Academia and Practice

Hello WSN-

My name is Cameron Brooks and I am a student/activist/organizer at the
University of Tennessee Knoxville.  I appreciate the work that many
contributors to this list do in academia and of the information you share
in this forum.  Yesterday I sent out an email from the Campaign for Labor
Rights about Del Monte workers in Guatemala that are being threatened with
death for standing up for their rights.  In this email it detailed some
concrete action that needed to occur from people to help them in this
struggle.

I have not heard one response back from anyone on the list on their
thoughts on this.  There has been extensive recent discussion on the
mounting of a campaign to discredit the racist book being mentioned, which
is extremely important, but it is equally important when a worker
organization asks assistance from the general public to aid them in their
struggle.  

This may be moving beyond the realms of the theoretical, which many on
this list serve are definitely valuable in, and moving into the realm of
practical struggle.  Does this make many academics feel uncomfortable?  I
am not making an accusation, but I am curious to people's responses.  Just
about everyone on this list seems to care and support global justice and
an anti-capitalist model of liberation, but what do people on this list do
in the realms of applying this into the practical?  

There is a definite contradiction that I see at my own university-
between academics who teach and speak in favor of worker justice and
equality, yet when it comes time to walk a picket line in solidarity with
striking workers, or participate and organize a local demonstration
against the WTO, they are no where to be found.  Is this just a problem I
see at my university, or is this a general problem with progressive
academics throughout the US?

Interested to hear what people have to say.

Cameron Brooks


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"The business of obscuring language is a mask behind which stands out the
much greater business of plunder.  The people's property and the people's
sovereignty are to be stripped from them at one and the same time.
Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that
you really want them to understand."

Frantz Fanon