Still Going
Three more people joined the Coalition Against Sweatshop Abuses (CASA) hunger strike today, as protest organizers and CU administration officials slowly inched closer to a resolution.
By PAULA PANT Colorado Daily Staff Writer
A dozen students yesterday were on Day 14 of a hunger strike aimed at pressuring CU to adopt the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP). Under DSP guidelines, CU apparel must be made by companies that contract 25 percent of their workforce from factories where workers have a living wage and collective bargaining ability.
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Virginia Cutshall and Tim Hillman, both of whom haven't eaten in two weeks, looked pale and sickly. Cutshall's normally bright eyes appeared sunken deeper into her face and were marred by a dark reddish hue. Hillman's cheeks, usually thin and well-defined, now appeared gaunt, and the color had drained from his face.
Yet both spoke yesterday's rally with an unwavering passion.
“I will not eat,” Hillman boomed through a microphone, “until this University stands up and respects the basic rights of workers everywhere.”
Thursday, April 27, 2006
determination.
the students, professors, and community leaders at the colorado university are one hardy bunch.... . . .... .. .. . . . here at 'sc, we have yet to affiliate with the wrc, but it's no doubt inspiring that people are still willing to go all out for something they believe in.
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3 comments:
I don't get hunger strikes. They're just predicated on the belief that your opponent is benevolent. The train stopped for Gandhi because the British were humane. CU may accede to CASA's demands because they don't want to appear uncaring faced with a bunch of emaciated students. It's all emotional blackmail, rather than a presentation of facts and logic.
Are they predicated on benevolence of the opponent? I'm not so sure.
In this case, I think it has more to do with facts, moral high ground, and public image. The facts are, that routine inspections of garment factories around the world result in pages of violation accounts; some minor, some flagrant, but none acceptable.
This is the driving force behind the movement here: we can afford to pay more for university goods produced by these people--
-- take the money out of the profit made by the licensees (the bulk of the cost of an item, easily trumping cost of materials, labor, packaging, and transport/tariffs)
-- or pass the cost on to the consumer (pretty low when dispersed item by item. estimates put it at 50 cents to $5 or so on $100 shoes. We can get you citations, CM; sorry I don't have them ready).
The students here have morality and justice on their side -- making a profit off of someone because you are in a position of power, is something that most everyone agrees is wrong. And because the students are sure that they are on the side of justice, they begin a hunger strike. I think that the university eventually caves in an effort to save face and not further publicize the fact that they and their licensees have been profiting from the exploitative situation they have produced and help thrive abroad.
By your logic -- the university will cave to ppl on a hunger strike so that it doesn't seem like they're letting students die from not eating -- it seems that students hunger striking to try to get their university to START sourcing from, say, a clearly identified, internationally condemned sweatshop (total hypothetical), that the university would say, "ok, we'll source from them. it goes against our principles, but we can't have you die of starvation." In that case, the University would have begun with the moral high ground -- refusing to source from sweatshops at the outset, and would have never agreed to start sourcing from a sweatshop except that these students, for some crazy reason.... Can you imagine if a University started doing immoral, unethical things simply because students said they'd starve themselves to death unless they conceded? Not to mention the the fact that the general public and human rights orgs would have never let the university get away with it. The media/public image have a lot to do with successful human rights campaigns; major insitutions can't afford to look like they're complicit in things like sweatshop labor.
A hunger strike is only viable if it has the right motivation, CM. It's what you're fighting for that matters, and why, on this issue, the universities don't have a moral leg to stand on.
- michel
I'm sure that the hunger strikers believe that they are acting with the moral high ground. But their tactic can only succeed if their opponents care about their wellbeing. Example: The dictator of North Korea wouldn't care if his opponents were on a hunger strike because he simply wouldn't care if they starved to death. So, even while those who oppose the North Korean regime certainly are on the high ground, their tactic wouldn't work because their opponent is evil.
On the other hand, the university in this case, is not evil, and thus can easily be manipulated by stunts like a hunger strike. But, what I suggest is that rather than emotional blackmail being employed by the strikers, they instead try to logically persuade the university to do what they want. If working conditions are indeed as atrocious as they say they are, then it should be really easy to convince the university to change its ways simply by presenting the evidence. Especially since we've already established that the university is not evil.
Of course, it's entirely possible that some people within the university have seen the same evidence as the students, but disagree as to the nature of the "sweatshops". It seems to me there is an entirely moral and ethical argument to be made that these "sweatshops" are in many cases not bad when weighed against their realistic alternative (that they don't exist at all), and provide the very economic opportunities that people desperately need. On that basis, the thinking goes, the university and the "sweatshop" workers are provided something; the university gets goods at cheaper prices, and the workers get jobs they otherwise would not have.
-CardMart =)
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