Labor Center attacked by Right-Wing Loonies Backed by Evergreen Goonies

In this period of declining budgets, we are all witnessing a renewed attack on our public services. From declining Social Security and welfare benefits, to a 28% increase in tuition costs, conservative interests are using financial crisis for their familiar goals of defunding public services.

Although a national problem, these issues are occurring on a local level as well, including attacks on our own campus. In a clear example of a private-partisan group with self-acknowledged conservative goals attempting to dismantle public services, the Labor Center has been subjected to an auditing of not only their financial records, but their ethical record as well.

In June 2008, a right-wing group with its headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri called Landmark Legal Foundation: The Ronald Reagan Legal Center sent a letter to the Washington State Auditor, calling for an investigation of the services provided by The Evergreen State College Labor Center. With this letter, Evergreen’s Labor Center was placed among the ranks of Labor Centers across the country, including those of the University of Massachusetts, Florida International University, University of Michigan, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and Indiana University, to come under attack by Landmark Foundation.

Along with nominating Rush Limbaugh (a member of their Board of Directors) for a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, Landmark Foundation also champions such right-wing business interests as climate change denial by providing a database of federal grants to environmental groups in order to facilitate financial-defunding attacks on these groups, and a concerted campaign against the public teachers union, the National Education Association, which is the largest professional association and largest labor union left in the country.

Busting up the NEA coincides with another of Landmark’s pet goals, replacing public education with a voucher system.

Given its clearly partisan agenda, the Washington State Auditor informed the administration of the Evergreen State College that an audit would not be necessary and that Evergreen could respond to this provocation as the they saw fit. However, Les Purce felt it prudent to open his own audit of the Labor Center, with assurances that the audit was financial in nature only, to which the Labor Center openly agreed. The Labor Center stated it was quite willing to allow examination of its finances in order to locate and correct any discrepancies.
With the auditing process under way, the Evergreen Administration then switched gears and decided that the audit would examine not only the Labor Center’s finances, but their ethics and mission statement as well. The Administration’s appointed auditor proceeded to produce a report that closely mirrored the same partisan accusations of Landmark Foundation. Throughout this process, Les Purce has participated in no meetings with the Labor Center and has relegated discussion of their concerns to e-mails, with no input accepted in the auditing process from the Labor Center.

The interests of a right-wing lawyer’s group from Missouri could result in the loss of the Labor Center from the Evergreen campus. The Labor Center’s work of educating people about their right to organize—such as immigrant laborers, whose lives and families are trampled upon by exploitative working conditions and sub-subsistence pay, and educational programs for women workers—provide long-term solutions to inequities by educating people on helping themselves through organizing.

This back-handed attack by Landmark Foundation is not only an intrusion into the affairs of our campus community, but is a concerted attack on working people of Washington State as a whole.

While the auditing process is well under way, and Landmark Foundation’s right-wing agenda has been adopted by our own Administration, the crucial services which the Labor Center provides have not been forced from our community yet.

A Faculty Meeting is scheduled for December 9, from 1-3 p.m. in SEM II B1105. Students who disagree with the influence and intimidation this private, conservative interest group is exerting on our campus should attend and voice their support for the Labor Center.

The Counter Point Journal will be bringing further information on this situation in our next issue.