March/April 2006 Featured Story Changing the Culture of Activism:
Fellowship: How long have you been with USAS and how did you get involved with the organization? Romero: I got involved when I was a student at the University of California, when we were running a campaign against Coca-Cola. Some of the leadership of USAS had heard about the campaign. They invited us to do a workshop at their national conference in 2003. Afterwards it seemed like a lot of the schools had gotten excited about the campaign and decided to take it on. At that point, I was invited to be a regional organizer for the state of California. After that last year of school, I was asked if I was interested in applying to be the national organizer in 2004. In the “Stop Killer Coke” campaign, the idea is not only to have young people become politicized but also for them to be actively involved in campaigns for social justice. Particularly important for me was getting more people of color in this type of movement. Now I’ve been a national organizer for a little under a year and a half, and my term will be finishing this summer. Fellowship: Oh, so you’ll be done in mid-2006? Romero: Typically the positions are two years to allow for new leadership to come in and develop. Fellowship: Was there something, a specific experience in college, that sparked your interest in social justice work? Romero: Certainly the person that went into school and the one that left it were quite different – in terms of outlook on life, and perspective on how the world works, and politics and such. When I graduated and looked back on what I accomplished, I had the idea that, first, I was very lucky, very fortunate, very privileged to have had all these experiences, and second, that it was really a chance to get other people involved – to get them to realize that there is a heck of a lot that you can do inside the classroom, but there is a whole lot more you can do outside it. The message for getting other young people involved, whether they go to a four-year college or not, is that they must see there is a place for them to engage. Fellowship: Do you mainly work with the campaign against Coca-Cola, or are there other campaigns that USAS works on as well? Romero: USAS works on three pillar campaigns. The second is for campus workers – organizing cafeteria, laundry, or janitorial workers to insure a living wage for these employees of universities. This campaign ties in with the third campaign, the “Sweat-Free Campus” campaign, which is what the organization was founded on. Its focus is on collegiate apparel – the sweatshirts, shorts, and caps that have the logos and mascots of universities. Those materials are always made in sweatshops (sweatshops being centers of exploitative labor, typically in the Third World). We realize and stress that no matter where we are, there are systems of oppression that function to keep these types of workers down. Just as important as the work we do is the way we do it. It is critical to do our work in a way that is welcoming and inclusive. Our work needs to truly represent the realization that we all someday hope to achieve for people of the working class, women, people of color, people of different sexual orientations. We need to realize the struggles we have ahead of us – but the more people we have on board, the more likely we are to achieve success sooner. Fellowship: Why are those three campaigns the focus of the organization? How were they chosen? Romero: Back in the late ’90s there were students who were part of an internship program in [the labor union] UNITE! They traveled and had first-hand encounters with the system of sweatshop exploitation, particularly the production of collegiate apparel under terrible conditions, locally or in Haiti, Thailand, Indonesia, wherever. They realized they had leverage that they could apply to their university administrators when they got back to their colleges. The point then was to hold these companies to very basic standards. No one knew where all these sweatshop factories were, so we demanded that companies like Nike disclose their locations. We also realized that there were no human rights policies or codes of conduct that universities had to abide by, so things like sexual harassment, false imprisonment, and child labor were not addressed. We directed student pressure to force those codes to be created. Once we knew where these sweatshop factories were and we knew universities had a basic code to adhere to, the question was how to monitor the conditions in those factories. Students dreamt of an organization that would do that on its own, but that would be paid for by their universities. This huge idea gave shape to the Worker Rights Hopefully, someday there will be kindergarten classrooms and retirement homes that can take on similar campaigns. But for now we are focusing on the contractual behaviors of colleges, high schools, and universities, environments where we have direct relevance and direct leverage points. That’s why Coca-Cola applies. Companies like Wal-Mart would be more difficult, because there isn’t such a clear connection between that company and our universities. Fellowship: What are some of the major successes USAS has achieved with these campaigns? Romero: In spite of very difficult fights, there have been several major victories in the past couple of years. One was last March, when students were organizing in favor of workers in Immokalee, Florida, with the campaign against Taco Bell. These were mostly migrant and undocumented workers from Mexico, Guatemala, and Haiti (seasonal workers) who pick tomatoes in Immokalee. Now the workers had this crazy idea of demanding better pay, a fair raise on a wage that had been stagnant since 1979. They asked for a one-penny increase per bucket of tomatoes – a minuscule increase, yet the growers said no. So these workers partnered with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), USAS, Student/Farmworker Alliance, MECHA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanode Aztlan), and other community, labor, and religious groups to put pressure on Taco Bell, which is one of the biggest restaurant chains in the world and part of the umbrella group called Yum! Brands. (KFC and Long John Silver’s are also part of this group.) Taco Bell was chosen since they are the ones with the power, who make the big bucks. It was a campaign that took several years. The student side focused on kicking Taco Bell off campuses because 1) they were abusing workers and 2) they were making money by exploitation. It was called “Boot the Bell.” The University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Chicago, and California State University at San Bernardino, among others, all kicked Taco Bell off their campuses. In March 2005, the campaign forced Taco Bell to sign a historic agreement with CIW recognizing all demands of the coalition and setting a precedent for other companies like McDonald’s, Burger King, and Subway to respect those same rights. The second major victory was with the BJ&B cap factory, which makes baseball caps (the flex-fit ones that can stretch to fit any size head). The workers tried to establish a union, so BJ&B started shipping its production to other factories in the area. Students and other labor allies discovered what was happening and “outed” BJ&B. Not only were they taking away the workers’ jobs, but they were also physically and psychologically intimidating them. There were even private meetings about trying to put down the organizing movement. In the end, BJ&B workers were able to secure the first independent unionizing contract in the entire Caribbean basin. This was a huge step in the right direction. Certainly there are more steps that need to be taken, but the fact that BJ&B and the Dominican Republic were able to secure that contract was historic. The third major victory took place at a factory called Kukdong in Puebla, Mexico. A couple of years ago now the cafeteria food at Kukdong was rotten; workers were being served rancid cafeteria food. So one day, the workers boycotted the cafeteria. Several of the leaders of the boycott were fired. Other workers joined the campaign, and about a week later, because of increased tension and some company violence inflicted on workers, the workers went on a wildcat strike. All the workers were fired and no one was hurt. A couple of student interns happened to be around. They passed information to USAS organizers in New York. After much pressure from other companies working with community groups, the factory went on not only to respect the workers, but also to form the first independent union in the entire nation of Mexico. The Kukdong factory is now called Mexmode. It is one of the few factories that is not only trying to respect the right to organize, but is also trying to secure a living wage for its workers. Now we are at the point that when people say, “Aren’t you guys trying to adjust the direction of the Titanic?” and “Those companies are so far-reaching and so global, how can you really stop them?” we can point to these three local victories. Those victories’ implications were global and are very far-reaching.
Fellowship: What are some challenges that USAS has faced in these campaigns? I know I would feel intimidated when taking on large companies like Coca-Cola. Romero: The funny thing is that initially it was the same with me. I was, like, “How do we take on such a huge company that invests millions of dollars in things like checking our Web site each day and trying to have interns hack into it?” I was, like, “Wow, this is too much!” But these companies are like anyone else and tend to screw up a lot as well. In the case of Coca-Cola, as well as with Nike, Reebok and others, they have that big façade of being impenetrable, with huge resources and huge consequences for anyone trying to take them on. But the fact is, there are several loopholes for targeting them. For example, with Coca-Cola, they were terrible when dealing with our campaign because they were addressing it as a PR [public relations] problem. They just brushed off not only the requests of students, but also the requests of institutions, the so-called “respected” individuals such as university administrators and city government officials. This showed clearly that Coca-Cola had never been challenged in this way. They were certainly weak and would not be intimidating to many people. The bigger challenge is dealing with the larger culture. In activism, there are only a certain few who can get involved – but a type of movement that will truly change things around will be led by people who otherwise don’t have the time. Activism takes time and community: that’s one challenge. A second challenge is that in general, activism is almost a dirty word. People associate it with young hippie tree-huggers who don’t shower and eat granola, and that is certainly not true. The fact is that people construe activism as something kind of far-fetched, something you have to become – while I believe that all of us, to some extent, are activists. We all have values, morals, and ideals that, when they are challenged or hit by injustice, send us into action. When we put those thoughts, those passions into motion, that is really what activism is. Fellowship: A comment I often hear about students today is that they seem so apathetic, especially compared to students 30 or 40 years ago. How would you respond, and how do you get students interested and involved? Romero: You have to make the campaign accessible and a little more real. If you show that activism isn’t anything but people with conscientiousness about what is right and wrong putting this into action, that is the key. I see this when other people hear and see me. They think, “Oh, he’s just a regular guy; activism must not be so crazy and weird after all.” The other point is that I think this all goes around in cycles. Certainly this type of work is not headlining now as it was back in the ’60s. This is somewhat healthy, because when I think of the activism that does reach the front pages today, that activism becomes chic, trendy, and fashionable. The campaigns that revolutionize society are never going to make headlines because it is not in the interest of those who control the media and institutions to give platforms for such beliefs to the leaders of those movements. This is fine. It’s always going to be an uphill struggle. So when people say, “Oh those young people don’t give a sh*t anymore, they’re so apathetic and don’t care about anything but their iPods or their Play Stations,” I’ll recognize that certainly some of that is true. I can see it in people I went to school with, and those I grew up with. But the real question is, why is that? How you are rewarded in this society is by having the flashiest car, the most beautiful partner, and the “bling bling.” You’re recognized for making it big and showing that you did it by your bootstraps. And that you and only you (and maybe your mom!) is responsible for your becoming who you are. We don’t realize that anything we achieve, any obstacles we may overcome, are because we are part of a fabric. The perception of community and of joint common interest is always valid, and I think it is particularly valid in the U.S. given our culture of commodity, where your worth is only determined by what you own and not by what you know, who you know, or what values you have. This is something very, very, very difficult to take on. I see it with my family in Colombia, where the same idea of buying into that pop culture where you are only cool if you wear the right brands and speak the right lingo is something that has spread throughout. That is not only dangerous but is also very saddening. When people say that youth don’t care, they don’t care for a reason. If they could be shown they are worthwhile and that there is so much work to do and that there are ways to do it, then I think we would really have a different generation of youth and of people as a whole.
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