NEW Book on Student anti-sweatshop organizing!! to order go to:
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Sweatshops.html
Students Against Sweatshops
By Liza Featherstone and United Students Against Sweatshops
Verso (available now)
"This book tells an inspiring story of how students are making history
today. Their battle against sweatshops reveals how the globalization of
capital is creating a globalization of conscience."
--Tom Hayden, Students for a Democratic Society cofounder/former
California state senator
"As vividly as any documentary film, Students Against Sweatshops
captures the gusto and political savvy of a student movement that has
made its impact in every corner of the global economy. Nor does this
indispensable book pull any punches; its bold commentary will hit home
where it needs to be heard."
-- Andrew Ross, editor, No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade and the Rights of
Garment Workers
"Campus activism lives! This inspiring and lucid account of the work of
United Students against Sweatshops proves it. Blending commitment and
analysis, Featherstone tells us why USAS is about much more than caps
and t-shirts -- it's about worker's rights, women's rights, challenging
the corporatization of the university, and establishing a fair world
order."
-- Katha Pollitt, Nation magazine columnist
"Everybody wants to have a living wage. Everybody wants to be able to
take
care of themselves and their family. Everybody wants to retire and feel
good, enjoy life. Breathe. Live. Eat."
Sheri Davis, Ohio State University
United Students Against Sweatshops heads a wave of anti-sweatshop
organizing
that has reached over two hundred American campuses in the past four
years. From New England to New Mexico, at colleges and universities
public and private, large and small, students have chained themselves to
administrators' desks, fasted for days and disrupted football games,
making one demand: clothing bearing school logos must be produced under
healthy, safe and fair working conditions.
Their campaigns have terrified multinational companies like Nike, whose
profits depend on young consumers. They have also brought the global
economic justice movement to the corporate campus, and provided a model
for transnational student/worker solidarity. Student agitation has
also, in a short time, led to some startlingly concrete improvements in
overseas workers' conditions. This lively book combines sharp analysis
from a seasoned journalist with narratives from both sweatshop workers
and student activists, creatively blurring distinctions between author
and subject. Students Against Sweatshops provides an overview of a new
campus radicalism, as well as a tool for the realization of its goals.
"Here are the inspiring voices of our democracy -- young people daring
to question authority and confront power. These are the Thomas Paines,
Sojourner Truths, Fredrick Douglasses, and Mother Joneses of our times.
America needs them more than ever."
-- Jim Hightower, radio commentator
Liza Featherstone is a New York City journalist who has written
extensively
about student, youth and labor organizing. A frequent contributor to The
Nation, Newsday and The Washington Post, she is now writing a book about
Wal-Mart workers.
