AFT Local 2121

President's message

May 2012

Looking for (comm)unity

By Alisa Messer

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
—from Marge Piercy’s
“The Low Road”

A surprising number of faculty members took the time to thank me for my message about unity in the last issue of Union Action, so that topic must have struck a chord. Perhaps ironically, we have also heard from members who say that the union is creating outright divisiveness between part- and full-time faculty. We’ve heard from full-time faculty that the union only supports part-timers, and likewise from part-time faculty who say we only care about full-timers. Read more...

April 2012

Credit and blame

By Alisa Messer

There’s a lot of blaming going around. It’s not that surprising: panic and finger-pointing are both symptoms of larger situational problems. While criticism has value, I am less convinced about the worth of blame. Not only because it’s frequently misdirected, but because constructive action is so much more useful. Read more...

February 2012

Yes, the budget is terrible . . . let's stop austerity measures by bringing revenue back

By Alisa Messer

Hit hard

The start of the spring 2012 semester has seen a riot of meetings, spreadsheets, and confusion as the college desperately tries to pull its budget back on track. While some of the issue was identifiable last semester, as you’ll read on page 4, part of this new emergency was basically dropped in our laps as of mid-January. Certain of our troubles could have been avoided with better planning and administrative oversight, and that same critique should be leveled at the state, which has now simply made community colleges responsible for its own short-sighted “solution” of placing an additional burden on our students through fees most cannot reasonably afford. Read more...

December 2011

It's all about the py pie

By Alisa Messer

My favorite chant at recent protests on behalf of the 99 percent? “What kind of pie?” “Occupy!” It's not just cute; there's a real point embedded. For all the criticisms of the Occupy Together movement—no definite demands, no plan for legislative change, and everything else the cynical can throw at it—I would say that the movement is very clear on its central issues: The one percent and its interests have far too much influence over our government, and the ninety-nine percent are suffering because of the increasingly suction-up economy that benefits the one percent rather than the rest of us. Ultimately, Occupy is all about the size of the pie and who has a say over the pie. Read more...

October 2011

Building momentum

By Alisa Messer

What didn’t seem possible just months ago—certainly not before Wisconsin or Arab Spring—is happening. Though you might not have known it right away if you were watching FOX News. Or listening to NPR.

When I first started making notes for this column, the Occupy Wall Street movement seemed small but determined, with no mainstream media coverage despite more protesters on Wall Street, round the clock, than at many Tea Party rallies. Now, following hundreds of arrests, this movement to bring attention to the many Americans who have lost their jobs, homes, and health care—and opportunities—has grown in media coverage and geography. Cities across the country, including San Francisco, Buffalo, and Jacksonville have joined in, and it has become an Occupy Everywhere movement. Read more...

September 2011

Where we stand now

By Alisa Messer

You’ll note a lot of public conversation about “the middle class” lately, and it’s true that given the outrageous (and increasing) wealth divide in the U.S., the middle class is being squeezed like it hasn’t been since the Great Depression. But these messages about the middle class sometimes make me wary. The middle class deserves our concern, and since AFT 2121 is a union of professionals, protecting middle class wages and benefits is much of what we do. However we must also remain concerned about those who aren’t lucky enough to, like us, have unionized, middle class jobs—many of them our students and their families. This is part of why AFT 2121 supported the San Francisco Progressive Workers Alliance campaign against wage theft and was pleased to see new legislation passed this August targeting employers who steal from their employees, why you’ll read in this issue about the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights and the recent Care Congress, and why we continue to support many social justice issues and offer solidarity to other workers. Middle class, working people, the un- and under-employed—at this point we’re not all in quite the same boat, but it’s nonetheless clear who’s on that yacht way out in front of us. Read more...

May 2011

There is a different way

By Alisa Messer

For the last dozen-plus years I've lived on a timeline measured by semesters; as a teacher, I have treasured and dreaded these last weeks of the semester as I review with students what we've accomplished in class and how ready we are to move on. This is a time, for me, to consider what I could have done to help students go farther as well as turning to next semester to think about what I will change for the better. Semesters are a liberating schedule to live on: the next one always offers a chance to bring it more together, to learn how to get even clearer. Faculty members get repeated chances for renewal. Read more...

April 2011

Under siege

By Alisa Messer

It could be a Facebook poll, a glossy magazine survey, or an old viral email: “How to tell when you’re under siege.” Or maybe it’s a t-shirt or a coffee mug. At any rate, it’s not particularly funny. Read more...

March 2011

Reframing the dialogue on public workers and education

By Alisa Messer

As I write this column, much is changing in the world, at breakneck speed. An autocratic ruler in Egypt has been forced out after decades, and Libya could be next. Wisconsin’s capitol building has been occupied for weeks, and protestors in Indiana, Ohio, and other states are battling the most intense attacks on workers’ rights this country has seen in many decades—with the largest fightback. Read more...

February 2011

Building a better budget in the nation's richest state

By Alisa Messer

Our new governor's budget 2011-2012 proposal seeks to close an approximate $25 billion budget hole for California, the nation's richest state. Brown has offered a budget with fewer gimmicks, outrageously deep cuts to higher education and social services, and a June special election that would extend some taxes. Read more...

December 2010

Apathy is boring (and dangerous)

By Alisa Messer

November 2010

The election and beyond

By Alisa Messer

This year, the California Federation of Teachers, our statewide affiliate, had the foresight and the courage to push Proposition 25 onto the ballot and through to a winning campaign. Many said obtaining a simple majority vote for the state's budget could not happen in this climate, but the CFT took a calculated political risk to stand up for something that we knew would have a long-term, positive effect on the state's budget process. Read more...

October 2010

Election results will have real impact at City College and for the state

By Alisa Messer

Election season is fully upon us, and if you’re like most registered voters I know, you’ve already received a phone call or three and some mail as well. We hope by now you’ve heard, in fact, from a fellow AFT 2121 member: your union local is working with the California Federation of Teachers and unions in our local San Francisco Labor Council to get out the vote in November. Read more...

September 2010

Pulling together for our students, our jobs and our state

By Alisa Messer

Over the last couple of weeks, as your union leadership held more than fifteen informational meetings at multiple sites to answer faculty questions about the tentative contract agreement, we heard many of the same faculty concerns: Were concessions really necessary? What could be done to protect the jobs of part-timers and other vulnerable faculty groups? What sacrifices were other employee groups making? What about next year? Read more...

Apathy is boring (and dangerous)

By Alisa Messer

As the fall 2010 semester draws to a close and I think back over the many crises of different sizes we tackled—and even made some dents in—it is difficult not to look toward next year with some trepidation. Times are hard. We are headed into a holiday season and a new year with thousands cut from their unemployment insurance (as a country, we’re willing to bail out banks but not people), still in the midst of war, and yet we hardly see a fight over extending tax cuts for the richest one or two percent in the U.S. In addition to the attacks on public workers, a blame-the-teachers mentality has gripped the country, and finger-pointing at unions has become thoroughly trendy. The latest state budget proposal slashes public services including CalWORKS, childcare, and grants for the elderly, blind, and disabled. The screws keep tightening on higher education. Community colleges educated 200,000 unfunded students in California last year and still turned nearly the same number of additional students away, the majority of whom were first-time community college students. CCSF has both enrollment worries and financial woes.

As is the case for so many of our students and their families, quite a number of us are seeing our most difficult financial year in some time. Lost hours, no summer school, wage cuts, medical costs, missing steps —they add up in substantial and painful ways. One of our frequent conversations around the Union office is about increased difficulties and tensions among individuals in the CCSF community. We’ve seen an increase in inter-collegial complaints and even employee investigations, demonstrating that many of us are facing significant stress.

Despite all this, I am consistently stunned by—and thankful for—the dedication and perseverance of so many I work with; there are inspiring examples throughout our campuses. Also inspiring are the DREAM ACTivists, the undocumented students across the U.S. who have risked so much to stand up for their own futures. Over the last few weeks, scores have gone on hunger strikes and staged sit-ins that put them directly in front of immigration officials to support the DREAM Act. The Obama administration has already deported more individuals than the previous administration ever did, but they courageously stand up and sit in nonetheless.

Instances of perseverance, stepping up, and taking action will need to grow as we face broader financial crises and choices about how to address them. Even with the passage of Proposition 25, most of the so-called “solutions” will be ever-more-severe cuts to education and services, amounting to even more burdens placed on working families and students.

In the UK, November saw 50,000-strong student protests, strikes, and occupations protesting university fee hikes that would amount to tripled tuition for some. I was struck by a sign that said, “Apathy is boring (and dangerous).” AFT 2121 has few apathetic members, as we learned during the November elections when we saw strong participation and interest from our membership. Apathy was not the issue when thousands showed up on the mall in Washington to support Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin; those who responded by rallying to “restore sanity” were not apathetic. So in addition to moving beyond apathy, we must clarify what our actions mean and where they take us.
Tragically, this semester also saw a rash of suicides among LGBT youth—and then an unapathetic response, including the “It Gets Better” Project. I watched scores of “It Gets Better” videos over the last few months, inspired by the viral nature of the project and how people were moved to speak out and share their experiences in order to help others. Yet I started to wonder about that title—“it gets better”—which seems to say, “Just hang on. Wait.” That sticking it out is worthwhile is an important message for anyone in despair, and especially for LGBT youth who are often isolated and bullied. But is it enough to say, “It gets better”? What about agency and empowerment, of working to make it better?

Our institution is testament to this core value, in fact: education “makes it better,” for students training in career technical programs, heading toward transfer, and learning their first phrases of English, as well as for older adults and for the families and communities that are touched by those who access education. But higher education is an active choice, not a waiting game, and the students who come to us—whether they are sure of themselves and their skills or need time to hone their abilities or find their paths—are making that choice. And as faculty, we help them do that. Every day.

This issue of Union Action offers just a few of many examples of how CCSF is actively working, not waiting, to make things better for students, to provide support and allow for agency and empowerment.

It doesn’t just “get” better—we need to be involved in making it that way. That goes for LGBT youth, for immigrant families, for our CCSF students, and for ourselves and our state. For the immediate and mid-term future of our educational community, that will involve something of a leap: the “better” must come in large part in the form of increased funding for the college. The options are limited, yet we know that action, progressive and proactive, will be necessary. Recent polling indicates that California strongly believes in public education and government’s role as a solution to making things better, and we know that San Franciscans cherish City College and know personally the ways it makes things better for the city. It is our hope that this dedication—to City College and the core values that a thriving, accessible community college represents for its community—means that San Franciscans will choose to support CCSF with the revenue it needs to keep educating. As a college community, we have to be ready to take that leap together and win back the future of this college.

The election and beyond

By Alisa Messer

This election cycle, California did better than any state in getting out the labor vote. Among California labor unions, the CFT—spurred in part by Prop 25 and by a new internal organizing initiative—was at the very top of the heap in terms of getting out the vote for labor, working families, and education.

For our part, AFT 2121 ran an ambitious and unprecedented internal organizing effort, leading to direct contact with and commitments from the majority of our membership—and as you know, it's not always easy to find you. I want to thank the many volunteers and precinct reps who contributed to the internal and external campaigns, in particular the tireless Barbara Shaw, who logged more volunteer shifts than any other AFT 2121 member. And I expressly want to thank our outstanding field organizers, Mark Piper and Galina Gerasimova, who worked with the CFT's Ed Wong to make our 2121 campaign one of the most successful internal organizing efforts within the CFT.

Your responsiveness to this campaign demonstrates the commitment of our members to supporting public education and public services, and it shows your interest in strengthening our local and its impact.

But the majority of the challenges we faced prior to Election Day remain, so we need to keep organizing. Here's a simple request: join the Committee on Political Education. Our COPE fund allows AFT 2121 to participate in the political process through contributions to candidates and issues, but our fund is small for our size. Growing the fund will help us commit resources to the kind of continued organizing we'll need to do to defend the City College budget and public education in California. Join by deducting a small amount per paycheck toward this fund: $5 is an excellent starting contribution to COPE.

Proposition 25's passage is a true victory, but Proposition 24’s defeat will leave a substantial hole in the state's budget. If we are unable to educate the California electorate by running a successful campaign to close corporate loopholes and repeal corporate tax cuts that have not yet gone into effect, we clearly have a problem. And with the passage of Proposition 26, which puts many fees into the same super-majority category as taxes, California's hands are tied even further—yet another reason to contribute to COPE and to be ready for more participation and action.

California acted as a firewall on November 2, electing Democratic and, in some cases, progressive candidates. San Francisco also bucked a trend by defeating Proposition B, which sought take-backs in pensions and dependent healthcare. The other 12 anti-worker, pension-related measures in the state won easily, and early polling showed that San Franciscans were in overwhelming support of Prop B, so the 57% “no” vote against B testifies to what organizing and educating accomplished.
The conversations and draconian actions about workers' pensions, including CalSTRS, won’t stop now that the election is over. Public workers are under pressure, and while much of the pressure stems from concerns about shrinking and underfunded budgets, many of the resulting "solutions" play straight into the hands of the conservative and tea party anti-services mantra labeling government the enemy. But government, though generally imperfect and eminently improvable, is where we get our roads, our educations, our courts, our safety and safety nets. Investing in government is about investing in our communities.

Austerity measures, cutbacks, and take aways are not the only possible “answer” to our budget crisis. For instance, San Francisco voters showed some willingness to think more proactively with the passage of Proposition N, which raised the real estate transfer tax on sales worth more than $5 million. Economic crisis or no, we are the richest state in the richest country on earth; there is money if we choose to focus our priorities. San Francisco workers, including all of us at City College, have already given up and given back taxpayer dollars and more, including benefits and healthcare costs: we can only stretch so thin. Our students have given up too much as well, and even those who are able to get their classes are nonetheless succumbing to increasing despair about transfer as CSU and UC fees continue to rise.

Meanwhile educators, who comprise a large section of unionized public sector, face our own specific issues, such as the many crossed wires in the discussions about public education today. Both Bush's No Child Left Behind and the Obama administration's Race to the Top try to quantify student achievement and success in terms of numbers and bubbles on scantron forms. As in the recent film “Waiting for Superman,” they seek panaceas in charter schools and oversimplified solutions to challenging problems—even as they continue to defund. In this context, we are fortunate to have Diane Ravitch, once a key player in the implementation of No Child Left Behind, as a new voice championing our profession. Her recent work advocates for public education and against increased privatization and reliance on testing. One of her refrains is that “education is not a race; it's a right.”

There are also challenges to colleges and universities as more reports surface about low completion rates for community colleges and we rely more on private funding and fundraising. We need to think clearly about our most vulnerable students, their access to college education, and how to help them succeed. Revenue and progressive taxation need to be part of the program; we cannot further cut our budgets or tighten our belts and expect positive results.

We can always do more to improve education, health, public safety, and other public services—and we should, we must. But competition, coercion, and starvation are not the answers, and until we help educate the public to rethink revenue and recognize that taxation and budget are a matter of priorities rather than scarcity, we'll be continuing to fight over far too few pie scraps to serve our students and support our families while the corporations and their CEOs roll in all the dough.

Election results will have real impact at City College and for the state

By Alisa Messer

My own calls to our members about state Propositions 24 and 25 (yes!) and local Props J (yes!) and B (no no no!) have yielded some enjoyable, interesting conversations—and a lot of hurried answering machine messages. When I’ve gotten you on the phone, I’ve had the chance to answer questions and hear your concerns. I’ve been pleased to hear that many of you are aware of Proposition 25 in particular, and you’re ready to support the smarter budget process it would implement in California by allowing the Legislature to pass a budget with a simple majority rather than the two-thirds super-majority currently required.

Fewer of our members seem to be fully aware of the impacts of Prop B, a city charter amendment introduced by Public Defender Jeff Adachi, which would make employees at City College and throughout San Francisco pay significantly more for dependent health premiums—in some cases upwards of $500 more per month. Though it’s been sold as “pension reform” that will help the city’s budget, it’s simply the wrong way to attempt to correct current budget shortfalls, and it makes no distinction between high-wage earners and others.

AFT 2121 is taking this November’s elections seriously, and in this issue of Union Action you can learn more about our efforts to get out the vote. We urge you to join us and to help with the organizing, even if you can only spare one evening.

I know that for many of us, it’s all-too-difficult to get excited about engaging in politics. We’ve been repeatedly disappointed. We know we can’t rely on the ballot box to build or bring the changes to us—there’s much more to building a better future than which boxes we check at the voting booth. (The many young people across the nation who voted in unprecedented numbers in 2008—now being accused of suffering from an “enthusiasm gap”—can attest to this reality.) No matter who wins and no matter what initiatives pass, we will continue to have challenging work ahead, and we will need to keep organizing and educating and working for change.

But right now we cannot afford to ignore the situation in Sacramento: our own professional livelihoods and our students’ educational futures depend on what happens there, as well as in D.C. And of course it’s not only the people at City College who are affected—some of these ballot measures will make real changes in budgets, which will mean real changes for our communities as well.

The good news about this election cycle is that there are some concrete, proactive things we can get behind to move us in the right direction. Some of the change we need—for instance, in passing legislation that will support education and public services and enable our elected representatives to do the same—can happen at the ballot box.

And some of the “change” we absolutely must prevent could happen there, too. Because whether or not you can get enthused about any of the candidates out there, you should definitely be excited and angry about former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. She and others whose primary concerns are corporate interests—their own interests—will bring us all kinds of change we don’t want to believe in. She has indicated she wants to run our state like a business and that she expects to hack an additional $15 billion from the state budget. She plans to cut 40,000 state jobs, decimate pensions, and attack collective bargaining rights. She’s pretty much declared war on public workers and unions. Whitman favors tax breaks for corporations and the rich—and punishment for the rest of us. She’ll accelerate the cuts Schwarzenegger has already made to education, public safety, and other vital services.

We’ve had enough “change” that favors corporations and the richest people in the state: it’s gotten us into this mess. Let’s make sure we don’t go any farther down that rabbit hole this November.

Pulling together for our students, our jobs and our state

By Alisa Messer

At the same time, we heard concern for students and fellow employees. Members of 2121 said they were willing to make difficult sacrifices to protect others. Often we heard faculty say as they voted for a pay cut, “I don’t like it, but I know we’re saving jobs and classes.”
There’s no question the difficult choices we have been facing are not peculiar to City College, San Francisco, or California. Across the country, workers in education and elsewhere, in the public and private sectors, are facing difficult pressures and choices related to the economic crises such as increased workloads, under- and unemployment, and budgets that prioritize tax breaks for corporations even as they tax students, working families, and communities in need of services and support.

In the private sector, it’s not difficult to spot these misplaced priorities. A much-publicized new study found that the highest paid CEOs in the U.S. were generally handsomely rewarded for laying off workers: more cuts at the expense of workers brought more pay to them. Says the Institute for Policy Studies report, “In 2009, the CEOs who slashed their payrolls the deepest took home 42 percent more compensation than the year’s chief executive pay average for S&P 500 companies.”
Then there’s Meg Whitman, who according to the Los Angeles Times is spending $249 a minute, adding up to $358,439 a day, to buy her way to the governor’s chair. Her interest in politics comes a little late considering she didn’t bother to participate in the democratic process for 26 years by actually casting a vote.

In the public sector, however, the villains are not always so clear. At CCSF, for instance, we face a $20 million per year shortfall, but while CEOs might be grabbing for profits, our administration wants what we want: the best educational experience for students and a healthy, sustainable work life for the employees who provide that education. We must turn our attention to changing not profits, but systems, specifically those systems that misprioritize funds, chronically underfunding education and placing private profit over public well-being.

To right this imbalance, we must pull together and focus not just on getting through the crisis, but on shifting the economic picture and the long-term priorities of the people and institutions that influence it. There are reasons to think many are ready to make that shift: the thousands of students and families, labor, and all sectors of education marching down Mission Street March 4th to join the crowd at Civic Center; those who went to Sacramento March 22nd to stand up for higher education; and the participants in the March for California’s Future and the thousands of allies who joined them as they marched up the Central Valley, talking to residents and signing up voters.
In San Francisco, one present indicator of the readiness to pull together is the joint organizing of community advocacy groups and organized labor. These groups are working in concert to mobilize and educate San Franciscans around smart revenue measures that will help save our services—will help save our city—by taxing those with resources rather than working families.

When we face a crisis, we can, as the saying goes, hang together or hang separately. Rather than allowing ourselves to be isolated, we can stand up for our fellow faculty, for our students, and for the needs of those in our communities, particularly the most vulnerable. We can stick together to support our students—a mission that is congruent with protecting faculty interests—and try to make any sacrifices equitable. We just did that by ratifying a contract that lets us serve more students and protect jobs even though it includes some significant, shared pain.

In crisis, we must stand together rather than to give in to divisiveness, which can arise as anxiety grows about jobs and economic security. We’ve seen the divide and conquer strategy recently in the rallying cry over public workers and their pensions, such as the ill-advised Prop B on San Francisco’s November ballot. That measure capitalizes on public perception that our budget crisis comes from public employees being grossly overpaid in retirement. This myth has grown as public employees are scapegoated and those in the private sector begin to wonder why they aren’t also looking at reasonable retirement benefits, shifting public attention away from the Wall Street bailouts and costly wars.

The immediate pressure around electoral politics is clear: November’s election is crucial for the future of our state. We hope you’ll work with AFT 2121 and our faculty field organizers, Galina Gerasimova and Mark Piper, to help us move in a better direction (see page 4). How we build together, work together, and hang together beyond November is another question—one we need to put our minds and hearts to. Turning things around will require listening and learning together. It will take patience and dedication to build a better City College, a more unified San Francisco, and a state that values and nurtures all its residents. As educators, our classroom and offices are good places to start.

Building a better budget in the nation's richest state

By Alisa Messer

K-12, already cut to the bone, would be mostly spared from direct cuts. The California State University and University of California systems would each take a hit of $1 billion.

For the community colleges, Brown proposes a $400 million reduction in apportionment funding. The system is already overstretched, and the state Chancellor's Office estimates that cuts of this magnitude mean as many as 400,000 students could lose access.

He also proposes a $10 per unit increase in student fees, moving the cost to $36 per unit and putting another 350,000 at risk. We know from experience that when fees go up, fewer students make it into classes. This is something we must vigorously oppose.

Let's be clear: student fees are a tax on our students, who are increasingly vulnerable economically but engaged in the one activity, higher education, most likely to protect them from unemployment and most able to help them build brighter futures—for themselves and their families, and for our communities and our state.

This proposed 40% tax increase on our students is an important sign that now more than ever we must talk—brazenly—about taxes. (Who pays them? Who doesn't?) It wasn't long ago, after all, that higher eduction in California was free, recognition of the return value taxpayers collectively receive from an educated public.

The master narrative about the economic crisis is that we must squeeze and starve our way out of the budget deficit. Not true.

Austerity is not the solution, both because it is wrong for working families and students and California's infrastructure, and because it simply isn't possible to cut our way out of the problem.

For illustration, try to imagine a California with no funding at all for the UC or CSU systems. Next, eliminate the community colleges, the world's largest system of higher education. What would that California look like? What would be the future of its children? Of the un- and underemployed?
While we're imagining, close down all the prisons. Even in that imaginary state, we'd still be in the hole.

That's the good thing about the governor’s proposed budget: it does more than cut. It seeks to expand revenues, something the state must do. But it’s still not enough.

Our state organization, the California Federation of Teachers, is working to develop a long-term campaign around the public sector, services, and taxation. We want to shift the conversation about what government and public infrastructure are and what they do for our state. We want to talk about the importance of public education and public services—and why we need to fund them, for the public good of everyone in the state. We think Californians are ready for that conversation.

It's hard to talk about taxes, but we need to talk about what they do for us and who's paying what price. Because unless we bring some significant revenue into the state, the quality of life for most of us will continue to decline.

To put things in perspective, consider that last year's "compromise" by President Obama regarding the extension of the Bush-era federal tax cuts means that certain Californians will keep a lot of money in this state—in their own pockets. In fact, for the richest 1% of Californians, that federal cut amounts to somewhere between $9 and $14 billion—a huge chunk of the state's deficit.

Now, I'm not suggesting it's viable to solve the state's budget woes simply by grabbing what the federal government didn't (or wouldn't). But there is money, and it's definitely time for genuine public discourse about it. It's not in the colleges, home health providers, or childcare. It's not in your pensions, either. No: it's in the military, corporate profits, and the bank accounts of the extremely wealthy.

Pointing this out can make people uncomfortable. But if we get better at saying what it is that public education does for our society—and polls show that Californians still believe in the importance of public education—at what the public sector does for our society, and how important it is for all members of our society to contribute their fair share, our state will be headed toward a much brighter future.

At City College, we also need to talk taxes. AFT 2121 and other college constituents are engaged in serious discussions about a citywide parcel tax to save CCSF. We will work to mitigate the governor's proposed cuts and the student fee increases. But ultimately, we know that CCSF needs help; we need additional revenue if we are going to continue to serve this city so well and make improvements to serve our students even better.

As the budget stands now, Brown's cuts would amount to about $12 million locally. We already know how stretched we've been over the past couple of years—I don't need to tell you how painful this could be.

This city deserves an institution like City College, one that will help pull San Francisco out of this economic crisis. We can run a successful parcel tax campaign because we know San Franciscans recognize the value of CCSF and higher education. And we'll be looking to you—as ambassadors for the good work we do here, and for all the ways we're seeking to do better work—to help.

Reframing the dialogue on public workers and education

By Alisa Messer

In California, where for now collective bargaining remains intact and supported (our current governor instituted collective bargaining for teachers and many others during his previous stint in the same role), we can begin to predict how attacks on workers will develop here. The Legislative Analyst’s Office released in February an alarming and misleading report on public sector pensions in the state that gained significant attention from policy makers. The Little Hoover Commission has jumped into the blame-the-pensions fray and suggests testing in court the solid law ensuring that once an employee is hired, retirement benefits cannot be altered (except to improve them).

It’s as if public sector workers were to blame for the dire straights our economy is in.

So let’s take a minute to recognize something important: this is not our fault. It’s not the teachers’ fault. It’s not the unions’ fault. And it’s certainly not your fault. (If you’re looking for someone to blame, I suggest you see “Inside Job” on the real origins of the economic crisis, which just won the Oscar for best documentary.)

We can hear the mainstream messaging loud and clear, especially in the media coverage (and lack of it) on Wisconsin. The message is this: “Look over there!” Americans should be angry at teachers and custodians and bus drivers because they are paid by the state and by the taxpayers—never mind that we are taxpayers, too. Meanwhile those who perpetuate the message destroy our schools, decimate what little healthcare and retirement security we do have, and decrease the social safety net.

Still, they blame us. The tea party narrative holds media sway despite the collective interest of nearly all of us in the U.S. This message is not accidental: it is a concerted effort, one developed by think tanks, with time and care and the intensive funding of people like the billionaire Koch brothers behind the so-called Americans for Prosperity and other “astroturf” groups.

We need our own concerted effort to counter this message. We need a campaign that says, “Education is a human right,” acknowledging that what we do is not just for individual students or individual faculty but about our collective future. We need a campaign that says, “The health of our communities is essential to our state. We should educate rather than incarcerate.” We need a narrative that recognizes that everyone in our state must have access to education because when students achieve, their families and communities do well, and so we all benefit.

Building this new message—“reframing,” as UC Berkeley linguist George Lakoff and others call it—is no easy task because at this moment, it feels like standing against a media flood, a veritable onslaught of naysaying that is happening in this country, even in California. After all, there is no money, right? There is a budget crisis—what can we do? It feels to many that there is nothing that will turn the tide.

But in the face of that, there’s a lot of courage, especially now when we have so many people working collectively to offer hope—the bravery of those in the Middle East and North Africa, who risk so much more than we do to stand up and demand change; the high school students in Wisconsin who stormed into the capitol building chanting, “What’s disgusting? Union busting!”; the teachers, firefighters, other workers, and students in Wisconsin, their counterparts in Ohio and Indiana, and the many hundreds of thousands who have been attending solidarity rallies across the country since Governor Scott Walker introduced Senate Bill 11. And there are the fourteen Wisconsin Democrats who made the unexpected decision to flee the state in order to block the bill.

By the time this issue of Union Action is in your hands, many things in the world may have changed, for better or worse—in Libya, in Wisconsin, in Ohio. Most of California’s future, however, will still be developing. For instance, discussions of pensions for California’s public sector workers, including those of us in CalSTRS, will proceed, and it will be imperative that all of us step into that discussion. Rather than participating in the current race to the bottom, we need to ask, “Why doesn’t everyone have retirement security?”

Unfortunately, none of this changes, immediately, the fact that we are facing a devastating community college budget that will include unprecedented cuts as well as fee hikes for students. These things are real, and City College’s budget has already suffered several years of damage, impacting everyone with a stake in the work we do here.

The austerity imposed on us will be far worse next year: the budget we face, regardless of naming the origins of this economic crisis, is very real and very bad. Financially, things continue to be bleak, and while no one at CCSF holds the blame for our budget woes, we will still have to muddle our way through, collectively, as we find a way to keep the college intact.

Under siege

By Alisa Messer

But the signs are everywhere: working families and the unions that represent them are under full attack. Teachers and public workers are being blamed for much of what is wrong in the country, especially state budgets. You’ve been following the news out of Wisconsin, and you’ve probably seen the many copycat attacks on collective bargaining in Ohio, Indiana, etc.

Though many of us may be taking some solace in the idea that Wisconsin-like measures are unlikely to take root in California, frankly, we can’t be so sure: last month, in the southern California town of Costa Mesa, their city council used the “budget deficit” line to announce it would lay off about half the city’s public employees, outsourcing or privatizing their services. Costa Mesa: Wisconsin in California.

Part of the siege is about retirement security: you’ll see on page 3 of this issue that there is a significant disinformation campaign about pensions we must combat and that the issue is broader. It’s not just our pensions on the line, but the notion that workers deserve retirement security. It’s not just CalSTRS, but the idea that all of us ought to be able to retire with at least the smallest sense of dignity, with the expectation of some income and access to health care.

California’s public education is under siege, with students facing fee hikes and our community college budget slashed. Early childhood education and K-12 saw about 30,000 pink slips in March. Employees and students alike are looking at an entirely different educational system—one that doesn’t begin to do this state justice.

Without the tax extensions that Brown proposed for a June referendum to bring in additional revenue beyond the $9 billion in cuts the legislature has already agreed to, we can expect more brutal budgetary measures. City College of San Francisco faces an unprecedented budget shortfall, representing a number that is difficult at this point to name because we do not yet know how the state will mete out the additional pain and suffering that looks increasing probable.

AFT 2121’s local priorities remain constant: to keep the college and the quality education it provides intact, to save jobs, avoid layoffs, and protect the ability of our members to support themselves and their families. It’s a tall order under the shifting budgetary quicksand, and there will definitely be cuts to our program. As those cuts happen, the district has agreed to preserve the priorities used in 2009-10: overload assignments and retirees are cut before part-time assignments, thus preserving jobs for as many as we can. Other details are still as much in flux as the actual numbers for the district’s funding next year, but we encourage you to contact us about your concerns.

I’ve written plenty here about “austerity” and the lie that there is no money available to fund what matters most in the state. There is money in California, and the budget problem does not actually have to be solved through cuts. But the now-dominant frame that it’s about spending—and that workers (and their pensions) are the problem—continues to amaze. Somehow Scott Walker has held onto it in Wisconsin, at least to some extent, and it’s a part of the California Legislature’s entire budget wrangling as well.

Yet a recent poll from the California Federation of Teachers, initiated by its Fight for California’s Future Task Force, demonstrates that most voters recognize we could go a different direction, and they’re willing to support it. Voters support increasing taxes by 1% on the wealthiest 1% of Californians—a number that would not solve the state’s problem, but would be enough to spare higher education, for instance. The statewide poll indicates that 78% support such a measure to help resolve the state’s budget crisis, and 53% strongly support it; even Republicans say yes at a rate of 60%.<

The same poll, which looked at Californian’s perceptions of public sector workers and collective bargaining, found that in California there remains significant support for public employees’ right to collective bargaining (61%) and even more support for those of us who do the work of the state: only 13% have an unfavorable view of public employees.

In short, Californians aren’t ready to swallow the line that public employees are the problem. They know the budget deficit is about those who aren’t paying their share—the wealthy and large corporations—and not those of us who do the work. We could feel that at the April 4 solidarity rally in San Francisco, which many AFT 2121 members attended and which drew thousands of workers and students.

It’s up to all of us, after all, to make sure that Wisconsin and Costa Mesa remain isolated incidents, and that Californians don’t begin to swallow the right-wing lie and diversionary tactics about who’s to blame.

Okay, so we’re under siege. Our students, families, and collective futures are. What can we do? There’s no one answer to this, of course. We need you to stay engaged and involved. We need your help in fighting for a fair tax package that does not decimate public education and public services in California. And we ask that you start gearing up for a Week of Action at the end of this semester, from May 9 through 13. California’s two major educational unions, CFT and the California Teachers Association, have been discussing significant actions, and AFT 2121 is planning participation.

Expect it to be big: we’re in a real state of emergency.

There is a different way

By Alisa Messer

But there are other timelines to worry about—fiscal and legislative cycles. The stakes are of a different scale, especially for the state budget, which never corresponds to district needs or planning. These timelines play out first on the state level, and this year that process has been complicated, to say the least. Despite changes in both state leadership and law, we find ourselves yet again heading out of a spring semester and into an unknown budget for next year.

Locally, that means we are once again working with a set of unknown numbers, and even as the semester ends and we continue to try to fix the meaning of those numbers for all of us, the college, and our students, AFT 2121 will be communicating via email and at aft2121.org to let you know about budget news. If you are not receiving emails or will use a different summer address (we recommend a non-CCSF address), please let us know to add or update you: 415-585-2121 or aft@aft2121.org.

All told, the funding outlook is discouraging for the near-to-medium-term future: slightly more than one-third of California's legislature continues to hold the state's educational future hostage to an “all-cuts, no taxes, keep-the-loopholes” mentality.

When we worked to get Proposition 25 passed last year, we knew that it was only halfway there as a solution; with a continued "super-majority" necessary to raise taxes, there would still be a battle at times when revenues were scarce. Though it now takes only 50% plus one to pass a budget, and it continues to take 50% plus one to cut taxes, the legislature continues to require two-thirds to raise them.

We’ll need increased taxes if we are going to save California's educational system for the current students, or for future students who could be turned away. In the shorter term, the Legislature may move to enact the tax extensions that would have been voted on in a June special election. In the longer term, the California Federation of Teachers and its Fight for California's Future Task Force is building with other groups toward a package of progressive tax initiatives, including the 1% on the 1% concept, for the state's next scheduled major election, fall 2012.

The short-to-medium term is really the most pressing for the students who are losing opportunities, and teachers, and school nurses, and classes, and transfer opportunities, and so on—now. And it is very real for the faculty and staff and other workers in the state who stand to lose their incomes and their health benefits under the present, all-or-mostly cuts budget picture.

As the adage goes, taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society.

Despite the current and constant implications that we, as public employees, are somehow not also taxpayers, April has just passed, and we're all more than cognizant of the taxes we contribute. Likewise, our students and their families pay taxes, and starting this fall many of them will pay even more because their fees to come to CCSF have been raised by nearly 38%. Studies show that unauthorized and undocumented immigrants in California also contribute billions in state and local taxes each year—and of course get no rebates if they overpay. In short, we all contribute, monetarily, to the network that makes our society possible to live and grow in, to the safety nets that help those of us in need—even, unfortunately, to outrageously expensive wars abroad.
Most of us do, at any rate. We know, thanks to the New York Times and others, that General Electric doesn't contribute, and other major corporations pay little to no taxes when all the accounting is done.

And we know that in California, the wealthy pay less of their fair share, despite owning more of the wealth. The California Budget Project's most recent analysis shows that the state's lowest-income families pay the largest percentage of their incomes of any group while more than 2,400 California households with incomes of $200,000 or more pay no personal income tax to the state. During the years when Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson governed California, the tax brackets were 10% and 11% for the highest income earners; now, the highest bracket is only 9.3%, and that rate starts for folks making $46,766 and more per year.

This is the time. Legislative action isn't everything, but it is a component. A bill introduced by Assemblymember Nancy Skinner, AB 1130, seeks to roll back towards those previous, fairer tax rates from the Reagan/Wilson era, adding a 1% tax on all Californians making over $500,000 a year. (You can check our pay schedules: that's definitely not us. Or our students.) AFT 2121 and the California Federation of Teachers support this bill, and the CCSF Board of Trustees unanimously does as well. Please take a moment to use 2121's new legislative point-and-click system at aft2121.org to send a message to your legislator urging support.

Where we stand now

By Alisa Messer

San Francisco is looking at a Wisconsin-flavored attack on workers in this November’s election. Last year, we were the only city in California to beat back local retirement take-aways on the ballot (there were 13 in all), and AFT 2121 members played a part in turning Proposition B back against what at first seemed impossible odds. This year, Jeff Adachi comes back with another “son-of-B,” a retirement initiative that would take back significant worker gains in a make-city-workers-pay-for-the-budget-problems-Wall-Street-caused move. This is Proposition D—so remember, Defeat D, which is for Damage.

There is a better retirement initiative on SF’s Nov. ballot: Prop C (think ¡Sí! ¡Sí on C!) represents a consensus measure negotiated with all of the city’s unions at the table, and all major stakeholders have signed on. It includes concessions that recognize immediate concerns about San Francisco’s budget, but the affected parties feel they can accept these compromises, and the measure shows a collective willingness to solve problems, rather than run roughshod over the people who make this city work.

Meanwhile, as an additional reminder that California is not above the wave of anti-worker, anti-union sentiments, the Koch brothers, ALEC, and their right-wing think-tank ilk continue their legislative offensive on working families and the public sector. Sufficient signatures have been gathered to put a pernicious, Wisconsin-style initiative on the ballot. This deceptive measure claims to be about stopping “special interests” including corporations, but in fact it would only impact paycheck deductions made by unions, making it increasingly difficult for California unions to collect voluntary political money for campaigns and taking away workers’ right to pool our money to create a strong political voice. California has twice rejected similar “paycheck deception” measures in recent years, but the seemingly anti-corporate slant this time fooled many into signing and could keep us busy in defense mode rather than focusing on constructive political change.

If there is a horizon worth straining toward—or at least the possibility of breaking through some of the long-term clouds—it is November 2012. It seems a long way away, but there’s a lot to do between now and then, as well as a lot to feel cautiously hopeful about, at least in San Francisco and California. The CCSF Board of Trustees has publicly stated its intent to put a parcel tax on the ballot to support City College. While slow in coming, this decisiveness allows us to plan carefully and mount a full campaign that includes all of the constituents.

November 2012 will also see a major, statewide initiative for progressive taxation from the California Federation of Teachers and other community and labor groups. Will we be voting to tax California’s wealthiest one percent by one percent more? By five percent more? Research to determine what this initiative will look like is going on right now.

As we move toward that possibly sunny November 2012, it’s not always easy to remember (and therefore bears repeating) that City College of San Francisco has actually weathered the storm quite well, considering. We’ve lost millions from our budget in the last couple of years (see page 3). This will be another terrible budget year, and we’ll continue to feel that pressure. Currently the District has proposed a spring 2012 that looks a lot like the smaller spring of 2010, and a summer 2012 program scaled back 30 percent from this summer’s record high.

The budget cuts haven’t been easy on any of us, and they haven’t hit all of us equally. Faculty gave back one percent of our earnings during 2010-11, many faculty members lost significant hours, and some continue to contribute as much as $2400 each year through lost salary steps for 2009-10. Students have lost classes and support and are paying higher fees, and staff have lost a tremendous number of positions—in short, everyone has contributed to trying to keep us together and the education we offer our students intact. In the long run, all of public education has lost incredible ground—and we must fight to see that it recovers.

Even so, when I compare our lot to districts around the state, which have suffered massive layoffs, sometimes encompassing full-time faculty, extreme course and program cuts, and major salary givebacks, it’s hard not to appreciate the strong community we have at CCSF.

Over the last couple of years we have pulled together for the collected benefit of all of us and the college. Now we must expand the effort: we’re going to have to pull together on a much larger level—with our students and families and greater communities—to have a real impact on the state and its future. That’s what this fight is about—our college and community, public education, and California’s future.

Building momentum

By Alisa Messer

“We are the 99 percent!” is the rallying cry of the movement, and with the highest jobless rate in generations, a shrinking middle class, and soaring CEO pay, most of us know we’re getting a raw deal. The astounding income and wealth gaps affect most Americans, but they impact blacks and Latinos disproportionately; in fact, the current recession has nearly doubled the wealth gap between white families and black and Latino families. Studies demonstrate that in addition to the housing market, a chunk of this disparity is due to attacks on the public sector and to de-unionization, both because African Americans in particular hold public sector jobs and because declining unionization lowers all wages.

The majority of AFT 2121 members I hear from share these concerns, which they also connect to the defunding of public education. We are perhaps more concerned because we consistently engage in the triumphs and struggles of our students. With access to such a variety of stories, we have front row seats for what the continuing economic crisis means for struggling families in the Bay Area.

A strong majority of Californians feel that education and public services need more support and that the wealthy and corporations are not paying their fair share. Research recently completed by the California Federation of Teachers, a number of community organizations, and allies in the labor movement, confirms Californians’ concern about the outcome for our future if we do not make change. Public support for education is especially clear, with “swing” voters talking about the need for smaller class sizes, more teachers, and other essential public services.

What is new, however, is the overwhelming concern regarding higher education. Research conducted in September shows that our state is deeply concerned about higher education, including rising tuition in all three segments of our public higher education systems. Voters feel strongly that postsecondary education, including career and technical programs, should be within Californians’ reach.

We’re seeing another shift in the public’s views on education. Last year, attacks on teachers’ unions reached a fever pitch. For a few months, there was no one more evil than teachers in the U.S. Now, that is changing. Education “reformers” like Michelle Rhee, a primary hero of the film “Waiting for Superman,” have been increasingly discredited as accurate information about high-stakes test scores and other touted improvements in her Washington D.C. area have come to light. While researchers have long offered studies and testimonials about many of the damaging educational “reforms” under the Bush and Obama administrations, it has taken time to get that information out into the public convincingly.

With the record being corrected, we must be sure that similarly damaging attempts to defund higher education in California are not successful. Recommendations that masquerade in the name of student success could have long-term impacts on our system and our community college students.

We are collectively turning the tides and building momentum. We need to build it with young people, the elderly, communities of color, other educators, middle- and working-class families, unemployed and excluded workers—everyone who makes up the 99 percent. There will be divergence of opinion about what actions we need to take. But there are some things we can agree on. One is making sure the other one percent takes responsibility to ensure that we have roads to drive on, buses to take, schools for us and our children, access to retirement security, and healthcare. We think the wealthy must pay their fair share.

We hope to channel some of this renewed energy into a successful statewide initiative to raise income tax on the wealthiest Californians in order to bring some funds back to education and vital social services. That won’t happen until November 2012, but there will be a lot to do along the way, and we expect AFT 2121 members will play an important role in that success.

It’s clear that regardless of the media and the politicians’ reluctance to say so, we know who is to blame for the crash in the economy, and it’s not immigrants who come here for a better life, jobseekers, or public sector workers. We should thank those scrappy, frustrated, young, and idealistic folks who gathered several weeks ago on Wall Street for showing us that the conversation can change, moving the needle back towards the needs of the many.

This blossoming movement is about what we think, believe, and know we can do to change the situation. It’s about whether we believe we can make a difference and insist that our concerns will be heard in the streets, in the media, and in Sacramento and D.C.

The Occupy Together movement should give us confidence that we can collectively make a difference and that we won’t continue to take the blame. The growing inequity—the wealth gap that has so grossly expanded in the last couple of decades—is not the fault of people working hard to stay afloat or getting their educations. We are the 99 percent, so let’s pick up our share of responsibility for that momentum and see how far we can take it together. We could be in a very different place when we’re done, and with luck and perseverance, we’ll be able to save public education and make headway toward a more just and equitable society that values and supports the 99 percent.

It's all about the py pie

By Alisa Messer

Students are the 99 percent

In concert with and buoyed by Occupy, a student movement is taking hold in California, with a week of actions to defend California's public higher eduction coordinated by ReFund California including marches, occupations, and (sadly) significant police brutality. The widely distributed videos of officers hitting students in the stomach with batons at the Berkeley campus and a University of California at Davis officer pepper spraying students sitting quietly (“as if he's dousing a row of bugs with insecticide,” one report accurately observed) brought the issue of higher education to center stage.

That’s where it belongs. California's higher education system was once the pride of the state, with full access and tuition-free colleges and universities for all who could benefit, representing the belief that education is a public good. That has been squeezed almost to the breaking point.

Colleges of the 99 percent

For the community colleges, that breaking point may come in the form of some proposals from the statewide Student Success Task Force, which seem to give up on the idea of a funded and accessible community college system for all. We are the colleges of the 99 percent, and we need funding for quality education. Rather than deciding that some students are deserving while some are not such good bets, we should be responding to the needs of more students.

In the current economic climate, the variety of education and training City College of San Francisco offers is needed more than ever.

Retirees are the 99 percent

Pension “reform” proposals are no different: those who push them say we just can’t afford them. While it is true that state and local coffers are in trouble, it's not true that there is no money. Governor Brown's recent proposals on pensions—many of which do not directly impact CalSTRS—claim to address the outrageous breaches in the rare cases such as Bell, California, where salaries and pension benefits put city officials well into the one percent. But corruption like this is the exception, and leveraging these concerns to cut workers' abilities to retire with some security is a tactic that fuels the distrust of public employees and plays an effective game of divide-and-conquer, distracting us from the issues at hand—such as the pie.

Expanding the pie

Anti-tax guru Grover Norquist famously stated his desire to shrink government “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

The extent to which the tax-hating, governmenticidal maniacs like Norquist have succeeded in shrinking the pie over the last decades means fewer services, a starving education system, students in increasing levels of debt, record unemployment, and housing foreclosures. We can fight over the little bit that Norquist and company have left us of our pie, or we can work to expand it.

Republican legislators have almost all signed Norquist’s no-tax pledge, but polls by California Federation of Teachers and others show Californians want essential services such as education, infrastructure, care for the elderly and the disabled, and public safety—not more tax cuts for the wealthy.

At City College, we must enlarge our pie. Students, faculty, and staff should not be providing the bailout for the college, the city, or the state, and we should not be fighting over tidbits. In the name of our students and the education we provide, we have made difficult choices and significant sacrifices in recent years, both collectively and, at times, disproportionately. But Occupy has demonstrated that the 99 percent can work together and be heard, channeling anger and frustration into activity and awareness.

We hope to channel this energy to enlarge the pie, building new revenue sources. CCSF will put forward a local revenue measure next year in the form of a parcel tax. And in the next weeks, we'll have a full description of the statewide initiative to tax the one percent that we have been planning with the CFT and other community and labor groups. We'll need your help to gather signatures, spread the word, and pass this ambitious November 2012 initiative that will raise the marginal tax rate on California's wealthiest income earners. Any adjusted personal income exceeding one million dollars a year will be subject to additional tax, bringing billions of dollars back to the 99 percent. It will be an essential step toward fair taxation and a beginning to the restoration of education and CCSF. It will enlarge the pie.

Occupy's point? It doesn't have to be this way. And for City College—for the students, staff, and faculty here, and for all the college constituents—it should be clear: enlarge the pie. What kind of pie? Occupy.

Yes, the budget is terrible . . . let's stop austerity measures by bringing revenue back

By Alisa Messer

Hit hard

Analysis of our district budget situation, while decidedly dire and undoubtedly the most serious we have yet experienced at City College of San Francisco, has also been rather fluid these first several weeks. Presumably by the time this issue of Union Action is actually in your hands, we will have more concrete news. There is general agreement that the college will need to move quickly to determine a budget plan that both addresses the current year’s shortfalls and moves us toward a more cautiously balanced budget in the next fiscal year, 2012-13. And it is clear the district expects all college constituencies to contribute.

Priorities

AFT 2121 has argued, and will continue to argue, that there is a measured way through this crisis. That doesn’t mean it will be pleasant or easy for anyone in the college community—or that we can ignore the present shortfall, which could be upwards of $24 million next year.

We know—and perhaps from more detailed perspectives than most in our college community—about the sacrifices faculty have made and the intense financial pressure some are under, particularly after so many years of cuts and absent COLAs. Faculty members have highly varied financial circumstances, but overall the last several years have been a challenge, as they have been for other employees.

So far, as we have weathered these budget typhoons, we have largely avoided throwing more Californians into the unemployment statistics. Repeatedly faculty has told us preserving jobs is of the utmost importance, and we’ve worked to honor that concern. In our membership survey last fall, faculty confirmed that preserving jobs and avoiding layoffs was by far the number one priority.
City College needs improved planning and execution of the budget so that the college is not grasping at straws or resorting to drastic solutions that unfairly burden faculty, staff, and students.

Keeping community in our colleges

Meanwhile, our community colleges face additional changes beyond the budget that will impact our collective work for a long time to come. Proposed “reforms” to the mission of our state’s community colleges (see pg. 3) now pose a serious threat to the education we will provide in the near future. Rather than advocating our colleges meet the needs of the 99 percent by restoring funding, the recommendations of the statewide Student Success Task Force, now adopted by the Board of Governors, plan to “ration” the education we’ll offer. If implemented, some of these proposals could change the face of community colleges and shut the doors on our most vulnerable students—and not only during this time of fiscal instability, but for the long run.

The 1 percent may have access to the world’s most elite educational institutions, but we need public education for the rest of us. California’s Master Plan for Higher Education recognized that quality, accessible public education was a public good. Under it, the community colleges were intended to be the colleges of the people. But they will fulfill that function less and less as students are priced out and turned away—or identified as “unsuccessful.”

We have made our concerns about such changes clear. Community college faculty members in other districts frequently express to me their gratitude for CCSF’s advocacy in response to the task force recommendations. As the recommendations make their way into the legislative process, we’ll need to make some strategic decisions about how best to defend the community college mission and CCSF’s diverse students in particular.

Not enough to get you down?

There is plenty of other discouraging news, too. The educator- and union-bashing continues, corporations remain “people” in rights but not accountability to others, and while Indiana has newly passed “right to work” (for less!) legislation, California workers will have to fight this November to ensure their continued political voice through the collective power of their unions. We will need to stop the Corporate Deception Act, which seeks to silence workers’ voices and virtually end voluntary contributions to political work. Plus, Governor Brown remains committed to changing pubic employee pensions; ultimately, all of our retirements could be less secure.

Something to pick us up

With so much discouraging news, it’s crucial that we seize opportunities to do good, both in our work with and for students, and in the larger political arena. Voters need some proactive, offensive-rather-than-defensive, “winnable” moves in our playbook. The kinds of things that will make us feel enthusiastic—even giddy—to think we’re part of a democratic process that can work for us.
I’ve met a lot of people, both on and off campus, who do feel giddy about the Millionaires Tax. The prospect of bringing revenues back to education and to critical social services without asking the state’s 99 percent to pay a penny more is enough to get more than two-thirds of the voting public saying “yes!” While we’re looking at discouraging state projections and priorities, we can bring funding back to our CCSF budget, with a well-run local parcel tax campaign this fall and with our other revenue measures. Let’s get out there and make some good happen.

Credit and blame

By Alisa Messer

I am not suggesting we should not be critical. In some cases, many of us have not been critical enough. It’s what we do with our well-founded criticisms—how we step beyond blame and toward action—that has real value.

Our capacity for organizing toward change and problem-solving is immense. The conversations that AFT 2121 members have recently delved into regarding working conditions, faculty morale, the success of our students, as well as saving public education and the college as a whole have been challenging and enlightening. They increasingly focus on planning, building, and taking action.

We have significant issues to turn our energies toward. We need to keep the community in our colleges and respond to the threat of narrowed educational access represented by the so-called Student Success Act. We also need critical and constructive responses to the increasing threat of privatization, such as the latest move at Santa Monica College to provide access to those who can afford extra, high-demand “toll lane” classes at $200 unit. And we have revenue to bring in.

Strategic planning, organizing, and building collective commitment over the last couple of years led our statewide affiliate, the California Federation of Teachers, to embark on the project that became the Millionaires Tax of 2012. CFT and our community allies recently reached a deal with Gov. Jerry Brown on a merged, compromise tax initiative that would have the collective support of the governor, the legislative leadership, and organized labor. The resulting new initiative is a significant improvement to Brown's original proposal—now almost all the funding comes from taxing the wealthiest in the state. Thus it has a better chance of success in November, especially with significant resources united to pass it.

It’s a mixed-message compromise, as many have pointed out, because a sales tax, however small, continues to ask California’s working and middle classes to “share the burden” of tax increases, despite Californians’ growing clarity that they have sacrificed enough while wealth disparity has only increased and the rich and corporations have abdicated their civic responsibilities in favor of their pocketbooks.

Our polling for the Millionaires Tax was phenomenal; it was the better measure, but the reality of the political situation did not allow us to make the decision to go forward based on the merits of the initiative alone.

Also phenomenal was the grassroots support that the Millionaires Tax had gained from students, community groups, labor rank and file, Occupy, and other activists. This initiative was a banner we could collectively rally under, and we were gaining momentum; it was also, as I’ve been repeatedly reminded, the first time some of us have felt so strongly about or believed so fully in the state’s electoral process.

The goal was to raise revenue and build a conversation about how funding should happen in this state: why education and social services are essential for the future of our state, why the wealthy should pay rather than extracting further sacrifices from the rest of us. The Millionaires Tax was not an end in itself but part of a larger campaign.

Some of us will be mourning the Millionaires Tax for some time. But we’ll also almost certainly be bringing in more revenue this fall—already our City College of San Francisco budget looks better—and we have shifted the narrative on taxation. Next time we’ll get farther. Especially if other labor groups get a little bolder because they see what our labor-community coalition gained by not giving in when all the others did. And how much more we could have achieved if they’d stood with us rather than against us.

There’s strength in unity, and something that’s been lost in the discussions of the Millionaires Tax campaign is how CFT forged a coalition with community groups across the state even without a large labor coalition. Our partners in Restoring California, including California Calls, the Courage Campaign, and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, made our collective work stronger and will make our continuing work more productive. Labor-community partnerships like this are all too rare and frequently shallow or short-lived, particularly on the state level. Restoring California will continue as a coalition, as will the work we began long before the Millionaires Tax to fully fund education and social services and defend California’s public education system.

Our organization, the California Federation of Teachers, and the other coalition partners who stepped up to build what eventually became the Millionaires Tax deserve significant credit. We moved the bar with our insistence that Californians will support taxation if it is approached more equitably. A year ago, under Brown’s proposal for regressive tax extensions, we were looking at a one cent higher sales tax, vehicle license fees, and an increase in everyone’s personal income tax rates. In December, because of the work of many of us, including advocacy by CFT and the Occupy movement, Brown introduced a plan that halved the sales tax and placed the income tax burden on those making more than $250,000 with progressive increments. And now we have something far better than that. We moved the governor and our state in a more progressive direction. That’s a victory. That’s a big deal.

Looking for (comm)unity

By Alisa Messer,
AFT 2121 President

Things are falling apart—not just at City College of San Francisco or in California, but nationally—for a large chunk of the population. In some respects, our CCSF community has done better than most, but we’re not immune, and things have taken a turn for the worse.

In Union Action, we’ve written about the deepening crisis in California’s community colleges and the systematic defunding of our public education system. We’ve also talked about how, after decades of shifting the burden off the wealthy and corporations, the lowest income families pay the largest share of their incomes in state and local taxes, as the California Budget Project has repeatedly demonstrated. But what about California’s broader labor market? In an April 2012 UC Berkeley policy brief, “A Depressive State: Assessing California’s Labor Market Four Years after the Onset of the Great Recession,” Sylvia Allegretto and Luke Reidenbach present a bleak but enlightening analysis (http://bit.ly/CAlaborMarketStudy).

Allegretto and Reidenback demonstrate that Californians have been hit disproportionately by un- and under-employment and by budget cuts—especially in the public sector. As educators of the 99 percent, we should note the impact of defunding public education – working families lose access not just to current educational attainment, but to long-term gains that education provides. Historically, two major pathways into the middle class have been good union jobs, and education. Both are endangered.

Currently, the news on California’s jobs crisis is bleaker than in the rest of the country. As a state, we are down more than one million jobs, leaving us with the same number we had in 1999. Since the beginning of the recession, the state has lost 7.3 percent (about 129,000) of local jobs, primarily from EC/K-12 and higher education.

Even with the economic turmoil in the state, AFT 2121 has sought to protect jobs. City College bucked the trend the last few years, adding few people to the unemployment statistics. (Until recently, we even continued to make some progress with increased full-time hires.) Sadly, that is no longer the case. After several years of pushing back on the state’s growing mandate to serve fewer students, this semester’s surprise deep cuts from the state, along with the college’s inability to stick to its adopted budget, swamped us, and we are seeing substantial layoffs for the first time in this fall’s schedule.

The “recovery” we’re told has been in process for the last several years isn’t much of one, not for us in the 99 percent, anyway. Though there have been slight economic improvements overall, recent analysis shows that this so-called recovery has actually increased inequality in the United States, with a whopping 93 percent of the 2009 and 2010 economic gains under this “jobless recovery” going to the country’s top 1 percent.

Meanwhile, most of our wages statewide slide downward: while California’s top earners have seen some improvement, most workers’ wages last year matched what they made in 2000. Overall household incomes, adjusted for inflation, are at 1998 levels. At CCSF, faculty members haven’t seen a cost of living increase in years, many have lost steps, and we’ve now had two years of across-the-board wage cuts, meaning faculty members are concerned about their ability to support their families.

We’ve sought to protect faculty’s base wages: extra pay assignments should be reduced before faculty members lose jobs altogether. When extra-pay assignments increased substantially in 2011 to meet District needs, faculty members had good reasons to take on overloads. At the time, to our knowledge, no part-time faculty members were denied assignments. But with program cuts, we look to protect our most vulnerable class of employees.

Part of Allegretto and Reindenbach’s conclusion is that California isn’t about to turn some corner and naturally grow back the jobs that will take us into some new golden state. If these statistics demonstrate anything beyond what a “Depressive State” we have every reason to be experiencing, it’s that we’re on a long, low road and need to work to change the picture rather than just waiting around for things to get better.

It’s in these kinds of difficult times that frustration gives way to finger-pointing and blame. We can all afford to be a little kinder to each other and our students and to all those around us—or at the very least, to try. Promoting divisiveness helps the 1 percent far more than it benefits any of us, and it undercuts potential solutions we can find in solidarity.

Taking a cue from Piercy’s powerful poem, do we know who we mean when we say We? We can and should challenge ourselves and each other to do better, and still be We, united in the noble purpose of this college to educate those who need it most. Our “theys” are not our fellow faculty members (be they part- or full-time, on step 2 or step 16, in this or that department), fellow employees, or students. There’s a lot of common cause, so let’s “care to act,” and strive toward unity.