I just got back from delivering postcards to five branches of the San Francisco Public Library:  Glen Park, Parkside (on Taraval Street), Ortega, Sunset, and Merced, and I really appreciate the supportive comments the librarians made about City College, especially at the Merced Branch.  The librarian who took the CCSF postcards said, "Let's find a prominent place for them because this is very important."  The librarian standing by told me that she had taken art classes and a lot of other classes at City College and could hardly express how much she loved the college.  She complimented me on my orange-segment earrings and said she'd seen some fig earrings like mine at the Farmer's Market.  I explained that they were from my sister in Chicago but that someone who'd signed the petition outside another library had told me she'd seen fig earrings like mine at the Farmer's Market.  The librarian then asked whether I was the signature gatherer when she signed a petition for CCSF at that Market.  I told her I'd done most of my signature gathering at Yerba Buena Garden. 

 I took pictures of each display of our new postcards "We are the heartbeat of City College," and I'm happy to say that in most cases they were prominently displayed.  However, at one branch there was a postcards still there from two semesters ago--but just one. At the West Portal Branch of the SFPL, there was still a stack of CCSF postcards I'd delivered in December 2021!  (Otherwise, it's a great library.)  I think it was at the Glen Park Library that a librarian said, "Yes, people do take these postcards, and they used to take the catalogs, but I guess they're not being printed up so much anymore."  I told her I would pass on her comment!

No Comment on a Petition of No Confidence

I got this message just now as I signed a petition:  

You have signed 23 petitions on Change.org! We know you care.

Yes, I do.  I care enough to make a comment when they say, "Display my name and comment on this petition."  I want to offer my thoughts as well as my name.    I read the whole thing through before I clicked on the petition to comment and sign.  No place to comment.

Here's what I wrote to Allan Fisher:

Hi, Allan~

It says "Display my name and comment on this petition."  Is there a place for comment?

I also may not be up-to-date on the administration's plans to move the airport program to the Evans Campus.  I thought they had decided against that.  

There are plenty of clauses making me want to sign.  We've lived through a lot of those "clauses" and gotten a review of them in Free City:  The Fight for San Francisco's City College and Education for All.

One concept that I question is stated on page 116 of Free City, when the writers respond to the assertion by the ACCJC and FCMAT that CCSF faced financial disaster because 92 percent of its expenditures went to salaries and benefits.

The authors say "To supporters this showed that the college unions had made CCSF a good place to work."

No, it shows that the college unions had gotten us good salaries.  Good salaries don't necessarily create a good place to work.  

What other aspects of the workplace does that 8% have to cover?

Dianna Gonzales said at a recent meeting something like, "I can understand your being outraged.  I hope you're also outraged that we're in this position."  I don't fault them for the problems that they inherited,--who would want their job?--but I've heard testimony that chairs were not informed between September 2020 and February 2021 of the plans to lay off so many of the faculty, so that supports the clause about the administration and Board of Trustees failing to adhere to open government...etc.

Please let me know if, as the document implies, it's possible to make comments.  

Tina

Our Campaigne for Anita Martinez for College Board

 

Several people have asked me about the results of the election for CCSF Board of Trustees, so I want to report that even though our candidate, Anita Martinez, didn't win, she came very close to winning. 

 I think that's an enormous accomplishment for a grass-roots campaign, and I think the time we spent supporting her everywhere we went was time very well-spent.  It was an intergenerational campaign too.

Other candidates had more political connections  and money.  What Anita had and has is first-hand knowledge from 25 years at CCSF as both an instructor and an administrator and at Skyline and College of Marin.  She wants to keep CCSF a community college, and she has extensive experience with budgets.  

I feel very grateful to her for being willing to run for this office and put all the time and energy she put into it.    Kudos to her and to her campaign manager Leslie Simon as well as to Eira Kien, Jess Nguyen, and Stephanie MacAller.  

Here are some numbers:

Our campaign managed to win 116,967 votes (10.82%) while the third and fourth place finishers earned 126,281 (11.68%) and 122,893 (11.37%) votes respectively. This represents only about a half percent (.55) difference between fourth and fifth places, not bad given the forces we faced at the start of the campaign.  (The winners were incumbents Shanell Williams and Tom Temprano and newcomers Aliya Chisti and Alan Wong.)

Of course we'd have preferred that Anita win!  City College needs her on the Board of Trustees.  But there's something very invigorating in supporting someone we believe in, regardless of the outcome.  

I want to thank all of you who voted for her and donated to her campaign.  One more thing to be grateful for this Thanksgiving!

I enjoyed walking around the city and beautifying scenic spots with Anita Martinez signs!  I met a lot of Anita Martinez admirers along the way!

KALW's Article on CCSF

https://www.kalw.org/post/city-college-still-everybody-abrupt-class-cuts-spark-sf-debate

Follow Up on Supporting African-American Studies at CCSF

"Black Studies Matter" was suggested as our group's name as we continue to move forward in an effort to get a Full-Time instructor for the program.  Our meeting on Wednesday, February 19, was held in MUB 39 the day after the AFT 2121 passed a resolution to support the African-American Studies Program and not to endorse any trustee who has not supported it.    All other ethnic studies programs have a full-time teacher.

Here you see Patricia Nunley making a point as Nancy Vargas, Don Rico Gebera listen and Kyle Hill takes notes.

Others attending the meeting were Wynd Kaufmyn, who left earlier (not plictured), Kathe Burick,  Leslie Simon, Ramona Coates, Sophia Montano,  Tessa Brown, and Tina Martin.

Leslie mentioned that Glen Nance of the African-American Studies Program hired here in 1975.  

Patricia Nunley surprised me by saying the opposite of what I usually hear in identity politics--that people of a particular group don't want outsides.  She said tshe believed in brown people standing up for black--going to the forefront--and black people going to the forefront to stand up for brown people.  If I understood her correctly, she said that nonpwhite people in the Union haven't felt supported.  

The fear is that the powers-that-be are tyring to consolidate departments and programs, but this isn't likely to work because the needs are different.  

The big concern right now is that the decision not to provide a full-time instructor for AFAM studies was based on false information.  First, they thought that someone on leave would be coming back, but she won't be in AFAM Studies.  She'll be in History.  Now they're saying that the full-time teacher has to teach five courses, but there aren't 4 courses in African-American Studies, which once had 8 courses, reduced to 6, reduced to 4.    

During our meeting, Leslie got in touch with Tariq Farrar, the instructor who hasn't been replaces, and he verified that he was not teaching 5 courses in the African-American Studies Program.    It's not mandatory that the full-time instructor do that.

The next step is for Edgar Torres, the Chair of Latin American Studies and now the interim chair of  the African-American Studies Program to speak to the FPAC, the Faculty Position Allocation Committee.    We need to know when it's meting and who's on it.  

Support the African-American Department at CCSF

Instructors, students, and a counselor were at CCSF this afternoon brain-storming how to support the under-staffed African-American Studies Program.  Unfortunately, I left my notebooks with all details behind, but here are some pictures:

Leslie Simon on Cutting Classes--Museum Studies

Introduction to Museum Studies is one of the classes that was cut in the Midnight Massacre. Out of that class, came the Frida Kahlo Way Initiative which successfully changed the name of the street where City College’s main campus fronts from its association with a disgraced public official to a beloved artist who represents women, people of color, people with disabilities, and queer people’s struggles. 

Out of the decolonizing/indigenizing museums and community engagement focus of the class has also come the Land Acknowledgment Initiative. This initiative would institute a purposeful acknowledgment that City College sits on Ramaytush Ohlone land and owes respect and commitment to the ongoing struggles of indigenous people. It received early and solid support from the Associated Students Executive Council and is now making its way through the College constituencies.

This summer, due to a collaboration between Museum Studies and SFMOMA, the San Francisco scale model will be assembled at City College for first the first time since 1942, when it was here at City Hall. But Museum Studies has been canceled, so the collaborative work planned for the students this semester will not happen unless the bridge funding goes forward and we can move on a late start schedule.

In the Curriculum Committee pipeline, now aborted due to the Midnight Massacre, is the Museum Studies and Social Justice Certificate, responding to the need in museums to diversify their staffs. With its population of primarily low income students and students of color, City College is in a unique position to make this happen. Many low-income students and students of color are losing the opportunity to enter a field which is crying out for their participation.