Dire Straits

Its been really hard to keep up with personal communications lately with jobs, wages, and benefits on the line. As an academic, it's hard to put up with the false dichotomies that are so easily used to make understanding complex situations more simplified. As a professor, this is antithetical to everything we work hard to teach students - to use critical thinking skills to look beyond the easy "us vs. them" mentality and look at the evidence and larger context from all angles, to think creatively about solutions to complex problems that will improve the lives of those who are struggling. The politics of polarized views on union vs. non-union and public vs. private, or any us vs. them categories simply makes it easier for the powerful to pit everyone else against each other rather than for people to work together for the betterment of all.

Currently public employees are being targeted, as if they are the cause of our economic problems. There are many causes for the current crisis, most chiefly the spending on the current wars without adequate revenues (public sector) and mistakes made in the financial sector (private sector). We have all felt the negative effects of these factors whether rich or poor, union or non, public or private. Those problems won't be solved by attacking sections of the population, as though they haven't already made sacrifices (take for example the amount of potential lifetime earnings the average PhD or stay-at-home parent sacrifices in order to educate themselves or care for their children).

So if you're wondering what black hole I've been sucked into because I haven't called or replied to your emails, it's the one where battered and dismayed public employees go to hopefully make themselves heard. Here are some signs from academics at a rally last fall and recent coverage of a rally at the state capitol this week.