> Doug wrote:
> >Well the folks I'm talking about are involved in union work on their
> >own campuses, antisweatshop activism, anti-intervention movements -
> >real gritty stuff, in other words. Eric Alterman, in a Wojtek-ish
> >diatribe against postie politics, quoted Nelson Lichtenstein as
> >saying that the strongest student support for the University of
> >Virginia's Justice for Janitors campaign came from the theoryheads in
> >English. When I was at the UVa English department 20 years ago, it
> >was hard to tear folks away from their Dryden.
>
> That's probably because we (lit crits/theoryheads) have one of the dimmest
> prospects in the job market among all grad students (well, we may have a
> better chance than those in classics). While back in your days, Dryden
> could have been a career, now it's a ticket to a lifetime of genteel
> poverty.
>
> all dressed up, but nowhere to go but to organize (while making minimum
> payments on my credit card debts, that is),
>
> Yoshie
Alterman didn't get all of his facts straight. It's a Living Wage Campaign at UVa, not Justice for Janitors. But he was correct about the theoryheads. When the campaign was getting off the ground three years ago, most of the people involved were indeed theoryheads who self-identified as leftists and/or radicals. My fellow comrades in the history department were for the most part too career-minded to get involved in such foolishness, even though their own career prospects weren't much better than english grad students. Currently, I hear that there are many more undergrads involved, coming from different disciplines.
now getting paid to organize, mark
________________________________________________________ NetZero - We believe in a FREE Internet. Shouldn't you? Get your FREE Internet Access and Email at http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html