From: Jesse Kirchner (jessek@u.arizona.edu)
Date: Wed Oct 31 2001 - 04:43:42 EST
Howdy USASistas (and happy Halloween!),
Many, hopefully most of you know that we created a new
Campus/Community Solidarity Committee at our National
Confernece in Chicago in August. This committee was created to
help coordinate all of the exciting efforts going on by USAS folks
around the country to struggle with local workers (somewhat the
same model as the International Solidarity Committee helps
coordinate solidarity actions by students with workers abroad).
Anyway, this committee just had its first conference call this
weekend, and what's here are the minutes from the call. You
should care about this because the local solidarity work being done
on campuses around the country is some of the most exciting
work being done by student activists right now -- and because it's
not too late to get involved with the CCSC.
Keep watching this space for announcements on when our future
conference calls will be. Anyone interested -- even people with no
experience working with USAS nationally -- we're asking you to
come help out.
But now, the minutes.
---------
The CCSC had an underpopulated but productive call on Sunday,
Oct. 28. You can read all about it here, or just skip to the
paragraphs with *** to get the important parts.
On the call: Amber Gallup (USAS staff), Jesse Kirchner (U
Arizona), Maddy Elfenbein (Harvard)
General thoughts: Working out the implementation of our
mandate from Chicago; immediate tasks and more abstract
procedures. We decided some short term actions to take:
*** Amber will compile (with help from the Regional Organizers) a
database of which campaigns each campus is working on, and put
that together with contact information for each campus.
Although this is slightly beyond the mandate of the CCSC (which
implied something like that, but only for local/domestic campaigns,
not all campaigns), we all felt it was important that such a
database be available. When completed, it will let someone just
check the database for, say, "New Era" or "Living Wage" and list
all the campuses working on that campaign or a similar one, with
contact info for those schools.
*** Materials will be distributed to everyone. Help out by following
up on the letter Maddy will send out about this.
More specifically, there are a few things we have in mind: The "Act
Up, Fight Back" packet already in production (jointly by the AFL-
CIO, SLAP and USAS) will be distributed to all USAS chapters
when it's available. Harvard Living Wage materials will be available
from the NO (National Office). Also, we will be soliciting materials
for distribution from other campaigns (but we're waiting on the Act
Up, Fight Back book to do that).
*** Process was decided upon for how the CCSC will organize for
action: we will convene, decide what we can do on the matter, and
contact ROs/other contacts individually and ad hoc to get things
done. If you think the CCSC needs to coordinate an action,
contact any of us on the committee and we'll do all that ASAP.
Amber will meet with some high-up folks from USWA on
Thursday. They are very excited about working with USAS and
about the CCSC. They are interested in coordinating with USAS
some campaigns in areas where one of us can help the other; for
instance, using a steel contract renewal struggle as a place to
start organizing students who can become part of USAS.
This way of organizing is rather alien to what we are used to doing,
especially as a national organization -- which is usually responding
to local conditions, instead of trying to create local conditions.
However, we felt that it might be worth a try as a way to expand
into chapter-poor areas (we'll make a firmer judgement after the
Thursday meeting). Amber will fill us all in some more on this and
on how it progresses.
---------
Jesse Kirchner
University of Arizona SAS
jessek@u.arizona.edu
USAS webpage: http://www.usasnet.org
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