Cross-class coalition-building at Columbia University

Cross-class coalition-building at Columbia University from Waging Nonviolence on Vimeo.

What does it take to organize across class lines? In the context of a nationwide revival of both labor struggles and student movements, students and workers at college campuses are increasingly having to find out. At Columbia University, students recently started to back a group of Faculty House workers who are fighting for a new contract. But what does solidarity mean at a university where students pay up to $60,000 a year, while campus workers can barely make ends meet? We hear from Osmond Cousin, who has been working as a chef at Columbia for the past 18 years, as well as Jane Brennan, an anthropology student who is one of the main organizers of the student-worker solidarity group. Cousin and Brennan share insights into how both groups have been building alliances in order to increase pressure on the university.

Professor Gustavo Mercado’s book, “The Filmmaker’s Eye: Learning and Breaking the Rules of Cinematic Composition” was recently translated into Simplified and Traditional Chinese, for distribution in Mainland China and Taiwan. Also, it was just announced that Tokyo-based publishing house Born Digital Inc. acquired the Japanese translation rights, marking the 8th language The Filmmaker’s Eye has been translated into and joining the Turkish, Polish, French, Korean, Spanish, and Portuguese versions.

Award-winning filmmaker and professor at Hunter College, Tami Gold, will deliver the closing keynote address at the Global Media Ethics Conference on Saturday, March 16th at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. The conference is a two-day event featuring filmmakers, artists, scholars, journalists and media professionals. Participants will discuss central ethical issues of privacy, surveillance, minority representation and civic responsibility in a diverse and global new media environment.

Through panel presentations, screenings, and discussion groups, Global Media: Ethics of Representation will encourage in-depth discourses on these issues with some of today’s leading scholars, filmmakers, thinkers, and ethicists.
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