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AMERICAN LABOUR:STUDENT SIT-INS SPREAD ACROSS THE USA:
Way back (in an internet sense, on April 11 actually) Molly blogged about an appeal from students at Appalachian State who were sitting in in support of the Designated Suppliers Program. You can learn more about this activist focus, that attempts to to bring various universities and colleges across the USA into compliance with a promise to but only from suppliers who hold to minimum standards in terms of their labour force. The students in question were evicted from their sit-in and arrested. The Boone Web, from their part of the world, has extensive coverage of the events. it also has links to the statement of the University authorities and the students' reply to same. be prepared to search the site.Way back in 1999 Time Magazine had a story on the `new student movement`. The present wave of action is far more widespread than back then. One wonders if it will get the same attention. In the wake of this, however, students at many other institutions have initiated sit-ins to pressure their university managements to sign up for the DSP. The following is a collection of these events that have occurred in the last few days. It is also an appeal from the students at the various institutions for internet solidarity, in order to show their respective authorities that the students are not alone, and that they have supporters from across the world. Read the following and sign up for the various campaigns if you will. Molly's comments on this whole matter follow at the end of the appeals. The activists are united under the banner of the United Students Against Sweatshops. ...........................................
NORTH CAROLINA:
Call Today To Support University North Carolina Students Sitting In For the DSP!
Students at the University of North Carolina are currently sitting in to demand that their university adopt the Designated Suppliers Program. Call, email, and fax Chancellor Moeser today to demand that all licensed apparel is produced in factories where workers have the right to form a union and earn a living wage.
Chancellor Moeser (919) 962-1365:
Hello, my name is ________ and I am a ________ from ______. I was shocked to discover that North Carolina clothes are produced in sweatshops. I urge you to listen to your students, adopt the DSP, and refrain from any kind of disciplinary action. Thank you.
Send a letter to the following decision maker(s):
Chancellor, UNC-Chapel Hill James Moeser
UNC Chancellor James Moeser
UNC President Erskine Bowles
Below is the sample letter:
Subject: Adopt the DSP Today!
Dear [decision maker name automatically inserted here],
We write to you about a pressing human rights concern that UNC Chapel Hill has the power to change. We write to endorse the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP), which was presented to the UNC-CH administration in 2005 by Student Action with Workers, an affiliate of United Students Against Sweatshops. The DSP is a comprehensive program for enhancing the enforcement of university codes of conduct under which University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill apparel will be produced in designated sweat free factories.
Students, faculty, and workers at Pennsylvania State University and Appalachian State University have been asking their administration to adopt the DSP since 2005 and 2006, respectively. Similar to UNC-CH, their administrations refused to listen to the voices of thousands in their university communities who care about the basic human rights of workers in their supply chains. On Tuesday, April 15, at the urging of Penn State administration, thirty-one students were arrested while peacefully sitting in the administration building asking Penn State to end its reliance on sweatshop labor. On Friday, April 11, six ASU students engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience urging adoption of the DSP were also arrested at the urging of the ASU administration. This is unacceptable to us. Our universities have a stated commitment to human rights and UNC in particular, living the motto of the "university of the people."
The students, faculty, staff, and members of the Carolina community would like to see their university system act as a leader in the struggle to ensure that the rights of workers producing apparel for their university are respected. Your position as a top seller of collegiate apparel means that you should be setting ethical standards. As of now, forty-two major colleges and universities have distinguished themselves as leaders by adopting the DSP, including Duke University, Georgetown, Columbia, and the entire University of California system. It is our expectation that, given your university's stated commitment to worker rights, you will publicly endorse the DSP and to commit your university system to adopting it as policy.Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
.................................................
MONTANA:
Molly note: According to a report from a local newspaper, 'The Missoulian' these students have also been arrested, just like those at Appalachian State. This makes support for their cause even more urgent.
Support Students Sitting In At The University of Montana To Adopt The DSP!
For the past two years, students at the University of Montana have demanded that their university ensure that university clothes are produced in factories where workers have the right to form a union and earn a living wage. Today, students are occupying President Dennison's office to demand that the university finally take action. Call, email, and fax President Dennison today to demand that Montana adopt the DSP!
President Dennison: (406) 243-2311
Hello, my name is ______ and I am from ______. I was shocked to hear that the University of Montana is sourcing from sweatshops. I am calling to urge President Dennison to listen to the students, respect the rights of workers, and adopt the
DSP. Thank you.
Send a letter to the following decision maker(s):
President, University of Montana George Dennison
UM President George Dennison
Vice President Jim Foley
Below is the sample letter:
Subject: Respect workers' rights
Dear [decision maker name automatically inserted here],
For the sake of the workers suffering to produce University of Montana apparel, it is imperative that you listen to the students sitting inside Main Hall today. The University of Montana must adopt the Designated Suppliers Program to ensure that workers are paid a living wage and afforded the right to organize a union. I urge you to join the more than 40 other universities that have already taken an active stance against sweatshop-produced collegiate apparel. In addition, I would urge you to respect the rights of your students to peacefully protest. Refrain from arresting students and adopt the DSP today!
Sincerely,
..........................................
PENNSYLVANIA:Support The 30 Students Sitting In At Penn State To Demand The DSP!
For the past three years, students at Penn State have demanded that their university ensure that university clothes are produced in factories where workers have the right to form a union and earn a living wage. Today, 30 students are sitting in in President Spanier's office to demand that the university finally take action. Call, email, and fax President Spanier today to demand that Penn State adopt the DSP!
President Spanier: (814) 865-7611
Hello, my name is ______ and I am from ______. I am calling to urge President Spanier to listen to the students inside Old Main today. For the sake of the workers who suffer to produce Penn State apparel, President Spanier must sign onto the Designated Suppliers Program immediately.
Thank you.
Send a letter to the following decision maker(s):
PSU President Graham Spanier Penn State University
President Graham Spanier
Below is the sample letter:
Subject: Respect workers' rights
Dear [decision maker name automatically inserted here],
For the sake of the workers suffering to produce Penn State apparel, it is imperative that you listen to the students sitting inside Old Main today. Penn State must adopt the Designated Suppliers Program to ensure that workers are paid a living wage and afforded the right to organize a union. I urge you to join the more than 40 other universities that have already taken an active stance against sweatshop-produced collegiate apparel. Adopt the DSP.
Sincerely,
.........................................
THE OBLIGATORY MOLLY COMMENTS:
The above actions are very much reminiscent of the late sixties/early 70s, and they share all the virtues and faults of that era. Back then .before Molly became an anarchist, she was a member of the NDP, the New Democratic Youth to be exact. We were all good devout leftists then, and our disagreements hardly reached the level of what is called in lefty parlance "theory" (most so-called leftist "theory" hardly deserves the name even today). Then, as now, we gravitated towards certain actions more because of an inchoate "emotion" rather than a clearly thought-out "plan".
The emotion ! At the time Molly was a member of the NDY, and we were, to a large extent, "in competition with" the 'Students for a Democratic University', a sort of clone of the American SDS. They had the "emotion" of trying to stage the most dramatic and most hopeless actions, often via the rather sneaky underhanded assumption that, once the campaign failed that they would 'recruit" the "educated" adherents of the campaign becxause they would be "radicalized" by the failure of the campaign and come to support "revolution". The SDU concept of "revolution" at the time was, to say the least, pretty vile and evil. The Trotskyist version was the best of the bunch, and most people had a Maoist version in mind. Should they ever have succeeded in their mad and pathetic project the death camps would have devoured tens of millions in North America. The American version, without the moderating influence of an indigenous social democracy was even more insane and more vicious than our Canadian one.
Nowadays the so-called Marxist left is very much of a joke. The two great competitors are anarchism and social democracy (not that the "great commies" of my own youth didn't pretty well all gravitate to social democracy in the end because it offered them jobs manipulating people even though they had no marketable skills to speak of). The United Students Against Sweatshops are very much a social democratic creation. They are the creation of the AFL-CIO (if you can grace that organization with the term "social democratic"). Yet, in their actions, they go far beyond their creators, just as we did in the NDY.
Their background, however, makes them more realistic today as opposed to the present reincarnation of SDS. Their lack of "radicalism" is actually a virtue and, yes, even an "anarchist virtue". This may be hard for some to swallow, particularly those who have been propagandized by the advocates of anarchism=militance.Yet.....one can hardly imagine the adherents of USAW tearing themselves apart over the identity politics that too much of "the left today" has inherited from my generation. Yes.... they recognize the issues, but they don't allow such recognition to degenerate into turning the organization away from its goals into becoming a "therapy session". They are too practical for that. They actually want to accomplish something rather than to show off. All this is a segue into the whole matter of "direct action".
"Direct Action" has become something of an anarchist mantra today, even though the term is almost always used for actions that are not just not direct action, but are often the exact opposite of same. The purist form of "direct action", as enunciated by the anarchist tradition has a rather simple meaning. It means that people actually initiate actions themselves that lead to a given result. In an union sense the clearest example of this would be the tactic of the IWW when it wished to restrict working hours of simply and plainly walking off the job at the hour decided upon by the workers. In India, Ghandi often engaged in such real and true direct actions, such as his campaign against the salt monopoly. The essence of direct action is that people actually do something without petitioning an authority to do it for them.
This is in stark contrast to a perverted idea of the term that is promoted by some within the anarchist milieu. To those people's lights "direct action" is nothing more than a synonym for "militance"(a hang over from the Maoist left), preferably of a violent nature. This sort of "direct action" is nothing more than social democracy stripped of intelligence and equipped with a stone to throw. It is nothing more than petitioning with a brick rather than a ballot.
The actions of Students United Against Sweatshops are not "direct action" in the purist sense. They are also "petitions", no matter how "militant" they may seem. They do not directly change the situation. They petition authorities to make the change. Still... they have virtues that should be imitated...
1)They actually have a goal that can be realistically achieved. The list of institutions that have already signed on to the DSP is living proof that their goals are realistic. If one wants to engage in this sort of action it is incumbent that one sets goals that can actually be achieved. Marching through the streets and smashing windows in favour of an "anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, anti-racist, anti-specieist, anti-ableist, anti-classist (Molly's gorge rises at this neologism), vague leftism is actually counterproductive, no matter how much it may "rally the troops". Eventually your "troops" realize that you are accomplishing nothing. They desert slowly but surely. REAL victories involve realistic goals.
2)One has a clear idea that one is "doing politics"and not making an emotional and existential statement. The whole idea is to influence others who do not presently agree with you. Molly has seen the written justification from one petty terrorist here in Canada. Here justification for her acts essentially boiled down to the bizarre proposition that her group "wanted to show that militant resistance in Canada was possible", a "statement' to the restricted in-group of leftists that she had foolishly identified with. Ahhhhh....who do you want to talk to ? Is it leftists who are waiting for the glorious government job or is it the average person ? Make your choice because the two are mutually exclusive. getting te "moral high ground" very much depends on what the mores of your audience are. choosing your audience is a necessity. Molly chose her own audience decades ago. The people at USAW have chosen the same audience, and their tactics are quite appropriate for those they want to speak to.
3)They have been consistently non-violent. This is important beyond measure. The whole idea is to actually accomplish something- not to show off. This also comes down to the "what do you want to do" question. If you want to speak to the unconvinced rather than to some vague subculture then you are obliged to gain the percecption of a "moral high ground". You have to appear better than those who have an opposite opinion. NOT to appear "tougher". The USASW have done this very well. Yes.... they are a social democratic creation, but anarchists woulkd be well advised to imitate them.
