FWB: "Hey Mote! . . .

. . . should really sign the DSP!"



Students from Feminism Without Borders, the Black Student Union, Students and Workers Unite, and Students for a Democratic Society delivered 41 balloons, several letters and a direct response to his deputy's criticisms of the designated suppliers program (DSP) today. The action, organized by Feminism Without Borders (FWB) as part of their sustained campaign to stop university support for sweatshop made clothing.

The designated suppliers program was envisioned by the Worker's Rights Consortium and United Students Against Sweatshops as a way to leverage university logo licensing rights towards livable working conditions for the people producing clothing bearing university logos. The DSP is a set of standards clothing manufacturers must follow when producing university licensed clothing. The standards define a set of fair labor practices that must be followed in textile factories.

Other organizations, such as the Fair Labor Association have joined with WRC and USAS to advocate for these changes.

The action today is a part of a the sustained lobbying campaign that FWB is organizing to try to get the university administration, President Mote, in particular, to act for workers rights and recognize the importance of a fair and safe workplace. Unfortunately, unless FWB can secure serious media for these creative, but small and quiet actions Mote and his handlers will be able to simply brush off the campaign.

FWB needs to up the pressure with each letter it delivers, bringing more students each time and continuing the creativity if the campaign is to be successful. More important, I think, to sustaining and growing the DSP campaign on campus is to connect it with issues that surround students every day. This is the hard part. There is a lot of privilege on our campus (and most college campuses) and it is hard to understand. I think empathy is very important. FWB has held a number of events to build that empathy and humanize the sweatshop worker. Even that isn't enough, though. What stake do we students have in the plight of workers in Guatemala? A more just world? True, but very abstract.

The point I am getting at is the very way students think is problematic. It is our jobs as organizers and activists to work to change that. The stake that students have in the plight of sweatshop workers is simple: we buy the clothes that pay for their bosses to bust their unions. We wear the clothes that were made in abusive working conditions. We continue to consume without considering where all this stuff comes from. That is problematic. We need to think critically about where and who and why and reevaluate our own patterns of consumption.