Bilal Al Amin     
Al-Hayat     
2004/01/27

Students have historically played an important role in America's long and turbulent history of social unrest. College students spearheaded the anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s forming a powerful national network (Students for a Democratic Society) of tens of thousands. Protests grew so intense on college campuses after President Richard Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia; the National Guard actually shot four students dead and wounded nine others at Kent State University in the spring of 1970. In the end, however, the students prevailed and forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam.

It was not until the mid-1980s that a student movement with a national scope would emerge again. This time, it was the racist apartheid system of South Africa that became the target of student protest. Students responded to a call from Nelson Mandela's African National Congress to boycott corporations that do business in South Africa, or otherwise force them to pull investments from the apartheid state - a strategy that came to be known as "divestment." Mock shantytowns resembling the shacks that poor blacks lived in were erected in a central location on what are often pristine university campuses. Students vowed to occupy and maintain these "shantytowns" until their university administration pulled all university investments that could be linked to South Africa. The largely successful international divestment campaign against South Africa became a model for later student movements like the Students for Justice in Palestine that emerged on dozens of campuses in the last three years, calling on their universities to divest from Israel.

The mid-1990s saw the emergence of yet another student movement. This was a generation of students who went to college in the age of globalization when U.S.-based factories were scouring all corners of the globe for the cheapest labor and weakest regulations. Students, themselves targeted as consumers by "brand names" like Nike shoes and Gap clothing stores, were shocked to find out where and under what conditions these brands were made. They discovered that many of their favorite-brand companies made massive profits by sub-contracting to sweatshops located in Central America, Indonesia, and China, where workers - largely young women - worked long hours under extreme conditions for poverty wages to produce shoes or articles of clothing that were then sold to U.S. consumers for 30 or 40 times their cost.

In 1998, after several years of ferment, the United States Against Sweatshops (USAS) was formed with 180 campuses participating and backed by some of most powerful labor unions. Union officials, particularly in the garment industry, were concerned about the increasing use of sweatshops abroad and began to raise awareness around the issue well before the students caught on. Worse yet, sweatshops began to reappear in the United States itself. In 1995, one activist group discovered a garment sweatshop in California that employed 72 Thai immigrant women, who worked in prison-like conditions behind razor wire and under the watch of armed guards. Soon, it became public knowledge that from New York City's jewelry district to the meatpacking factories of Iowa and the strawberry fields of California, sweatshop labor, often preying on undocumented immigrant workers, was widespread in the country.

Much like the earlier divestment movement against South Africa, anti-sweatshop student groups demanded their university divest from any corporations that can be connected to sweatshop labor. Many universities, for example, had millions of dollars in contracts with Nike to make their lucrative university sports apparel - t-shirts, caps and sweatshirts with the university emblem on them. The students enforced their demands by carrying out occupations of university offices until either the administration relented, or the students were forcibly evicted. Nike, Gap and other brand-name companies known to use sweatshops were directly targeted for protest including sit-ins and leafleting customers. Every year, around the time of the Christmas holidays, New York City high school students, in the thousands, march through the heart of the shopping district to raise awareness among shoppers.

United Students Against Sweatshops continues to be active, but was submerged in the larger movement against globalization that emerged in the now-famous Seattle protests against the World trade Organization at the end of 1999. Since then, students have turned out in the thousands to confront the meetings of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, or any other free trade summit. In the few years that this new anti-globalization movement has existed, they have successfully thrown a big question mark over the process of globalization, undermining several attempts by the U.S. government to sign new free trade agreements. Even with the shock of the September 11 attacks, the movement shows no sign of going away any time soon.

The Bush administration's heavy-handed response to the attacks both in the U.S., by attacking Americans' closely-guarded civil liberties, and abroad, by waging endless wars, has sparked a new round of student protests against the so-called "war on terror." In the run up to the invasion of Iraq, anti-war students coordinated national days of action where they would walk out of their classes against desperate threats of expulsion by school authorities. Of particular concern to high school students from underprivileged economic backgrounds, was a concerted campaign by the military to lure them into its ranks to replenish the increasingly over-stretched U.S. armed services. Military recruiters developed a slick MTV-style campaign to make service in the military look appealing to young people, spending up to $11,600 per recruit.

High school students and parents were shocked to find out that according to a clause buried in a recently passed Bush administration education bill, any school eligible for government funds must automatically turn in the names and addresses of its students to the military to help them in their recruitment efforts. The military draft (compulsory recruitment) that caused so much protest in the 1960s had been abolished in 1973 as the Vietnam War wound down. Today, the U.S. military uses all sorts of incentives, including paying for college fees and tuition, as a way to tempt young people into military service. High school students characterized it as a "poverty draft," saying that the military deliberately targeted the poor for recruitment, sometimes chasing military recruiters off their campus in protest. They pointed out that, of the hundreds of Representatives and Senators in Congress - the body responsible under the constitution for declaring war - only one had a child that was enlisted in the military.

America's youth continue to rebel against the multiplying injustices they see committed in their name; whether it is economic exploitation or the militarization of their society. Despite concerted efforts by both the media and the government to turn them into happy consumers and willing soldiers, a new generation of Americans are questioning the new and dangerous course being charted by the Bush administration.
 
 

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english.daralhayat.com     2004/01/29     22:55 GMT