Troubled times are coming. Berkeley’s own Robert Reich has sounded the alarm in a recent column listing 15 warning signs that a tyrant is taking over.
People are frightened. For us old folks who have lived through so much, the feelings are familiar. I will never forget December 13, 2000, the night that Al Gore lost the election by fiat of the Supreme Court. Pulling into the driveway, I heard his concession speech on the radio, and I wept. I just knew that the presidency of George W. Bush would be a disaster, and it was.
Through those miserable eight years, through terrorist attacks, the Iraq War, and the financial implosion, I began to wind down a long career in public education. A bit pooped, I pensioned out at age 65 in 2008.
But the election of Barack Obama gave me the psychological boost to teach a reduced load for five more years. The Presidency touches individual Americans on an emotional level, and so many of us Californians are worried about Trump. In such times, we need to hold on to our values and each other. A whole lot of hugging is going on.
In the midst of this uncertainty, three recent events buoyed my spirits. One was Obama’s optimistic and graceful farewell address, full of positive lessons and encouragement. Of course he emphasized his accomplishments: leading us out of a deep recession, the Iran nuclear deal, the Affordable Care Act, and Cuba. He celebrated marriage equality and cautioned that race relations, although improved, still have a long way to go.
But the essence of his speech was a lesson in dignity and democratic citizenship. He extolled the rule of law and worried that the growing rancor in public life creates such negativity that “people of good character” are reluctant to engage in politics. He said that a belief that the system is “inevitably corrupt” has an onerous effect and that we each have a duty as citizens to accept responsibility to be “those anxious and jealous guardians” of our democracy. He told young people not to break windows, but to organize.
We’re going to miss Barack Obama even though he’s not going away. He promised to be an active citizen, “the most important office in a democracy.”
City College Accredited
Another uplift came with the end of the accreditation crisis at City College of San Francisco, my employer for 42 years. The threat of losing our accreditation began in 2012, affecting the morale of everybody at the college: the Trustees, the administration, and faculty, and the students. Many of us retired, leaving the fight to the younger teachers.
Watching the struggle from Berkeley, I admired the perseverance of my union, as the leaders of the American Federation of Teachers Local 2121 waged a spirited, focused, and intelligent fight for the survival of our beloved school with the help of the entire college community, San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera, and myriad supporters. It took five years to beat back the forces of reaction, and now that the worst is over, I feel relief that City College has survived and pride in the part that my union played.
Somehow the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), led by Barbara Beno, managed to convince the public that City College was mismanaged. Some of that accusation was true, but there’s much more to the City College story than meets the eye. The ACCJC didn’t like our contract and the power that faculty had won.
Since I contributed to that contract, specifically the equitable pay scale for hourly instructors and their re-employment rights, the past five years have been a constant reminder about the fragility of political accomplishments. Just when we think that we’ve won a victory, another force waiting in the wings comes forward ready to wipe away those achievements, like the Republican attack on Obamacare.
During my time there, City College underwent changes that improved an already remarkable educational institution that included two divisions, credit and non-credit, a huge and diverse student body, a dedicated and heterogeneous faculty, and the support of the citizens of San Francisco.
For a small town girl from the Catskills, working at CCSF was a dream come true, even though I spent my entire career as a “temporary” part-timer. Sometimes walking around San Francisco, I wondered how I ever got to such a glorious place.
Although financially challenged, I enjoyed total academic freedom in the non-credit Older Adults Program, a priceless opportunity that few teachers enjoy. Ultimately, that was the trade-off that I came to accept. I wrote my own course outlines, syllabi, and lesson plans. All the administration seemed to care about was the enrollment count in our classes.
Out of necessity, I became a union activist and enjoyed the support of a spirited team including my mentor, the indomitable Chris Hanzo, our executive secretary. On the negotiating team, I learned the laws of collective bargaining, both adversarial and interest based. I got elected to the Academic Senate.
In 1998, around the middle of my career, Bob Varni was elected to the Board of Trustees and began a revolution at CCSF by first hiring consultants and two years later Chancellor Evan Dobelle, who fired a third of the administrators. This was the first time that I witnessed up close and personal how much change could be effected by a single person in the right place at the right time.
The college was restructured into departments with the faculty running the instructional program and a streamlined administration playing a supportive role. Our part-timers committee won the advent of an hourly pro-rata pay scale and a modicum of job stability.
The financial problems at the school were not caused by employee contracts, but by risky investments and behavior by some of the later top administrators. It was the banking disaster of 2008-2009 that put City College and others into jeopardy by deflating our budget cushion, which just so happened to coincide with the beginning of the accreditation process.
I had worked under President Barbara Beno at Vista College, teaching basic skills classes at night for five years. The Peralta Community College District is top heavy with four Presidents and their managers. No wonder Ms. Beno thought that CCSF didn’t have “enough administrators.”
The crisis is over now; congratulations and best wishes are due to all my colleagues who survived this ordeal and to the younger faculty who have the responsibility and opportunity to rebuild. Teaching is hard enough without the additional struggle of healing a wounded school.
The Forgotten Dead
I was reminded again about the power and importance of individual citizens at a recent Berkeley Rep performance of 946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips. I hadn’t paid attention to the reviews. I knew the show had something to do with a cat, but as I watched, it slowly dawned that I knew the back-story, a largely unknown World War II disaster off the coast of the Slapton Sands in England.
In July 2000, I was motoring around Devon with a Scottish friend, crossing the moors towards the mouth of the Dart, where the D-day invasion force had gathered in the spring of 1944. I wanted to see the place where my uncle Julius “Dudy” Nathan, a sergeant in the US Army, had enjoyed some English hospitality before crossing the Channel and landing on Utah Beach in Normandy.
From Dartmouth, we drove along the beach and stopped at an unusual memorial, a rusty Sherman tank, gun pointing upward, its front decorated with a wreath and flags, a stone monument nearby. Up walked a welcoming figure, a white haired gent who seemed to be the guardian of this place. He was Ken Small, now deceased, the author of The Forgotten Dead.
When Mr. Small realized that we were a Brit and a Yank, he launched into the story of how he had exhumed the tank from the sea floor where 946 American servicemen had died in a German U-boat attack on April 27, 1944 and how he brought to light this horrific fiasco, caused in part by technical failure in Allied communications.
He signed a copy of his book, an account of the disaster and his difficulty in uncovering the truth. The book and the memorial website list all the names of the army and navy victims so they will never be forgotten again.
Michael Morpurgo heard of this tragedy and wove it into a children’s book that was adapted by the Kneehigh theater company, who have brought other mesmerizing productions all the way from Cornwall to Berkeley Rep.
Ken Small was just an ordinary citizen dealing with depression when he stumbled across military detritus on Slapton Sands. In memorializing the victims of Exercise Tiger and informing their families, he found a new purpose in life, now honored as an inspiration.
Citizens can do such things. Thank you Barack Obama for reminding us and for rejoining our ranks. Welcome back.
Toni Mester is a resident of West Berkeley
