I am not the only one.
I want to say that clearly
before I say anything else.
I am one of thousands.
Tens of thousands.
The people who teach the courses
the university could not run without,
who do the work the institution needs done
on terms the institution is not willing
to make permanent,
who are grateful for the renewal
because the alternative is nothing
and nothing is not a viable alternative
when you have rent and children
and a life that requires income
to continue being a life.
We are the precariat.
We are the adjuncts and the sessionals,
the limited term and the continuing-without-tenure,
the remote instructors and the contract staff,
the ones who built the open learning systems
and the online infrastructure
and the distance education programs
that expanded access for everyone
while our own access to security
remained carefully, structurally limited.
We are not a footnote.
We are a workforce.
We are a policy decision
dressed as an employment arrangement
dressed as flexibility
dressed as opportunity.
We are the infrastructure that is never on the letterhead.
I am naming us
not because naming changes the contract,
not because this poem reaches a boardroom,
but because the record matters
and the record has mostly been written
by the people whose names are on the doors
and whose tenure was never in question.
This is the other record.
Written by the ones who came back
every September
on terms that did not include
the dignity of certainty.
We came back.
We taught well.
We deserved better.
Somos el precariado. Somos también la razón por la que esto funcionó.
We are the precariat. We are also the reason this worked.
