Another find from Arianna...

* Sludge Tested as Lead Poisoning Fix in Poor Black Neighborhoods *

Lawmakers and the NAACP are calling for an investigation into reports that
federally funded scientific experiments in 2000 spread sewage sludge on
yards in poor black neighborhoods to test if it could fight lead poisoning
in children. The Associated Press reported Sunday that researchers spread a
mix of human and industrial wastes from sewage treatment plants on the lawns
of nine low-income families in Baltimore and a vacant lot next to an
elementary school in East St. Louis, Illinois. We speak with John Heilprin,
the AP reporter who broke the story.

Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/23/sludge_tested_as_lead_poisoning_fix

Labor Notes conference

Recent Labor Notes conference: http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20080414/006771.html

Reading Material

An article Cappy wrote for Inside Higher Ed entitled "Higher Ed's Changing Economic Landscape":

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/04/10/hill

Also an article Arianna emailed some of us a while ago, "The Rise of the Ghetto-Fabulous Party," about offensive, problematic parties students of privilege host & attend (from Color Lines):

http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=%0A248

SUNY Stony Brook Conference, Crazy Lunch, Conference Pictures in!!

Thanks for reminding me to post re: the lunch, Lulu (and also the SB conference! I am trying to figure out a way to fund that right now.) Here’s the link for the SUNY Stony Brook conference—titled “How Class Works”—for those of you who are interested:

http://www.sunysb.edu/workingclass/conference/2008/

The following is a recount of my lunch with PAC (the one I was asking for your advice about, & posted about, below)…

I knew I was sort of in for it when I saw one of the (wealthy, older, tanned) women who comprised the Council (it’s a group of mostly alumnae/i I think) walking her white POODLE on a leash through the restaurant. This woman did not sit with me but three other very lovely, also rich older tanned white women sat with me...cappy came in late to the whole thing & sat at some other table with a different student & more alums.

We had a conversation about the different dorms on campus etc for a while when I decided I would just begin THE conversation haha, so I said, “I’d like to tell you about why I am here…” and I tell them all about us and our events and the conference and man we have done so much this year and are so awesome that it is not hard to make us sound very impressive!

One of the alums I was sitting with asked me what I would like to see change institutionally in order to make the transition easier for lower-income students—great question, right! So I suggest:
a. peer mentoring system (jr/sr paired w/ incoming freshmen who self-identify as lower-income/first gen)
b. alumnae/i network of those alums that were first-gen and/or lower-income/working class during their time at Vassar, to help with the problem of lower-income/first gen students not having social capital that other wealthier students do…(we will be putting out a call in the Winter ’08 Vassar Quarterly piece about the conference for alums who were first-gen and/or lower income during their time @ VC to email us, to get this network going)
c. finally, a campus life resource center devoted to class issues, with an accompanying administrative assistant to campus life (like the Blegen and ALANA centers have now…but then I had to explain to these alums what Blegen & ALANA were…for those of you non-Vassar kids, they are our resource centers for LGBTQ students and African American/Black, Latino, Asian American and Native American students…)

Another of the alums I sat with, after I made these suggestions, said the following--it is like pretty much a direct quote:
"I’m not trying to take away from your experience or your story because I think that the work you're doing is great, but I just want to bring something to your attention that you may not be aware of. You know, people of wealthier backgrounds struggle with these issues too...sons and daughters of wealthy parents worry that they won't be able to make as much money as their parents! And sometimes siblings feel badly because some of their siblings make more than others...like my younger brother...I just feel so badly that he has to WORK!!!! But at the same time I think it is important that my children understand
that people do need to work...even though they'll get their inheritance..."
You can imagine me sitting on the edge of my seat barely able to let her continue--but keeping cool--as I launched into this whole rant about social capital and THEN i was like, “I would just like to turn your example back on you...imagine the child of a janitor going off to a school like this and then having your child want to come out of this school and hold a job that places her in a higher class than her father...and then she may go on to make much more than her father ever did! Now, imagine being that parent...and then imagine being that child."
They stared at me with their jaws dropped for a minute...so, I think I got through a little bit, after TWO HOURS of me doing my best to explain the needs of lower-income students.
I didn’t get a chance to talk to cappy but she said hi to me afterwards & wanted to know how the rest of the conference was. I saw her chatting w/ these 3 women I had been sitting with as I was leaving…good sign?

Wow, so I will just take up this whole blog now…haha sorry this is so long. Buuut I just had a great great meeting w/ Ed Pittman (remember, he was one of the panelists on the faculty panel…he’s VC’s associate dean of the college for Campus Life) who was very supportive of the idea of a resource center/accompanying administrator for lower-income/first gen students. I will be writing a proposal for this demand (I’d love some help if anyone’s interested) and working with him on it—then I’ll meet with Cappy later this semester to discuss the idea with her and hopefully it can be up and running in some form next year or the year after…so, in conclusion, we are moving full steam ahead in the right direction!!! Hooray!

ALSO, the conference pictures are assembled @ this link...
http://pa.photoshelter.com/gallery-show/G0000sl8BvTJLQa4

You'll need to sign in as kabradystepien@gmail.com, and the password is um, "password"...haha. There are tooons of our lunch w/ Cappy...

class issues on the radio

Still coming down from how great the conference was, I was pleasantly surprised to hear this program on the radio on the way to make groceries yesterday. Definitely worth listening; the segment on Amherst's no loans policy was really interesting. If you want to vomit, be sure to check out this segment. It's pretty wtf-tastic.

In other news, I hear Kathleen had a fine time at the President's lunch on Friday.

In other other news, post y'all!!!!

Also - a reminder. It's still a ways off, but if you're planning on going to the SUNY Stonybrook conference, register for that shit soon . . . It gets more expensive if you wait til after the first week of May (and that counts for those of us who can no longer finagle money out of our colleges to cover things of the sort).

An old, but still relevant, essay

"[T]he radical believes that the system itself is the problem: in terms of economics this means that the system of profit does not create hardship as the unfortunate sidelight of an otherwise warm-and-fuzzy social order; rather, we believe that the pain experienced by people under such a system is very much inherent to that system, and is in fact required by it in order to function. People are out of work in such a system, and thus poor and even destitute, not because the system is breaking down, but indeed, because it is working exactly as intended.

This is an analysis that most don't want to accept. And that's no surprise, as "seeing the system" goes against everything most of us have been taught since we were young: the idea that one can be whatever one wants if one simply tries hard enough and plays by the rules. The notion of the U.S. as a pure meritocracy where individual failings are just that, is a very seductive ideological posture, and one that few have ever subjected to real challenge.

The good thing for those who are radicals however, is that every now and then we get a little help in proving the larger point from the most unlikely of sources, and this week was no exception. For as I write this, Americans have just been told that we must brace for a ratcheting up of interest rates: three times as we enter May, and another likely hike in the middle of the month. And why? Well, as Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan explains, the economy is too healthy, unemployment too low, and wages, God forbid, have inched upward for too many, thereby raising the specter of dreaded price hikes.

As such, it has now become necessary according to the worldview of the Fed -- one that is shared by all major players in both the Democratic and Republican parties and certainly by their Presidential candidates -- to raise the cost of borrowing money, thereby cooling off the expansion and hiring spree, and perhaps even nudging unemployment numbers up a bit. But wait: what was that? Intentionally slowing down job and wage growth? Intentionally doing something to push unemployment up and put folks out of work?

Exactly right, and thus, it is Alan Greenspan who has demonstrated this week the accuracy of radical analysis as to the nature of the economy under which we labor and live. This former devotee of the market-worshipping, pseudo-intellectual cultist, Ayn Rand, now demonstrating clearly that pain and suffering, low wages and poverty are not the result of individual moral failings or a decline in the Protestant work ethic, but rather, are built-in to the nature of modern capitalism. "

from Tim Wise's essay "Seeing the System" published May 10, 2000
http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/seeingsystem.html

I should add that Thom & I have already come up w/ this list:
-facilitating Vassar's community relations w/ Poughkeepsie--org tour of Pok for incoming freshmen, VC staff should publicize community events to students
-a space & a full-time employee solely devoted to WC/1st gen students (thanks for that idea Smith!)
-more equitable employment/diverse staff for admissions, and/or workshops for that staff about class awareness
-admin needs to be aware of "hidden costs" students face (furnishing dorm room, laundry, caps & gowns for graduation, interview travel costs, GRE/teachers' exams, etc etc)

Very interesting..

Y'all--
Cappy has invited me to lunch with her and the President's Advisory Council ("a select group of Vassar alumnae/i, parents and friends who meet with the President twice a year to learn about institutional priorities, offer advice on issues of pressing concern, and explore ways to support Vassar") this Fri. Suggestions on what to ask for/discuss?