneous. We were very isolated from the problems developing in the City of Rochester. When the riots in Downtown Rochester broke out in 1964 as kids we were taken by surprise. Of course in the white solidly republican suburb of Greece that was a problem caused by those other people who weren't like us. Luckily I had parents that were more enlightened but for the most part the sense of suburban prosperity rested on a thinly veiled sense of soft racism.

 

The situation is quite different today. My old neighborhood is a mix of elderly still living in the houses they bought in the post war years, older families downsizing or with reduced economic resources, and a small smattering of younger couples. It is no longer the prosperous area I grew up in. A lot of these folks are struggling economically and/or medically. You hardly ever see kids running around or playing on the streets. Occasionally you will see a group of teenagers from a catholic group home walking around trying to look tough. But any regular group of neighborhood kids is gone. In the houses where there are kids, they generally stay inside. Many people don't seem to have jobs or have low paying ones. In the house across the street from where I grew up, three adult children live (a couple and one son) none of whom work. The only one in the house that works is the 75 year old mother. Down the street are two adult children who seem to be very well educated, live with their adult parents, and don't appear to have permanent employment. Rochester is littered with well educated workers who worked for Kodak, Xerox Bausch and Lomb, and have lost jobs as these businesses radically downsized. Despite the fact that the local media tout the success stories of a few upper level employees who have started successful businesses, the majority of those who were still young enough to enter the workforce either had to work at lower paying jobs or faced age discrimination trying to find jobs at their skill level. I read a statistic while back that in the first decade of the century, incomes declined 17% in the suburb I grew up in which was heavily populated with Kodak workers. The working middle class has virtually disappeared in our area.

 

The worst harbinger of .decline is however, the creep of empty houses in the neighborhood, This never would have happened when I grew up, Apparently the  greater  Rochester area is 10th highest rate of zombie (empty or abandoned home) foreclosures in the nation   zombie homes In another piece I read it is ranked 7th worse/ THe house two doors down from me went into foreclosure and has been empty for close to a year. The one next door was empty for a long time too after a similar foreclosure and although it is was sold and owned by an absentee landlord it is only sporadically occupied. Down in the next block another house is unoccupied. A quick list of the contiguous streets on in my neighborhood on internet site Zillow indicated numerous housed in foreclosure and many for sale.  Another house on that block while well kept up shows no sign of occupancy. A local town activist has started to document the growing number of empty homes in the town many in the oldest part. Some have been unoccupied for years.

 

The specter of drugs also plays a role in some of these foreclosures. The couple two houses away were both drug addicts, not the down and our kind but the working ones, THe female was arrested released and then jailed for parole violation leaving the father, who worked as a minimum wage restaurant worker to take care of the two kids, He fell into a deeper more addiction. He let the house go down living with the kids for over a year in house without heat or electricity until he was finally addicted. The house next door only occasionally occupied was last used as a place to sell drugs. So things are surely going downhill.

 

Obviously there are economic consequences of empty houses. It estimated that an empty house in the neighborhood up to 15% and costs a great deal of tax money in maintenance. But the broader problem is what it does to the character if the neighborhood, It can attract petty thieves looking to rob the house of copper pipes and other valuables. Stripping the house of its infrastructure however, makes the house even more difficult to sell and costly to repair. Two main economic culprits are the financial crisis of 2007-8 and the longer term one of middle class decline. In the short run the financial crisis burst the housing bubble and recession meant that many could not afford the houses they had purchased during a time of cheap money. Given the lime it took for foreclosures to process in New York State, these foreclosures are just coming on line. They are however, significant. THe foreclosure rate is 4 to 7 percent in the suburbs and 7-14 percent in the city.

 

The longer term problem however is the decline of middle class incomes for the large majority of the population. Without the ability to make a substantial down payment or paying monthly payments many can no longer qualify for mortgages or afford to pay them. Many have high debt loads especially from student loans. The dream of a home of one's own is dying.

One becomes more transient a non-permanent resident who has less of a stake in the community. And while central city Rochester has one of the highest poverty rates in the country the inner rings suburbs now have areas of persistent and significant poverty.

 

Scholars have noted some of the features that are at the root of decline of the inner ring suburbs.  One of them is the desire for larger housing and with it further escape from the problems of inner ring suburbs. This has led to a disinvestment in the inner ring suburbs by developers. There is a disinvestment in housing stock. Another is the above mentioned deindustrialization, which has led to the loss of working class jobs with the resulting declining incomes for the working class. Inner ring suburbs have become less homogenous and more ethnically diverse with some the problems that entails. The result is what has been called the new suburban gothic. “in the most problematic areas” according to Short Hanlon and Vicino. “there are issues of a housing stock that is no longer marketable, an infrastructure that is in need of repair and residents that are dying out without a younger generation to replace them.” The result is the rise of central city problems like rising crime and schools that are failing.

 

Dignity and the aging poor or Getting old is a bitch

Dignity and the aging poor        

or Getting old is a bitch

 

Recently a friend of mine and her family were faced with a difficult decision. Her mother has been in and out of hospital in the last couple of years and has some mobility issues. At the hospital they claim she can no longer live on her own. The family relative who has been taking care of her and my friend’s dad who is also in poor health can no longer care full time for them. Her mother was pushed into a permanent nursing home residence while undergoing rehab. It’s not that clear that she understood what was entailed in that. While some might see this as okay she will end up separated her from her husband, in far less than ideal circumstances and cause difficulties in the family. Splitting up the couple seems cruel, but that is the nature of contemporary health care. It too often follows a medical model and not a model that stresses the dignity and autonomy of the aging person. This is doubly true if you are poor. The poor person who needs care is often just a throwaway. They cannot get the resources they need to stay at home and when they must be in a home the kind of setting that makes life worth living. They don’t even have the basics of privacy. More than just the reduction of the person to a medical patient without dignity being poor makes one more open to coercion and loss of autonomy in decision making and subject to conditions that are depressing and sometimes dangerous.

 

Too often healthcare providers use manipulative tactics to get older folks into nursing homes. They threaten them with sanctions or legal action if they want to keep their relatives at home. In this case the family was threatened with the loss of health services. They said if her mother wanted to live at home against their wishes they would cut off health care to her. I am not sure what that means, since they cannot actually cut off all care, but obviously some services are involved. It is the threat however, that is at issue. The attempt to coerce compliance through threats seems unacceptable. It goes against our sense that people ought to make decisions freely and with due consideration. It is not even clear in this case that my friend’s mom actually realizes that she has committed to live in the nursing home on a permanent basis. She keeps asking when she is going home.

 

 Often however these decisions are made in circumstances in which alternatives are not available or presented. My aunt for example faced a similar problem when her husband had a stroke and could no longer take care of himself. She too was coerced into placing him in a local nursing facility which was not very good. I wouldn’t wish the treatment he received on my worst enemy. He lived out his life often medicated and sometimes restrained because he was sometimes agitated and unable to communicate his needs. He lived without dignity or much compassion or care at the nursing home. It was only because his wife came to the nursing home every day and cared for him that he had any quality of life at all. It is a lousy way to end your life. My father used to call the homes where the poorer elderly were forced to live chicken coops, He wasn’t far from the truth. We ought to wherever possible help people to live in their own homes. Many nursing homes don’t do the job.

 

The decision to place him was however, not simply a medical one, he had problems but did not require or get constant medical monitoring. It was largely an economic one that is one of supple and cost. Although my aunt and her husband were not poor they lacked the resources to get any of the nursing care reserved for the rich they simply had to place him where space was available whatever the quality. And nursing homes seem anxious to fill beds to capacity without much concerns for the person and her dignity/

 

The situation with my friends mom seems little different. The social workers say she can’t live alone without almost 24 hour care. They live in a semi-rural area and the options are limited. The family had to take that nursing home otherwise the family would have to travel many miles to see their mom. The nursing home where she will stay will put her in a double room with another person she does not know. She has no TV and no access to the recliner she has at home is not available. Once she is a patient in the home she will not even be getting physical therapy she is basically left alone with little contact except family visits. In short she has little or no privacy. Getting a phone and TV is extra money that the family really can’t afford. You have to wonder whether the situation is really in her best interests. From what I can tell she is not going to get much attention there. The risks of such institutional neglect seem worse than dangers she might face at home where at least her husband is there. The nursing home has made little attempt to provide a place where both could stay together.

 

Dealing with an ill and aging parent is stressful in itself. But being in a nursing home that is less than optimal can divide families. Some see no choice, while others find the ill treatment and indignity of the conditions heart breaking, In any case even those who see the necessity of institutional care, are affected by the decline of their relative under poor conditions. Of course the conditions of home care are often stressful too. Caregivers often sacrifice and find that the area care without enough help can be very difficult. Yet as people live longer and with more chronic diseases these choices are going to be more a part of the lives of children and parents. But really it is the economic situation that is driving the problem. As our society is characterized by greater inequality and as the middle classes disappear Fewer and fewer elderly will have the resources to deal with the challenges of old age. The burden then falls on their children who are themselves are struggling economically and socially. As with other social issues the risks are being pushed downward onto those who are least capable of carrying further burdens. We are creating a major crisis in the care of the elderly.  THe children and relatives of the elderly should not have to risk financial ruin or bankruptcy to provide their parents a dignified life,

As with most goods in our society the divide between the access of the well off and he weaker in will increase.  Few will have the resources for quality elder care. Like our children who are being ill served by an education system that is breaking down the elderly are in the process of becoming another throwaway generation. The children of the family don’t have the resources they need to deal with the situation. They all work and at jobs that don’t pay enough IF their children have to quit jobs or work part time to take care of them then they too will suffer. They face financial ruin and emotional turmoil just to provide a dignified life for their parents.

 

Perhaps there are some better solutions and more help available but the family isn't aware of that they have met with social workers to attempt to get more help. Getting information on available resources is a big problem. When possible the best thing is try to keep elderly in their homes. There are a few programs that help a bit when elderly are not too bad, but there needs to be more what they start to decline. If the choice is a chicken coop, separated from your spouse and family or living at home, the answer seems simple. Yet families will need help to keep parents at home when their health problems increase. Those resources are not really available.

 

We need to rethink the way we treat the elderly in several areas. First we need to take seriously a transition away from a strictly medical model to a human flourishing one, the aim should not be simply following the judgments of doctors and the medical community about the health of an elderly person, but the wellbeing of the individual taken broadly. Ethical and moral issues such and dignity and autonomy of the elderly need to be emphasized. Second we need to provide more resources, yes public resources toward keeping the elderly at home or in places where their care and needs are paramount. Third we need to provide more resources to caregivers if they find they have to stay with parents who are in declining health these include economic support and emotional ones as well.

Donald Trump and the new Prophets of Deceit

Leo Lowenthal's Prophets of Deceit (co-authored with Norman Guterman) is one of the most significant pieces of social research done by the Frankfurt School in America. Along with Adorno's work on anti Semitism, it considers the role of the (generally right wing) agitator in American society beginning in the New Deal. These have of course close links to the Frankfurt School's analysis of the Authoritarian personality, It traces the psychological tropes and social context of the anti semitic and anti communist themes of the agitators of the 1930's and early 40's

Lowenthal's work still has resonance today. It is important first of all for its prescience,  For what was once the domain of marginal thinkers, the "agitator." has gone mainstream, Since Reagan (and probably Nixon) at the least, the mainstream of the republican party has run on the backs of classical scapegoats, the welfare mother, the African American criminal (Willie Horton), and now the immigrant, It apes the fire and brimstone rhetoric of the preacher with it's moral pieties. Lowenthal and later Marcuse in his 1970 introduction broaches the question of whether the agitator who works on the margins will enter the mainstream. Lowenthal argues that we are at a turning point in the analysis of social movements. He wonders whether the agitator will become more prevalent as late capitalism develops, Marcuse writing 20 years later said:

“If we compare or contrast the agitator of the thirties or forties whom this book examines with the political leaders of today, the shift in the target, tone, vocabulary seemed slight, , , , What has happened on this road is the introjection of the agitator into the legitimate political machine/”(v)

Writing about the tension in late capitalism, the phony mobilization of the Vietnam war and the Nixon era Southern Strategy Marcuse notes that the difference between the agitator and the political mainstream has become blurred. As Lowenthal and Marcuse predicted, this situation has become worse today. The recent rise of the Donald Trump candidacy, whatever it’s ultimate success, seems to be a harbinger of things to come. In the future we may well see more Donald Trumps as a reflection of a political party system that no longer can maintain the loyalty of the populace. Still Trump is not sui generis, The Trump phenomenon is the result of longstanding problems in American life.

The second reason we should re-examine Lowenthal's work has to do with the kind of explanation that he gives for the rise of the "agitator" Many contemporary analysts wonder why the middle and working classes vote against their "true interests" They look with some justification and the dumbing down of America, Others take a more value oriented approach, They reject the idea that individuals are motivated by strictly economic interests, and claim that many seek the communitarian values he see missing in liberal ideology. However Lowenthal following Horkheimer's (and to an extent Adorno;s) in looking for the latent or unconscious motives involved in the agitator's appeal. It is not that people are inherently stupid, (although it might be fair to say the level of discourse has no doubt declined) or longing for a unified community as much as they are alienated by their condition and situation. When we look at the appeal of the agitator or today the mainstream politics we should not look at the manifest content or the explicit message , We should instead look at the implicit message, the one which create a psychological bond between the speaker and his audience.

Horkheimer’s diagnosis

Lowenthal follows Max Horkheimer discussion of the rise and decline of bourgeois culture in late capitalism, The bourgeois idea of the individual was being superseded by the mass man of late capitalism, Horkheimer spoke of the end of the individual in late capitalism. He thought that advanced capital was eliminating democratic possibilities and becoming more like the authoritarian state.  It was becoming completely controlled by big business and cartels who had allied with welfare state to replace the free market and rules though collusion. With this change the idea of the autonomous individual was lost. Unlike Marcuse or later Habermas, he saw no possibilities for democratization or social movements in this transition. To the contrary the end of the high bourgeois era, meant the  end of the autonomous individual bereft of the capacity to use his own reason or make free decisions, and instead shaped by the mass media. Of course Horkheimer's does not believe that the bourgeois actually realized individuality  en masse, but it did remain a possibility for some. In his view the state control of socialization through schools and mass media means that independent subjectivity is absorbed into the repressive whole/ (say more) Marcuse had earlier taken a similar position in his essay on fascism. He saw liberalism in its classical sense as being superseded by fascism. Certainly in retrospect Horkheimer and Adorno both underestimated the counter tendencies of late capitalism, yet certain parts of theory analysis ring true. Certainly late capitalism put stresses on the individual which have increased as neo-liberalism intensifies

Lowenthal does not explicitly employ Horkheimer’s analysis of advanced industrial society but follows conclusions regarding the decline of the individual. He analyzes the latent content of the agitators appeal in terms of the alienated powerless individual who is because of his psychological state is open to manipulation.

Lowenthal thinks that the results of these  social and economic changes and the decline of the individual. is the rise of a kind of “social malaise.”  an alienated individual who can not make sense of her situaltion:

“the modern individual’s sense of isolation, his so-called spiritual homelessness,his bewilderment in the face of the seemingly impersonal forces of which he finds himself a helpless victim, his weakening sense of values . . . This malaise reflects the stresses imposed on the individual by the profound transformations taking place in our economic and social structure” (15)

Elements such as the atomization and depersonalization of mass society,  the breakdown of personal bonds and changes in family structures have had an effect on the individual. They continue to intensify and put pressure on the individual. “Malaise” he claims, “is a consequence of the depersonalization and permanent insecurity of modern life.” But these are according to Lowenthal only indirectly related to grievances.  Nonetheless, these feeling are there:usly of oppression .

Individuals in mass soceity  share a sense of economic political moral and cultural grievances that have become if anything more prevalent today. Immigrants are taking jobs, our nations has become morally and culturally bankrupt, losing our patriotic spiritual and  christian roots. As a result of which groups of people feel distrustful disillusioned and have sense of deprivation. Others are taking the resources and money that they deserve.

The problem with the malaise of the late capitalist era is that it does not lead the individual to a clear sense of what is wrong. People felt distrustful or delusions, as he they felt their lives were not under their own control.

For Lowenthal then it is not the manifest content of the “agitators” message that counts that is the specifics of his message, it is his appeal to the latent content of the discontent of atomized mass society that is crucial. The agitator crystallizes discontents by providing a vehicle for the malaise of individuals. It is not really what he says but that he supplies an emotional vehicle. We have to remember however that emotions are not just raw feels, but express our relation to the world, When we are anxious or fearful or resentful, these sensibilities are not just a reflection of the individual but her position in the world what she expects to happen or a sense of what is possible. The person who feels victimized or threatened by social and economic condition is as Lowenthal argues often oppressed to some extent, Without a reflexive understanding of the situation they tend to  Their understanding tends to be unfocused The agitator appeals to the sense of the world that is vaguely shared. However, the agitator unlike the reformer or the revolutionary does not attempt to make sense of suffering and malaise but uses it to reinforce the dominant power, Instead of looking at the role of business, agitators in the 1930’s and 1940’s blamed the jews or the foreigners, Today we see a sustained hostility toward immigrants especially undocumented ones, and against immoral liberals who don't follow “christian values. Where today’s agitators address economic issues they blame the foreigners like the Chinese or the Mexicans as we see in Donald Trump,

    Of course the current situation presents a more serious challenge, Clearly the mainstreaming of the agitator as shown in the  rise of Donald Trump as a potential republican candidate has illustrated how powerful the agitator can become, I think that  in neo-liberal capitalism the pressure on the individual has increased, The declining fortunes of the middle class and he poor, and the difficulties of adapting to a multicultural world has increased the sense of unease of many Americans.  Still I think that Jodi Dean’s analysis of the trump phenomenon In these Times misses the mark in some respects. She thinks that Trump is the only “honest” politician “Where other candidates appeal to a fictitious unity or pretense of moral integrity, he displays the power of inequality.” Trump does not hide his power he flaunts it  and revels in it. Trump according to Dean expresses all the racism sexism, and the sense of superiority and entitlement of the wealthy that exempt them from ordinary morality. The notion of manners and morality are really only the facade for an unbridled will to power. The “truth” then of American politics is the reality of the wealthy that can and will do whatever it wants without remorse or guilt. Rather than rejecting this lack of remorse, Dean thinks that individuals identify with Trumps flaunting of convention and with the desire to rule over others and clean out or sweep away the vermin. She thinks it is a pure form of jouissance, Lacan’s term for a kind of primary pleausre. But doesn’t she leave out the sadistic element in the equation,

No doubt the sadism of the leader or agitator is an important in the attachment of  the follower. And i think against Dean that it is more a matter of sadim than jouissance. To reduce the issue of  sadism to a kind of transgressive pleasure really misses the key point: transgression can apply to any rejection or norms for good or bad, but the sadism of the agitator really does not attempt a change of power but the reinforcement of existing power. Sadistic pleasure in punishing others is distinct from the happiness one might obtain in rejecting an oppressive norm or freeing oneself if only partially from domination. Thus it is not the just happiness at rejecting a norm but the disgust toward the other that is part of what the agitator expresses. I don't think Dean’s notion of pleasure in transgression gets at this point which she acknowledges in her analysis.

When one says that Trump is the only honest politician it mean using the term honest in a restricted sense. Surely it can’t be honest to play on the racism and fears of others without regard for the consequences. He is no more authentic than others glitters throughout our history. No doubt we can argue as Christopher Lasch argued some time ago that this era represents the of the elite rather than the revolt of the masses. The elite have withdrawn from contact and engagement with the urban poor and  and no doubt the elite have come to devalue the ordinary citizen, but we ought to be careful not to fall back on the Manichean view of our situation that Dean seems to construct. The capitalist class becomes the embodiment of pure evil.  Even Marx did not go that far. The sadism that Trump expresses is not really as new as Dean thinks, After all as I noted above, Reagan expressed the same type of sadism against the “welfare queens” who live high off the hog on the government dole, while ordinary people have work long and hard for their daily bread. The poor and downtrodden and the outsider are the targets of this sadism. Trump’s version ramps up the nativism and the agitator performance.This growth of American politics,  was already well known for a while -- and it has been effectively harnessed to maintain the status quo and even to support deregulation and,greater inequality and the transfer of wealth.

It seems to me what is different in the further mainstreaming of the agitator is the growing distrust among a segment of the population and growing malaise which doubts not only government but the leaders of the republican party. Where Reagan especially had the trust of the conservative and fearful elements of the population the growing economic and social disquiet has lead to a greater distrust in established authority and the yearning for a “leader” to come in and clean up. In short it is a more radically anti democratic sentiment. Of course 9/11 initiated a new sensibility in many but it has not been mitigated over time but had fused with economic and social malaise.

New School Same Old School

New School, Old School? The New School Fiasco, Again and Again

ACT-UAW Local 7902's rally, held on March 16th, with adjunct faculty, graduate assistants, students, union workers, officials, & supporters at The New School in New York City
© ACT-UAW Local 7902

In mid March, The New School was having problems with its contract negotiations, and Brian Caterino, who had taught there years before as a contract worker -- though he was paid the same measly compensation adjunct faculty were paid -- commented that this was nothing new. 

I asked him if he would write something about this, and he did...



A few weeks ago, part time faculty at The New School held a day of protest over stalled contract negotiations and work conditions. The part timers who teach 85% of The New School courses have been without a contract since August 2014. The current proposals included reductions in health care benefits to part time faculty and other cuts. Part time faculty want -- among other things -- better health care benefits, adequate payment for online courses, and job security. They point out the discrepancy between the wages of part timers and the extravagant salaries paid to some faculty and administration while others just scrape by. 

While part time faculty make about $16,000 per year, the President of The New School, David Van Zandt, earns over $700,000, and Vice President and CEO James Murtha over $1. 2 million. The New School also opened a new building at the cost of $352 million.

The University Center at The New School
© The New School

These compensations continue the precedent set when ex US Senator Bob Kerrey became president. Not only did he get over $900,000 yearly salary, but also he received a $1.2 million golden parachute when he left in 2010 and continued getting a six figure salary as emeritus president. 


Under Kerrey, The New School was reorganized to follow the model of the corporate university rather than the progressive university founded in 1918 by war protesters dismissed from Columbia University and supported by Charles Beard and John Dewey.

Yet the problems at The New School did not begin with Kerrey. This kind of treatment of adjuncts is nothing new at The New School. In the late 90’s, I was involved in a project funded by FIPSE to develop the existing online DIAL program at The New School. This was a distance learning experiment, as most of the faculty lived outside of New York City. 

When I got involved, I was somewhat stunned to find that the pay for online faculty was only around $1000 per course; that was considerably lower than the already poor wages I received teaching part time at a SUNY campus in New York state.

As the project unfolded, it came out that one of the rationales for expanding this program was to generate revenue to support full time faculty. It was assumed that the part time faculty taught elsewhere, and this was just a side gig where they would use material they already had.

Of course this was not true.

Many either had no jobs or were part timers, and although I might have been the loudest voice to complain, few were happy with this situation. Because a lot of us were unhappy, the project was terminated and many of us were too.

I wrote a letter to Lingua Franca criticizing them, but I don’t recall any response. Being far away from NYC, I was pretty much isolated form the situation. 

I really expected more out of The New School, but I can’t say I was totally surprised. The seeming willful ignorance of the situation of part time faculty still reigned. Though I liked the person in charge of the FIPSE project, she seemed to have little notion of the depth of the problem. She claimed to be a kind of Frankfurt critical theorist.

Other critical theorists there -- some of whom I had met as a graduate student and had some contact with -- did not as far as I could see speak up or help. Certainly no tenured faculty contacted me with any message of support.

But then they never do.

One well known faculty at The New School who will remain nameless mentioned something about problems in an interview I read several years later, which I can summarize as follows. "It’s up to adjuncts to organize and do something about it..." 

That’s it.

Some of these same people were prominent critics of Kerrey’s economistic model years later when he took office.

Not being there I can’t say for sure, but every account I read focused on the lack of faculty autonomy and consultation, not on the treatment of adjuncts.

I guess what I got out of the experience was a deepened sense of the aleination from academia that I already felt. Not only in the face of the intransigence of administrators but also in the willful ignorance of faculty to the conditions developing around them... I felt betrayed.

By the late 90’s it was not news that contingent employment was taking over academia. Earlier when I got out of grad school, faculty seemed to think that the part time trend was a blip and that employment would pick up. Even they missed the boat on the real causes of the adjunct problem. 

When things changed they never caught up.

In some disciplines like philosophy, which had been expecting job shortfalls for years, students were subject to a rather draconian ranking system. In the philophy department at a school I attended, faculty would support a small group of those they saw as their star students and push them for jobs; the rest were on their own. Faculty -- whatever their ideological stripe -- simply accepted the logic of the market and never bothered to look at the forces that were shaping the market and their own profession.

Now that things are so apparent that they cannot be denied, they are paying attention.

Given the strength that the forces of marketization have gathered, it might be too late to change things. If they had woken up and acted earlier, we might not be in this situation. But I have come to believe that most tenured faculty are -- despite the usual slings and arrows of fortune -- happy and secure and have little interest in what comes after they retire.

In the end, I did not leave academia, though it left me.

Despite the fact that I had some really strong recommendations and have -- in rather trying circumstances -- managed to publish articles and edited a pretty well known collection in my field, I could never even get a look for a full time position, As I got older too, I found that younger, more compliant people got even the crumbs of part time work.

That’s not a way I was willing to live.

Needless to say, I do not have a lot of respect for my academic colleagues.

For the most part they are phonies who are impressed by pedigree academic or familial, and who defend their position and privilege with pieties about the academy for tenure as a bastion of critical thought, while their peers are struggling.

Support for adjuncts is totally lacking.

The more my situation became desparate, the more I was hung out to dry by full time faculty and peers.

The author of the aforementioned article on The New School protest was a student at The New School just a few years ago and notes the increasing culture of alienation between students, faculty, and administration. While I know full time faculty were extremely unhappy with Bob Kerry, and they gave him a vote of no confidence in 2008, still I did not see the displeasure extended to the teaching conditions of part timers.

I just read another report, this one from the California Faculty Association, which stresses the economic insecurity of our times. They are increasingly discouraged and frustrated with little hope for their own future and that if their profession. The constant anxiety over jobs and money is a real soul destroyer. 

I don’t know anyone who would want to do it anymore.



Letter to Lingua Franca is written below, for your convenience. It is dated August 1997, New York City: 

"I do not condone all of the Mobilization's proposals for change at The New School, nor its offensive attacks on individuals like Nancy Fraser. However, if The New School administration is as unresponsive to student concerns as it has been to those of part-timers, I can understand the students' frustration. I am a contract instructor offering courses in the on-line DIAL (Distance Instruction for Adult Learning) program. As an "independent contractor," I am barred from listing myself as a member of the faculty or as an affiliate of The New School. This bit of legal legerdemain allows the school to avoid paying social security, let alone pension or health care.  

Already, it pays some of the lowest part-time wages I have encountered, $965 per course. Moreover, we have been told that we should not expect raises because the adult division is designed to subsidize the other -- presumably more important -- academic divisions. Nevertheless, we are told how lucky we are to teach at The New School, where we can offer the courses we choose. 

Despite our low wages and lack of job security, our love of teaching and our dedication to our work are supposed to justify sacrifices no tenured academic is asked to make. If tenured faculty at The New School are sympathetic to legitimate institutional reforms, they should demonstrate their commitment by working toward a living wage and decent benefits for part-time faculty." 

BRIAN CATERINO 

ROCHESTER, NY

Brian Caterino is an independent scholar who lives in Rochester, NY. He works in non profit independent media and is the co-editor (with Sanford Schram) of Making Political Science Matter and articles on critical theory, social theory, and social science research. He has also published in Perestroika: the Raucous Rebellion in Political Science as well as articles and reviews in a number of journals. His most current publications are "Phronesis and the Participants Perspective" in The British Journal of Sociology (Volume 64, Issue 4, December 2013) and “Lowering the Basement Floor From Community Colleges to the For-Profit Revolution” In New Political Science.