Qua?

Thursday & Friday, June 11th & 12th 2020

The State is scattering. Locally on Juneteenth, bars are being opened to stymy the underground media concerning the strike.

For instance, CNM, where I teach, has established a “COVID-19” training course, which was sensible. But it was propaganda for our president, Tracy. I’d question two things about it. One, that toddlers shouldn’t wear a mask -- they should. PM-SIS is dangerous for genetically-predisposed children. Two, over-cleansing and mentioning that a vaccine doesn’t exist is also questionable or wrong. But it presented similar to “President Trump’s Coronavirus Guidelines for America”. Slightly difficult to accept.

But, it’s about to go down concerning returning to campus this fall. In fact, Tracy’s move to make a Juneteenth “tea” chat is appalling. Not because she wants to connect to the faculty, which is great, but the day she chose, after she personally releases some general, faceless announcement about an Equity Council that doesn’t yet have a website, seems less than coincidental. I want to be meaner, but I tried to confront it directly through Administrative means.

Capitalism is going to try to take the spirit of this away. But it won’t happen this time. This time we’re better educated. This time we’re stronger and fearless. This time, we know how to wait and how to agitate. 

From now until Juneteenth, I will incite strike. In the state of NM, it’s illegal for “public workers” to strike. This was a law passed in 1978, still standing today, with very few attempts, if any, since then. Fucking time! How unusual that a state with so many Latinx, in the lineage of Miguel Trujillo Sr, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, or before with the likes of Santa Anna, Villa and Zapatista, don’t represent against those above. What are we afraid of? I always believe we’re just grateful and too faith-based to challenge. I accept that, but grace and faith also know bounds.

So I’m going to deconstruct the Public Employee Bargaining Act [10-7E-1 NMSA 1978] and it’s successor 10-7E-2, as much as I care to:

10-7E-2. Purpose of act.The purpose of the Public Employee Bargaining Act [10-7E-1 NMSA 1978] is to guarantee public employees the right to organize and bargain collectively with their employers, to promote harmonious and cooperative relationships between public employers and public employees and to protect the public interest by ensuring, at all times, the orderly operation and functioning of the state and its political subdivisions. 

What is a right? Organize? Bargain? Employers? Forget the second intentional statement after the comma. 

I’ll start with definitions of the first statement. What is a right? Unalienable, meaning it can’t be denied. So I can’t be denied organizing and bargaining with my employers. What does organize mean? Get together with? It means to “arrange into a structured whole, to order”. Whose structure? Whose order? Hmm, we’re already off to a bad start.

Who is my employer? CNM? The president? The financial officer? My dean? Who is my boss? And herein lies the entire problem. Is there a single person in control of me? No. There is deferment for a slew of inadequacies and other reasons because of the impersonal nature of our institution, and the American academic framework in general. That will change. The “middle men” are our and capitalism’s problem, and that’s who must be gone. I teach my students directly. I need no one else. The “accreditation” and federal educational mandates are a failure and a joke, and have been for some time, but are a necessary tool. What convolutes and destroys “harmonious and cooperative relationships” is the hierarchical obedience upwards, and those who demand of what should be learned. All I’d have to defer to is my own department’s SLO’s and Final Exam to show you its academic and sociocultural biases and limitations, and how it only presents “ceremony” for those above and past.

This is New Mexico’s problem. We play the victim, we play the poorest state. We defer and beg by following the guidelines, rules and laws, most of which hurt us presently or continue to hurt us into the future. This statute was written after No Child Left Behind, when we believed in absolute, utopian education, a stalwart of an imaginary 20th century. 

But its purpose is neither organizing nor bargaining, and surely has little to do with my rights. Including terms like “harmony” and “ cooperation” are special, cute, and even a little inappropriate for State law lexicon, but “protecting the public interest by ensuring, at all times, the orderly operation and functioning of the state and its political subdivisions” says “DO WHAT WE SAY”, be default. To be honest, I’m much discouraged from the rest of the upcoming rhetoric which only serves to further convolute and discourage. In some ways, this opening statement is like a cop who kneels with you one day, then assaults you the next. 

“We promise rights and harmony and cooperation, but only if it serves State politics.” This is education, and some of us are too overeducated for lazy and loose language.

10-7E-3. Conflicts. In the event of conflict with other laws, the provisions of the Public Employee Bargaining Act [10-7E-1 NMSA 1978] shall supersede other previously enacted legislation and regulations; provided that the Public Employee Bargaining Act shall not supersede the provisions of the Bateman Act [6-6-11 and 6-6-13 to 6-6-18 NMSA 1978], the Personnel Act [10-9-1 NMSA 1978], Sections 10-7-1 through 10-7-19 NMSA 1978, the Group Benefits Act [10-7B-1 NMSA 1978], the Per Diem and Mileage Act [10-8-1 NMSA 1978], the Retiree Health Care Act [10-7C-1 NMSA 1978], public employee retirement laws or the Tort Claims Act [41-4-1 NMSA 1978].   

See, what did I tell you? So fucking lazy that I have to go through all of the other legislation to get to what I really want, which is why in 2006 “Strikes and lockouts prohibited” was added. The Bateman Act is about unpaid debt and payment to politicians, to be honest, the rest obvious from title alone.

But then we get to definitions, and the section includes definitions for terms that aren’t even used in the 2006 statute up to that point, only in the 1978 statute. See ya, I have some reading to do.