Over the past several years I’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of projects faculty and students could organize around that would have meaningful impacts on the university and the community. During my first two years at KU, I was the faculty adviser for a group of amazing students who wanted to found a chapter of United Students Against Sweatshops. In less than a year, the students researched the history of USAS, of KU’s licensing agreements, and the range of tactics students could use to persuade the university to join the Workers Rights Consortium–an independent group that monitors textile factories around the world and organizes against sweatshop labor. The short story is that the students convinced the university to join the WRC and for a period of several years, you could be assured that if you were donning the KU logo on your clothing, that you were not supporting sweatshop labor. One year, President Cevallos even mentioned the university’s WRC membership in his opening address — even though he never acknowledged that it was STUDENTS who responsible for the university signing on. I just checked the WRC web site only to find that Kutztown is no longer a member of the WRC. It just goes to show, once the spotlight is turned in a different direction, the university will ditch any stated commitment to human rights.
Anyway, the fact is that students’ activist made a tangible, concrete change in the university. If that student organization had continued after a couple of the key organizers graduated, we might still be able to say our KU apparel was not made in sweatshops. In the light of the current recession and budget-cut mania, I’ve been thinking about the kind of things we could do locally that would have real, tangible effects and that would provide some degree of mutual aid to our communities. Ever since the Occupy Movement exploded on the scene, I’ve been having conversations here and there about just this issue. And today’s Occupy Kutztown rally was an encouraging place to begin a conversation about organizing locally and retaking a piece of the commons. With that in mind, here are some projects you will be hearing more about on the XChange in the coming weeks and months. Here are some concrete things we can demand our university does:
- For starters, 50% of all food served in the dining halls and other locations on campus should be locally sourced from family farms
- 75% of all university supplies should be manufactured in Pennsylvania, when possible, at union shops. This includes office supplies such as paper and pens as well as larger items such as desks and walkway lighting.
- All new building projects should be build using union contractors from Pennsylvania.
- Space should be set aside on campus for a farmers’ market
- All university banking accounts should be moved out of “big banks” and relocated to community based banks in the area.
Kevin Mahoney
Christina Steffy
Amy LB
[...] Occupy Kutztown – Day One October 12, 2011By Editor Zero, Raging ChickenI got the chance to spend about an hour at the Occupy Kutztown action in front of the Wells Fargo Bank in Kutztown today. Despite the nasty weather, there was a pretty good turnout. There were almost double the amount of people right at 11 am…I didn’t get there until around noon (had to go to my office hours). Much of the discussion on that corner was organizing talk. Where can we go from here? [...]
40 people showed up today at Wells Fargo! Great job Nick and Kevin. Lots of old people like me. Where are the students of this public(government supported) university and their profs?? It was raining, OK. Hope I see 80 next time. I know, I am being the devil’s advocate. Just can’t understand the mindset of public university students and profs getting a cheap, inexpensive education/teaching job courtesy of the taxpayer—-yet the students/profs take this for granted!!!!! Wow. When will they understand we support them financially and more importantly we support the mission of inexpensive publicly supported education. Maybe they want to spend 3x more at a private college? Maybe the profs want to make far less money and have fewer benefits??
Sorry, I just don’t get these people. I am financially secure and retired, but I care about the future. Maybe I should adopt the attitude of these students and profs and join the Tea Party/Ron Paul and crusade against you people. I am trying to help you who are in the 99%…………maybe I need to go golfing and let you and your future be determined by the 1% who hate your existence.
Ron,
I wish I could provide a strong defense of students and faculty here. I can’t. For the life of me I will never understand why there has not been a stronger response from PA faculty and students first regarding the budget cuts, retrenchment, increased tuition, program elimination, and just plain lies. When labor held a rally against the cuts in Harrisburg back in May, I am sorry to say that I was the only faculty member from KU in attendance and the showing from PASSHE faculty in general was pretty dismal. The ironic thing was that while faculty could not find a few hours in their day to make that rally a priority, leaders from the Steelworkers, AFSCME, and at least one other union made defending public higher education a priority in their addresses. In an NAACP rally a week before labor’s rally–at which both APSCUF-KU President, Paul Quinn and I spoke–we could not fill a bus with faculty. One bus would have meant 10% of KU’s faculty.
As my friend and activist radio show guy, Rick Smith, has said many times on his show, maybe it is going to take things getting even worse before faculty and students decide they better act before losing the farm. Rick points to the old labor saying, maybe “when your stomach is empty, your head gets right.” I hate to think in those terms, but I am not sure what it is going to take–how long can faculty retreat into their disciplinary bunkers and ignore the shredding of the fabric of public education? Jury is still out.
On the other hand, the energy of the 99% movement/Occupy Movement is palpable. Over the past few of years I’ve found myself shifting my emphasis in my activist work…from trying to urge more people to get involved, to focusing on gathering and consolidating existing–rather, fragmented–activist networks in the area. The fact is, there are a lot of really good, committed people out there who are not plugged into an organization or a movement. I think that kind of situation more often than not leads to cynicism and despair. We can’t afford that…there’s too much at stake.
So, we fight on…the work of building movements is tedious and unglamorous and very often you do not see the fruits of your labor for months or years. I hope we don’t have to get to the point where things get even worse than they are already…I fear that’s what it may take, but I hope that this emergent movement opens a door to a new dawn of activists. Time and our work will tell. Don’t give up on them yet.
Ron,
I live in Macungie and didn’t find out about OK until the next day. Will there be another protest in Kutztown? When? And how do I/we find out about it ahead of time? Like the KU students I don’t have the time/resources to travel to NYC or Philly.
James S.
James,
I think the best place to get up to date info will be the Occupy Kutztown Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/OccupyKutztown?sk=wall
There’s not a lot up there now, but there will be.