Stonewall: History of a Rebellion

Audio of speech June 2009 by Dana Cloud.

http://wearemany.org/a/2009/06/stonewall-birth-of-gay-power

Why Marry at all? A poem by Marge Piercy

Why marry at all?

By Marge Piercy

Why mar what has grown up between the cracks
and flourished like a weed
that discovers itself to bear rugged
spikes of magenta blossoms in August,
ironweed sturdy and bold,
a perennial that endures winters to persist?

Why register with the state?
Why enlist in the legions of the respectable?
Why risk the whole apparatus of roles
and rules, of laws and liabilities?
Why license our bed at the foot
like our Datsun truck: will the mileage improve?

Why encumber our love with patriarchal
word stones, with the old armor
of husband and the corset stays
and the chains of wife? Marriage
meant buying a breeding womb
and sole claim to enforced sexual service.

Marriage has built boxes in which women
have burst their hearts sooner
than those walls; boxes of private
slow murder and the fading of the bloom
in the blood; boxes in which secret
bruises appear like toadstools in the morning.

But we cannot invent a language
of new grunts. We start where we find
ourselves, at this time and place.

Which is always the crossing of roads
that began beyond the earth’s curve
but whose destination we can now alter.

This is a public saying to all our friends
that we want to stay together. We want
to share our lives. We mean to pledge
ourselves through times of broken stone
and seasons of rose and ripe plum;
we have found out, we know, we want to continue.

Speech by Silky Shoemaker to Queerbomb (alternative pride gathering) June 4

Loved this–political, funny, celebratory all at once.

This night has been a long time coming. Im so glad we’re all here to celebrate our wild and beautiful queer identities. Tonight we proclaim who we are and what we love, without shame or apology or beer commercials.

Pride is strength in what we love and it is what we make it, together. And now we show Austin that we can make it without money or corporate sponsors or exclusionary tactics or billboards. Without fear of sex or bodies, of filth or poor people, without fear of speaking the truth.

As “the Gays”, we have an incredible lineage of radical, courageous ancestors who literally put their lives on the line to exist in this world. To exist in flaming, exuberant queerness. Their struggles have paved the road we walk tonight. And when we take to the streets for pride, we carry their torches in honor of the work they have done, the lives we have lost, and the work we still have left to do!

41 years ago when Stonewall Riots lit up the lower east side of Manhattan, no one apologized to their board of trustees afterwards.
They did not consider themselves “too freaky” or “too vulgar” or “unsuitable for families”. Even though that is exactly what the world wanted them to think. They were queers of color, they were trannies, they were activists and organizers. They were sex workers and drag queens and passing butches. They were backroom cocksuckers and bitter old queens and underage twinks. They were drunks, loudmouths, and perverts— tired, disappointed, and angry. And they fought for their right to exist in just these ways, and more! (So every time you see a bitter old queen at Charlie’s, you can thank Sylvia Rivera.) They fought to be unapologetically extravagant in their queerness and irrepressible in their demands!

We will be told again and again to make ourselves presentable, to hide behind closed doors, to button up, butch up, hush up, pay up— to sell out our values for mainstream acceptance. BUT this is wrong! and its also BORING!

They will say we should do it in the name of normalcy or decency or that its the only way to get it done. And especially they will say “Do it in the name of families.”

But my family is right here. Im reclaiming that word. (Again!) Because my family is built around respecting and honoring each other in our many facets, in the beauty and dignity of our varied experiences. And in this shared family we inherit a responsibility from the faggots and bulldaggers of yore, our flaming foremothers and forefathers:
To remember that the freedoms we have were built on the radical activism of others. When they took to the streets with broken bottles and high heels in hand they made room for pissed off transsexuals in bad wigs, (and more!)

When ACTUP members chained themselves to the walls of the NYStock Exchange they demanded the world see us: as living, breathing, fucking, dying human beings in need of affordable medicine and basic compassion.

When we pass out free condoms its not just to say “Be safe,” its also saying “We’re not ashamed” “We will still find power in how we make love.”
When i think of Queerbomb, I think of us all making love. BIG GAY LOVE out on the streets! And i think its heroic. Im so proud to march with you all tonight. To honor our history and build a future. To bridge and overlap movements for freedom and justice and good looks.

In the words of Sylvester, “You make me feel mighty real!”
Lets march!!

REMAINS TO BE SEEN: “Our Body” as ideology

Katie (who gets credit for this title), Samantha, and I got sucked into the “OUR BODY” exhibit at UT’s Stark Center, which houses a “museum” dedicated to the instillation of norms of human “fitness.” Named after fitness gurus Joe and Betty Weider, its galleries include a huge, rotating plaster cast of a statue of Hercules, a reading room featuring sports history and periodicals; its walls are graced by posters of athletes and groups of men and women working out.

The call to fitness contextualizes the experience of the OUR BODY exhibit. Only during our making our way through the exhibit did its other investments become apparent. Of course, like all exhibits, it is rhetorical, guiding spectators teleologically through its scenes. Lighting, technology, and walls of quotations from philosophers, artists, and anatomists all give dignifying credence to the display.

But there are numerous problems with this series of representations. Numerous scholars and journalists have attended to how the plastinicization of corpses as a way of preserving them for display, the selection of “fit” bodies posed in athletic endeavors, and the pedagogical revelation of “diseased” bodies all may be aligned aesthetically and ideologically with Nazism. They are bodies made to work in the name of freedom from superstition and romance. (See https://sites.google.com/site/stopbodyworlds/media-coverage/body-worlds-body-aesthetics, and the excellent rhetorical/anthropological analysis at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/sphpod/sphpod/schulte-sasse.mp3).

In addition, the gender politics of the exhibit are alarming. Almost all of the “plastinates” as critics call them are male; penises and testes dangle matter-of-factly from most, with signs identifying the penis at every one. The female body is reserved for and sequestered in the “prenatal” area, marked off with warnings about the material within being sensitive and commanding reverence from viewers. Parents are exhorted to escort their children or protect them from this content. Inside this small display, one gets a look at the female reproductive system, with strange emphasis on the vulva, labia, and even pubic hair.

Then there are fetuses suspended in plastic at various stages of development. A wall sign describes the changes in fetal development week-by-week; except for the title of the display outside, the fetus is referred to as “the baby” after the blastocyst stage. The reservation of femininity for reproduction and the reverence dictated toward gestation have clear ideological import. (At the same time, the display of fetuses–shrimplike even at 8-12 weeks–would give pause to any abortion opponent looking for ammunition.)

In other cities around the world, the exhibit has gone under a number of names and has included varying numbers of plastinates. In some exhibits, the donors of corpses and their release forms are put into the foreground. In Austin, however, there is no mention of where the bodies came from. One is struck by the fact that they are overwhelmingly male and Asian in their features and coloration. (There is something seriously disturbing about seeing a corpse holding its own removed skin draped over one extended arm.)

A little digging reveals that it is likely that the bodies in the Austin exhibit (with the exception of the fetuses, of course) are those of Chinese convicts, numbers of whom could have been political prisoners, who were executed or died in prison. There is no way that these once-persons gave their “consent” to participate in this ostensibly educational, scientific project.

According to Boston Herald journalist Darren Garnick, German scientist “Gunther von Hagens’ factory in Dalian, China’s third largest port,
reportedly employs 260 medical school grads to work the “Body Worlds” assembly line. Factory workers get $200-$400 a month to peel skin,
scrape fat off muscle and replace bodily fluids with soft plastic. Based on a presumed 40-hour work week, that comes to $1.25 to $2.50 an hour for what has to be the grossest job in the Eastern Hemisphere” (https://sites.google.com/site/stopbodyworlds/media-coverage/the-working-stiff; see also http://www.postgazette.com/pg/07175/796418-109.stm).

This fact more than any other reveals the exhibit as a for-profit enterprise mounted by the self-aggrandizing inventor of the plastinicization process. (Not incidentally, visiting the exhibit is not cheap.)

Finally, the exhibit cultivates pornographic voyeurism, which, one could argue, all such representations do. I am not embracing a scopophobic stance, however. Numbers of groups have protested this exhibit where it has appeared (notable among them are religious groups for the unavoidable materialism of the display). Given the heinous provenance of these bodies, the employment of sweatshop labor in the tranformation of them into objects, and the posing of the dead as physically fit Barbie dolls, protest is a reasonable response.

At the very least, we should encourage spectators to recognize the rhetoricity of the display and to question the conditions of its production and the social relations of its consumption.

At UT, the exhibit is called: “OUR BODY: The Universe Within.” Marketed as a display of “actual human bodies,” the display will, according to promotional material, make it so that “You will never look at your body in the same way again!” It is, according to the brochure, a “blockbuster exhibit!”

The exhortations to regard these molded, arranged bodies as “our bodies” and to learn a new way of seeing ourselves through these viscerally exposed models may cultivate identification with these anonymous others. However, it seems to me that the import of the title “OUR BODIES” is the claim to ownership, wherein property and propriety intersect.

My Harvey Milk Day Speech . . . how I wanted it to come out.

We Must Unite and Fight:

Speech at Harvey Milk Day Rally 5/22/2010, Austin Texas

Conclusion of Equality Across America statewide conference

(which didn’t exactly come out this way)

Today, I am wearing the “queermadillo” t-shirt that many of you present signed at the 300,000 strong National Equality March in Washington D.C. That march demanded full equality at the federal level for LGBTQ persons in all matters governed by civil law. The march was a powerful statement that we are here, we are on the move, and we are not waiting for our rights.

As I put on this shirt, I was reminded of the incredible diversity of our communities as reflected in the ways we name ourselves: Lesbian. Gay. Bisexual. Transgender. Transsex. Intersexed. Allied. Questioning. Queer. Moreover, many of us experience the multiple oppressions of living at the intersections of race, gender, sex, class, nation, and so on. We belong to multiple political organizations and ascribe to diverse political beliefs.

But we share in common the way that we challenge or mess up the segregated categories that our rulers depend upon to divide us—gay/straight, black/white, immigrant/native, male/female: legal/illegal. When we demand equality, even in the seemingly conservative domain of marriage and family, we mess up the categories that warrant the dehumanization of so many of us to the profit of the few. The backlash against us shows how we share enemies in common. We share on a deep level our demand for recognition of our core humanity.

For these reasons, we must UNITE and fight.

Every day, we undergo the insults of oppression and we face the limitations of our movement and its leaders in responding to our needs. Emmanuel Winston today told us today about being bashed, how he represents thousands of other instances of everyday violence against gay and especially transgender persons. In 30 states it is legal to fire a person just for being gay. Transgender workers face the added burden of not having documentation that matches their gender identity and expression, which leads to incredible unemployment and hardship.

Many of you here represent members of the military and veterans persecuted under the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law. Like many immigrants, we are decreed “illegal,” and with immigrants, we demand the breakdown of the borders between us. Out4Immigration founder Amos Lim today told us how deeply the immigration issue matters to LGBTQ people. If we are in bi-national families, we have no legal right to unite them.

And then we are denied the rights and dignities of recognized families and marriage. I know many of you recognize, as I do, that the nuclear family idealized by the Right is a problem. But our demand for marriage equality is not a bid to replicate the politics of normal. When we enter these relationships and win recognition for them, we are transforming society at its base. We transform these institutions by our entry into them. Marriage and family rights are, like immigration rights, a class issue as well. Being able to provide one’s partner health care; the right to share and inherit property and pensions; these and many other benefits are desperately needed by many of us.

We MUST unite and fight!

But the leading organizations of our movement—including the Human Rights Campaign and the National Lesbian and Gay Rights Lobby—have failed to prevent or stop these harms. They have counseled patience, compromise, and working through the “official” channels of elections and lobbying. They embrace Democratic politicians and forgive them when they betray us. For 40 years, basically since Stonewall, these organizations have not moved us forward.  The old strategies are not working any more and we are tired of waiting.

It will take a new generation, this generation here, to refuse to compromise or to wait when it comes to our basic rights. Harvey Milk, whose life and work we honor here today, once said, “It takes no compromise to give people their rights.” In other words, our rights are not subject to compromise! Dismissing our urgency and militance, Congressman Barney Frank told organizers for the National Equality March last year that the only thing that would feel the pressure of the movement was the grass. But we will not wait and we will not be silent.

We must unite and FIGHT.

Harvey Milk was a politician yes, but an organizer, a rabble-rouser, and an agitator first and foremost. He refused to settle, to wait, or to give up what was unique about himself even while uniting with others across ideology, race, gender, sexual orientation, and class. Infamously, he told every group he spoke to that his aim was to recruit them. His memory continues to recruit us to this fight.

He said, “I have tasted freedom. I will not give up that which I have tasted. I have a lot more to drink.”

We have tasted freedom in recent years in several states, only to have the cup ripped from our hands.  But we will not give up that which we have tasted. We have a lot more to drink. Harvey Milk struggled until his death to win his freedom.

If we are rightly to honor his legacy, WE must unite and fight!

Harvey Milk was right.

We must UNITE and fight.

We MUST unite and fight.

We must unite and FIGHT!

The Political Rationality of Joseph Stack

Joe Stack’s deliberate crashing of his small airplane into the Echelon Building in Austin, TX (which housed some offices of the IRS) on February 18 was remarkable not only because of its extreme character but also because of how pundits across the political spectrum have embraced him. Even his own adult daughter called him “a hero,” and there was widespread resistance to calling his actions “terrorism.” Stack and one other person were killed in the attack.

As Glenn Greenwald noted on salon.com, there is an element of racism and Islamophobia in refusing to label an American citizen’s political violence as terrorism. Responding to Fox News’ claim that it wasn’t “terrorism in the usual sense that most of us are used to,” Greenwald commented, “We all know who commits terrorism in ‘that capital T way,’ and it’s not people named Joseph Stack.”

He continues:
In sum: A Muslim who attacks military targets . . . in their own countries that have been invaded by a foreign army, are Terrorists. A non-Muslim who flies an airplane into a government building in pursuit of a political agenda is not, or at least is not a Real Terrorist with a capital T—not the kind who should be tortured and thrown in a cage.

Indeed, when questioned on this issue, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that the incident did not appear to be terrorism, because he did not suspect “somebody like an Al-Qaeda.”

However, the cogency of Stack’s manifesto also helps to explain why he has not been denounced as a terrorist. The fact that he was a white US citizen just meant that his political rationale would receive careful attention. Although a number of media outlets, like Business Insider, called Stack’s manifesto “insane,” it had clear resonance with the anger and hopelessness of working-class Americans.

Scholarly research on political violence (including my own) shows that such actions arise from a combination of grievances against the system and the perception that there is nowhere to give public voice to or demand redress of those grievances. I have documented how, too-often, corporate executives and political leaders have portrayed political and social problems as psychological ones. Stack resists this impulse in the opening paragraph of his letter: “The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken.”

Stack’s manifesto decried the US government and its spending priorities. A small-time, self-employed tax resister, Stack focused his outrage on a 1986 tax code change classifying IT industry consultants as employees rather than as self-employed. This shift, Stack wrote, reduced him to the status of a criminal and a “non-citizen slave.”

Stack railed against the use of his money to bail out corporations who, he observes, have committed “unthinkable atrocities”: When it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days, if not hours.” He charged the American medical system with the murder of “tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. . . . When the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for their mistakes.”

It should come as no surprise that this statement has resonated with the desperation and anger of thousands of people across the country watching real health care reform go down the drain, facing layoffs and futile job searches in a time of double-digit unemployment, and living through the gutting of public services, including education. People also recognize that the source of their outrage is the twisted priorities of a system that prioritizes endless wars over meeting people’s needs and pays corporate economy-crashing finance executives billions in bonuses.

At the end of his letter (and in spite of his place in the petit-bourgeoisie, not the working class), Stack locates himself in a line of people who have died “for freedom in this country.” He quotes the communist manifesto approvingly against the capitalist creed (“From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed”): “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

The Business Insider Article that labeled Stack’s manifestor “insane” prompted hundreds of responses to the contrary. A reader from Elkhart, Indiana, wrote, “I’ve been unemployed since 8/2008. No jobs anywhere in the area. . . . . I’ve been selling auto parts since I was 16, and in a few weeks, I’ll be 50. I don’t want to end up in a homeless shelter.” Another wrote, “I don’t agree with his actions, but I certainly feel for him.”

Yet another added:
He was a long way from a crackpot. Today Wachovia announced that they have foreclosed only on 1% of the people in default. The country is hurting because of big banks and Wall Street and nobody is protecting the average citizen. In fact, the Supreme Court just ruled that corporations can put as much money as they like behind any candidate that they feel. Well guest what: that candidate will be the one who will screw the American public the most so that they can continue to get away with obscene profits while we suffer.

Stack’s analysis may make common sense to many working-class Americans today, but his drastic action represents his perception that he had neither options for public expression of his anger nor agency in affecting the actions of the government and corporations motivated his drastic actions. (He also set his family’s home on fire; no one was injured.) A sympathizer online wrote, “The man killed himself because he could not access his government in a real and meaningful way.”
Writing that a body count was the only thing that would get people’s attention, he hoped that his actions would prompt others to “rise up and revolt.” His sense of isolation and inability to affect the direction of his life, much less that of the entire nation, led him to the tragic conclusion that (individual) “violence is the only answer.”

In previous research, I (along with two co-authors) have observed how would-be Presidential assassins express similar hopelessness. Sam Byck, who attempted to assassinate Richard Nixon in 1974, wrote that he felt like one grain of sand on an endless beach. He had picketed the White House continually and even tried to join the Black Panthers. But both the economy and the Left were in decline, and opportunities for collective expression and resistance increasingly few. As Stack also noted, the corporate control of the media and political process gives the “little guy” very little voice.

At present, Stack’s words and deeds reflect the period we are in: a time of profound class anger but without yet the corresponding organization and confidence to mount collective, public political resistance. Contrary to Stack’s analysis, Americans are not “zombies.” What is needed is the re-emergence of vibrant social movements—and not the mistaken channeling of popular anger into right-wing populism—as sites of collective agency to transform the economic and political landscape.

Sorry to have been inactive

I’m using this blog mostly for posting things about academic freedom issues. I appreciate everyone who has been commenting. I’ll be checking in only from time to time.

Account of UNC protester on Tancredo visit 4/14

The letter was written by Billie Murray, Ph.D. Candidate at UNC Chapel Hill. H

April 16, 2009

Dear Chancellor Thorp:

I want to express my concerns over the events of April 14, 2009. Currently, I am a Doctoral Candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Communication Studies specializing in the rhetoric of social protest. I have been a part of the UNC system for 6 years and a student and member of the UNC-Chapel Hill community for over 4 years. During that time I have witnessed some of UNC’s proudest, shining moments and consider those less shining to be opportunities for growth and progress. As a member of this community, a first-hand witness to the protest events on April 14th, and as a scholar of free speech issues, I believe it is my responsibility to address what I see as precisely one of those opportunities.

In the days leading up to April 14th, I reviewed a number of emails, websites and other literature about the Youth for Western Civilization, Tom Tancredo, and proposed responses to his presence and the presence of the YWC chapter on campus. I attended the event on the 14th as a researcher of social protest and free speech and to stand in solidarity with those students who felt threatened by the presence of the YWC and Mr. Tancredo in our community. During the protest, I watched as some of my students were roughly pushed to the ground by police officers, sprayed with pepper spray, and threatened with a taser. I helped some students to the bathroom on the second floor of Bingham Hall to rinse the spray from their noses, mouths, and eyes. Needless to say I was afraid for their safety and my own. The Students for a Democratic Society released a statement today detailing a side of this story that has been absent from police accounts, the Daily Tar Heel, and other mainstream media sources. In the interests of free speech, that side of the story deserves to be heard, and I encourage you to hear their voices.

I can’t say I wasn’t warned that something violent might occur at this event. A faculty member in my department who researches hate speech sent out an email requesting that anyone deciding to take part in the protest use caution because demonstrations against hate groups can increase the likelihood of violence. I suppose I should have known from my own extensive experience and research that this violence most often comes not from protestors, but from the “protectors” of free speech. It seems only Mr. Tancredo’s free speech rights and safety were of concern on Tuesday, not the free speech rights and safety of your own students. The apology issued to Mr. Tancredo on the grounds that he felt threatened and was unable to be heard was out of place. An apology should be issued to those students who feel threatened by the presence of the YWC and Mr. Tancredo and the violent silencing of their own voices at the hands of police officers.

Other arguments have surfaced since the events that a cursory review of the history of protest would reveal as commonplace. For example, protests just give those protested against the publicity they crave, and there are better ways to deal with these groups. But I ask you, what are these better ways? In your notice to students you suggest that: “There’s a way to protest that respects free speech and allows people with opposing views to be heard. Here that’s often meant that groups protesting a speaker have displayed signs or banners, silently expressing their opinions while the speaker had his or her say.” While I might agree that sometimes silence can be golden, Alice Walker reminds us that “no person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.” This demand for silence also reveals a misunderstanding about one of the main goals of protest, both historically and in the current moment, to disrupt. Protestors often seek to disrupt our comfort zones in order to bring light to injustices. Silence is not disruptive. Disruption requires volume, and they were loud. Yes, a window was broken. But there seems to be more concern over this small piece of damaged property than over the overreaction of police in spraying and threatening bodily harm to the students.

Threats of criminal and Honor Court charges against the students who exercised their free speech rights is indicative of how effectively they embodied their power to express themselves and protect their community from the silencing effect of hate speech. We often lament the lack of involvement of young people in politics and issues of importance. But how quick we have been to encourage their silence, demonize their expressions, chill their participation, and discipline and punish them when they have any real effect.

Some have argued that it is not entirely clear that YWC or Mr. Tancredo are/were engaging in hate speech. Your own comments refer to his talk as being about “immigration.” However, a review of Mr. Tancredo’s past speeches and YWC literature makes it quite clear that a rhetoric of “anti-immigration” is being used to thinly disguise intolerance, racism, fear, and attacks on the cultural identities of people of color who should “assimilate” into Western Culture. As purveyors of higher education, we have a responsibility to our students to be more critical and discerning and to teach them to be more critical and discerning about the rhetoric to which they are exposed. You don’t need to be a rhetorical scholar to see the insidiousness of this rhetoric. Hate speech (or if you prefer to err on the side of simple racist rhetoric) does not promote social justice or any other democratic values. Hate speech silences free speech by humiliating, denigrating, instilling fear, and inciting violence

It has been argued in the past couple of days that supporters of free speech should be tolerant of all speech. While I am of the view that as a democratic society we must be tolerant of dissenting views, in no way does this mean that all speech promotes democratic ends or should be tolerated. Put simply, some stories are better than others. The litmus test for these “better stories” include those that promote tolerance, acceptance, social justice, equality, and yes, free speech. The rhetoric espoused by YWC and Mr. Tancredo does not promote tolerance of difference and silences those who are “different.” Why then should we be tolerant of a rhetoric that in no way promotes the goals of a democracy and that creates a culture of fear and hate? Hate speech silences free speech.

Mr. Tancredo is a former Congressperson and Presidential candidate. Therefore, he is someone with a great deal of political power, who has had many and will continue to have many opportunities to have his voice heard. I do not lament his speech being disrupted in this particular instance. What I do lament is that the students who attended Mr. Tancredo’s speech with the goal of engaging in dialogue or debate with him, did not get the opportunity to have their voices heard. Their voices are too often silenced it seems. However, it is my understanding that the groups who organized the protest have since been in conversation with these students to apologize and find productive ways to work in solidarity so as to avoid a similar clash of communication strategies in the future. But as a teacher of communication, I would say to those students desiring dialogue, I admire your resolve. However, to have a truly productive dialogue with someone holding contrary views, all must come to the table willing to respect the diversity of others, trust in their goodwill, and prepared to be honest and open-minded. I do not believe that given the opportunity to dialogue with Mr. Tancredo or members of the YWC, you would have found these conditions to be present.

In closing, I would like to ask you, Chancellor Thorp, to use this moment as an opportunity to truly hear your students’ diverse voices when they say to you that they will not be silent when racism threatens their community. Use this opportunity to forge a dialogue among students, faculty, staff, and university police so as to have more productive, peaceful interactions in the future that protect our students and their rights.

Respectfully,
Billie Murray

Defend Loretta Capeheart!

JUSTICE FOR PROFESSOR LORETTA CAPEHEART!
A TEST CASE FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND WORKERS’ RIGHTS

Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) Justice Studies professor Loretta Capeheart has been targeted by her administration for her outspokenness for workers’ rights, against the Iraq war, and for increased representation of minority scholars at NEIU. In 2007 she was elected to chair her department by a 2/3 majority of her colleagues, yet the University refused to appoint her to that post and even went so far as to put the department into receivership and install a representative of the administration as chair. Capeheart was also denied merited awards during this time.

What were Capeheart’s “crimes”? An activist in her union (University Professionals of Illinois-AFT/IFT), Capeheart was a leader in the 2004 faculty strike. In 2006, she testified in the state legislature on the need to recruit greater numbers of Latino/a faculty, contradicting and infuriating Provost Lawrence Frank, who was in attendance. In February 2007, she defended students in the anti-war movement who were arrested during a protest of a CIA recruitment event on campus. This controversy led NEIU President Sharon Hahs to propose a campus events policy (subsequently withdrawn) imposing draconian and unconstitutional restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly on the campus.

When Capeheart spoke up at a faculty council meeting to question the treatment of the students, NEIU Vice President Melvin Terrell lashed out at her, stating that Capeheart was a “person of interest” to the police and that a student had filed charges of stalking against Capeheart. These defamatory statements were absolutely unfounded. But the threat against Capeheart—that if she continued to speak out, she and her career would be targets for retribution—remains very real. “Stalking is a criminal offense,” she said. “I lived in continual fear that someone would come to arrest me in my class and that I would lose my job. The message was that if I continued to speak they would come after me.” To date, Terrell has not retracted his accusations.

Capeheart is suing Terrell for defamation, alongside Hahs and Provost Lawrence Frank for violation of her constitutional right to free speech and retaliation against her. She seeks an injunction against further violations, her rightful appointment as chair, and from Terrell, monetary damages for harms resulting from his defamation of her. Incredibly, the administrators’ response argues that Capeheart, as a state employee, may not sue the University or its officials, contravene their positions, question their conduct, or speak as a faculty member on matters of public concern. Their motion to dismiss the case states that “clothed in her authority as a faculty member,” Capeheart criticized University policy, “even going so far as to disagree with the stated positions of the Provost.” “It is very middle ages,” Capehart said, “like the lord vs. the serf.” The case is pending hearing in Federal Court.

We cannot allow NEIU administrators to get away with these attacks on academic freedom and workers’ rights. Their actions should be chilling to all workers, activists, and scholars. Her case is a perfect example of the stakes of the ongoing struggle for academic freedom—for labor, for inclusion and equality of minorities, and for the right to protest against war and injustice. We stand with her.

Petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/j4lc/petition.html

“Facts Count” by Freeexchangeon campus.org

Go to freeexchange on campus.org for the full report. Here are their conclusions about Horowitz’s latest book, “One-Party Classroom”

FACTS STILL COUNT
executive summary
Nearly three years after our first report, Facts Count, debunked the accusations against
faculty members and higher education in David Horowitz’s 2006 book, The Professors,
we find ourselves confronted with yet another round of attacks against higher educa-
tion in his latest book, One-Party Classroom, which he co-authored with Jacob Laskin.
Our conclusion, after reading this new book and examining its arguments and their
factual bases, is the same as it was in 2006: Facts still count, and Horowitz’s arguments
still sorely lack supporting evidence.
New policies that affect higher education should not be undertaken lightly, considering
the millions of students and future leaders attending American colleges and universi-
ties, the communities relying on important research to solve our collective challenges,
and the policymakers depending on institutions to add economic vitality and growth to
their districts.
Unfortunately, instead of the rigorous examination upon which future policies and
planning should be based, Horowitz’s analysis in One-Party Classroom closely resem-
bles the shoddy research and baseless conclusions in The Professors. Like previous
works from Horowitz, One-Party Classroom attempts to indict all of higher education
based on examples the authors have cherry-picked and then distorted beyond any sem-
blance of reality.
This report examines the inaccuracies in One-Party Classroom’s accusations, as well
as the lack of evidence and faulty logic underlying its claims and conclusions. As in
his previous works, Horowitz cites only a scant number of academics and courses, and
then makes broad generalizations and indictments of higher education based on that
unrepresentative sampling. In this book, Horowitz adds to his research problems by
reviewing only course syllabi available online, faculty member profiles and reading
lists—often incompletely and/or inaccurately—and failing to include any real measure
of what occurs in a course. In particular, this report will examine:

conclusions and accusations based on incomplete and inaccurate course syllabi:
Horowitz repeatedly uses inaccurate copies of course descriptions, intentionally omits
sections of course descriptions and simply misquotes course descriptions, when claim-
ing that a course, department or faculty member’s work is inappropriate for higher
education. With a lack of accurate evidence, Horowitz’s conclusions fail to hold water.
misrepresentations of classroom reading lists.
Repeatedly, Horowitz cites the reading list of a course as evidence that it is used to
indoctrinate rather than educate—typically because his representation of the read-
ing list contains only perspectives of which he disapproves. However, in a number of
examples, Horowitz’s account literally leaves out books and reading assignments that
would disprove his claims.
misrepresentations of faculty members’ credentials:
As in his previous attacks on higher education, one of Horowitz’s chief complaints is
that faculty members lack the credentials to teach their courses. Similar to his treat-
ment of reading lists, Horowitz relies on, at best, incomplete information to make his
claims. He repeatedly leaves out significant research or writing in the relevant field
when making his accusations.
Facts still count, and our assessment of Horowitz’s latest book finds it sorely lacking.
Much like The Professors, the data in One-Party Classroom is cherry-picked, manipu-
lated or grossly blown out of proportion to serve Horowitz’s agenda—to smear and
discredit higher education. To the extent One-Party Classroom provides evidence of any
trend, it demonstrates only the consistency of Horowitz’s biases against higher education.