Syndicate and Hague

This post is pretty much a list of links that the Thinkery blog put together and I’m posting to also move the stories up in the Google ranks.

The Uptake is doing some good reporting and you can follow them, among others, on Twitter - @theuptake @mnindylive @jasonbarnett @coldsnaplegal.

Regardless of the haul, I have concerns about the implications and methods. Overall, just make sure you’re educated on what’s happening in our city - since the national and much of the state-wide media isn’t doing a lot to get multiple angles on the story. Here are the links:

• The Minnesota Independent:
• Protesters meeting space raided by Ramsey County
• Ramsey County sheriff issues statement on raid
• Sheriff anticipates arresting thousands during 2008 RNC
• Crackdown begins: Food Not Bombs house among Saturday raids
• Warrant at Food Not Bombs house sought bombs, feces, razor wire (The warrant covers such basic items as nails, screws, bricks, computers, “media in whatever form,” and digital camera equipment. All of which can be used in weapons in a protest, but also all of which are common household items. Which makes it totally permissible to raid pretty much anyone with this kind of warrant list.)
• Police searches turn up weapons and other devices to disrupt traffic
• Reports of additional Pre-RNC raids in St. Paul still arriving
• RNC Welcoming Committee detained, denied entry at Canadian border
• Anti-RNC activists respond to police raids; convergence space reopens
• RNC Welcoming Committee unbowed by raids
• Members of raided houses speak out
• Oh no, the anarchists are coming: media scare tactics unfounded, Anti-RNC groups say
• The Uptake’s reporters have been following the raids and streaming video live from their phones. You can find the Twitter feed here:
• Police swarm Earth Justice bus in St. Paul
• Police detain Democracy Now
• Police enter house
• Lawyers in handcuffs
• Tour of raided protester HQ
• Inside the RNC Protest Center
• Police detain journalists
• Police bust through attic to detain Democracy Now producer
• National Lawyer’s Guild: police raid “preventive detention”
• Police make no arrests after raiding RNC Journalist home
• Police raid in St. Paul of Green Party Activists’ home
• Police bolt doors at RNC Protest Organizing Center
• Homeland Security vans head to RNC protester house raid in St. Paul
• Twin Cities Daily Planet:
• Big Green Bus arrested
• Journalists targeted by FBI in St. Paul
• Ramsey County sheriff raids homes in South Minneapolis
• Police break down doors in night-time raid on anarchist meeting
• Detained Glass Bead videographer on policing in the age of YouTube
• It can’t happen here? It already has.

There are plenty of reasons that women shouldn’t get behind Sarah Palin just because she’s got two X chromosomes, including her adamantly anti-choice stance on women’s rights to make decisions for themselves. Personally, I think that Palin was chosen cynically - to potentially appeal to the radical right Christian conservatives and to disenchanted (sigh, so sick of that meme) Hillary supporters.

All that said, I’m already seeing the sexism that encountered Clinton rearing its ugly, ugly head in discussions of Palin. It’s disgusting and unnecessary and none of us should stand for it. Just as we shouldn’t stand for the misogynistic attacks on Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton or any other woman.

That’s it, that’s all I’m saying on this. Have fun this extended weekend and join me at the Liberty Parade if you’re in Minneapolis!

Megan and I can hardly listen to the radio anymore without feeling so frustrated we have to turn it off and hope by the time we turn it back on that the media is done finding angry Clinton supporters to sound off and give them fun and ridiculous soundbites. It’s almost impossible to listen to the discussions of anything Michelle Obama does because it comes back to questions of “Do you think she was patriotic enough? How can she convince people she doesn’t hate America?”

Let me tell you now - there is absolutely nothing Michelle Obama can do that will get the pundits to stop asking that question, just as there is nothing Barack Obama can do to stop the media from dwelling on the drama that they continue generating about the small but vocal number of Clinton supporters who threaten to support a candidate who opposes almost everything their candidate believed in.

So you know people question Michelle’s patriotism, Barack’s “Americanness,” whether Hillary’s supporters will support a Republican rather than vote for Obama.

What else do you know? How are you being educated about the differences between the candidates in this race? (Boy, are there differences!) Well, your humble blogger has had it. From now until the election, I will be giving a weekly analysis of a specific issue and how the two candidates differ. It’s time to talk about what matters and the petty dramas that find themselves at the top of the media cycle are not what’s most important. Most important are what are the candidates’ values and what are their visions for our country - and how do they plan to implement those visions.

Look for Part I of this handy guide to McCain vs. Obama on the issues this Sunday.

I was already a little twisted over the article that ran in the Star Tribune about U of MN’s president Bob Bruininks this weekend. Then I looked at my student account for the coming school year and nearly had a heart attack. Tuition went up $353/semester ($706 a year) for graduate students, making annual tuition alone over $10,000 per year. Tuition for undergraduates went up to $550/year and is pushing $10,000 per year.

I know I’ve talked about this before, but the sticker shock of my upcoming degree combined with an uncomfortably cheerleading Strib article and the sadness I have looking at my undergraduate alma mater (and employer and place where I’m getting my PhD) become further and further out of reach for average Minnesotans is pretty profound.

The article was already sour to me when it stated that “Bruininks also would not back down when clerical workers walked off the job a year ago, and the strike fell apart.” Summing up what happened last year in those few words that favored the administration was inaccurate at best. The pay scales at the University as we strive ever further towards that “top three” designation are, as in corporate America, increasingly skewed. Faculty in certain schools make incredible salaries. Whether or not the salaries are deserved/necessary is a point of ambivalence for me–I see both the pros and cons–but to essentially put the workers at the University “in their place” while lavishing senior administrators and plenty of faculty with six figure incomes and assorted perks is, in my opinion, simply immoral.

Anyone who works in academia long enough knows that the quest for “top three” status isn’t about the University’s undergraduate education. It’s about securing grants, having top notch graduate programs, doing groundbreaking research…and all of those are good things, in my opinion. However, there is that pesky reality that we are also supposed to educate thousands of new undergraduate students every year.

The naive undergrads who commented on the Strib article think this quest for glory has been done for them, but that’s just not in evidence. We still rely heavily on graduate students and adjuncts to handle undergraduate courses and I don’t see that changing.

As for the idea that the U should be an elite institution and the people who cannot get in (nevermind that the article didn’t exactly address students who can get in, but cannot see how to finance such a hefty price tag), I’m again ambivalent. If you want the U to be the “pinnacle” of public university education in Minnesota, I’m not necessarily opposed to that. But we’d better damn well get our priorities straight. The U can be a fantastic school and an affordable school, if we decide that it should be.

While I whine a bit about the amount I’m going to have to put in for my graduate degree, I’m not actually very broken up about graduate tuition rates. Graduate school is nice, it certainly gets you places a BA/BS doesn’t, it tends to bump your pay up, but it’s just not necessary that masses of Minnesotans get masters degrees and PhDs.

However, pinnacle or not, the kids of Minnesota should have access to the U. They shouldn’t be priced out of an education here. The people of this state have a vested interest in an educated workforce and our student populations should have affordable access to everything from the community colleges to the state universities to the University. It’s really that simple.

Apparently, that girl reverts to all her obsessive behaviors. Worked all night, save the time I was on the phone with Megan. Installed the new WP and plotted future improvements to the site. Read and plotted grant applications for my real job. Tried to break away from the computer. Failed. Wondered if I wanted to incorporate Twitter in my blog.

I was also reading a bunch about salary negotiation/feminist finance type stuff and feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of saving for a down payment on a house. I know everyone says “do it now! it’s so cheap!” but those were the same lines I was being fed two years ago - “do it now! interest rates are so low!” And then everyone on the planet got foreclosed on. Hyperbolic, I know, but there are dozens and dozens of foreclosed/foreclosing homes in my neighborhood and you can feel the stress of it when you walk down the street.

Something I don’t really advise at night, now.

To those of you who read here, I know you’re not much of a commenting crowd. You often respond on Twitter or in person, depending, but what improvements do you want on the site? I could thread the comments, but won’t if people still don’t care to comment. I could pull in a twitter feed to keep some kind of content fresh.

I can anticipate topic areas this fall. Let’s have a preview, shall we? (Oh humor me, Megan will be back tomorrow and I won’t need you to put me to sleep at night again for a while. Let’s just talk a little longer.)

Things that will likely come up beginning in September:

• ruminations on technology in education
• bitching about how much I dislike the statistics class I just spent a billion dollars on books for
• thinking about the role of race in researchers and, by extension, the role of researchers in developing race
• election ‘08
• the old standbys of feminism, racism, and cool technology things and promoting my friends’ activities because they are awesome
• and of course - how googley-eyed I am over Megan

Yup. I think getting off teh interwebs is a good idea…

I’m getting bogged down in trying to improve my tag cloud.  Unfortunately, that “work” thing that I have to do takes precedence.  Dammit.

A moment, though, on my funny day yesterday.  Nothing pulls in the viewers like a little maniacal raging…but when there aren’t really any consequences, speaking your mind isn’t really a brave/innovative thing.  I doubt I’d have written a similarly vituperative post about the academic hand that feeds me–I can be critical, sure, but boy I was just furious yesterday!

That said, I think I was validly angry/annoyed/mortified…so nothing has really changed.

In completely unrelated news, Twin Cities citizens better get ready to hide because not only are the RNC and Ron Paulites coming to town, so is Ralph Nader. Sigh. My plan is to hide in my non-destination neighborhood and hope things don’t get explosive.

I think I’m going to upgrade my WordPress installation tonight.  This is probably inadvisable since a ridiculous number of people have visited my blog since I railed on the mobile web thing yesterday, but Megan is away and I need a break from grant-thinking.

Think I can do it all in an hour?  We shall see…that’s the time I’ve budgeted for it.  If I lose posts/comments, I do apologize.