"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." - Thomas Jefferson 1820
"There is a growing technology of testing that permits us now to do in nanoseconds things that we shouldn't be doing at all." - Dr. Gerald Bracey author of Rotten Apples in Education
Like the other dishonest people you’ve known in the past, UMSL and UMKC are attempting to divert attention to ‘academic freedom’ in order to weasel out of what they’ve been caught Red handed allowing on their campuses, the issue has to do with the fact that Judy Ancel is at the very least a supporter of an ideology dedicated to overthrowing the government of the United States of America (see my previous post), that she, along with Don Giljum (an avowed Communist and union thug), supports the use of violence to accomplish their goals, and that far from keeping those their personal views, they both boldly brought them into the classroom, made them the center of the course, and even actually brought a communist party activist into class and gave him an unchallenged platform to spew his party line for two hours in front of your kids.
Is this the purpose of a university education in the state of Missouri? Should college students learn how to sabotage and promote acts of violence against the United States and private industry?
Apparently the chancellor and provost believe this hateful and violent speech and action is protected and welcomed:
our campus supports academic freedom, civility, diversity, open discourse and the pursuit of knowledge…
This cover of academic freedom is ridiculous on it face for these lecturers. These statements should be condemned by the university, not protected under academic freedom. This is hate speech, pure and simple.
The University of Missouri system is receiving more than its fair share of national attention this week. Calls for an end of the Institute for Labor Studies at the University of Missouri KC have come from many fronts recently as videos have emerged showing ILS professors advocating the occasional need for violence and industrial sabotage as acceptable methodsfor "corporate/union negotiations" as well as outlining specific tactics that can be used.
This is not the first time the UM ILS has been poised under the chopping block. In 2007, in an interview with KC online, then Chancellor Bailey said elimination of the Institute for Labor Studies was being considered "in an effort to comply with a mandate from the University of Missouri Board of Curators that each of the four campuses — Kansas City, Columbia, St. Louis and Rolla — cut spending by 1 percent each year for the next three years to help fund salary increases for faculty."Then state Sens. Victor Callahan and Chris Koster were part of a meeting with UM staff to talk about possible restructuring of the Institute to save it. UofM staff salaries have been frozen since 2009, but clever "structuring" of the pay scale has meant that salary increases have continued, only in the form of promotions that come with automatic pay increases. The Institute survives today, but it seems a shift in message is called for more than a restructuring.
Professor Ancel has had a long consistent history of supporting the unions and a view of the future with unions running the show. Her communist support is apparent. She wrote in a 2009 article for LaborNotes.org"When unions side with nationalism they confuse workers about who our allies are, who our enemies are, and what will advance our own interests. Without alternative strategies economic nationalism seems logical, but our history suggests it will take us onto the rocks...This is the wrong debate, where the alternatives are either corporate-led globalization, with multinationals roaming the world for cheap labor, or protectionist nationalism, with these same multinationals distracting us with a phony show of patriotism to divide us from other workers....Unions gained leverage in the U.S. when we could take wages out of competition by organizing entire industries. In today’s global labor market wages are again in competition, and it’s still our job to equalize wages so that corporations can’t whipsaw us."
She still sees the world as an Us vs Them scenario, where there are allies and enemies. Yet she paints the future of the worker as one where we're all in this together. We'll all receive the same pay, no matter where we go or, by the way, how good we are or how hard we work. In this world one must have an enemy. And, since it is human nature to rationalize doing anything to an enemy, violence against the enemy du jour is totally acceptable. And in her world, that enemy will always be whoever disagrees with the union.
The video shows how far this line of reasoning can go. When asked when something stops being a terrorist action and starts being a revolution, Ancel casually laughs, "When it succeeds, it's a revolution." This is the Saul Alinksy doctrine of the ends justifying the means and results in the escalation of violence until they are successful. And if you really want to be scared, her co-teacher on this online course, Don Giljum, who says industrial espionage has its place, is the Business Manager for the Union that represents workers at the Callaway nuclear plant and all of Ameren UE in Missouri.
Bill Hennessy of Hennesseysview.com and the St. Louis Tea Party, has written to Governor Nixon demanding:
Shut down Labor Studies until the department’s been purged of anti-American radicals
Fire Missouri state employees who invited Don Giljum and that communist [Tony Pecinovsky] into classroom
Apologize to Missouri taxpayers who pay $400 million a year for that university system
Apologize to the students and their parents who sat through that filth
Is Ancel's and Giljum's message one you want delivered in your tax payer funded university system? If not, contact the interim President, Steve Owens, and ask that the ILS be investigated and defunded until its violent anti-American curriculum is removed. Steve Owens, Interim President 321 University Hall Columbia, MO 65211 (573) 882-2011. Or, in case you're having trouble reaching him, try your senator or representative and ask that they investigate how your tax money is being used at the ILS.
The videos — first posted on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website — capture Judy Ancel, director of UM-Kansas City’s Institute for Labor Studies, telling a class “violence is a tactic, and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.” She goes on to tell a story of a friend who worked for a utility company in Peru, where it’s illegal to strike.
“They couldn’t get access to” strike, “but they had a lot of cats and they succeeded in putting cats in powerhouses,” she said. “And the cats — now, don’t think about the cats, OK? The cats would run around inside and short out the system and cause power blackouts. And that created enough chaos in the system” to get to “a negotiating position.”
Plus, she joked, they “got rid of a lot of feral cats.”
The course, Labor in Society & Politics, is offered as part of the labor studies certificate. It’s team-taught by Don Giljum of Operating Engineers 148, and Dave Robertson, a UM-St. Louis instructor. It’s unclear whether those in the class are adult workers or college students. The UM System declined to comment, and Ancel was not available Monday afternoon.
In the videos, Giljum advises students to get creative with union strategies. Giljum, who represents Ameren workers, explains how workers at one company printed articles off the Internet about sabotaging equipment and spread them throughout the plant. Additionally, workers would “end up at the same shopping center or church” as the CEO of the company — so much so that he became paranoid and began wearing protective jackets and helmets inside the plant “because he was afraid of being shot,” Giljum said. “There are all kinds of things you can do to be creative.”
Finally, the FBI was called in and the plant became a potential crime scene, giving workers paid time off. In another instance, he said he was charged with instigating riots that “destroyed several police cars.”
Violence is not only a part of union history, he said, violence and sabotage has its place.
The video also shows a student asking when terrorism becomes a revolution, to which Ancel responds that it’s “terrorism until it’s successful. Then it’s a revolution.”
