Lunch with the Artist
Wednesday March 14 noon followed by
Artist’s Talk at 12:45

Closing Celebration and Ceremony of Release on
Sunday 25 March at 5 p.m.

Kurt Steger first conceived of his Burden Boat in response to an
invitation to show at Virginia Tech. The campus was still reeling in shock
and sorrow from the massacre that had taken place just two years
earlier. Steger writes “I felt a compulsion to create an art piece that
might help facilitate healing.” The burden boat project was born, a
twelve-foot vessel made of ceramic and wood with cotton bags filled with
hallowed ground from the Virginia Tech campus. It was initiated at the
exhibition’s opening on September 11, 2009. During the show, people were
invited to write their burdens on scraps of paper or send them in by mail or
email and place the written burdens into the boat. At the end of the show
there was a ceremonial burning and burying of the burdens, personal and
collective.

Two years later the Burden Boat would resurface in Washington D.C. as an
integral part of the 9/11 Arts Project designed to remember the horror of
that day ten years earlier and hopefully focus on healing. It was placed in
the courtyard between the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and the
National Portrait Gallery where it collected hand-written and emailed
“burdens”. A ceremony of healing, this time through water, took place on
the afternoon of 9/11/11. » read more »

Hunter Link of the University of Virginia's Living Wage Campaign explains why he and other students stopped eating and why workers at UVA can and should be paid a living wage.

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.

Producer: David Swanson.

Engineer: Christiane Brown.

Music by Duke Ellington.

Download or get embed code from Archive.org or AudioPort or Radio4All or LetsTryDemocracy.

Syndicated by Pacifica Network.

Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!

» read more »

Concerned citizens from Louisa and Richmond gather to demand; suspension of operations at North Anna Nuclear Plant and legal accountability on reckless endangerment charges for major stockholders and officers of Dominion power.

What:
A noontime picket at Dominion headquarters in Downtown Richmond. On the anniversary of the Fukushima disaster and in light of ongoing radioactive tritium leaks at the North Anna Nuclear Plant, we will gather to demand safety and sanity at North Anna.

Who:
Concerned citizens from Richmond, Louisa, Charlottesville and around Central Virginia. including Louisa-based group Not On Our Fault Line,
Richmond Sheriffs Platform Comittee, Americans Against Planetary Destruction and more.

Where:
Dominion Headquarters
701 East Cary Street, Richmond, VA

When:
Noon on Friday March 9th.

Why:
Because people in Central Virginia are tired of watching Dominion gamble with our health, safety, and future for the sake of shareholder profits.

The earthquake on August 23, 2011 caused ground motion that exceeded the plant's design by 100%. Despite protest and legal action by local and national groups, North Anna was allowed to restart without any retrofits to make the plant safe in earthquakes. Demands for full core inspection of unit 1 and inspection of underground pipes carrying radioactive tritium were also ignored. Recently we have learned that these pipes are leaking tritium into the environment.

We will also be demanding an enlargement of the emergency evacuation planning zone around North Anna to include Richmond, Charlottesville and Fredericksburg. During the Fukushima meltdown people who lived over 25 miles from the plant had to be evacuated, even though much of the radiation blew out to sea. In the case of a meltdown at North Anna, prevailing winds could carry the radiation over Richmond. The center of Richmond is 40 miles away and downwind from North Anna.

Come to Dominion headquarters at Noon this Friday March 9th!

On the anniversary of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima and in light of ongoing radioactive tritium leaks at the North Anna Nuclear Plant, we will gather at Dominion headquarters (7th and East Cary) to demand safety and sanity at North Anna.

The earthquake on August 23, 2011 caused ground motion that exceeded the North Anna plant's design by 100%. Despite protest and legal action by local and national groups, North Anna was allowed to restart without any retrofits to make the plant safe in earthquakes. Demands for full core inspection of unit 1 and inspection of underground pipes carrying radioactive tritium were also ignored.

Recently we have learned that these pipes are actively leaking Tritium into the environment.

We will also be demanding an enlargement of the emergency evacuation planning zone around North Anna to include Richmond, Charlottesville and Fredericksburg. During the Fukushima meltdown people who lived over 25 miles from the plant had to be evacuated, even though much of the radiation blew out to sea. In the case of a meltdown at North Anna, prevailing winds could carry the radiation over Richmond. The center of Richmond is 40 miles away and downwind from North Anna.

Dominion is gambling with our health, our safety, our land, our water and our communities so their shareholders can profit. We are sick of the nonsense, the lies, the baseless reassurances. Enough is enough!

Organized by Louisa-based group Not On Our Fault Line, Richmond Sheriffs Platform Comittee, Americans Against Planetary Destruction and more.
Contact
Chris Dorsey
804-551-0033
rva4peace@gmail.com

The Nobel Committee is under pressure for having ceased to award the Nobel Peace Prize for work aimed at peace.

Now comes the University of Virginia which has just announced that it plans to award the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal to Jessica T. Matthews, head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

It is highly unlikely that UVA would be making that award were the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace working for what Andrew Carnegie required that it work for, namely international peace.

Carnegie provided the funding for the Endowment requiring that it work to eliminate war, and that once war was eliminated the endowment move on to abolishing the second worst thing in the world.

The Endowment has moved on, while wars still occur.  It claims to have redefined it mission to include economic matters.  Its programs do not include the abolition of war at all, but focus on several other areas.  Matthews excuses herself for this by pretending that eliminating war is not attainable:

"The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is the oldest international affairs think tank in the United States. Founded by Andrew Carnegie with a gift of $10 million, its charter was to “hasten the abolition of war, the foulest blot upon our civilization.” While that goal was always unattainable, the Carnegie Endowment has remained faithful to the mission of promoting peaceful engagement.

Several defining qualities shine through in Carnegie’s history: the consistent excellence of the research; the institution’s unusual ability to stay young as it grew in age by regularly reinventing itself to stay ahead of the tide of change in the world; and a determination that its work should produce real change in the real world.

The most recent reinvention was the announcement of our Global Vision of 2007, a plan to create the world’s first global think tank. Today, with a thriving network of locally staffed centers in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and America, the institution is on its way to achieving that ambitious goal. Those of us, past and present, who have had the great fortune to serve this extraordinary institution can look forward to our second century with a real sense of accomplishment and with the expectation of notable contributions to a more peaceful world yet to come.

Jessica T. Mathews
President

It's fitting that Matthews will accept her award at the home of Thomas Jefferson, a man who believed that ending slavery was unattainable, just as others have believed that ending every foul practice once established is unattainable.  In fact, ending war is perfectly within our grasp.  But that doesn't mean we can afford to have someone divert hundreds of millions of dollars from the task, even if they do find creating uncontroversial websites and "think" tanks more convenient. » read more »

From MichaelMoore.com

'Why I'm Hunger Striking at UVA'

"... in our 'caring community,' hundreds of contract employees may make as little
as $7.25/hour ... I have experienced many periods of economic hardship in my
life. Growing up, I moved over 30 times – including various stays in homeless
shelters, the homes of family friends, and church basements. I know firsthand
what the economic struggle is like for many of these underpaid workers."
– Joseph Williams, third-year student at the University of Virginia
and player for Virginia Cavaliers football

Get the Facts
UVA would need to spend $4.2-5.8 million to pay all direct employees at least
$13/hour – or less than 0.25% of the university's $2.487 billion annual budget

'Same Thing, Different Century'
"I still view the University as a plantation ... the field workers aren’t going
to speak out." – Grace, former UVA employee

If Only the Woman Who Wrote This Were President of UVA
"Being paid a living wage for one's work is a necessary condition for
self-actualization." – Teresa A. Sullivan, The Social Organization of Work

UPDATES: @UVALivingWage | LivingWageAtUVA.org | Facebook

DO SOMETHING in Charlottesville, VA Friday:
Join the Living Wage Rally at 12:00 Noon
University of Virginia Rotunda, street side, University Avenue (MAP)

DO SOMETHING Anywhere:
Politely Tell the People Who Run UVA to Act Like Decent Human Beings
Their email addresses are publicly available right here

Sign the Living Wage Campaign Petition » read more »

Feb 29th: Shut Down ALEC from Kontra on Vimeo.

Twelve students at the University of Virginia on Saturday began a hunger strike for a living wage policy for university employees.  They've taken this step after having exhausted just about every other possible approach over a period of 14 years.  I was part of the campaign way back when it started.  I can support the assertion made by hunger-striking student A.J. Chandra on Saturday, who said,

"We have not spent 14 years building up the case for a living wage.  Rather, the campaign has made the case over and over again."

This is the latest in a long series of reports making the case.

Another striking student, David Flood, explained,

"We have researched long enough. We have campaigned long enough. We have protested long enough. The time for a living wage is now."

UVA was the first campus with a living wage campaign back in the late 1990s, but many campuses that started later finished sooner.  UVA has seen partial successes.  In 2000, the university raised wages to what was at the time a living wage.  But those gains have been wiped out by inflation.  Local businesses have voluntarily met the campaign's demands, and the City of Charllottesville has both implemented a living wage policy and called on UVA to do so.

When we started, no one dared to say the word "union," but by 2002 a union had formed.  It lasted until 2008, and now a new organizing drive is underway. 

Workers, however, still fear being fired for joining a union or for joining the living wage campaign.  (Does anyone recall the Employee Free Choice Act from way back yonder in 2008? It would really come in handy.) With workers fearing retribution, students and faculty are the campaign's public face, and even some students (especially those with scholarships) and faculty are afraid to take on that role.

In 2006, UVA students tried a sit-in as a tactic to pressure the University's Board of Visitors.  The students were arrested after four days, and wage policies unaltered.  But now they are looking to the model of Georgetown University's successful hunger strike in 2005.

Since 2006, the campaign has been building support among workers, faculty, and the Charlottesville community whose economy is dominated by UVA and almost a quarter of whose population is below the federal poverty line.  Here's a debate on the topic from 2011. A petition has been signed by 328 faculty members.

A rally was held on the steps of the Rotunda on Saturday to launch the hunger strike.  Chandra told the gathered crowd that this 14-year campaign by an ever-changing cast of students who typically stay only 4 years has tried teach-ins, concerts, film showings, petitions, letter-writing, marches, seminars, reports, and community outreach of all sorts.  Speaking privately, he told me that the university measures its success by its publications and many other quantities. "The well being of the lowest paid workers," he said, "has to be part of deciding whether this is a successful institution."

Without pressure for action, Chandra said, "the same passive acceptance of injustice that allowed blacks to be excluded from UVA until 1950 and women until 1970" will win out. 

Hunter Link is another hunger-striking student, the only one of the 12 not currently enrolled.  He graduated in December.  He pointed out that UVA sends students abroad to do service projects with money it could have used to pay its own workers a living wage.  Of course, it also builds giant sports arenas, raises its top salaries, and adds more buildings to its main campus all the time. 

For most of the past 14 years, UVA had a president who gave no indication that I ever saw of caring in the least what happened to the people who scrubbed his toilets.  Now, UVA has a new president, its first female president.  Her name is Theresa Sullivan, and she has published books, including quite recently, advocating for a living wage.  When it comes to actually paying one at UVA, where doing so would cost a fraction of a percent of the billions of dollars UVA is hoarding, Sullivan sings a different tune.

Hunter Link read to the crowd on Saturday a letter from an unnamed worker who complained that President Sullivan talks about "a caring community" but -- asks the worker -- "what good are values if you don't live them?"

It's popular in U.S. politics these days to prefer words to actions, but the UVA living wage campaign is taking the opposite approach, pointing out the deceptions in Sullivan's claims.  "Contrary to President Sullivan's inexplicable claims," said hunger-striker David Flood, "real wages have declined in the past six years."  Objecting to non-monetary compensation as an alternative to wages, Flood remarked to loud applause: "You cannot pay the rent with a course at UVA.  You cannot buy medicine with a coupon good only at the UVA company store."  Before UVA workers can take classes, Flood said, they must be able to buy housing, food, and medicine.  They must be able to live in the community that they make possible.  I would add that they must be able to quit their second or third jobs if they are to have time for taking classes.

The living wage campaign is demanding a minumum wage for direct, contracted, and subcontracted employees of no less that $13, and that wages be adjusted each year to comply with the Economic Policy Institute's regionally sourced cost-of-living and inflation calculations.  This must be implemented without reducing other benefits, including healthcare, without under-staffing, without reducing hours worked, and without demanding increased productivity.  We started out demanding $8, and if the University had met that demand and indexed it to the cost of living, this campaign would have ended.  Professor Susan Fraiman, who has been part of the campaign from the start, remarked on Saturday that she very much hoped she was speaking at the last living wage rally that would be needed.  That will depend on the impact of the hunger strike.

The strikers have set up a permanent vigil between the Rotunda and the UVA Chapel.  The strikers are informed, articulate, dedicated, and deadly serious.  They've had physicals and will consume only liquids.  One of them, Hallie Clark, pointed out that the Black Student Alliance rallied for higher wages at UVA in 1969.  This has been a long struggle indeed. And the majority of the lowest paid workers at this slave-built campus are still black.  The honor code still forbids cheating on tests or treating students as if they would cheat on tests.  But it does not at the moment require presidents who have publicly articulated the moral demand for a living wage to actually pay one.

President Sullivan must work with UVA's Board of Visitors.  The board members are almost all from out of town.  Most students and workers have no contact with them.  They are not a part of the Charlottesville community.  Some of them are graduates of UVA's Darden Business School, which of course teaches the benefits of low pay for workers other than oneself and erases from consideration the question of whether a worker must hold a second job, or must use only emergency rooms for healthcare, or must leave his or her children unsupervised.  When I was a graduate student in philosophy at UVA, I took a course at Darden that was jointly listed as business and philosophy.  The course sought to apply ethics to the view of business regularly promoted at Darden, which felt a bit like applying a stick of lipstick to a large and fast-moving pig.

Here's a list of the members of the Board of Visitors along with their phone numbers. You can also click their names to email them. Or click HERE to email them all at once.  Hunter Link told me the campaign had been in touch with Mark Kington of the Finance Committee and found him less than supportive.  Here's what the various members do for their day jobs.  Other than the student member and the ex-officio member, if you can find a connection between any of the other members and education please let me know.  They seem to be almost all bankers, lawyers, CEOs, and . . . well, the sort of gang that ought to be the Board of Visitors for Darden Business School, not UVA; except they wouldn't have to visit as Darden has its own supply of these types.

President Sullivan is going to have to take the lead here.  It is her students refusing to eat, across the street from her house.  Her office phone is 434-924-3337.  During the next week, she and the board members need to hear from every single one of us who cares.  The Board of Visitors will be meeting next week.  There will be rallies every day this week, leading up to that meeting.  To get involved, go to livingwageatuva.org

» read more »