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Gabbing and Grousing with Gordy |
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The Proper Mixture of Experience and Youth I have become more aware this past year for the need to do a better job of blending experience and youth into Guild leadership positions. Guild leadership, and I dare say leadership in progressive organizations in general, is top-heavy with baby boomers ready to retire in the next three to five years. If we don't do a better job of reaching out to the thirty and forty “somethings,” the Guild and other progressive organizations run the risk of increasingly becoming irrelevant. We recently concluded elections for Guild officers, and none of the races was contested. Of the nine members of the Guild Executive Committee, only two could be considered to be a newer or younger Guild member. We're trying to bring new blood on board, and we have made some progress. The Meet and Greets this year have been successful in introducing newer faculty to the Guild and visa versa. Over 60 faculty members have gotten to know the Guild in this fashion. Attendance at membership meetings has, for the most part, been large and diverse. Newer faculty have volunteered for Professors for Quality Education, our Guild political action committee, and there is a healthy mixture of experienced and less experienced Guild members on PQE. But, we must do a better job and we must do it now before the baby-boomers retire, resulting in the loss of a great deal of experience and an under-prepared future generation of leadership. In this spirit, I will be tapping newer Guild members on the shoulder to step into leadership positions as they present themselves. In the not-too-distant future, we will be looking for a new editor for our award-winning publication, the Chaparral. Don't be surprised if you receive an e-mail or a phone call from me asking you if you're interested in becoming the editor. I will be a bit more aggressive in soliciting interest from newer faculty in getting involved. I will nudge folks to step up. I hope the response will be positive; the intent is to keep the union strong now and in the future. The Guild's problem is not just our problem. It is, I believe, a problem for the CFT and for progressive organizations in general. At the CFT Convention this past April in Oakland, there were 31 workshops, and not a single one was devoted to the issues of how to engage newer faculty in union activities, how to smooth the transition from the baby-boom generation of leadership to the next generation, or how to incorporate more youth culture into our organization. On the Sunday morning of the Convention we were entertained by a wonderful choir singing old labor and civil rights songs, but at no time during the Convention was there any spoken word, hip-hop, or rap entertainment. It's as if we're oblivious to the need to mix the old with the new and expect newer faculty to adapt to us, instead of us adapting to them. This is a recipe for disaster. In contrast, on the weekend of April 18-20, I helped organize a festival commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Ashgrove, a music club that existed in Los Angeles from 1958-1973, where I had the pleasure of working from 1969-1973. Integrated with older blues and bluegrass music were newer interpretations and newer artists—a good blend of old and young. There were Taj Mahal and Michelle Shocked, the Freedom Singers and Laura Love, the Watts Prophets and Ben Harper. The festival got it right in terms of the performers, even if most attending were over 50. Perhaps, more rap, hip-hop, and spoken word artists would have attracted a younger audience, but the effort was made, and that's the point. The Guild, the CFT, and progressive organizations/events need to do more to blend the older with the newer. If we don't, we all lose, and the ones who lose the most are those who aren't even aware of the loss, those who refuse to be involved. I would love suggestions from the membership on how to do this “blending” better. Hopefully, if we do it better here, we can serve as a role model for what should be done by the CFT and others. & |
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