“Subterranean Fire: The Percolating Currents of Graduate Labor Activism in Rhetoric and Composition”

by Andrew Bowman and Bruce Kovanen | Xchanges 15.1, Spring 2020

Take a Stand

While organizing is challenging, as Heller et al (2011) discuss in their forum in College English, it is a worthwhile endeavor. The organizing in Rhet-Comp to this point has focused on building the communities and solidarities necessary to address the field’s systemic problems. Building on these existing calls for change, we need to come together to enforce them. Make no mistake: worker power is what gets things done, or, as Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) members say, “Direct action gets the goods.” Organizing offers a path forward to address and mitigate exploitation across multiple domains (such as race, gender, class, ability). In our view, organizing is about making plans and working through them. This is informed by union literature such as Bradbury, Brenner, & Slaughter (2016), which lays out an approach to organizing. From one-on-one conversations between colleagues to organizing a labor action such as a rally or sit-in, organizing begins by identifying shared problems and then reframes those problems as places on which to take a stand (Parker & Gruelle, 2019). The Wyoming Resolution touched on a current of labor exploitation that has continued, in its varied strands, to our present moment. To enact organizing as a practice, we must build on the work of labor activists in the field and begin to address exploitation by organizing in our own departments, universities, and fields. Small actions, when done collectively, can have ripple effects across our field. Exchanges such as this symposium lay the groundwork for the sustained organizing that can change our field.