Social Justice

  St. Joseph’s University has a new African Awareness group called Harambee, which, apparently, refers to a Kenyan tradition of community self-help as well as meaning  “pulling together” in Swahili (and does anyone remember how we learned stuff before Wikipedia?). The new group was the lead organizer of St. Joseph’s AIDS Awareness Week. Harambee’s president, Michael Mungai Nyambura, has appeared in these pages before, also for bringing African AIDS awareness to St. Joseph’s. (Incidentally, Nyambura also founded a home for street boys in Kenya. Are you impressed yet?)

  Students protested their Universities’ lack of thought in choosing the manufacturers of their clothing last week.  The student group Feminism Without Borders is asking the University of Maryland to join the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP), which requires members to choose suppliers that pay workers a living wage, among other things. In Washington D.C., the Progressive Student Union of George Washington University is also pushing for their University to join the DSP. More than 150 schools across the country are currently signed on. 3/2/07 

  University of Washington freshman Whitney Hahn recently organized a benefit concert called “A Red-Light to Slavery” to end human trafficking in the U.S. Whitney was inspired to organize the event when she learned in her sociology class that 14,500 slaves currently live in the U.S. According to Free the Slaves, a nonprofit organization dedicated to abolishing modern-day slavery, slaves can be found in 90 cities across the U.S, and most are associated with the agricultural industries, domestic services, commercial sex, and manufacturing trades.

  Never Again!, a student organization at Denver University, organized a Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week that included speaker Lani Silver, a survivors panel with survivors of the Holocaust and the genocide in Darfur, and a candlelight vigil. Organizers of the event wanted to raise awareness of the problem of genocide and its existence today. 4/10/07  Read More from Denver University

  The Colombian Student Association at Florida State University held a march against the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), or FARC, which they term a terrorist guerrilla group in Colombia. The 35 protesters marched from the Student Union on campus to the Capitol Building holding picket signs. The march was organized in to coincide with a similar protest held in Colombia. Read more from F

  Twelve student activists from the University of Michigan were arrested last week after refusing to leave the University President's office. The students were part of Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality's Sweatfree Campaign, and were trying to get University administrators to toughen the school’s policies on sweatshop labor. 4/4/07  Read More from the University of Michigan

  The Sweatfree Coalition—an amalgam of groups that includes Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality and the University chapters of Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union—marched across the University of Michigan's campus last week to protest the University's use of sweatshop labor in its University apparel. The group wants the University to adopt the Designated Suppliers Program, an independent group that monitors sweatshop use.  Participating universities only use companies that do not use sweatshop labor, as designated by the DSP, in the produc

As members of Harvard University’s Student Labor Action Movement entered their sixth day of hunger striking—and first hospitalization—Harvard’s administration agreed to meet with SLAM about living wages for the school’s security guards. The guards are currently involved in a labor dispute with the outside company, AlliedBarton, hoping to earn a minimum salary of $15 per hour. The University has consistently said it will not intervene in the labor dispute. The striking students are careful to say that, while they view the administration’s meeting as progress, they’ve not yet met their c