Russell Athletic Boycott Gains Steam

August 3, 2009 in Campus Protests, Divestment, Labor, Student Power, Sweatshops, The Corporate University | by | 1 comment

I haven’t posted much about the Russell Athletic story this last while, but I got an email yesterday from United Students Against Sweatshops that demonstrates that their work has really been moving forward.

When I posted last, in early May, USAS had won fifty-seven campus disaffiliations from Russell over the course of the spring semester in protest of the apparel company’s labor policies in Honduras, specifically its decision to close a newly-unionized factory  Jerzees de Honduras factory in the wake of its unionization.

Since then, nearly thirty more campuses have joined the Russell boycott, bringing the total to eighty-four. New recruits to the cause include merchandising bigwigs the University of Arizona, Brown, Louisville, the University of Florida, and North Carolina State. USAS is now calling this “the largest collegiate boycott of an apparel company in history.”

You can follow the story as it develops at USAS’s Boycott Russell Athletic blog, which I’ve added to our blogroll today.

DC Election Reforms Could Empower Young Voters

July 29, 2009 in Politics, Voting Rights, Youth | by | Leave a comment

The Washington DC Council is considering a set of reforms to the district’s elections that would have the effect of encouraging youth voter turnout — and allowing some currently ineligible teens to vote in primary elections.

Among other things, the Omnibus Election Reform Act of 2009 would:

  • Allow 16-year-olds to “pre-register” to vote.
  • Grant the vote in primary elections to 17-year-olds who would turn 18 by the time of the general election.
  • Establish same-day voter registration, eliminating a deadline that’s currently a month in advance of election day.

Each of these reforms is designed to get young people (and, in the case of the third, not-young people too) engaged with electoral politics. The evidence shows clearly that if you register, you’re likely to vote, and that if you vote once, you’re likely to vote again.

Eliminating barriers to voting is the biggest step we can take toward higher turnout, and all of these proposals are worthy of adoption in DC and throughout the nation.

USSA Congress, Days Five and Six

July 26, 2009 in Students | Tags: | by | Leave a comment

At Friday’s plenaries, the Association endorsed two major organizing campaigns, created a new space for conservative delegates to meet at USSA conferences, rejected a proposal that the Association hire an executive director, and passed two dozen administrative resolutions pledging USSA action on various issues.

Friday was quite a day, and yes, I’m still working on that post. But I’m going to dash off something quick on yesterday and today in the meantime.

Yesterday, Saturday, the Association conducted a morning planning session for the upcoming year’s organizing campaigns, then spent the afternoon and early evening on workshops and the meetings of regions and caucuses at which most of the new USSA board of directors was elected. (One of the workshops was my session on social networks and student activism, which I’ll be writing more about after I get back to New York.)

After the meetings and workshops, the students gathered at an off-campus bar for the traditional end-of-Congress party. After a week of long days (and nights) of hard work on the University of Colorado’s dry campus, everyone was ready to celebrate, and exhaustion and altitude ensured that the celebration would be … spirited.

It was a great party.

Today the newly-elected 2009-10 USSA board of directors met for the first time, continuing the planning for the year. They also set dates for their next three meetings, the first of which will be in October in Washington, DC. By mid-afternoon nearly all of the Congress participants had left Boulder.

I’ve been asked several times since Friday’s plenaries how this Congress compares to others I’ve been to, and how I think it will be remembered in years to come. I hope I won’t be accused of cheerleading when I say that this was among the most positive, energetic Congresses I’ve ever attended, and that I suspect it will go down in USSA history as an important milestone in the Association’s progress.

More on why in my next post.

Previously:
USSA Congress Begins Today!
USSA Congress 2009, Day One
USSA Congress 2009, Day Two
Late, Short Wrapup of USSA Congress, Day Three

Workshop Open Thread

July 25, 2009 in Students | by | 1 comment

I just got out of facilitating a social networking workshop at the USSA Congress, and I promised I’d put up a quick post for overflow questions, comments, and links.

Here it is.

5:34 pm update: Jesse just asked me about how I liveblog. This is how.

8:31 pm update: Here are links to some of the sites folks mentioned in the workshop…

DREAMActivist, for organizing around the DREAM Act.
Wikispaces, a site where people can create wikis for free.
The preview site for Google Wave.

Late, Short Wrapup of USSA Congress, Day Three

July 25, 2009 in Students | by | Leave a comment

On Thursday I was out and about until two in the morning helping out USSA students with plenary meeting prep, and then I was up again at seven to start getting ready for the plenary itself, so I never had a chance to post a recap of the day’s events.

The plenary itself went for more than seventeen hours starting a little after ten o’clock Friday morning, and it was astounding in all sorts of ways. There’s a lot to say about it, and I’ll put up a full post about yesterday’s events later, but first a quick overview of Thursday.

The day was devoted to workshops and caucus meetings. The workshops covered a lot of ground — from “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: How to Prevent Burnout” to “Autonomous Organizing Down Under,” led by the president of the Australian National Union of Students, David Barrow — but a common thread ran through almost all of them.

USSA sees itself first and foremost as an organization of grassroots student organizers. It conducts regular Grass Roots Organizing Weekend (GROW) trainings for its membership, and many of its staff and officers come up through the ranks of its GROW trainers. Its major campaigns are organizing campaigns, and its closest institutional allies share that perspective.

Over and over again at this Congress, USSA’s formal and informal leadership has framed questions in terms of organizing strategy and tactics, pressing their fellow students to plan concretely for how to run and win campaigns around the issues they care about. This is not a group that’s particularly interested in making abstract statements of principle or engaging in acts of symbolic protest for protest’s sake.

I’m off to run a workshop now, but I’m hoping to find some free time later this afternoon to post about yesterday’s plenaries.

Previously:
USSA Congress Begins Today!
USSA Congress 2009, Day One
USSA Congress 2009, Day Two

About This Blog

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StudentActivism.net is the work of Angus Johnston, a historian and advocate of American student organizing.

To contact Angus, click here. For more about him, check out AngusJohnston.com.