By Sarah Levy | August 26, 2010

PORTLAND--Approximately 60 Sky Chefs workers, members of UNITE HERE Local 9, and their supporters rallied across the road from their workplace by Portland's airport.

LSG Sky Chefs is the main suppliers of meals to most airlines and some retail outlets like Trader Joes, and has facilities around the country. Portland's rally was one of 10 that took place around the country. Workers have been fighting for a new contract for 10 months, with a stubborn management that doesn't want its profits dented.

Most workers are paid minimum wage and are forced to work long overtime hours. Management tries to take advantage of the fact that many of the workers are immigrants, so union representation is especially important for them.

Workers gave concessions a few years ago when the company was in a serious financial crisis. Now, the company is back making big profits, and union members are demanding an improvement in pay and health care benefits.

On one recent day, workers turned up at work and placed Band-Aids over themselves to show management how much they are being hurt by its intransigence. The action rattled the management, highlighting the unity of union members.

Workers inside Sky Chefs waved as union members outside chanted, "Who's in the fight? Local 9! Who's gonna win? Local 9!" and "Escucha, escucha, estamos en la lucha" ("Listen, listen, we are in a struggle"). The workers' confidence was shown by the increased participation in the rally.

Bob Marshall of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 addressed the crowd and pledged the solidarity of the union's 19,000 members and workers. Other speakers from UNITE HERE Local 9 and Jobs with Justice also spoke.

Phu Lieu, originally from Vietnam, has worked at Sky Chefs for 10 years. Addressing the rally in both Vietnamese and English, he described how, four years ago, workers gave up so much to help the company, but now it is time for the company to give back what was taken.

Eric Shierman, a Sky Chefs worker and union rep, gave a demonstration of unity when he handed a fellow worker a pencil and got him to break it. But when he gave 19 pencils, they could not be broken. "When members stick together," Eric said, "they can never be broken."

In an interview, Shierman said, "Sky Chefs claims they are struggling because their customers are struggling. It is true that several airlines have financial troubles, but Sky Chefs is a darn near monopoly--selling to both winners and losers--and is making a bucket load of money. It's time to share it."

The rally has shown the willingness of more workers to get involved in this struggle for dignity and a decent contract. The sense of unity could be felt in the air and the solidarity showed that victory can be won.

By Paul Dean | August 16, 2010

PORTLAND--Approximately 60 Sky Chefs workers, members of UNITE HERE Local 9, and their supporters rallied across the road from their workplace by Portland's airport.

LSG Sky Chefs is the main suppliers of meals to most airlines and some retail outlets like Trader Joes, and has facilities around the country. Portland's rally was one of 10 that took place around the country. Workers have been fighting for a new contract for 10 months, with a stubborn management that doesn't want its profits dented.

Most workers are paid minimum wage and are forced to work long overtime hours. Management tries to take advantage of the fact that many of the workers are immigrants, so union representation is especially important for them.

Workers gave concessions a few years ago when the company was in a serious financial crisis. Now, the company is back making big profits, and union members are demanding an improvement in pay and health care benefits.

On one recent day, workers turned up at work and placed Band-Aids over themselves to show management how much they are being hurt by its intransigence. The action rattled the management, highlighting the unity of union members.

Workers inside Sky Chefs waved as union members outside chanted, "Who's in the fight? Local 9! Who's gonna win? Local 9!" and "Escucha, escucha, estamos en la lucha" ("Listen, listen, we are in a struggle"). The workers' confidence was shown by the increased participation in the rally.

Bob Marshall of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 addressed the crowd and pledged the solidarity of the union's 19,000 members and workers. Other speakers from UNITE HERE Local 9 and Jobs with Justice also spoke.

Phu Lieu, originally from Vietnam, has worked at Sky Chefs for 10 years. Addressing the rally in both Vietnamese and English, he described how, four years ago, workers gave up so much to help the company, but now it is time for the company to give back what was taken.

Eric Shierman, a Sky Chefs worker and union rep, gave a demonstration of unity when he handed a fellow worker a pencil and got him to break it. But when he gave 19 pencils, they could not be broken. "When members stick together," Eric said, "they can never be broken."

In an interview, Shierman said, "Sky Chefs claims they are struggling because their customers are struggling. It is true that several airlines have financial troubles, but Sky Chefs is a darn near monopoly--selling to both winners and losers--and is making a bucket load of money. It's time to share it."

The rally has shown the willingness of more workers to get involved in this struggle for dignity and a decent contract. The sense of unity could be felt in the air and the solidarity showed that victory can be won.

By Katheryn Brooks | July 19, 2010

PORTLAND, Ore.--Marchers and some bystanders chanted "Hey hey! Ho ho! These budget cuts have got to go!" as about 100 people gathered at Pioneer Square before marching to City Hall on July 15.

The protest, which emphasized cuts to in-home care received by seniors and people with disabilities, was called by Yulia Arakelyan and Erik Ferguson, both of whom are dependent on assistance from home care workers in order to live normal lives and continue to work.

Prior to organizing the rally, Yulia described herself as the type of person who tried to "change the world everyday" through the way that she lived. However, as she saw the budget cuts affecting those around her and learned of the new 9 percent across-the-board budget cuts that were recently imposed by Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, it became apparent to her that she had to get out and fight.

As a result of these cuts, the Oregon Center for Public Policy (OCPP) reports that the Oregon Commission on Children and Families will cut $2 million in grants to programs that provide services and support systems to families with infants or children with developmental disabilities.

OCPP also states that over 2,600 Oregonians with mental or developmental disabilities will see a reduction in the home care that allows them to remain employed and active community members. Seniors and adults with disabilities also face cuts--most drastically, a 75 percent cut in the in-home care program that provides services such as laundry and shopping to 10,500 seniors, reports OCPP.

While many of those present at the rally were directly affected by the cuts, as evidenced by multiple signs that read "I'd rather be homeless than in a nursing home," there was also a large number of care providers and friends who were out to support those facing the cuts this round.

Amanda, Karielles and Linda, who work for the Developmental Disabilities Services Division of Multnomah County, spent their lunch break at the rally in order to support the families that they work with who are now just barely coping as services have been scaled back to the bare minimum already.

While further layoffs are a future possibility for their department, the women were most concerned about the effect that the budget cuts would have on those currently receiving services from the county. Linda described the effect the services their department provides, many of which are now being cut, as making the "difference between housing folks and making sure they feel integrated into society."

While in-home services are getting the ax, other areas of Oregon's budget have weathered the budget cuts struggle without much damage--most notably the Department of Corrections, which, according to the OCPP, had initially proposed closing three prisons. Kulongoski instead requested funds from the Emergency Board to keep those prisons open.

When asked about the governor's spending priorities, Karielles said it makes sense that the governor would keep the prisons open because with all of the services being cut and support systems severed, many more Oregonians are likely to end up in the streets or in jail.

Activists like Yulia are determined not to let this happen. While this was the first protest she has organized, she said that it won't be her last. Yulia is even considering making a trip down to the Capitol Building in Salem to show Kulongoski who his budget cuts affect and maybe even camp out on his lawn, because if she loses her in-home care, that may be her new home.

By Nicole Bowmer | June 30, 2010

SOMETHING QUITE surreal keeps happening. I stop thinking about the Gulf oil spill. And then I start again. And then I realize that in those last two or four or nine-and-a-half hours when I wasn't thinking about it, oil was flowing. And now that I'm thinking about it again, oil is still flowing. And this keeps happening. Every day. Week after week. Month after month. And it's still flowing.

And BP is concerned. At least, they're saying they're concerned. "Let me reassure you," wrote BP press officer, Robert Wine, in response to an online petition I never signed, "that we in BP are extremely concerned about the spill and pouring every possible resource we can into the efforts."

Well, it's a good thing they're extremely concerned because I'm extremely disgusted and extremely scared.

As individuals, when we make poor choices, when we misappropriate priorities and funds that result in disasters and deaths, we go to jail. For corporations, however, when poor choices are made, when priorities and funds are misappropriated, resulting in disasters and deaths, as long as it's done in the name of profit, CEOs and shareholders cash in stock and attend yacht races. And it's still flowing.

"We have engaged local communities to support those efforts," the letter continued, "and we are following all the requirements of law to verify that persons hired are lawfully present to work in the U.S." So in the face of a colossal environmental nightmare, one of BP's top priorities is that they don't ruffle the feathers of the Minutemen or Jan Brewer.

Well, that's just colossal genius. Especially considering people who are from, let's say, south of the Rio Grande have a legitimate and understandable interest in helping with any and all efforts given that their job security through the tourism industry and their food security are on the brink of extinction thanks to this colossal environmental nightmare spewing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Not the "Gulf of America" or the "Gulf of Britain" or even the "Gulf of Texas," a state which, like all of the southwestern U.S., was part of Mexico until imperialist-driven members of the U.S. military and government spun a web of lies to justify an invasion. (For those who have had a pulse in the last decade, this scenario may sound familiar.)

But the "lawfully present" priority of BP begs the question: What about the sea creatures? How is BP verifying that the sea turtles and the brown pelicans and the dolphins and the sharks and the crabs and the schools of fish that are now crowding American shorelines are lawfully able to receive treatment in the U.S.? Who gets the job of profiling them? Who's asking for those documents? Who listens to those accents to decide which ones sound just a bit too un-American?

Because, by all accounts, it appears that we've got single-payer health care in action for those creatures. (Which is more than we can say for what we've got in action for people.) Regardless of what patch of land or ripple of water those creatures turn to as a nesting ground, if they haven't already sunk to the bottom of the Gulf or Minutemen haven't shot them, they're receiving medical attention. It's quite the testament to humankind. Look at that, we can be both.

And after all of the "single-payer now" petitions, rallies, cross-country caravans, requests to speak to President Obama, rejections from President Obama, town hall meetings, Congressional hearings and arrests at Congressional hearings, who would have thought that all we needed to bring single-payer health care to America was the most devastating man-made environmental disaster ever. And it's still flowing.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

SO THE twisted and toxic logic of capitalism strikes again. In the event of a worst-case scenario, BP could have poured every possible resource into having a back-up Plan G or T or Z. At this point, I'd take a functional Plan B.

But instead of pouring resources into those preventative efforts, BP did what corporations are legally bound to do: they increased their profit margin. Just six weeks prior to the April 20 explosion in the Gulf, the obedient sheep who inhabit the mainstream media pastures applauded BP for an "aggressive cost-cutting drive" that allowed the company to top rival Shell as the largest oil company in Europe.

Aggressive cost-cutting drive? I wonder what departments had their funding cut? Because I know one department that didn't: the penthouse-suite department actually received an increase. The CEO of BP had apparently been living in scarcity over the years with a $4.2 million annual salary. But then, he showed his cost-cutting aggressiveness, which somehow meant that he deserved what was called a "fair and balanced" increase to $5.9 million per year.

A 40 percent increase? What's your original demand when you enter contract negotiations if what you walk away with is a 40 percent increase during an economic collapse? Do you go in demanding 75 percent, and then show you're a good sport willing to take one for the team as you walk away with a measly 40 percent?

Teachers should give that a go in their next round of contract negotiations. As it stands right now, they're labeled as selfish when asking for even single-digit increases. So if they announced that they were willing to take one for the team at 40 percent then maybe they could also be the recipients of a "fair and balanced" increase. And it's still flowing.

So what can be done? Some people are trimming their hair and sending it to the Gulf to be bagged and set afloat. Some people--famous people--are hosting telethons. And not-so-famous people are calling up and donating their dollars. And some people are getting their hands in the muck and wiping down feathers and setting creatures free.

And still other people are selling carcinogenic chemicals to sink the oil, while others are selling contraptions to spin the oil out of the water. Because, surely, we need to do something.

Agreed. But let us start by acknowledging that while trimming and donating and wiping and sinking and spinning may help us feel like we're doing something to help, those actions will do absolutely nothing to get at the root cause of this oil spill and prevent future disasters. We cannot buy our way out of this nightmare. No more so than someone could buy their way out of an abusive relationship with make-up to cover the bruises and aspirin to take away the pain.

What more devastating environmental disaster needs to occur for us to admit that a society based on profit cannot support the very life systems that we and all creatures depend upon for existence? It really can't. No matter whom we vote into office. No matter how many lyrical and lovely speeches they give. No matter how many actions they promise to take. No matter how many actions they end up not taking.

It can't because the point of a society based on profit means that when profit comes into conflict with social needs, profit wins. And profit won in the gulf, and the gulf will never recover. Not in our lifetimes. And if profit continues winning, not in anyone's lifetime.

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WHAT IF those 11 BP workers who didn't get to go home to their families would have actually had a say in the priorities of the company? Would they have supported offshore drilling in the first place, especially considering no viable remedies existed in the event of a worst-case scenario? What if they and their fellow employees on the rigs, in the refineries and in the offices had voted on how much one hour of labor was worth?

One penthouse-suite employee was taking home $3,072.92 per hour while other employees on the rigs, in the refineries and in the offices were taking home kibbles 'n bits, by comparison. If an aggressive cost-cutting drive would have been deemed necessary by the workers, would they have voted to postpone needed maintenance on what internal company e-mails labeled the "nightmare well" in the Gulf? Or would they have voted to cut costs by reconciling the obscene gap in wages?

Why do we continue insisting that democracy is a wonderful way to live, yet we don't extend it to our daily lives? Our workplaces? Our banks? Our universities? Our neighborhoods? Right now, we're living in a world where people making $3,072.92 per hour are calling the shots and buying off the very people we elect and the federal agencies they oversee.

We need look no further than the fact that in the weeks following the explosion in the Gulf, the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that regulates drilling, which has since been split into three different agencies with three new names, continued issuing exemptions to corporations that make their profits in oil and gas. This meant that those corporations were not required to pay for or submit in-depth environmental studies of exploration and production projects before drilling in the gulf. The federal government continued this well-entrenched and disastrous practice even after the April 20 explosion.

Then let us continue our clean-up effort by acknowledging that whatever it is that needs to be done cannot be done for us. No promise can be made, no law can be passed, no temporary ban can be implemented, no CEO can be sacked, no agency can be restructured, no agency can be renamed, no politician can be voted in, no politician can be voted out that will mean things are finally "fixed."

Because no one making $3,072.92 per hour wants the system to be fixed. The only things that get fixed in a system based on profit are those things that are profitable for the corporations. And if politicians need anything to win a political campaign, what they need most of all is for their corporate sponsors to maintain profitability.

So if the system cannot be fixed for us, then that means fixing the system is up to us. What if the employees at BP or Shell or Exxon were to decide it was time that the workers ran the company based on social needs. One worker, one vote. Offshore drilling--worth the risk? An hour of labor--what's it worth? Hours in a work week--what's fair? Oil--what are alternatives?

Now, of course, the penthouse-suite employees will have none of this. So they fire the workers. But the human resources manager rather enjoys workplace democracy and refuses to enact the terminations. And the payroll manager realizes that real democracy includes economic democracy and continues issuing paychecks.

The penthouse-suite employees go to the bank to put a stop to this democracy madness. But the bank employees received a call from the oil company's payroll manager, and now the bank is trying out this democracy thing, too. The bank employees vote to refuse any request by the penthouse-suite employees to withdraw or freeze funds.

The penthouse-suite employees go to the police station. But the police officers have accounts at the same bank, so they heard the news. The police officers vote to stand in solidarity with the workers. No tear gas or cracked skulls on their watch.

So the penthouse-suite employees call up the president. But the phone line's been disconnected. So they try the Pentagon, the Marines, the National Guard. But the soldiers heard from their families and friends that democracy's rising, so they took a vote. They're refusing to shoot down democracy at home. And given that the U.S. military is the largest consumer of oil on the planet, they took another vote. They're refusing to shoot down democracy abroad, too.

So the penthouse-suite employees call their friend at Fox News. But movements spread fast these days, and the office workers and camera operators told Glenn Beck to take his $666,666.66 weekly take-home pay as a writer and broadcaster and kiss it goodbye. ($666,666.66! I'm not making this up. $32 million is his approximate annual salary, divided by 12 months, divided by 4 weeks...equals $666,666.66. And guess what? If a=100, b=101, etc., adding up the letters in Hitler totals 666. If we worked for Fox News, this would be all the proof we'd need that Glenn Beck is, indeed, Hitler.)

Now maybe you're thinking that a society run by workers to meet social needs is inconceivable. Inconceivable?

"BP calls blowout 'inconceivable'..."

"BP says Gulf oil spill 'seemed inconceivable'..."

"BP calls disaster 'inconceivable'..."

You mean, like that kind of inconceivable?

And it's still flowing.

By Camille White-Avian | June 17, 2010

IN A city as gay-friendly as Portland, you would expect relative safety for the individuals of the community, and that they would enjoy a certain amount of respect. We have an openly gay mayor, Sam Adams, but lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people don't seem to be protected by the police force that he leads.

In a recent article in the Portland Mercury titled "Hate Comes Out of the Closet," the gruesome details of several gay-bashings are described. Both were in public in downtown Portland, which sports a couple drag bars and more gay bars per capita than the rest of the city.

Steps made toward the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" are a welcome win for the LGBTQ community. Still, however, LGBTQ people lack the same basic rights as heterosexuals when it comes to marriage and custody of children. Still, LGBTQ people are afraid to call the police after a gay bashing.

Jeffrey Darling, one of the men brutally assaulted while with friends who were dressed in drag, felt that "dealing with the paperwork and investigators would be more trouble than just letting the incident blow over and...wasn't sure it would do any good." Deputy District Attorney Rod Underhill admitted, while comparing gay bashing to domestic abuse, " There's a sense that if they call the police, the right thing isn't going to happen."

In the gay community, it makes a lot of sense that the police don't seem to be the right solution to fighting the homophobia that confronts us everyday. The police have been used to enforce homophobic legislation and conduct raids on gays bars, terrorizing LGBTQ people in the only place that was a refuge from the oppressive society that labels us as sexual deviants.

If Mayor Adams wanted to stop gay-bashing in Portland, he could move to push for legislation in the state of Oregon to give LGBTQ people the same rights as their straight brothers and sisters--to love, marry, care for and live with the people that matter the most to them, despite their gender or orientation. He would make it so those who have been bashed feel safe calling the police, instead of knowing that it won't make a difference or that the police might be bigots themselves.

It's time for gay politicians to stand up for our rights, instead of just talking about how we deserve them. If Adams really thought we deserved equal treatment, he would act like it.

By Wael Elasady | May 20, 2010

TWO RECENT reports make the case for a radical restructuring of Oregon's public universities. Both of these reports call for increased funding of the state's institutions of higher learning, but there should be no illusions about their real aim--namely, advocating a corporate takeover of public universities as the only way to address budgetary shortfalls in an age of financial crisis.

The first report, "The coming crisis in college completion: Oregon's challenge and a proposal for first steps," was released in November 2009 and prepared by Dave Frohnmayer, who is a University of Oregon law professor.

The Frohnmayer report recommends that the Oregon State Board of Higher Education convert the state's three largest universities into autonomous public corporations (similar to Oregon Health & Science University). This model would empower an unelected governing board to oversee all university operations, set tuition rates and admissions standards, and manage all costs and revenues.

The second report, also released last November, was prepared by the office of Portland State University (PSU) President Wim Wiewel and largely endorses the recommendations of the Frohnmayer report.

If implemented, these recommendations would undermine the democratic participation of the state legislature as well as citizens, students and faculty in Oregon's public universities and, if similar measures elsewhere offer any indication, lead to a decline in public access, affordability and course offerings.

The proposal to remove the legislature's ability to cap tuition has led to sky rocketing tuition wherever this policy has been put in place. In Texas, tuition has jumped 23 percent since 2003 when deregulation was instituted, carrying the state well above national and regional tuition averages.

And right here in Portland, since Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) was transformed into a public corporation in 1995, it has become the most expensive public medical school in the U.S. with 20 percent increases in tuition in just the past two years.

The crisis facing public higher education is clearly national in scale. Across the U.S., tuition rates have run more than 100 percent ahead of inflation since 1981 while family income has only risen 27 percent. Meanwhile, the cost of attending a public four-year university now amount to more than 30 percent of the annual income of most low- and middle-income households.

The simple fact is that the cost of higher education is already too high, with the average American student being indebted before they even begin their careers with over $23,000 in student loans. Students and parents cannot afford to lose the only tool they have to keep tuition costs from skyrocketing further out of control.

If tuition is deregulated and increased to reflect the "market" as suggested by these reports, this trend will be accelerated, and many students from low- and middle-income families will be priced out of the dream of a college education.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

BOTH THE Frohnmayer report and the white paper argue that declining state funding for higher education make this restructuring necessary and urgent, pointing to the fact that state funding for higher education has dropped by 40 percent during the past 20 years and in the case of PSU now only compromises 16 percent of its annual budget.

The Frohnmayer report calls for doubling state funding of higher education from $715 million to $1.55 billion per biennium, while the white paper calls for a state funding floor that would guarantee that funds for higher education would not dip below a minimum threshold after each legislative session. Both reports recommended that each university should have access to a local, or regional, tax base for additional funding.

While the Frohnmayer report spends considerable time highlighting the funding shortfalls and challenges facing the Oregon University system, it only devotes 150 words out of the entire 56 pages to actually recommending increases in public funding. And though Frohnmayer states that a "substantial re-investment in the state's universities" is the "principal conclusion" of his inquiry, he does not provide any clear steps to achieving this.

Instead, after painting a dire picture of public funding and casually dismissing all political solutions for funding higher education as impossible, Frohnmayer introduces corporate restructuring as the only solution to saving our higher education system.

The white paper adds nothing original in this regard but simply mimics Frohnmayer's formula of raising the alarm at the decrease in state funding, brushing aside any possible legislative solutions for increased state funding, and then spending the bulk of its space making its case for corporate restructuring.

Unfortunately, the white paper makes two proposals--for a state funding floor and access to local ballots for funding initiatives--worth consideration but fuses them unnecessarily with the proposed corporate restructuring.

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WHILE THE two reports lack details about how to address the funding crisis, they do include a proposal for a drastic restructuring of the relationship between the state and our public universities, and they spell out some of the ways they believe university administrators will be able to wield this newfound authority to more "efficiently manage" universities.

The Frohnmayer report recommends that the legislature pass what he calls the "The Independent Public Corporation Enabling Act of 2010" during its special session this February. This proposal would see the State Board of Higher Education create several independent public corporations, each with a governing board authorized to oversee all university operations. The role of the Oregon State Board of Higher Education under this model would be limited to establishing the mission of each independent organization, allocating state funds, and overseeing performance agreements.

The white paper refrains from recommending any specific governance model, instead enumerating key principles. It lists several models that it contends can accommodate its key principles including the model of OHSU (the public corporation model advocated by Frohnmayer), the University of California System, the North Carolina model, and the Virginia model.

Without delving into the details of the individual governance model of each university system, suffice it to say that the underlying feature shared by all four systems is the high degree of independent authority enjoyed by the boards of these universities and their greater freedom from state oversight.

Both the white paper and the Frohnmayer report argue that the increased independence afforded by these structural changes will allow each university to increase its "efficiency" and maximize alternative revenue sources in light of decreased state funding.

Specifically the reports hope this newfound authority will be able to make up for decreased state funding by gaining:

1. Authority to sell bonds, borrow against assets, and assume debt without state budgetary constraints,

2. Full operational control, including the ability to set admissions standards as well as the salary and benefits of faculty and personnel,

3. Authority to set tuition to "reflect market conditions" with no legislative caps on the size of increases.

The first concern about the proposed restructuring is the undemocratic nature of these centralized governing boards. It will strip voters of their power of oversight and regulation of these institutions and will consolidate power in the hands of a few unelected and (generally speaking) politically connected individuals while removing much needed transparency in the way our universities are governed.

In addition, it's not clear that allowing these newly created corporations the ability, for example, to pursue real-estate investments with public money and leverage debt on public buildings will have a positive effect on the resources available to Oregon students.

The power to more easily engage in such business transactions with no oversight could result in riskier investments or higher levels of university debt, creating financial instability for the institution in question.

OHSU provides an example of the possible dangers. In 2009, OHSU reported $39 million in investment losses due to the financial crisis, resulting in a $35 million budget shortfall. OHSU then fired nearly 1,000 employees, enacted a university hiring and salary freeze and reduced university pension plans. To date, OHSU continues to have a high debt burden and struggles with lower hospital revenues, higher rates of uncompensated care and a decline in state appropriations.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

BUT IT is not simply democratic participation and oversight that will suffer from this restructuring. Public access, affordability and course offerings will all decline, further eroding the already skewed balance between the university's role of empowering individuals to become critical citizens in a democracy on the one hand and its role in training future workers for employers on the other.

The long-term effects of a corporate restructuring could radically alter the purpose that our universities serve in society. Universities have always been torn by the conflicting mandates of their economic function as training workers for the marketplace and their social function as institutions that provide opportunities for students and faculty to become critical and knowledgeable citizens capable of self-governance in a democracy.

In the past 20 years, this balance has tipped as federal and state funding for higher education has dried up while funding from corporations and businesses has increased. This change in the source of funding for universities has been accompanied by the ever-growing proliferation of corporate priorities in the system of higher education, as revenue generation becomes university administrator's top priority.

Students are increasingly referred to as customers, faculty simply as employees, and course work and research are more and more dictated by the needs of corporations that view universities as factories of human capital and technological research.

The corrosive effects of these changes are clearly visible as the democratic governance and the social function of the university slowly become a thing of the past. Student union buildings look less like centers where students discuss and organize around important political and social issues facing society and more like malls, where food vendors, cell phone providers and banks can advertise their products to a captive student population--for the price of a small fee to the university.

Faculty participation in the governance and social life of the university has suffered similarly. With more than 50 percent of all university faculty in the U.S. now employed on a part-time or temporary basis, shared governance with strong faculty leadership continues to decline. Even the role of university presidents has changed, as the focus has shifted from hiring candidates based on their intellectual and academic accomplishments to candidates capable of doing the necessary handshaking, ribbon cutting and business networking to attract outside revenue sources for the university.

The replacement of state funds with corporate funding has also had more quantifiable effects. In 2000, after students and faculty at the University of Oregon demanded that the university make sure vendors only sell sweatshop-free products, Nike CEO Phil Knight retaliated by pulling $30 million in funding to his alma mater. In fear of losing this large sum, then-university president Dave Frohnmayer (yes, the author of the Frohnmayer report) overturned the student and faculty decision so Nike would continue its funding.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

NOT ALL cases of corporations exerting pressure through their financial influence over the university are so overt or politically charged. Since 2006, more than 65 percent of all university research is being funded by private interests--compared to 60 percent that came from federal funding in 1965.

This enormous increase in private funding has led to a significant deterioration in the independence of academic research institutions. Corporate research funding often places limits on scientists and forbids them to share the results of their research with their colleagues because of the investing company's fear of losing commercial patent dollars.

Furthermore, an alarming number of academics and administrators are reporting conflicts of interest related to their research due to outside financial relationships with private corporations and firms. For example, an investigative report by the San Jose Mercury News found that of Stanford University's 700-plus faculty, more than 299 disclosed potential conflicts of interests related to their research, and 26 out of 67 department heads and administrators reported outside financial interests related to their research within the last four years.

Pressure on scientists and academics to steer their research towards the desired goals of the corporation providing the funding has been widely documented and in many instances has undermined the objectivity of the research in question. Stanford's Center for Biomedical Ethics reported in a study that industry-sponsored research on drugs reported positively on drugs 98 percent of the time compared with just 79 percent of papers based on research not funded by the industry.

Finally, the type of research and the programs offered at universities will reflect the needs of the corporations funding the universities as they demand a return on their investment. This trend is already underway as liberal arts colleges, minority studies programs and the humanities struggle to compete for resources with departments that are seen by administrators as revenue generators for the university.

Likewise, funding for basic sciences that drive innovations 10 to 15 years down the road has lost out as private industry interested in applied research for immediately viable commercial products has provided a growing share of university budgets.

The effect of such perverse commercial influence in academia can be seen most clearly in bioscience, in which the overwhelming majority of research funds will go to developing highly profitable drugs to treat maladies like impotence, baldness and wrinkles while life-threatening diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis that kill millions every year in poorer parts of the world receive just a fraction of the research funds.

In many important ways, the privatization and corporatization of our universities has already occurred here in Oregon and across much of the country. The recommendations of the Frohnmayer report and the white paper, if followed, would serve to accelerate this process and destroy what little remains that allows us to call these institutions public. And ultimately, we will pay the price in our inability to address the educational needs of coming generations.

The Frohnmayer report and the white paper correctly point out the dire need for increased public funding to our public universities. So we demand an explanation for the failure of both of these reports to make an effective case for increased public funding for higher education. As both students and taxpayers, we demand leaders who can make that case, and an administration who does not offer students, faculty and staff token participation in a process in which the defining elements have already been set.

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DESPITE THE best efforts of Dave Frohnmayer and the PSU administration to sell corporate restructuring as the only option for saving higher education, students and faculty have come out strongly against the proposed restructuring.

Within a couple months of the release of the Frohnmayer report and the white paper, students at PSU had created informational packets, hosted several forums and organized a protest in response to the restructuring plans. And during the March 4 national day of action to defend public education, more than 400 PSU students and faculty rallied on campus. Speaker after speaker addressed the need to oppose the privatization and corporatization of Oregon's public universities.

The success in Oregon last November of ballot measures 66 and 67, which raised taxes just enough on the richest 2 percent of Oregonians and on corporations to avoid major cuts in education, health services and other basic state services, shows that many in Oregon have begun to reject the notion that our students, teachers and workers should be expected to bear the brunt of an economic crisis they did not create.

Not only have Oregon residents proven that they are willing to lead the way in increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations to safeguard public education and state services, but with state spending on prisons outstripping education and federal spending on foreign wars and bank bailouts in the trillions, many are beginning to understand that budget cuts have more to do with twisted priorities rather than a lack of funds.

With major budget cuts averted for 2010 and a strong show of protest from students, the discussion of corporate restructuring seems to have temporarily died down. But students and workers in Oregon must continue to organize in anticipation of the $1.5 billion in budget cuts already being threatened by state politicians in 2011. Supporters of corporate restructuring will surely attempt to use this as a new impetus to again peddle a plan that will dismantle what's left of Oregon's public higher education.

By Nicole Bowmer | March 22, 2010

YOU HAVE to hand it to the Wall Street Journal. When a dose of blind privilege and contemptuous ranting is called for, the Journal delivers the goods.

Following the March 4 Day of Action to defend public education, the Journal's literary bullhorn was handed to Peter Robinson. In an article called "The Golden State's Me Generation," Peter scoffed at the "self-pleading" March 4 activists who "demonstrated the entitlement mentality and self-absorption that has come to dominate much of higher education."

This coming from a man who wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan.

I once met a Ronald Reagan at a pancake breakfast fundraiser for an elementary school. His t-shirt said, "I'm not that Ronald Reagan."

So Peter Robinson was a speechwriter for which Ronald Reagan, you may ask? You know--that Ronald Reagan. The Ronald Reagan who was living in the White House when the top marginal tax rate paid by the wealthiest individuals in the U.S. on income over $161,500 fell from 70 percent to 28 percent.

Unlike the March 4 activists, these millionaires and billionaires didn't need to make their demands known with protest signs and a march down Pennsylvania Avenue. That's what privilege gets you. You just talk to the man who lives in the White House over steak and red wine at a fundraiser dinner or standing at the 9th hole during golf.

Yet I don't remember a Reagan speech that denounced the "self-pleading" millionaires and billionaires who "demonstrated the entitlement mentality and self-absorption that has come to dominate much of the American ruling class." Maybe Peter wrote that speech. Maybe he crafted the words with care only to watch Reagan toss the masterpiece in the trash can.

I also don't remember a Reagan speech explaining why his administration wouldn't support an increase in the minimum wage.

So someone who earned $10 million in Reagan's last year in the Oval Office had more than $4 million extra to stash in their savings accounts or invest in the stock market than they would have had at the beginning of his eight years. Yet one nickel--the same nickel that kicked off the first minimum wage increase in 1938-1939--was too much to ask for someone, let's say a janitor, earning $3.10 an hour. Maybe Peter noted that in another tossed speech.

Or maybe there's something to this theory of trickle-down economics. Since ream after ream of documentation has shown that, in fact, the money didn't trickle down from the millionaires to the janitors, let's at least admit that the money trickled down somewhere. It trickled down from the millionaires to the sons and daughters of the millionaires. And the nickels that the janitors never got never trickled down to their sons and daughters.

For the trickled-upon sons and daughters, the 30 percent tuition hikes in the University of California higher education system would be pocket change--while the untrickled-upon sons and daughters don't stand a nickel's chance in the land of Hades of being able to afford such an increase.

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PETER ROBINSON might have written some great speeches we never heard. Speeches that denounced the entitlement mentality of the military-industrial complex, which received a funding increase of 276 percent for strategic nuclear weapons in Reagan's first five years in the White House.

Two-hundred-and-seventy-six percent? You can say many things about Peter Robinson's boss, but you can't say that he didn't have priorities. The 276 percent increase didn't prioritize vibrant ecosystems; fully-funded education; preventative and holistic health care based on citizen health, not corporate profit; farm policies supporting small farmers and sustainable growing practices; living wages keeping families out of poverty; clean water to drink; clean rivers in which to swim; work schedules that support parental involvement in the community, schools and relaxing with family and friends--you know, all those things that make life meaningful.

Not that Ronald Reagan. That Ronald Reagan prioritized a 276 percent increase in weapons of mass destruction.

I've been trying to increase my overcrowded bookcases by buying 276 percent more books, just to get a visual of what such an increase would look like, but I ran out of money. So how did Reagan pay for such an increase to the entitlement mentality of the military-industrial complex? Did the money come from the self-pleading millionaires? It couldn't have been--not with the drop in taxes they paid.

Maybe Peter forgot to write this down, but the money didn't come from the privileged. It came from the poor. It came from a 14 percent cut in food stamps, a 28 percent cut in child nutrition programs, an 11 percent cut in low-income energy assistance programs, a 33 percent cut in health services, a 39 percent cut in general job-training programs, and a 16 percent cut in financial aid for needy students--also known as untrickled-upon students.

And let us not forget the elderly because, hopefully, we'll all be one of them someday. Yet Peter Robinson's boss pushed for Social Security reform that would have enacted a 40 percent benefit reduction for early retirees, a one-third reduction in disability benefits, and a 20 percent cut in the overall program. (The Senate, thankfully, voted 96-0 against this plan.)

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REAGAN INSISTED on referring to these cuts as "savings." Now, if a child nutrition program or a Social Security benefit office was staying busy stacking taxpayer money in a big pile, only to set it on fire in a patriotic blaze of glory and finish off the day by hosting a S'mores campfire, then I think most folks would be in agreement: Whew! Thank you, Ronald Reagan, for "saving" all that money from being burned!

But, of course, the money wasn't being burned. It was being used to benefit citizens facing the impossible task of meeting their basic needs on $3.10 an hour--until the Reagan administration cut the funding and "saved" it.

I can't find a single Reagan speech that uses anything other than "savings" to describe the cuts that devastated citizens who didn't have the privilege of starting off the 1980s with hundreds of thousands, if not millions or billions, in domestic and offshore bank accounts.

Maybe Peter wrote those speeches. Maybe Reagan burned them to satisfy a S'mores craving. Or to dampen suspicions. After all, people might have started questioning why 50 percent of the "savings" fell on families with annual incomes of less than $10,000 a year, and 70 percent fell on families making less than $20,000. But for families with incomes in excess of $80,000 a year, just 1 percent of the "savings" affected them.

And this was just in Reagan's first term. By the end of that first term, according to U.S. Census data, U.S. income distribution was more unequal than it had been since data was first collected in 1947--and it only got worse from there.

People might have suspected that Reagan, in the face of skyrocketing millions for the millionaires and billionaires, had declared an unspoken war on moms, dads and children living in poverty by eliminating the very social programs that kept them alive when abysmal wages and disappearing jobs to overseas factories could not provide the basic necessities.

Maybe Peter knew that you just can't tell people that sort of truth.

Perhaps Peter Robinson's masterpieces ended up in a trash can. Or maybe he's a privileged fellow, propped up in a haze of academia and completely disconnected from the realities that ordinary people face. My untrickled nickel's on the latter.

By Paul Dean | March 11, 2010

PORTLAND, Ore.--After 19 months without a contract, teachers here have finally gained a new agreement that doesn't include the main concessions sought by the school board.

The Portland Association of Teachers (PAT), part of the National Education Association, had been in an acrimonious battle with Portland Public School Board (PPS). Since negotiations began, PPS had been demanding a lengthened workday and work year, five unpaid furlough days, increased health care costs and many other changes in the contract language.

Teachers and other educational staff have been in forefront of the battle for educational funding, putting in many hours and dollars to pass the recent Measures 66 and 67, securing funding for schools. They worked 10 days for free a few years ago as well as using their own money for classroom supplies.

Yet these sacrifices and dedication weren't enough for PPS, which wanted more from the teachers. School officials said they respected teachers, but showed nothing but disdain for them. And while the teachers were expected to take the brunt of the budget crisis, PPS expanded its bureaucracy, giving big pay raises to people with no work history in education.

Throughout the contract talks, the PPS negotiating team was ignorant of the educational terms or even what was already in the contract. It proved a frustrating and unnecessary waste of time.

Teachers overwhelmingly voted for the three-year contract, which is retroactive to the expiration date of the previous agreement. The new deal gives teachers lump-sum back pay in April, a pay raise of 2 percent in the first year, no pay raise for the second and 2 percent in the third year. There will be none of the once-threatened five furlough days and no increase in contributions to health care.

The teachers did agree to 7.5 minutes duty time before and after the student day, but that's not the 15 minutes PPS wanted. Teachers are already required to be there for those 15 minutes, but it was made clear by the PAT in the contract that this will not increase the workday, work week or workload of unit members.

All the other changes that PPS wanted to put into the contract failed. This was due to PAT mobilizing its membership into various activities, including big rallies and pickets of the school board meetings, which visibly rattled school board members.

Last November, PAT put the heat on PPS with a 1,200-person picket line outside a school board meeting. Teachers, furious that school board members had called them an "outside body," streamed into the building chanting, "Contract now!"

This demonstration showed just how angry teachers had become. "I've worked for Portland for over 30 years, and I've never been more disgusted with the district," said Trudy Rees, a teacher at Harvey Scott Elementary School.

The next day, PPS dropped its demand for five furlough days after it "found" $11 million. But it took another three months of teacher mobilization to push the board into pulling back its other aggressive demands and finally agreeing to a contract.

A new contract is due next spring--and to be sure, PPS will be back with a vengeance. As part of the agreement, the PAT agreed to form a joint committee with PPS to study how school principals evaluate teachers and examine the teachers' working day--a move that could be a prelude to a demand for further concessions. PAT will have to draw on the lessons of this struggle to keep the school board at bay.

By David Rovics | March 8, 2010

I LOVE a good riot. The distant sound of things breaking, the smoke billowing from whatever is burning, the young men and women busily smashing whatever they can find into fist-sized pieces, launching the objects over the heads of their fellow rioters (if all goes well) and into the ranks of the black-clad police with their Ninja Turtle armor, translucent plastic shields and their array of far more sophisticated weaponry.

I love the scent of tear gas (if I'm just on the outskirts of the cloud)--it's exhilarating, the scent of possibility, of the situation's volatility, the thrilling uncertainty. The excitement of seeing the barricades get lit on fire, knowing that no police vehicle, no matter how well-armored, is going to drive through that.

They're going to have to put the fire out first, and until they manage to get some big hoses to the scene (which might require the participation of the fire department, which might not want to participate), this is our block. Maybe the police even retreat a couple times under particularly heavy volleys of rocks and bottles, the crowd surges and cheers. Meanwhile, the more experienced rioters stay busy gathering wheelbarrows full of more things to throw at the cops, knowing they'll be back soon.

My neighbor says it's because I'm an Aries, but whatever it is, if I find myself in the midst of such a situation, the memories are all fond ones of the rush and the togetherness of the moment. It's a warm, fuzzy feeling, really.

However, most people in most of the countries with which I'm fairly familiar--the U.S., Canada, England, Germany, Denmark, Australia, Japan--don't feel that way. For most people I meet, riots are scary things, and they don't care or notice much whether it was a chain store's windows smashed or a local one, whether only SUVs were torched or hybrids, too, whether any passersby got hurt in the process or not. The major news outlets don't pay much attention to what the underlying reasons for the rioting is--just enough about the situation for people to associate the riot with the cause and the cause with scary people who aren't like them.

I've been home in Portland over the past couple weeks, not in Vancouver for the Olympics and the accompanying protests that tend to materialize when a gigantic corporate event and the international media covering it rolls into (and over) the town. By European standards, the event the media was focusing on sounds like it was a pathetic little riot, a few smashed windows and overturned newspaper boxes, but it managed to attract the lion's share of Canadian and even international media coverage, as usual--it's sensational, but more than that, it serves the purposes of corporate media outlets that, for political reasons, want to make most protesters look bad, and don't want people going out to rock the boat in the first place.

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BY MY informal count traveling around, I'd say that most people in many countries are afraid to go to protests, even if their sympathies are with those protesting. They're afraid of what they've heard in the media about how things get out of control. They'd rather avoid lines of police in riot gear, and they feel unsafe at the thought that what they believed was going to be a nonviolent event might suddenly get scary when a small group of people decide to start throwing rocks through store windows.

Some of the rock-throwing anarchists (as opposed to the far more numerous non-rock-throwing variety of anarchists) will now ask: Who cares? Who cares if lots of people are afraid to come to protests because of us? They're "liberals" anyway (anyone who doesn't support your right to riot is a liberal, in case you didn't know).

But here's the thing: We need a mass movement, and contrary to what certain popular primitivist authors like to say, a few thousand dedicated people are not going to accomplish much of anything, let alone revolutionary change, without the support of a mass movement.

That is, whatever tactics you're using to organize resistance groups of any kind, the tactics need to be ones that don't completely alienate the general public (very much including the "liberals"). And the general public tends to be freaked out by groups of people committing acts of violence (or forms of property destruction that seem violent to them).

In recent decades, lots of people in lots of places have embraced all kinds of militant and often effective tactics--strikes, bus boycotts, sit-ins, building takeovers, nonviolent civil disobedience of all kinds. Those of any political persuasion who would say that tactics like these are universally ineffective are simply ignorant.

Equally, there have been some pretty darn effective movements that have employed violence around the world over the past few decades and centuries, and you'd have to be an extremely ideological pacifist not to recognize that. But these movements that have employed violent means have used a lot more than rocks. It takes a pretty desperate situation (say, Cuba in 1959) for movements like that to garner popular support, and there's not a serious guerrilla movement anywhere that wouldn't admit that the fish need the sea in which to swim, or they quickly die.

In the context of most modern, relatively well-off countries, it seems quite evident that rioting--even if it's not much of a riot--only impedes anyone's efforts at building a movement. It is, in fact, a much-used strategy of the police, as we've seen time and time again certainly throughout North America, Europe and elsewhere. I have no doubt that the first rock thrown is thrown by an undercover cop at least half the time in most situations.

I also have no doubt that most of the young people participating in the black bloc and advocating for "diversity of tactics" (translation: "don't tell me not to throw rocks, you oppressive, ageist liberal carnivore!") are well-meaning people doing a lot of good work in their communities when they're not throwing rocks through windows. But whether or not they want to believe it, when they start throwing rocks during a march they are doing exactly the same work as the police provocateurs--I mean literally, not figuratively.

Black bloc: Doesn't this make you wonder about what the fuck you're doing?

First published at Songwriters Notebook.

By Camille White-Avian | February 25, 2010

PORTLAND, Ore.--Some 500 protesters gathered in Pioneer Square to protest the murder of Aaron Campbell by Portland police.

Campbell, a 25-year-old unarmed African American, was shot in the back on January 29. He had been at the apartment of his girlfriend, who had called police when he appeared to be suicidal. Yet Aaron was walking out of the apartment backward with his hands on his head when police shot him six times with beanbag rounds.

Witnesses say Aaron dropped his hands, probably because of the pain of being it with the beanbag rounds, when Officer Ronald Frashour, shot him once in the back with an AR 15 rifle. Frashour claimed Aaron was reaching for a gun in his waistband, but no gun was found. He was handcuffed and left on the ground for half an hour before he was given medical attention.

The march was kicked off by Rev. Reneé Ward, one of the organizers of the protest, who spoke out against racism and the use of repeated excessive force by the police. Protesters then marched down Broadway toward Portland State University where a rally was held.

Members of Aaron Campbell's family and community spoke about the importance of continuing this struggle. Marva Davis, Aaron's mother, spoke briefly, saying, "I want to see justice. I want to see fairness. I don't want to see this happen to anyone's family again."

This is just one death in a long history of excessive force used by Portland Police Bureau. Police have killed Kendra James, James Perez, José Mejía Poot and James Chasse, but none of the officers involved have been indicted for any crime. We have to keep up the pressure to win justice for Aaron Campbell.