Student Activism is quite strong, and it's good to know we are a part of
it. This is a good read. Enjoy
GREY LEE
SGA President 802/656-7736
B 156, Billings UVM Burlington, VT, 05405
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 1995 12:02:20 -0600
From: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Christian Science Monitor Article on the Oct. 27 Free Burma campaign and the use of Internet
>From The Christian ScienceMonitor
Tuesday, October 31, 1995
p.3
POLITICAL ACTIVISM ON CAMPUS TAKES ON A CYBERSPACE TWIST
'Birks' have replaced earth-shoes but human rights still rile students
By Ann Scott Tyson
Staff writer of the CSM, Evanston, ILL.
Brad Simpson, a PhD candidate in history at Northwestern Unievrsity, spends
most of his spare time mobilizing fellow students to protest human rights
abuses in farway East Timor.
A doctoral student named Zarni at the University of Wisconsin in Madison
devotes about 15 hours a day to on-line organizing, rallying classmates
behind a campaign to divest US firms from his native Burma, also known as
Myanmar.
At Ohio State University, Brad Watson, a junior in sociology, leads 20 Ohio
student groups in demonstration and letter-writing campaigns aimed at
freeing political prisoners identified by the human rights organization
Amnesty International.
No one is claiming to have reached the heights of antiwar fervor achieved
in the Vietnam era. Central America is no longer a cause celebre. But
political activism on the American college campus is alive and well in the
1990s. It is increasingly sophisticated, high-tech, and at times, just as
effective as its tie-dyed '60s exemplars in making politicians and crporate
executives take notice.
"Student activism is on the rise," says Roberto Guerra, Midwest campus
coordinator for Amnesty International. "A lot of studets are realizing
the US frequently plays a role in human rights situations overseas."
This weekend, for instance, more than 300 students activists from across
the Midwest gathered at Northwester in Evanston, Ill., for a day of
training, speeches, and advice on campus organizing run by Amnesty
International. The gathering was the largest regional get-together of
studet activists ever held by Amnesty, says Mr. Guerra.
And last Friday, hundreds of students at 75 universities, including
Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and Northwestern joined an international day of
protest against the military dictatorship in Burma, says Mr. Zarni, head of
the Free Burma Coalition.
Students in cities around the country dumped out cans of Pepsi and staged
sit-ins at PepsiCo Inc.-owned subsidiaries such asTaco Bell, Pizza Hut, and
Kentucky Fried Chicken to protest Pepsi's investment in Burma. They also
call on alumni associations to cancel tours to Burma. Alumni at
Northwestern and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) have
agreed; Yale alumni are considering the demand.
Organizers seek the total divestment of PepsiCo, the oil giant Unocal, and
other large US firms from Burma. They say they hope to mobilize a student
movement similar to the one that pushed US companies to pull out of South
Africa in the 1970s and '80s.
"Essentially we want to re-create what went on during the anti-apartheid
movement," says Zarni. He and his fellow activists are working to form a
broad alliance with environmental, women's, and human rights groups opposed
to the Burma regime, as well as with labor unions that are battling
PepsiCo.'s suppliers.
"Rank and file union workers in Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, and Decatur
(Ill.) are all actively encouraging a boycott or a Pepsi dump." says Todd
Price, a University of Wisconsin student who is working to garner union
support for the Burma campaign.
Unlike the past decades, today's student activists rely heavily on the
Internet and other modern technology as organizing tools.
Amnesty, for example, has its own World Wide Web site. It recently began
distributing an interactive CD-ROM to educate students about high-priority
cases of human rights violations. Moreover, the Burma action day was
orchestrated almost entirely on the Internet.
"In seven weeks this campaign has pretty much exploded," says Zarni.
"Without the Internet, this would have been impossible."
>From his small room in Madison, Zarni connects quickly and cheaply with
activists around the world. "If I can't mail out campaign posters on time,
I just get on the net and send people our site address and let them
download it," says Zarni.
****End text.
##########################################################
Free Burma Coalition
c/oDepartment of
Curriculum and Instruction
225 North Mills Street.
University of Wisconsin,
Madison, WI 53706
Tel: 608-256-6572 (home)
Fax: 608-263-9992 (office)
"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate
agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground... Power
concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Frederick Douglas -- Letter to an abolitionist associate, 1849
##########################################################
|
