Wednesday, May 28, 2008

A Woman's Place

Putting aside for a moment that the members of AFT have not actually voted to put anyone in office, it's nice to see AFT get a positive mention in the press.

From USA Today:
Delegates to the American Federation of Teachers' biennial meeting here [Chicago] in July are expected to elect Randi Weingarten their new president, along with two other longtime AFT officials: Antonia Cortese and Lorretta Johnson as secretary-treasurer and executive vice president, respectively.


According to the USA today, this would be the first time three women headed a "major" labor union.
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4 comments:

  1. ashMay 28, 2008 at 2:31 PM

    Dave, I am afraid that I am going to have to call you on your facile reiteration of the easily digestible narrative of women in power within the union. At the very least critical interrogation is in order here, if not a re-centering, de-centering or dismantling. In fact, an all-out re-imagining may be exigent. After all who is “women”? How are we going to define “them”? (Or is it “us”? We need to learn that.)

    Are they organizing around policing and incarceration within and without—-not to mention in the border and boundary areas near and adjacent to--the penal site of the academy? Or do they occupy a privileged space outside of the carceral landscape that is the academic archipelago? Are they resisting oppression? Challenging the abuses of the state and conventional understandings of union politics? Creating communities of struggle with insurgent intellectuals? Have they critically interrogated the meaning of solidarity? Tell me they have at least done that, for god’s [sic] sake! It’s a good thing AFT’s biennial meeting is in Illinois! I hear they know a thing or two about critical action!

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  2. dave3544May 28, 2008 at 5:33 PM

    Awesomest comment ever!

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  3. wobblieMay 28, 2008 at 11:02 PM

    Seconded on the awesomeness. As to ash's questions, the answer is... no!

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  4. ashMay 29, 2008 at 8:49 AM

    In all seriousness, if the answer to my over-the-top tongue-in-cheek questions is no, this gets at something that has really been bugging me lately: it's great that we are seeing more women in leadership roles. But there is nothing about being a woman that necessarily makes you a different/better leader or even better on "women's issues" (however you define that). I'll probably be posting on some variation of this thought later today...

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