As part of the ongoing saga between Broward College administration and its heavily beaten-down adjunct labor force, adjunct groups, along with community support, will be protesting the administrative virus at Bailey Hall today at 5 p.m.
The context is the long-term trend in the college administration of redistributing money away from faculty to ensure posh lifestyles for an administrative elite. Some adjuncts have decided to fight back, using small numbers and under the typical daily financial stresses that low incomes always ensure. A campaign has developed around exposure and, if American labor history is any indication of the future, the development of counter-attacking techniques that force a reduction in the power of the arrogant few.
Until that point comes, the traditional method of attempting to effect a change through the act of exposing injustice and unjust human actors will be employed. This means we will see signs that call out the administration for what it does to the adjuncts, "teaching for table-scraps," "equal pay for equal work," and things of that nature, rather than signs calling for what we want to happen to them. So for now, the adjuncts will go to the public to ask them to understand what the administration does to us. But in the future, we must get to the point where we go to the public to ask that the public understand what we must do to the administration.
As the rampant decay of political institutions has lead to upward redistribution of power (often with the help of state power, which is effectively controlled by a constellation of competing private sector actors, as Albert Einstein also observed more than 60 years ago), the ability for ordinary people to access a standard of living has become increasingly compromised in order to support this small but hypermonied class of power addicts.
These are the kinds of people who need our help and tough love to bring them down from their positions. A nemesis is always useful in affairs like these, but the soft touch and understanding of the withdrawal of addicts will also be important for humane actors seeking the best ways in which to balance a transfer of power. And perhaps some of us (ahem) are more suited to the former than they are to the latter but like any good team learns that there are different roles for different people to play.
Email [email protected]
Follow @NewTimesBroward
