Today and tomorrow, student-workers are going on strike to protest unfair labor practices (ULPs) by the University of California after its administrators refused to meet their (very reasonable) bargaining demands and threatened union members who might participate in a strike. The UC Student-Workers Union, UAW Local 2865, represents over 12,000 graduate and undergraduate Academic Student Employees– all…
Read MoreI had the very good fortune to attend my first Spillit event last night in (local photographer/visual anthropologist, Jamie Harmon‘s) Amurica studio space. Spillit is one of the newer additions to what has become, over the last several years, an incredibly rich, astoundingly diverse, mostly DIY and impressively self-sustaining (for lack of a better descriptor)…
Read MoreThe news has just been released that Rev. Fred Phelps, founder and lifelong shepherd of the Westboro Baptist Church (in Topeka, Kansas) has died at the age of 84. I find it difficult, I confess, to summon the normal human compassion that usually accompanies news of another’s death in this case, largely because Phelps dedicated…
Read MoreLet’s face it: exercising solidarity is tricky business, not the least of which is because “solidarity” itself is a tricky concept, which requires the subordination of real differences (across a whole host of important categorical domains) for the sake of some particular common interest that might prioritize similitude– often for prudentially strategic reasons– over, across…
Read MoreAs some of you already know, I am also one of the bloggers at NewAPPS. I’m re-posting here a piece co-authored by Edward Kazaian and I that appeared this past Tuesday on NewAPPS. It’s generated a lot of conversation so far, and I’ll have a post forthcoming soon on my take on that conversation. What…
Read MoreThis is the first installment of my series Memphis on the Downbeat, an inside look into Memphis music by a bona fide Memphian and music-lover. This week Memphis hosts the 30th International Blues Challenge (Tuesday through Sunday at venues all over Beale Street), which every year brings leading blues artists and bands from all over…
Read MoreOne of the things that I’ve resolved to do in 2014 is devote more space on this blog to Memphis, THE GREATEST CITY IN THE WHOLE UNITED STATES. (C’mon, really, pick a fight with me about that claim. You will lose.) As I’ve said many times before, in private but more often in public, there…
Read MoreAt long last, I’ve finally gotten all my (administrative, bureaucratic and legal) ducks in a row and I am now able to share with you the documentary film that my student Sophie Osella and I made several months ago: WORKING IN MEMPHIS. Last summer, I posted periodically about our process of making the film here…
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