SHAWN CHENG/YH

Good morning Vietnam: the new activism

Two months after spending four days in a Seattle prison for protesting "secret global government," Terra Lawson-Remer, MC '00, is still angry. "They attacked us while we were just sitting there non-violently, singing," she said of the confrontation between the Seattle police and the thousands protesting the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Tues., Nov. 30, 1999. "It felt like a battle between the hired hitmen for the WTO who were protecting the elite order and the people who wanted to create a democracy. We drew the lines, but they started the war." Yet Lawson-Remer's anger melts into excitement when she speaks of the demonstrations themselves. "The conference galvanized people to be more radical," she said. "There was democracy in the streets."

Rewind 30 years to May 1970, when democracy was in the streets every day, all over the country. In New Haven, Conn., Black Panther leader Bobby Seale was being held for the mur-der of FBI agent Alex Rackley; in Washington, D.C., Richard Nixon announced the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. Tensions were high as students boycotted class and protesters occupied the New Haven Green. As they would do in Seattle 30 years later, the National Guard rolled into the streets, and the battle lines were drawn. "It was a surprising experience to walk down Howe Street and see students lying down by men in khakis carrying automatic weapons," political science Professor William Foltz, GRD '63, remembered. "These were 19-year-old kids, and they were scared s***less."

Thanks to the efforts of then-University President Kingman Brewster, TD '41, who opened the campus to throngs of outside protesters on Fri., May 1, Yale emerged without a scratch, but other institutions were not so lucky. Three days later, four students at Kent State University were shot and killed by the National Guard. "In those days, you had May Day, Kent State, and the invasion of Cambodia all at once," Foltz said. "There was a clear sense that something was wrong."

According to the new student activists, that sense has not been killed by the complacency of a booming economy. "During the civil rights and anti-war struggle, there was a feeling of national urgency," Jean Friedman-Rudovsky, the national media coordinator for the Student Alliance to Reform Corporations (STARC), said. "This is the same [now]."

COURTESY CORPREFORM.ORG SEATTLE, 1999: Tanks and tear gas evoke memories of protests past.

Many current students scoff. "Let's face it—the economy is doing well, and most students I know seem content to join corporate America," Rumpus editor Matthew Belinkie, TC '02, said. "Quite frankly, something severe needs to come along for student activists not to look silly." Matthew Medearis, SM '01, chairman of the Yale Conservative Party, was less charitable. "Students involved in this type of activism care more about harassing others and labeling big corporations than genuinely helping," he said. "Effective change requires more than setting up a straw man."

But STARC believes that a successful resurgence of activism is possible. Through a series of planned events—including a "Fair Trade Week of Action" in February and "Earth Day to May Day" protests—and smaller, targeted efforts, STARC hopes to bring the energy of the Seattle "victory" to campuses and cities nationwide. Yet the turmoil of that famous May Day in 1970 is clearly lacking from Yale's campus, where student protests typically draw a crowd of 20 rather than 20,000. Could it ever return—and is the fight against "corporate evil" the key to bringing it back?

Fighting the good fight?

"The activity at the WTO was the kind of thing that was happening here—every day," said Sam Chauncey, DC '57, University secretary during the May Day demonstrations and a lecturer in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health. "I can't thing of any real student activism here at all now." STARC, however, would beg to differ. Calling itself the "student movement of today," it is attacking the same agencies that have helped to sweep the U.S. into its present age of prosperity: multinational corporations.

STARC, founded in part by Lawson-Remer, had its first informal meeting in April 1999, and officially established itself as a national student alliance seven months later with a conference at Yale attended by some 500 students from 130 campuses. The rapid growth has continued—presently, STARC's membership numbers over 4,000 students from 250 campuses. Since its inception, the organization has concentrated on its program of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI), urging universities to disclose their investments and to avoid supporting corporations that exploit the communities in which they operate.

Yet STARC's long-term goals are much loftier than SRI. "The members of STARC see that the unregulated growth of corporate power is the greatest threat to the environment, human rights, democracy, and labor in the world today," SRI Coordinator Ben Siegel, PC '00, said. "Students who wish to create positive change in any of these areas must join together to reform the corporate power structure."

Attacking corporate misuse of power is not a novel idea. United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) has focused on reforming sweatshop factories since its founding in July 1998. "In some ways, USAS laid the groundwork for STARC," USAS member Lauren Stephens-Davidowitz, JE '03, said. "[It] reinvigorated student activism and got students and the nation talking about corporate power and its effects."

Indeed, USAS's efforts were strong enough to pressure an increasing number of universities to take action. In October 1999, Yale announced that it would require its licensees to disclose factory names and locations. And on Fri., Jan. 7, the University of California system adopted a policy requiring all companies manufacturing products with its logo to provide a living wage and safe working conditions. These actions were victories for USAS and, by extension, encouraging signs for STARC. But the leap to STARC's greater goals is a sizable one, particularly when it comes to drumming up widespread popular support.

The most fundamental hurdle that STARC must clear is proving that its cause is worth fighting for. And plenty of naysayers deny that there is a problem in the first place. "[STARC] is seriously misrepresenting corporations," economics Professor Philip Levy said. "It is somewhat like saying that workers are terrible because they shoot up workplaces. That does happen, but it is not the norm." Levy once worked with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and believes that STARC and USAS are oversimplifying the issues surrounding corporations overseas. "This issue revolves around whether or not it is moral to offer lower levels of pay or follow different environmental standards in different countries," he said. "As long as workers are voluntarily accepting the jobs, I think it's very hard to make an argument that they're being exploited."

After a semester in Ecuador, however, Lawson-Remer thinks that exploitation is precisely what is happening. While Levy conceded that corporations should follow the "laws of the communities in which they operate," Lawson-Remer claims that these laws lack integrity. "The citizens don't have control over their own governments because the government is so dependent on the corporations that they change the laws of the country to accommodate them," she said. Lawson-Remer also refuted the claim that the workers are satisfied with their jobs, saying, "People there were really angry that business was coming first and not their local autonomy."

Real or imagined, corporate exploitation is still a slippery foe. "It's hard to see what the target is," Lawson-Remer said. "The problem just has so many tentacles." Thus, STARC is taking a multi-angle approach. It hopes to repeat the extraordinary solidarity that spurred the Seattle demonstrations—in which "turtles marched with Teamsters"—to rally support from all walks of life.

The hard sell

The widespread coalition that STARC desires would combine students with union workers, environmentalists and ordinary consumers—creating unlikely, often incompatible, bedfellows. "Students see a common cause with `workers'—trade-union and pink-collar union members," said New Haven Advocate Associate Editor Paul Bass, JE '82, who has watched events in Seattle and New Haven unfold. "In theory, it's a powerful idea. In practice, it's extremely difficult to pull off. [While] unions don't want companies moving abroad and taking away American jobs...the American public enjoys paying artificially low prices for everything we buy."

STARC members realize that it's a hard sell. "Sometimes it seems nothing can shake college students from their apathetic mindsets," Friedman-Rudovsky said. Yet Lawson-Remer envisions a future in which STARC's presence is as prevalent as that of '60s protesters. "I'd like to see a network of activists with local campaigns at hundreds of universities, with the leadership ability to pull off mass action," she said. But can a conglomerate with as vague an aim as "reforming the corporate power structure" pull off the kind of mass movement that occurred three decades ago? Sociology Professor Debra Minkoff, who teaches Contemporary Social Movements, thinks it can. "How movements frame the issue is critical for recruitment and mobilization," she said. "[The framing] must have some resonance among potential participants and the public more generally—so `corporate evil' may be very abstract, but not, in principle, ineffective."

COURTESY YALE BANNER NEW HAVEN, 1970: National Guard puts down nighttime riots.

Those who witnessed the turbulence of 1970 tend to disagree. "Student activism arises when students feel there are local or national issues that are not being addressed by those in authority," Chauncey said. "But I see no evidence that students of today find such issues worthy of major effort." Whereas in 1970, the average student couldn't wait to jump on the protest bandwagon, today only a few diehards feel the need to raise their voices. "We live in a society that's fat, dumb, and happy," Foltz said. "There is no sense of national or international crisis that hangs over everything as there was in those days of great hoo-hah." To Chauncey, that lack makes for a qualitative difference in activism. "I am impressed with what [STARC] is doing," he said. "What is different [from the '60s and '70s] is the intensity and the numbers involved. In the earlier period, the demonstrations would have been day after day and the visits to my office would have been daily or more!"

Still, at least one of those most deeply involved with student activism in the '60s—a former student leader himself—doesn't think the ubiquity of the anti-war protests is necessarily unique. "Let's have no nostalgia for the Vietnam War!" Todd Gitlin, president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) from 1963-64 and a guest lecturer at Yale this semester, said. "Corporate evil itself is very unlikely to be a general mobilizing impetus. But judging from their manifesto, the STARC people, like SDSers 1962-65, know that. It seems to me that they're looking for unifying themes to help activists think about their disparate efforts in common."

Dreaming of another Seattle

Gitlin's modern counterparts agree that this is precisely what they are doing—fighting big problems with a bigger, more dynamically organized coalition. "The power of STARC is that it brings people together from so many different areas of activism to pursue a common goal of justice and true democracy," STARC Coordinator Jonah Zern, Cornell '99, said.

STARC is taking steps toward such expansiveness. During its Fair Trade Week of Action, to be held in February, students will organize against the unqualified grant of Most Favored Nation status to China and against a trade bill in Congress that it believes will exploit Africa. Members expect a large turnout for the event as students continue to ride the wave of excitement from Seattle. Other actions, such as Fair Trade Coffee, focusing on getting retailers such as Starbucks to offer "Fair Trade Certified Coffee," and the "Egregious Eight," a list of the worst corporate offenders in areas like animal rights and labor, are also part of STARC's ongoing agenda. And STARC is even more optimistic about the tentative "Earth Day to May Day," 10 days of diverse, grassroots activism that will culminate in mass May Day demonstrations nationwide.

For all of this planning, the Internet has been an indispensable tool—especially for an organization that, as Lawson-Remer says, has "no money, no office, no location—we're not centered anywhere." Chris Crews, Ohio State '00, a STARC coordinator, credits the Internet even further, placing it at the center of the modern struggle between good and evil. "We can now plan an international day of action, with any target, in any country, and millions of people could know an hour later," he said. "That is the beauty of the Internet: it is ambivalent. It can transmit billions of dollars between corporate shareholders or facilitate a global revolution. Whoever makes better use of the web will ultimately prevail."

Big questions, small answers

But for now, the activists of today are being realistic—they do not expect to destroy the multinational corporate structure just yet. "We're a lot like the civil rights movement in the '50s, building strength for a larger movement to come," Jessica Champagne, BK '01, a Yale USAS leader, said.

No one is certain what form that larger movement will take. But those who have been around and seen it all have little desire to see the '50s of the '90s develop into the '60s of the '00s. "I respect your generation more," said Thomas Greene, BK '49, GRD '55, a retired English and comparative literature professor. "Students today who work in community service really get their hands dirty. I admire this more than the sentimental gestures from the past." In addition to STARC and USAS's active efforts with SRI and Fair Trade Week, Dwight Hall organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and the Women's Center have also striven for real solutions to social injustices. Despite their small numbers, they have met with some success—Yale agreed to disclose factory locations, Starbucks termed itself "very receptive" to Fair Trade Coffee, Habitat has built homes for people across the country, and the Women's Center organized a successful "Take Back the Night" rally in the spring. In light of this pragmatic approach, the '60s may no longer be the model for student activism. "[The war] did kick off a mass movement," Gitlin said, "but that took many years to develop, and in the end also diverted much moral energy from more constructive activities that SDS and other groups were involved in."

Chauncey, however, hinted that at least one aspect of the '60s is worth repeating: the unrestrained passion with which activists approached their cause. "In the '60s and '70s, I think students were less impacted by `the future,'" he said. "I feel today that there is a lot of uncertainty and insecurity about the future. I think that insecurity can prevent a student from following his or her conscience about a social issue. And that to me is both understandable and too bad."

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