the Youth Climate Justice movement, Power Shift '09 and Capitol Climate Action

The fight for a green economy and address the urgent danger of global warming has become one of the defining fights of our generation. This weekend around 12,000 youth have come to DC for Power Shift '09, a conference organized by the Energy Action Coalition, with an overall goal to push the White House and Congress to adopt comprehensive energy and climate legislation. This Monday, March 2nd around 5,000 participants will be involved in the largest citizen lobby day to storm Capitol Hill with their message.

On that same day Washington DC 2500 youth will be involved in a more direct action approach to put pressure on Congress through the largest act of mass civil disobedience for climate change in US history to shut down the Capitol Coal Plant. According to their website:

"The Capitol Power Plant — a plant that powers Congress with dirty energy and symbolizes a past that cannot be our future. Let’s use this as a rallying cry for a clean energy economy that will protect the health of our families, our climate, and our future. "

Already powerful members of Congress have responded to this looming large scale action. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recently released a letter asking the Capitol Architect to switch the Capitol Power Plant from 100% coal to 100% natural gas by the end of 2009. The Capitol Climate Action coalition responded in a press release to reassure that the action was still on and that:

“Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid’s dramatic action shows that Congress can act quickly on global warming when the public demands it,” said Greenpeace Deputy Campaigns Director Carroll Muffett. “This move demonstrates that they recognize the urgency of the climate crisis and the need for a switch to cleaner energy sources.”

Power Shift and Capital Climate Action are coordinated by different groups and seemingly different views about how to get our government to address global warming in a systematic fashion. I feel that both lobbying and direct action are good to do in tandem as a general strategy to put pressure on lawmakers and decisionmakers. Its exciting to see this kind of energy and sheer numbers in DC from people my age taking on this hugely important issue. With a new administration there is alot of potential for expanding this movement and getting more involved to get results. If Congress still moves slowly in the next few months on this issue, I have a feeling there will be more large scale direct action across the country among youth.

I will be at the Capitol Climate Action on Monday and I will post the pictures from the even on this blog.

SOLE and the cut Russell Contract

Props to SOLE (Students Organizing for Labor and Economic equality), my former student activist group at Michigan for being mentioned in the recent New York Times article about the University of Michigan cutting its contract with Russell Apparel over documented anti-union tactics in its Honduras factory in violation of their code of conduct:

The University of Michigan announced on Monday that it was ending its apparel licensing agreement with the Russell Corporation, becoming the 12th university to do so in response to the company’s decision to close a unionized factory in Honduras.

University of Michigan officials said an agreement under which Russell made T-shirts, sweatshirts and fleeces with university logos would end as of March 31 because Russell had violated the university’s code of conduct calling on licensees to guarantee the basic rights of workers.

...

Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, said, “Over a period of two years, Russell engaged in the systematic abuse of the associational rights of its workers in Honduras, thereby gravely and repeatedly violating the universities’ codes of conduct.”

....

“This is a toxic company,” said Leigh Wedenoja, a University of Michigan senior who is a member of the president’s advisory committee as well as Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality. “We feel that if the university is serious about encouraging human rights, then we could not keep Russell as a licensee.”

Unfortunately, such conditions in garment factories across the world sourced by major apparel and clothing companies are the rule rather than the exception and University code of conducts that most major colleges across the US currently have are inadequate. They fail to address the global supply chain in the garment industry that create these sweatshop conditions. As Scott Nova of the WRC explained it in 2006:

While colleges and clothing companies have agreed on such measures, it has
become apparent that they alone won’t work, said Scott Nova, executive director
of the consortium. He said that the problem is that factories in developing
nations are desperate for the work. So if an American clothing company with a
contract to produce thousands of sweatshirts with a college logo seeks bids, the
factories will bid low. Even when that company includes a code of conduct as a
requirement, the factories will claim that they will comply, get the contract
(at prices that would make it next to impossible to comply with the code) and
assume no one will notice. Because the contracts are short-term, he said, even
if someone did notice, the contract would be over soon enough.

"The basic underlying supply chain model of jumping from factory to factory, of pushing prices down, is simply incompatible with a reasonable level of worker rights," said Nova.

As a result, since 2005, students on campuses across the country (including SOLE) have been fighting for the adoption of a systematic, anti-sweatsop measure known as the Designated Supplier Program (DSP) at their universities. The DSP addresses the structural problems of the global apparel market by creating a fair trade model for the factories manufacturing collegiate apparel. Under the program " university licensees are required to source most
university logo apparel from supplier factories that have been determined by universities, through independent verification, to be in compliance with their obligation to respect the rights of their employees." In order to do this, university licensees are required to meet several obligations to their suppliers:

• pay a price to suppliers commensurate with the actual cost of producing under applicable labor standards, including payment of a living wage
• maintain long-term relationships with suppliers;
• ensure that each supplier factory participating in the program receives sufficient orders so that the majority of the factory’s production is for the collegiate
  market

There has been some progress in getting universities to adopt the DSP and get started on implementing it. Atleast 30 colleges including the entire University of California state colleges, the University of Wisconsin. Indiana University, University of Miami and Georgetown University have adopted the DSP. But there has been alot of resistance as well to it at major universities that carry alot of weight in the collegiate apparel market like my alma mater the University of Michigan.

In 2007, after a two year long campaign and the formation of a sweatfree coalition over the DSP, I and 12 other students engaged in a sit-in in the President's office to have our voice heard and get this proposal adopted. Unfortunately instead of talking with us, the President (Mary Sue Coleman) had us arrested. In past achievements towards sweatfree UMich apparel had come through sit-ins such as to get the University adoption of a code of conduct (1999) and its membership in the WRC (2000) . Thus our own effort seemed like a continuation in this struggle. Unfortunately it didn't turn out that way due to a President who readily claimed that she "doesn't take demands from students."

Only when we can address the structural problems of the global apparel industry that create sweatshop conditions, which the DSP is the only measure out there that does, can we end the kind of problems that happened at the Russell factory in Honduras.

the NYU student occupation and its aftermath

I wanted to cross-post the official Take Back NYU statement regarding their recent student occupation in solidarity with their effort to bring about democratic accountability and transparency at their school. I hope there are more of those to come in the US as it has become widespread throughout Europe (from Greece to the UK):

Take Back the Balcony!, Thursday night, Bob Burdalski

From 10 pm on February 18th 2009 to 2 pm on February 20th, students of Take Back NYU! occupied the Kimmel Center for University Life in a historic effort to bring pressure on NYU for its administrative and ethical failings regarding transparency, democracy and protection of human rights.

During the occupation students rallied hundreds of supporters to the streets of New York, drew national and international press coverage, and sparked a long-needed discussion about the NYU community. For these reasons and more, Take Back NYU! believes the occupation represents a historic moment, and by many measures a success.

However, we also recognize that our occupation was not a full success. When we succeeded, we did so because the passion of our movement shone through the smoke and mirrors cast by the NYU administration. When we failed it was only because we underestimated the lengths NYU will go to in order to deter any real criticism of its policies.

The administration demonstrated their steadfast commitment to ignoring its students. Members of Take Back NYU! didn’t even see the face of NYU negotiator Lynne Brown until 26 hours into the occupation. Throughout, the administration only gave disingenuous offers of discussion without negotiation, which the students readily rejected. NYU’s refusal to negotiate contrasts sharply with good-faith negotiations made by other universities during similar occupations.

We believe that our occupation gave NYU the opportunity to become a leader among universities and to build our community around strong commitments to democracy, transparency and respect for human rights. Instead, NYU said ‘pass’ and chose to stick to its narrow interests at the expense of genuine discussion.

In the course of defending its secrets, NYU put students and its security guards at risk by encouraging the use of physical force to end a non-violent protest. NYPD officers used billy-clubs and mace against demonstrators outside the building. These acts of aggression have gone unmentioned and unquestioned in the course of NYU’s handling of the occupation.

This protest is just a beginning to what is to come. The action made national and international news, and showcased the real power of the new student movement sweeping the globe. Here in New York, a City Council member, Charles Barron, has publicly endorsed our campaign and shamed the University for its mishandling of student protest. Actions at universities around the city will continue in the weeks to come.

No doubt NYU will begin attempting disciplinary action, but no suspensions, expulsions or arrests can contain what began in the last two days. This fight will carry on in the hands of the dozens of people who made it inside, and the hundreds more who came out to support the occupation. NYU showed its irrational need to defend secrecy and its exclusive hold on power, and that alone will drive this movement forward.

In the immediate future, we hope to have the opportunity to discuss the core issues of the occupation with the NYU community, including the administration. Take Back NYU! remains willing to open negotiations about these issues, should NYU decided to come forth in good-faith. In the mean time, we encourage supporters to contact administrators to ask that NYU end suspensions, drop threats of expulsion and that students be allowed to remain in their residences on campus. The willingness to express and act on dissent should not result in the disruption of students’ education or housing.

For everyone showing support: the real lesson here is that you can act and you can make a difference. Take the lessons from the occupation on to your own struggle, and begin to act yourself.

Getting back into it

So its been a while since I've updated and I'm contemplating how I'm going to do this. Before I had written some long columns on specific relevant topics that I found interesting. That proved a little too work intense and difficult to keep up regularly so I now I'm gonna scale it back a bit. I'll post bits of articles and news stories that I find interesting and write a little bit about them and my opinion.

Also, I'm gonna start writing about political organizations that I find interesting and highlight what they do as well as new books too.