When you think about it, there are times when sitting around and stewing over some injustice will just drive you to desperate devices in order to, at the very least, make you feel better.  I remember the time our faculty union (FAMCO) decided to push a recalcitrant administration to deal forthrightly with us instead of treating us exalted academics as mere costs of operating a private liberal arts college. The idea of a union was novel and caused a deep rift in the faculty. There were other divisions before on philosophical and educational principles.  However, a number of us met in my back yard (most of the faculties were afraid to meet openly on the campus) and formed an economic union of professors.  It is still there.  I wisely waited to push openly for this new order until after I had been awarded tenure for three years of faithful service. Tenure no longer is so freely handed out.

The thing that has tickled my memory of that long ago desperate measure to form a union is the notion that came to me of using one of the tactics that helped focus attention on our problems in a present day context. We suffered low pay and particularly, unequal treatment at the hands of a secretive and selective Board of Trustees and an authoritarian administration. We went on strike. I had the thought that if we could not go to strike here in my condominium over rascally treatment by the builder of our complex at least we could employ some of the tactics that had worked in the past.

I thought up a number of slogans that would look informative on placards. Then a group of our working unit owners would take time off to go to the builder’s home with signs and be photographed there protesting the fraud he had committed in building the condominium back in 1969.  We would contact the police to notify them of our peaceful intention and invite the newspapers and television companies to come and record the event. We would obtain the necessary permits and do everything legally with our lawyer’s blessing. I think it is a great idea.  Carol does not and I wonder if my Building will think so. It seems too easy, doesn’t it?

Actually, there is nothing to lose and a lot to gain.  By this time, we have reached a saturation point where the cars in our little common parking area are stacked up, have become a danger to pedestrian traffic, and would make it impossible for emergency vehicles to approach our building in case of fire or rescue work. I think we have been driven to desperate devices to get our builder, still demanding payments on recreation property until the year 2069, to wake up and admit he had defrauded us in the parking our documents show he should have given us on our own property. What he did was to take from others and give to us. The others want to take it back and there is where we need desperate devices in order to make things right. There: I feel better now.