[918] in peace2
SLAP mtg notes
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Boston Jobs WIth Justice)
Thu Aug 23 12:51:09 2001
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Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 11:55:25 -0400
To: bostonjwj@mindspring.com
From: Boston Jobs WIth Justice <bostonjwj@mindspring.com>
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here are the notes from tuesday's _SLAP-Boston_ meeting- they are
sort of long, but worthwhile to look through... good luck this year- if
y'all even do 1/2 this stuff- it will rock-
Jane
Notes- SLAP meeting August 21
Introductions, updates on campus work and plans
Emerson: last year they infiltrated the student government and helped
organize the adjunct faculty. This year they are thinking about starting a
living wage campaign and working on affordable housing.
U Mass Boston: Have done a lot of work in the past around campus labor
issues with Sodexho dining hall workers and RA’s organizing.
Brandeis: are continuing to do support work for graduate student organizing
Northeastern: want to do work with out-sourced dining hall workers and
mobilize for Sept 30th
BU: want to start supporting organizing dining hall workers
BC: want to start a student-labor group on campus
Tufts: working to support the contract negotiations of Janitors in SEIU 254
in progress now- and are asking for or support! to come to rallies and
teach-in over the next few weeks
MIT: want to start doing anti-sweatshop work
Harvard: continuing to work on the Living Wage Campaign and anti-sweatshop
stuff
introduction to SLAP (Jane and Brad)
SLAP started last fall with a few meetings and solidarity actions. In the
spring we convened a citywide meeting for students mobilizing against the
FTAA. We organized a speakers-pool and had t4each-ins on lots of
campuses. This summer we have had a number of “solidarity summer”
workshops and several successful actions.
SLAP is a project of Jobs with Justice which means that we have some staff
and institutional connections to progressive people in the labor movement
who want to work with students. There are two national staff people in
Washington DC who can help with advice and resources. They are Laura and
Treston and can be reached at 202-434-9512. They are publishing a manual
of case studies and useful information of running student-labor solidarity
campaigns. Call them for a copy. SLAP Boston has one intern, Brad. He can
be reached at Boston JwJ at 617-524-8110. Jane Martin and Dave Monahan
won't be in town this year.
***SLAP Boston, will be completely what we make of it, and we want we want
it to be.***
What does it make sense for us to work on together? ideas for this year
- turn out for each other’s rallies and actions- next up-coming
event- teach-in at tufts on the 4th and rallies to follow soon after
- giving each other advice- i.e. question from Northeastern- how to
work around management intimidation?
- educating each other and our campuses i.e. SLAP is running a
teach-in at BC on Oct 17th on student labor activism to help their campaign
get off the ground. another idea is to have citywide teach-in for
ourselves on local labor history in october, or skills workshops.
- work together to support off-campus labor struggles i.e. the
Brockton Nurses strike rally on the sept 1st 12:00-2:00 on the 100th day of
their strike!
How can we coordinate our campus campaigns strategically?
we didn’t talk too much about this stuff, but maybe this conversation can
continue into september.
- use the same figure or use the same figure or formula for a
general standards for living wage; or campus labor code of conduct
- target the same specific contractors in our campus campaigns
- targeting the city government i.e. campaigns to support a bill that
will require universities to provide affordable housing
- Boston-wide day of action
- work together with our allies i.e. recognizing union contracts that
affect multiple campuses like the one with SEIU 254 this winter or others
Mobilization for September 30th protest against the World Bank in Washington DC
- -Gina’s idea of a touring teach-in with a group of speakers that
can come talk at different campuses- people agreed to work on this project
- Brad’s idea that some of these “teach-in” can be rally-like,
outside and loud!
- There is also a city-wide teach-in for students with: bankbusters’
amazing international speakers from the NGO “50 years is enough,” the
Harvard Living Wage campaign’s local speakers talking about the affects of
globalization on massachusetts workers, and skills workshops- the teach-in
is at Harvard on sept 15- SLAP agreed to co-sponsor and do some turn-out work
- CD training at MIT on sept 16
- bankbusters passed out bus tickets to go down to DC of the 29th and
30th that we can start selling!
How to stay in touch structurally- ideas for this year:
- Idea for a Boston SLAP newsletter that would have updates on
what’s going on at each school… question of whether to do it w/ indy media
center or not. another idea was to do it as an e-mail PDF attachment that
different schools could print on their own.
- e-mail list serve- low volume, but useful- send a message
to subscribe-studentlaboractionboston@yahoogroups.com or e-mail the
moderator, brad at abhornbake@hotmail.com
- idea to have a big meeting in september when everyone gets back to
school was rejected due to different starting times and september 30th
mobilization
- idea to begin having monthly meetings in October with one
representative from each campus was presented, but not really discussed
- idea to have a big meeting/educational event in early October after
S30. Speakers who didn’t make it to speak at Solidarity Summer on Boston
labor history and race could come talk on a panel with the first big SLAP
meeting of the year to follow- people agreed
- there will be continual planning meetings for S30 mobilization and
to plan the teach-ins in september. next meeting will be Tuesday, Aug 28
at 6:30 at Northeastern.
up-coming events we want to be involved with . . .
August
24&25: films on WB and IMF at Coolige Corner
31: tableing with Jeff
September
1: Brockton Nurses 100th day of the strike rally 12-2pm
4: teach-in at Tufts on the janitor’s contract negotiations, 10 pm
5: Movie on the IMF and WB in India at MIT
7&8: Street medic training at MIT
12: Movie on the IMF and WB in India at Lucy Parsons’
15: Bankbusters’ teach-in at Harvard
16: CD training at MIT
20: teach-in at Emerson
25: Immigrant Lobby Day protest in DC
29: Protest against militarization in Latin America and march against Bush
in DC
30: protest the World Bank and IMF in DC
