July Activist Newsletter Content

IRAQ

Two weeks ago, the House voted to approve a new version of the supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other things. The Senate considered the bill this past week, clearing and sending the $161.8 billion measure to President Bush’s desk. On Monday, he signed the bill into law.

USA Today points out that roadside bomb attacks and fatalities in Iraq are down by almost 90 percent over the last year, according to Pentagon records and interviews with military leaders. For two reasons, however, you should take this statistic with a grain of salt. First, The New York Times recently reported that the Pentagon established a domestic propaganda program that makes use of more than 75 "military analysts" to disseminate favorable coverage of the Bush administration's war efforts. Second, the non-partisan Government Accountability Office recently criticized the Administration’s measures of progress in Iraq. Its report implies that the administration is out of touch with realities on the ground.  The reality: By now, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million.

Two weeks ago, four big Western oil companies (Shell, Exxon Mobil, Total, and BP) were preparing to sign no-bid contracts with Iraq. These companies want in on the action of Iraq’s future lucrative oil production. On Monday, the Times disclosed that "a group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up [the] contracts.  Critics point to the presence of advisers as confirmation that the administration is "working behind the scenes to ensure Western access to Iraqi oil fields."

Let’s keep up our lobbying and activism efforts to hold this Congress accountable!  Check out this petition for an Iraqi referendum in which the citizens of Iraq can exercise their sovereign right to have foreign troops withdrawn. Also, join us at the upcoming Campus Progress Action Lobby Day to meet with your representative about the cost of the war, the economy, and how it is impacting you.

COLLEGE AFFORDABILITY

Happy July! We are not just saying that because we get to barbeque and play with fireworks. We are also excited that interest rates will drop on both new subsidized Stafford loans and Stafford loans made before summer 2006. A new report by US PIRG demonstrates that the average student starting a four-year school next year with these kinds of loans will save around $2,570 over the life of the loan. You should check out this guide for student borrowers by the Project on Student Debt to see whether you should consider consolidating your loans after July 1^st.

The excitement doesn’t stop there – what could be the first music video dealing student debt was posted on YouTube by artist Matt Kresling and is making the rounds on the blogosphere. The song features calls from debt collectors and advises borrowers to consider defaulting on their loans. Defaulting is probably not a good idea if you can avoid it. 

The Institute for College Access & Success released a new report suggesting how Congress could promote a ceasefire in the vicious bidding war between colleges for the “best and brightest” students (at least according to SAT scores).

Colleges are using their scarce student aid dollars for merit-based aid in order to attract the kinds of students that will improve their US News rankings. This of course means that students without financial needs are getting help, while students unable to pay for tuition aren’t. While many in the “higher ed world” would like see more need-based aid, no administrator wants to take the moral high ground and watch his or her institution slip in the college rankings. They are also prevented from cooperating with other colleges to prevent the excessive use of merit aid by anti-trust laws. The Project on Student Debt report points out that Congress could create exceptions to these laws that would give colleges an opportunity to work together to end the “bidding wars.”   

State governments also have a merit aid problem, and, despite increasing criticism of state financial aid programs that are not focused on need, new data by the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs show that very little is actually changing.

Finally, the Federal Trade Commission released a guide to help student borrowers avoid misleading marketing practices by student loan companies. Concerns about deceptive practices will likely lead to some new regulations in the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

CLIMATE CHANGE

The first month of a record breaking summer began with the Climate Security Act massacre in the Senate, killing any hope a climate bill will reach the White House this year. Despite its obvious flaws, the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill represented the will of the American legislature to address climate change. As some enviro-groups refused to endorse the bill due to its many shortcomings, many senators (both Republicans and Democrats) voted against the end of the Republican filibuster calling for the bill to be weakened. If you bothered to listen to their crocodile-tear arguments, you might have noticed the faint voices of industry spokespeople telling them word-per-word why any climate bill will indeed cripple the economy (yeah right, exactly like seat belts did).

The disastrous beginning of the month set the stage for more climate misery. As over 71 percent of Republicans stated that they don’t believe the climate crisis will pose a significant threat, the Mississippi river flooded like it hadn’t in 15 years, claiming 13 lives.  Disclaimer: connecting any single weather event to the climate crisis is not allowed. For example, we can’t connect this year’s California wildfires, Southwestern and Southeastern droughts, Midwestern floods, record-setting severe winters and tornadoes, or even the Northwestern floods that we have seen since June of last year to the climate crisis. Yet, one might wonder whether 20 years of scientific warnings saying that global warming will cause an increase in severe weather events might have something to teach us about how we build our levees, where we build our homes and how we farm our food.

But it’s not all gloom and doom on the climate front! People throughout the world are mobilizing to change the political and business scene. A British group is organizing a "summer of discontent" by stopping coal trains and occupying lands slated to be surface  mined, while an international movement is rising to force politicians to lower CO2 concentrations to 350 ppm, the lowest ‘safe concentration’ according to climate guru, James Hansen. Young people are also rising up, continuing to make their campuses more sustainable and drafting a unified climate platform. The time for silent support is over, the victims of the aforementioned weather events demand action.

Tiffany Le
Senior, English (Creative Writing- Poetry) Major
University of Houston

For the past year and a half, Tiffany Le has been kicking butt and taking names with the University of Houston Students for Fair Trade (UHSFT), which was awarded a Campus Progress Action Grant for the 2007-08 school year. The group has been working hard to get all coffee sold on campus to be fair trade certified using some very innovative tactics.

She recently joined four UHSFT members on a trip to the university president's office with a giant papier-mâché coffee bean to raise awareness about fair trade and get their administrators to take it seriously. After some great coverage by the Houston Chronicle, which has a daily circulation of more than half a million, the UH administration started placing signs explaining the advantages of fair trade coffee in cafes around campus. These signs have been a demand of UHSFT for a long time.

Tiffany took a few moments this week to talk to us about fair trade coffee, organizing on a commuter campus, and using creative tactics for concrete goals.

How did you become political? What got you to where you are today?

I honestly can't remember if anything in particular influenced my personal involvement in the Fair Trade movement. I was always a bit of a coffee snob and it only made sense to try and consume my favorite beverage responsibly. That, of course, branched out into other Fair Trade products. It's so easy to do-- a small action, really-- but it makes such a difference in the lives of these producers. To be completely frank, I knew about UH SFT a year before I joined and I was already a practicing Fair Trade consumer. I had never been involved in any kind of activist organization before and I was terrified of participating. Eventually, as things began to escalate in their campaign, I met my friend Angela who was in the group and asked me to come to a meeting. A week later, I was walking around campus gathering signatures and campaigning for Fair Trade before attending a Student Government meeting where our Fair Trade bill was presented. The rest... well, you know.

The University of Houston is a commuter campus, and doesn't have a reputation for student activism. Yet, in the past few years, students began working toward fair trade coffee, started an anti-sweatshop campaign, began publishing an alternative student publication, etc. Why are more people starting to get involved? Is there anything that students at similar campuses can learn from UH's example?

I think it's so great that there has been a swell of activism on campus in the last couple of years. I can only speak for UH SFT when I say that we were just tired of being passive to the system and being told that consuming irresponsibly was cool. I really do think our group, since we were first, is responsible for shaking things up on campus. Students are now looking closely at how the university invests their money-- our money-- and doing something about it if we don't see that it's fit. Being active at UH is a challenge, I'll admit, but it's doable. We live in a ridiculously big and spread out city and we all come together to one location. Even though this is the case, the heart of the matter is that we pay for our education at an institution we have a right to be proud of. Why not make UH into what we want it to be? Corporations shouldn't dictate our college experience.

What is so important about fair trade coffee?

As I said earlier, it's so easy to do! Buy a different cup of coffee and know that you're choice is the ethical one. As much as we pay for coffee over here, the fact that these farmers are being paid so much less than what they can live off of is unacceptable. If we, as a university, can change that just by serving coffee distributed under Fair Trade regulations then why not?

UHSFT uses a lot of props, like giant coffee beans, in its activism. How does this tactic help your campaign?

Street theater certainly makes things interesting and has been used for political activism for years. For us, I think, it gives us more of a presence. It tells the administration, "We're not going away and here's a little present that proves it." These props are large for a reason: they are a nuisance and a burden if anyone tries to dispose of them. They're a reminder that even though we're not in the room, our issue is still there and we still want answers.

What are your next steps? What's next for you on campus in terms of activism or personal goals?

Victory is so close we can taste it! We're going to keep pushing until we've reached our goal of a 100% Fair Trade Campus. Everything next is all about trucking through and maybe inspiring others along the way to ask for more from their university.

Do you have any words of advice for young progressives?

The status quo isn't always what is right. Just because it's popular mentality doesn't mean it's the only way things work. If you care about something, make it happen. Don't let the scary guys in suits shoo you away and have fun while you're at it!