Special Event on Hydraulic Fracking, October 13

Please join the Pratt Faculty Union (UFCT 1460) for a special presentation: ‘Hydraulic Fracturing’
[the new Halliburton technique used to drill for natural gas]

Learn how proposed “fracking” regulations will NOT protect New York City!

On Thursday, Oct. 13, from 6:30-8:30 in the Alumni Reading Room, three expert panelists will discuss proposals for New York State, the Delaware River Basin, and Lower Manhattan.  
Since 2005, when ‘fracking’ was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act, fracking has swept across the country, investors and policymakers believing we have enough domestic natural gas for perhaps 50-100 years. Unfortunately, though natural gas is in fact less dirty than coal when burned, the fracking process itself is so contaminating that when extraction is included, natural gas causes more greenhouse gas emissions than does coal, if taken out 20 years.  In addition, fracking tends to contaminate water supplies with the heavy metals, methane and radioactive materials found deep underground, as well as with the toxic chemicals used in the process itself, and also vents dangerous hydrocarbons into the air. Though it does create a few, mostly temporary jobs, it also destroys many traditional jobs. The New York Times has labeled its investment strategies as a ponzi scheme. Both New York State and the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) are about to issue fracking regulations, thus opening up NYS and the Delaware River Basin (source of 90% of NYC’s pristine drinking water) to this dangerous process, and threatening our growing local and organic farmlands. 

Spectra Energy is about to be issued a permit allowing it to build a 36-42-inch high-pressured gas pipeline under the West Side Highway, the West Village and Lower Chelsea. This pipeline is the same type as the one that blew-up in San Bruno, CA in 2010, killing eight people and damaging the city’s water supply system. We still have time to demand NY transition to sustainable energy, rather than natural gas.

Panelists:

Joe Levine, graduate of Pratt Architecture, is a principal in the NYC firm of Bone/Levine Architects. The firm is involved with urban infrastructure upgrading and rehabilitation, conservation easement planning, and is a consultant to the Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design. He is also the co-founder of NYH20 and Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, two grassroots nonprofit organizations dedicated to educating the public about the threats posed by unconventional natural gasextraction.

Craig Michaels is an attorney and consultant to the NRDC on the NY SGEIS. Previously he was the Watershed Program Director at Riverkeeper.

Clare Donohue is a kitchen and bath designer, and founding member of Sane Energy Project, a group formed to fight the Spectra pipeline and promote sustainable energy in NYC. The group has been working since early spring11 to make residents aware of the project, and in two weeks convinced 500 people to become intervenors against the pipeline. In June, SANE Energy presented more than 2500 petitions to City Council.

——
If interested in attending, please RSVP me at: kyecarbone@gmail.com as space is limited. Moreover, non-UFCT members as well as students are certainly welcome; I’ll just need to know beforehand for a rough head-count that cannot exceed sixty for the ARR.

Lastly, attached to this email are two fliers one B&W and one in color. Please print-out, post, and distribute within your respective department/area(s) (email Kye for attachments).

Thanks to my sister Foundation colleague: Alice Zinnes for organizing this special event!

In Solidarity,

-Kye

Comments Off | By trotsky | September 27th, 2011

Climate Change Event with Christian Parenti, 9/26

Christian Parenti on Tropic of Chaos:

Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence

Special Event sponsored by the Pratt Faculty Union (UFCT 1460)

Monday, September 26, 2011

6:30

Alumni Reading Room, 3rd Floor, Pratt Library

 

Please join the Pratt Faculty Union (UFCT 1460) for a special presentation by Christian Parenti, investigative journalist, contributing editor at The Nation, Puffin Foundation Writing Scholar at The Nation Institute, and visiting scholar at the Brooklyn College Sociology Department.  He is also the author of Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (2000); The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America (2003); and The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq (2004).

 

The world’s developed nations currently face a political, social, and ethical dilemma: how will they react to the ravages of climate change that are affecting undeveloped nations in the global south right now?  These same developed nations must also come to terms with the ways their neo-liberal, neo-colonial policies have helped turn these undeveloped nations into “failed states” that are more vulnerable and less able to respond to climate change.  Parenti’s latest book, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (New York: Nation Books, 2011), deftly looks to the past and to the future in an effort to come to grips with the new world order that climate change is bringing about.

 

In Tropic of Chaos, Parenti argues that the effects of climate change are at the root of violent conflicts breaking out throughout the global south.  He shows how areas in the “tropic of chaos”—East Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, India, and Pakistan—have been made especially vulnerable to climate change due to the effects of both Cold War proxy conflicts and neo-liberal economic restructuring and privatization, and how the West is already preparing for these conflicts through developing the techniques and arsenal associated with counter-insurgency warfare.

 

For more information, please contact Kye Carbone (kyecarbone@gmail.com) or Suzanne Verderber (sverderb@pratt.edu).

 

 

Comments Off | By trotsky | September 19th, 2011

Rally to Support LIU Faculty, Monday, 9/12, 3-5

Dear UFCT Member:


As you’ve probably heard, our fellow Brooklyn faculty colleagues at LIU are on strike.

Calling a strike is never a cavalier move, or is it a stunt; but only called for when management chooses to be completely intractable with respect to collective bargaining. The LIU faculty union had been negotiating for a new contract in good faith w/LIU’s management since late spring and throughout the summer. They have come to an impasse as LIU’s management is demanding: ’0′, ’0′, ’0′ in wage increases for three years, and greater give-backs and contributions from the faculty for the cost of health benefits; hardly ‘reasonable’ or ‘benelvolent’ demands. When push comes to shove, LIU’s union has every right to consider, and thus call for, a strike…

In response, flunky administrative personnel have been dispatched to replace faculty in the teaching of classes, demonstrating all too clearly LIU’s lack of respect for their students in addition to their faculty.

Pratt and LIU are affiliated in many ways other than being the rare private-sector faculty unions — for both full-time and part-time faculty — in Brooklyn, much less, the country, as they were for a short time (in the early 70′s) in our own Local 1460, and in fact, used Pratt’s CBA as a model for their own contract. In addition, LIU spear-headed what is an ‘Alliance’ of all higher-ed faculty unions in the tri-state area irrespective of private or public-sector (i.e. SUNY, CUNY…), or each union’s affiliation w/NYSUT, NEA, AAUP, etc. We are thus “allied.”

In any event, I’m asking that you consider lending some support and solidarity to our Brooklyn brethren. They are holding pickets at Flatbush and DeKalb each day at 8:00 a.m. and 1p.m. I will be joining them tomorrow, Friday, September 9th, at 8:00 a.m.

Please understand that you are completely free to picket and/or rally at any time, but cannot ‘skip’ the teaching of your classes at Pratt to do so (that would be considered a ‘strike’ and we are prohibited from “lending a strike”…!) Moreover, there is a huge rally scheduled for next Monday, September 12th at 3:00 p.m., Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church: 85 South Oxford St., Brooklyn, NY.

There will be a number of speakers at Monday’s event. I have been invited to speak as well, and I’m more than happy to do so.


In Solidarity,

Kye

——
President UFCT Local 1460 

 

Comments Off | By trotsky | September 11th, 2011

Christian Parenti on Climate Change, Sept. 26, 6:30

Christian Parenti on Tropic of Chaos:

Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence

Special Event sponsored by the Pratt Faculty Union (UFCT 1460)

Monday, September 26, 2011

6:30

Location TBA

Please join the Pratt Faculty Union (UFCT 1460) for a special presentation by Christian Parenti, investigative journalist, contributing editor at The Nation, Puffin Foundation Writing Scholar at The Nation Institute, and visiting scholar at the Brooklyn College Sociology Department.  He is also the author of Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (2000); The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America (2003); and The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq (2004).

 

The world’s developed nations currently face a political, social, and ethical dilemma: how will they react to the ravages of climate change that are affecting undeveloped nations in the global south right now?  These same developed nations must also come to terms with the ways their neo-liberal, neo-colonial policies have helped turn these undeveloped nations into “failed states” that are more vulnerable and less able to respond to climate change.  Parenti’s latest book, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (New York: Nation Books, 2011), deftly looks to the past and to the future in an effort to come to grips with the new world order that climate change is bringing about.

 

In Tropic of Chaos, Parenti argues that the effects of climate change are at the root of violent conflicts breaking out throughout the global south.  He shows how areas in the “tropic of chaos”—East Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, India, and Pakistan—have been made especially vulnerable to climate change due to the effects of both Cold War proxy conflicts and neo-liberal economic restructuring and privatization, and how the West is already preparing for these conflicts through developing the techniques and arsenal associated with counter-insurgency warfare.

 

For more information, please contact Kye Carbone (kyecarbone@gmail.com) or Suzanne Verderber (sverderb@pratt.edu).

 

 

Comments Off | By trotsky | September 5th, 2011

GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING, APRIL 12, FINAL SLATE OF DEMANDS

Dear UFCT Dues Paying Member: 

As a reminder, a final General Membership Meeting and ‘send-off’ (for negotiations), is scheduled for this: Tuesday, 4/12th, from 12:30-2PM, in the Alumni Reading Room, 3rd floor, Library (sorry, no food is allowed in the ARR.) 

The UFCT’s issue proposals for our forthcoming spring-summer contract negotiations w/the Pratt Administration are attached for your perusal.  [Please email Kye at kyecarbone@gmail.com if you need a copy.  --Suzanne]

In Solidarity,

-Kye

Comments Off | By trotsky | April 9th, 2011