The University of Houston Students for Fair Trade, who have received a Campus Progress Action Grant, were featured in the Houston Chronicle yesterday for their long running and energetic campaign make all coffee sold on campus fair trade certified.
Students carrying a giant replica of a coffee bean stormed Chancellor Renu Khator's office at the University of Houston on Monday, the latest skirmish in their two-year campaign to force the school to offer only fair-trade coffee in a library kiosk. […]
The student government association last year approved a resolution supporting the proposal. Letters and other documents distributed by the student group indicated Aramark plans to install a Starbucks in the library, building the kiosk with $60,000 in student fees. (Starbucks buys some fair-trade coffee but not exclusively.)
This Whopper™ of a victory must be even tastier (sorry - couldn’t resist) as it comes after the discovery that Burger King hired a company to spy on the Student/Farmworker Alliance.
Mother Jones magazine is running a survey to figure out if young people like you think the future of activism lies in personal choices like buying environmentally friendly cleaning products or if activism is something else. Weigh in on their survey here.
Registration just opened for the 2008 Campus Progress National Conference. If you thought last year's conference was great, just wait for this year's event. Past keynotes have been Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi. And if one day of hearing from amazing speakers, networking with students activists from all 50 states, and building the skills you'll need to transform your campus into a progressive bastion in the fall aren't enough, then don't worry, Campus Progress has you covered.
On July 7th, Campus Progress is organizing with USSA and the Student PIRGs a Grassroots Training Day.
On July 9th, Campus Progress and The Nation present their annual National Youth Journalism Conference. Speakers already confirmed include Eugene Robinson, Asra Nomani, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and Mathew Yglesias.
All of these events fill up quickly so apply to attend today!
I had the opportunity to attend the Young People For (YP4) National Summit in Washington D.C. as a 2008 Young People For Felllow. It was a great opportunity to meet other fellows from across the nation and a wonderful learning experience through the workshops and the speakers presented. A workshop that I found particularly interesting was the one on "elevator pitches". The term "Elevator Pitches" points out the reality that generally we have a very short time to make our point across, so we have to deliver our message as quickly as if we were to have a moment to talk to someone in an elevator. I also liked the session called "Fishbowl Reflections" which gave the YP4 fellows the opportunity to share their thoughts among each other about the sessions they had already attended. I learned a lot from Van Jones presentation about how to create jobs through the environment and how to present the environmental causes to marginalized communities in such way that the community can visualize the positive impact environmental causes may have on their community. The energy of the people at the conference was tremendous. From Elody Gyekis mural project to Haya-Abdel Latif's work with international students, if you had a particular area of interest you could find someone at the conference that could share his/her experience with you. I encourage people look at the website and learn more about this excellent event. http://www.youngpeoplefor.org
Inside Higher Ed has a piece up today discussing student gun control activism in the wake of last semester’s Virginia Tech shootings. The piece profiles student-led groups--Protest Easy Guns and Students for Concealed Carry on Campus--that rally around different ends of the gun control debate.
But is gun control really the issue here? I’m all for responsible gun purchase and registry guidelines, but students could better leverage their influence by lobbying for mental health care reforms on their campuses. Andy Guess notes that task forces reviewing the killings “faulted university policies and pointed to the effects of confusing mental health laws” in addition to loopholes in gun laws—but students don’t seem to be picking up that cause.
Universities have a history of distancing themselves from troubled students, sending them packing or to the margins instead of supporting and helping them. Shouldn’t progressives be fighting for effective, accessible mental health care on campus? It’s a more comprehensive solution that gets at the root of the Virginia Tech situation—a student who felt that violence was an appropriate outlet on campus—and benefits students with a variety of mental health needs.
Friday, Ohio University held a race issues forum to help students, faculty and community members come to terms with the racism that is far too prevalent in Athens and the world. At the forum, I spoke up about how white activists at OU did nothing in support of the Jena Six. (See earlier post - Racial Divide in Campus Activism) After I said I felt that we "sat that one out," and that white activists should be ashamed for not taking part, a black student from the back of the room spoke out against me. She said it hurt to hear me speak about the white activists, when the black activists worked so hard to raise money to send students to Washington, D.C., to protest. Damn, did I feel bad. I didn't mean black students didn't do anything, I meant white students didn't help them. I suppose she looked at it as my white privilege allowing me to dismiss her efforts and think that black students needed white students' help. That was not what I mean at all, but I felt terrible.
Inspired by our recent blog discussion about David Horowitz's latest crazy campaign against decency, reason and open dialogue? Want to speak out against the divisiveness of "Islamo-fascism Awareness Week"?
I don't! But activist Bill Baird certainly does, since he was jailed for distributing a condom to an unmarried woman. Years later, the Boston jail he was placed in is a hotel, that, ironically as ever, has free condoms provided in each of their rooms.
Ken Silverstein is, for my money—or time, as the case may be—one of the best D.C. journalists working today. A rarity in the blogosphere, his “Washington Babylon” at Harper’s regularly provides original reporting along with the standard interesting commentary. Yesterday Silverstein put up an important post on “Facts and Darfur,” touching on an issue that has animated American campuses more than perhaps any other in recent years. Even amid the heady successes of the campus-based divestment campaigns, it seems like a lot of us, myself included, knew very little about what was going on in Sudan beyond the stray terms like “genocide” and “Janjaweed.” I’ve tried to educate myself about Darfur. But I have to admit I’ve always regarded those campaigns with a measure of skepticism. One simple reason: Read More »
In possibly the quickest stint of activism I've recently seen, Verizon reversed its decision yesterday to block text messages from NARAL Pro-Choice America. The alerts were something that people could sign up for voluntarily and weren't considered spam-style text messages. Verizon's policy prohibits "controversial" or "unsavory" text messages. Within a matter of hours, Verizon reversed the decison, allowing the text messages to be sent to those who elected to get them.
Tomorrow is the big anti-war rally in Washington, D.C. which you’ve hopefully by now seen signs for on your college campus. The protest, organized by Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER), begins with a rally near the White House, continues with a march to the U.S. Capitol, and concludes with a “die-in” that organizers estimate will involve approximately 1,000 people lying down near the Capitol in a symbolic effort to represent dead U.S. soldiers and dead Iraqis.
To get you pumped for the action, I thought I’d belatedly share some photos from the last anti-war event I attended, a “Take A Stand Town Hall” co-sponsored by Americans Against Escalation in Iraq and MoveOn.org. The event was targeted at Senator Specter who “chose to stand with President Bush and his reckless Iraq war policy instead of his constituents” by failing to attend. (The organizers left an empty chair on the panel to remind the audience of Specter’s absence.)
Then don’t do anything on the 31st. Otherwise, you should check out the national day of action aimed at pressuring Bank of America to stop helping companies who engage in mountain-top removal.
Between 2005 and 2007, Bank of America facilitated nearly $1 billion in loans to Massey Energy and Arch Coal, two of the largest companies responsible for the destructive practice of mountaintop removal coal mining. This form of mining literally blasts the tops off of mountains to get at thin seems of coal that lay beneath. Mountaintop removal coal mining has permanently destroyed over 500 square miles of mountains and buried over 1,200 miles of streams in West Virginia alone.
As we can all see from the pages of this great blog, there are many problemsin the world, many terrible government policies, and too many things that we should all work towards changing.
Yet, don't get depressed by them, don't be apathetic, DO SOMETHING. If there's one thing about Campus Progress that's always impressed me it's that they are always looking for ways to help students out and have the resources to do so. Take the first step and apply to be a CP student representative today.
As a CP student rep, you can do everything from planning events such as film screenings, panel discussions, and debates to working on issue campaigns including global warming, college affordability, Iraq, and free exchange on campus.
Being a CP rep gives you some pretty cool opportunities and let’s you stop being just another liberal hypocrite who complains constantly about things being messed up in the world yet doesn’t lift a finger to do something about it.
I know, I know – these are the last three words you want to hear. Yet like it or not, professors on your campus are already finalizing lesson plans, staff at dorms are flipping over ten year old mattresses to hide the stains, and financial aid officers are waiting for those last minute gifts from lenders to determine who will make it onto your preferred lender list. You should be getting ready as well.
Campus Progress is accepting applications for its Student Representative and Advisory Board programs until August 10th. Student Reps help spread the progressive message on their campus by working on exciting issue campaigns, setting up events, and helping to build a strong progressive community on their campus. You can apply by clicking here.
“No taxation without representation!” You heard them cheering it at protests in the 60s and 70s – 1760s and 70s that is. You’ve read the slogan on D.C. license plates. Today, you get to shout it out in solidarity with a bunch of voting rights advocates.
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