Bertha Louise Poe quoted labor leader A. Phillip Randolph as she spoke to nearly 150 people who attended the Graduate Employees Organization's "National Day of Action" yesterday afternoon on the Diag.
"At the banquet table of nature, there are no reserve seats," Poe said. "You get what you can take and you take what you can hold ... and you can't take anything without organization."
Poe, secretary-treasurer of the Michigan AFL-CIO, battled cold winds to speak to graduate student instructors, students and faculty to celebrate graduate student teaching and union empowerment. Graduate students held similar demonstrations and activities at 26 universities nationwide.
GEO handed out popcorn, cotton candy and song sheets while members of the University community listened to speakers, gospel singers and a bagpipe player.
The centerpiece of the rally was a 320-square-foot "blackboard" monument to graduate teaching onto which GSIs stapled teaching memorabilia, including collages and pictures.
Speakers focused on the strength of the University's GEO's union - the second oldest graduate workers' union in the country - and stressed the need for graduate teachers to form unions on dozens of other university and college campuses.
"We have the strongest, most participatory graduate union in the country and some of the best working conditions in the country," said GEO President Michelle Mueller, noting that graduate students at other universities are fighting to get health coverage and adequate compensation. "We have these benefits. It's our role to show the rest of the nation what a graduate union can do."
Alan Wald, an English and American culture professor, told the crowd that University faculty should support GEO. All employees have the democratic right to combine to protect and preserve their economic rights and working conditions, he said.
"Propaganda that some administrators and a few misguided colleagues of mine put out (says) that GSIs are not real workers, that they are merely apprentices in training, should be anathema to any working faculty member," Wald said. "Sometimes I wonder if the faculty who say these things really do their work."
LSA senior Mandy Odeir told audience members she was proud to be taught by GSIs.
"I'll take my education with a union label," Odeir said. "Go GEO!"
U.S. Rep. Lynn Rivers was unable to attend, but in a statement read by a spokesperson, Rivers said she commended the GSIs' dedication to the preservation of the quality of education students receive.
Rob Gordan, a graduate employee from Wayne State University, spoke about the need for Wayne State graduate students to unionize to combat proposed cutbacks in their health coverage plan.
"The University of Michigan's GEO is a wonderful example of what happens when you just stick together and stand up for you rights," Gordan said.
Launa Schweizer, a GSI for American Culture 201, said she didn't think her students would be embarrassed by the pictures of them she stapled to the blackboard.
"I'm doing this to show my students how much I think about them, the class and how much I care about teaching," Schweizer said. "This is part of the point - to reach out to more undergraduates and give them a sense of what we do and how we improve the University."
Great Books lecturer Mark Bucham said he attended the celebration because he was formerly a graduate student and sympathized with the GSIs' values and ideas.
"I don't think the University's administrators are very serious about undergraduate education," Bucham said. "One of the things GEO does is bring that to the floor."
"They have a broad vision of social justice at the University which is very worthy of support," Bucham said.
Micah Holmquist, a first-year student in the Residential College, said he came to show his support for unions and "the movement of the working class."
"I think this event is a good idea and it's unfortunate that there aren't more people here," Holmquist said. "It would be nice if there were more students here but it doesn't surprise me because University students are primarily middle class and don't realize the importance of unions."
JENNIFER BRADLEY-SWIFT/Daily
Elyse Bryant of the Center for Labor and Industrial Relations rallies the crowd of more than 150 gathered on the Diag yesterday for a Graduate Employees Organization rally.