On Strike!
"Wear your regalia if you have it!"
I received the message as I gathered my things to commute across the state from my home in Western Massachusetts to Wellesley, the Boston suburb where I have been teaching since September. My PhD robes had been hanging in my closet untouched since I wore them to graduation nearly seven years ago; putting them on again in the parking lot on my way to a strike was not what I expected when I bought them, but it felt great—and made for a nice photo op in the MetroWest Daily News!
The previous week, during spring break, I had learned both that my one-year contract had not been renewed, and that the labor union representing the non-tenure-track faculty on campus had called on us to strike. With no agreement in place a week later, it meant that my commute to campus would be for a different purpose: walking the picket line.
As the strike enters its second week, and with the Wellesley College administration having canceled yesterday's bargaining session, it is looking more and more likely that my days of biweekly 90-minute commutes are over. I will admit that I've grown pretty tired of the long drives; taking this position was a stretch in many ways and I'm grateful for all that I've learned from the experiment whether these last three weeks are spent teaching or striking.
That time on the picket line, though, was worth the trek—I spent the night with a friend nearby and immersed myself in the bubble of solidarity, nervous energy, and collective improvisation on the sidewalks surrounding campus for the strike's first two days. I even brought my little blue pBone Mini for an impromptu teach-in on the antislavery roots of the unofficial labor movement theme song, "Solidarity Forever." Later that day, longtime Theater Studies professor Diego Arciniegas and I led exercises in diaphragmatic breathing and embodied speaking—afterwards, Diego observed sardonically that this was his first collaboration with a colleague in the Music Department in his 30-year career. I've been incredibly impressed with the union, drawn from the ranks of new lecturers like me and longtime non-tenure-track faculty who have been at this for decades. Alongside students, faculty colleagues, and other supportive community members, we have created a space where the spirit of liberal arts inquiry is alive and well.
I'm disappointed that my students won't have the opportunity to work through what I was planning for the second half of the semester in Jazz History and Electronic Music. But I'm also looking forward to what comes next—stay tuned for more updates soon about what the next year has in store!
To learn more about the strike, I highly recommend this recent interview with my colleagues Annie Brubaker and Jacquelin Woodford. And if you'd like to support my colleagues on the picket line, please consider a contribution to the WOAW Mutual Aid Fund. In the meantime, enjoy Clark Terry and Bob Brookmeyer's take on Solidarity Forever, which I use in my Jazz History class as a paradigmatic example of a hard-swinging groove: