What refusal can we take up?
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2021-04-16T13:47:15-07:00
Refusal resonates with everyone. This video of Notre Dame's undergraduates accompanying Rundgren on "I Dont Want to Work" illustrates how, across generations, careers, and backgrounds, we all want do the things we love, and ignore the rest. Todd Rundgren describes I Don’t Want to Work as "the most lucrative song I have ever written..."
explaining how "...it got adopted by a lot of sports fans… then it got picked up for various commercials and movie promo—things like that. And then Carnival Cruise decided they wanted it to be their entire identity. For several years, they were paying me ridiculous money to use it. And then they started sinking a lot of ships. So they decided they should change their image *laughs*… I don’t make as much money currently off of it as I used to, but it’s available *laughs*…But, I like to say it was some kind of cosmic gift I was given" (Nolasco 2019).
A cosmic gift indeed, from Bartleby's "I prefer not to" on down through the years to Rundgren's "I don't want to work" money maker, developing fluency in singing, hearing and saying "No" can be a practice, a celebration, a song, or even the ultimate form of collective refusal--a workers' strike.
While a librarians' strike is our profession's ultimate form of collective refusal, there are many other ways union participation benefits the librarians who have such representation. Kelly McElroy is paraphrased by ALA as saying: "concerns about working conditions, quality of life, and higher education funding brought many of her colleagues together" (Smith 2018). During the COVID-19 pandemic situation, in Pittsburgh, librarians and other professionals at the Carnegie Library worked with their recently-organized union, affiliated with the United Steelworkers, to successfully demand that library employees should not be required to report to library facilities and should be paid regardless of their ability to work from home (DPE 2020).
Even in times when a strike, or unionizing, or any sort of collective action feels impossible, consider small ways you can refuse, both at work and in your personal life. Can you refuse to let someone speak over you in a meeting? Can you refuse new projects unless you receive additional resources? Can you refuse to feel guilty about spending time with your loved ones instead of constantly working?