one two three

The guy in the middle is me and what I'm doing, other than rousing the rabble, is teaching the folks a new chant.

This post, by the way, is only sort of about the chant and it's really not about the protest pictured above, but if you're curious about the protest the story is here.

Anyway, the chant that I was teaching (with contextual modifications, of course) goes like this:

One, we are the union
Two, we have a contract
Three, a little bit louder now
We are LEO

It doesn't come across on the page, but done correctly it has a fantastic rhythym. The trick is that when you repeat the chant the opening 'one' becomes part of the last line and is shouted really, really loudly.

Maybe you have to be there.

The first time I encountered that chant, the words were:

One, we are the union
Two, we need a contract
Three, a little bit louder now
We are GSOC

That was five months ago in New York during the first week of GSOC's strike for recognition at NYU. You know what? They're still on strike. Five months. It's tough for me to even wrap my head around that.

I don't blog about the GSOC strike much anymore because, really, what is there to say? The strikers are employees and as such they ought to have the right to form a union. The NLRB took away that right and NYU chose to withdraw recognition from the union. And so there was a strike. And there still is. And there's no end in sight.

Please donate to the strike fund.