Markeshia Ricks Photo
Members of Local 33 and retired members of Locals 34 and 35 march out of Yale SOM Friday.
A graduate teacher union that is gaining notoriety for its ability to embarrass its nemesis pulled one more trick from up its sleeves Friday as its members unfurled a very larger banner inside the Yale University School of Management.
The banner had just two words on it: Trump University.
Nearly 150 people marched in the pouring rain from Yale President Peter Salovey’s house on Hillhouse Avenue at lunch hour to chant outside and march the sidewalks flanking the SOM’s Whitney Avenue campus.
Meanwhile, a handful of UNITE HERE Local 33 members made their way to an upper floor. By the time the marchers arrived in front of the school, the members inside began to roll and hang the banner so that it could be seen through the school’s huge glass front.
The activity took place on the 10th day of an ongoing fast by eight Yale graduate student teachers who are demanding that the university begins negotiations with their union. The university states that it waiting for the National Labor Relations Board to rule on an appeal of a decision to allow just some graduate student teachers to vote in a recent unionizing election.
Though many of the demonstrators’ chants Friday were directed at Salovey, another name kept popping up: Wilbur Ross. As in President Donald Trump’s secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Ross also is the billionaire investor who, back in 2010, pledged $10 million to support SOM’s construction. He now is the namesake of the school’s library. Ross is one of three Yalies currently serving in the Trump administration. The other two are Secretary of the Treasury Steven Munchin and Ben Carson, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Fasters at the demonstration.
Local 33 member Gabriel Winant said Friday’s action and march, was the union’s response to an email Salovey sent a couple of days ago, in which he expressed his concern that eight graduate student teachers who are fasting and have been hunkered down in a shed at Beinecke Plaza for 10 days might be endangering their lives. The fasters made it Friday to the demonstration in front of SOM, though they sat to preserve their energy. (One of the original eight fasters swapped out with a new faster this week for medical reasons.)
“Threats of self-harm have no place in rational debate when an established dispute resolution process still exists,“Salovey wrote in his email. “Respect for law and legal process, civil argument and persuasion: these are the hallmarks of airing and resolving disagreements at a university.”
Marchers wearing signs that mashed up the faces of Presidents Trump and Salovey.
Winant called Salovey’s statement patronizing. He told the crowd of marchers that the president can end the fast if he stops “stalling every day with legal delays so the Trump administration can come to their rescue and void our votes” by naming new anti-union NLRB members.
The recent election in which some graduate students formed Local 33 constituted the “debate” Salovey referenced, Winant argued. “Stalling is not rational discourse. The debate is over, and what Yale is doing is trying to ignore the results. They’re not respecting the process. What they’re doing instead is Trumpism. Pure and simple.”
Jeffrey S Niedermaier, a Local 33 member in the East Asian Language and Literatures department, said that ultimately the someone affiliated with the school took the banner down and returned it to the members. They complied after about 15 minutes. He said the idea came after some connecting the dots to the Yale administration’s behavior and who’s in the Trump administration.
Retired Yale employees and former members of Local 35 and 34 also participated in Friday’s march. Meg Riccio told the crowd that she and seven other retirees protested at the office of David Swensen, Yale’s chief investment officer, who oversees the university’s $25 billion dollar endowment. When Swensen wouldn’t see them, they decided to sit in and chant: “David Swensen, Wilbur Ross … We know Trump is your real boss!”
Rain, wind and Dollar Store umbrellas didn’t thwart the protesters.
Yale and New Haven police officers responded to the scene at 55 Whitney Ave. After being read their rights, the retirees elected not to go to jail so they could participate in the demonstration in front of SOM.
Local 33 reported after the protest that at some point 12 of their members were detained by police and charged with creating a public disturbance after sitting in and chanting, “Trump, Ross, Salovey! Negotiate without delay,” in front of the library. Supporters of Local 33’s cause also apparently picketed in front of Ross’s home in Palm Beach, Fla. and his office at the Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C.
The marchers had one final message and New Haven Rising’s Scott Marks led them in chanting it, just as the rain finally started to let up:
“We’ll be here! We’ll be here. We’ll be here!”