Adjunct
Week, May 7-11, was marked at fifteen campuses by special
organizing events that ranged from tabling to one-to-one
conversations to posting of signs that warned, “Crime
Scene—Exploited Adjuncts.” But the week’s “coolest
event,” according to Kristin Lawler, one of the week’s
organizers, was the May 9 concert and rally at the Graduate
Center, featuring never-before-heard lyrics by Woody Guthrie, set
to music by contemporary folk artists.
Jorge Arévalo,
Archivist for the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives, explained
the decision to present the Guthrie songs in collaboration with
the PSC: "Woody believed in the power of music to fight
against all forms of oppression. This stubborn commitment to
social justice cannot be stored in a file cabinet, and we believe
that if we are to truly carry on the legacy of Woody Guthrie we
must maintain the same commitment.” Arévalo added that “we
recognize the PSC's current struggle to be part of a growing
movement within this country that has been fighting the increasing
corporatization of learning institutions.” Also a CUNY doctoral
graduate student in ethnomusicology and a delegate from the music
department to the Doctoral Students Council (DSC), Arévalo said
that he was inspired to secure the cooperation of Nora Guthrie,
the Foundation's Executive Director, by Lawler's reports to the
DSC of the union’s commitment to fight for improved conditions
for part-timers.
During
Guthrie's stint in the Merchant Marines he was a member of the
Seaman's Union, and he remained involved with labor causes his
entire life. Guthrie’s output was prodigious, with 3000-plus
songs in a fifteen-year recording career. Many of the lyrics were
never set to music and are among the vast collection of material
in the care of the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives (www.woodyguthrie.org),
established in 1972 to develop a greater awareness and
understanding of Guthrie's legacy. Arévalo assigned intern Andrew
Jawitz to select ten union songs from this collection. He then put
out an open call to folk musicians to choose any of the songs to
set to music, with the proviso that they agree to a one-time only
performance at the May 9th organizing rally.
Without
knowing which lyrics the others had chosen, five of the seven
artists wrote music for "Revolutionary Mind," a song
that includes the refrain, "No reactionary baby can ease my
revolutionary mind." All the versions, from guitar and bass,
to hard rock, to banjo solo, brought down the house, with the
inter-generational audience clapping, tapping and cheering.
Thomas
Conner, a music journalist from Guthrie's birthplace, Tulsa,
Oklahoma, wrote and performed his own seven-stanza "Talkin'
Adjunct Faculty Blues": "I started to think adjunct was
spell A-D-D J-U-N K/ So I called my fellow junkers together/Said
there's only one way our lots'll get better/If we don't want our
livin's so hard/We gotta fill out a teachers union card/On the
double/No more trouble/Best lesson I ever been learned."
(Lyrics or tape available from ThomasHC@aol.com.) Speakers at the
rally included Arévalo, Woody Guthrie's granddaughter Anna, and
adjunct organizers from Columbia and NYU, as well as the PSC's
Ingrid Hughes, Stanley Aronowitz (who turns out to have a
beautiful voice) and Barbara Bowen. "Joining the union is not
enough," said Bowen, "We have to preserve our rights as
citizens and bring them to the workplace. Make this the union you
want it to be—make it sing.”
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