USAS Southeast is . . .

I hope these tips are helpful, though unfortunately it’s getting a bit late to do some of the things, like asking unions for money. But if you’re driving to Hattiesburg, and especially if you’re carpooling, hopefully your expenses won’t be too great anyways. Please let us know what you need, and remember to REGISTER!

1. Basic Fundraising Tips:
a. Give people a number. When you’re asking a person, group, or organization to help fund an activity or whatever, you need to ask for a specific amount. Leave room for them to give more if they really want to or less if they want to help but don’t have pockets quite as deep as you’d hoped.
b. Overestimate. Don’t make the sum of what you’re asking for the exact amount that you need - that’s a surefire way to come up short. It’s usually a safe bet to assume you’ll get one third to half of what you ask for.
c. Call back. If you email, fax, mail or call a person or group for money make sure to follow up with them. Call them to see if they have any questions, to make sure that your request for funding reached the right person, and that person got all the information they need. If you don’t follow up you ensure that you won’t get money. It is also harder to say “no” to someone in person.
d. Give them what they need. Don’t make it hard for people to give you money. In any request you make for funds make sure you include information like who they should make checks out to, where they should send checks, how they can contact you, and what the money is for. Some people/organizations will need more information than others about how you’re using the money. You should find out about the people/organizations’ particular needs when you make follow-up calls.
e. Get help. Fundraising is a difficult task and hard for one person to do alone. Getting more people involved from the beginning only guarantees a better outcome in the end. Dividing the work up on your campus can help too. (e.g. one person to apporach unions, one to do on-campus fundraising and one to organize an event)
f. Self-interest. It is critical to make sure person/organization you’re requesting money from is aware of all the potential benefits to their organization from the event or activity you are trying to get funding for. People don’t give you money because they think you’re so nice, they give you money because they see how their interests are served.

1. Raising Money on Campus:
a. Student Government. On many campuses student governments have a ton of money. Writing a bill for funding and bringing it before your studnet government is often a relatively easy way to get money. Pointing out to your student government all the ways in which the event or activit will help studnet organizations develop will make them all the more interested in helping fund the training. You will need to find a senator to support the bill and allow time for the bill to go through committees and full senate. Also if you are granted money, be sure to do all the right paperwork.
b. Sympathetic faculty/professors. Yes you can ask them for money. A simple letter explaining your organization and what you’re doing printed on nice letterhead can work wonders. Stick one in every mailbox on campus and you might even get a few surprises. Call the professors you know to make sure they got your letter. Some faculty are given discretionary funds by their departments and others might surprise you with a personal check. One thing to be wary of, however, particularly if your campus is unfriendly to your organization, is your university soliciting policy.
c. Departments. Sometimes you will find sympathetic faculty members that don’t have money to give themselves, but support you and are willing to help you get money from departemtns they work in. Departments that often support student activism include: Sociology, Labor Studies, African American Studies, Women’s Studies, History, Philosophy, Social Work, Etc. (Social Sciences and Humanities).

3. Approaching Labor Organizations:
a. Meet and greet. Developing a relationship with locla unions is very important. Students have time and energy that many workers don’t have, and unions have resources many studnets don’t have. Combined with a similar mission this makes for a great partnership. So go meet the folks at all the Union halls in your town. Tell them what’s going on at your campus, and there are events or activities coming up that you will be involved in that concern labor issues. After they know what’s up most unions are more than happy to help fund a group of studnets getting trained to join the struggle for workers’ rights.
b. Councils. Central Labor Councils can also be a place to look to for support. Most will be more than happy to help you find funding, and if they won’t or can’t for some reason give you money, getting a statment of support from the CLC can help you lobby other unions. Labor councils generally meet on a monthly basis though so you need to get in touch with them pretty far in advance. CLCs often have a pretty good idea which locals will be supportive and have contact info for all of them. You can go to the AFL-CIO website at http://www.aflcio.org/unionand/statefed.htm to find links to your state’s CLCs.
c. District and Regional. Contacting district and regional offices of unions can also be worth your while. Fax is usually the best way to put in a request for funds. Since you know exactly when they get it you can make your follow up call a couple of hours after sending the fax to make sure it got in the right hands and see if they need any more information. It is always best to start with a contgact that you nkow first at the district and regional offices.
d. Don’t wait until the last minute. When asking a union for money sooner is always better than later. In some cases a local will have to vote before a substantial amount of money can be granted and that can take a few weeks, not to metnion the time it takes to actually get a check cut.
e. Let them speak. Offer the labor organizations an opportunity to get the word our about a struggle happening locally, or talk about something they are doing or jsut set up a table with their information.

4. Approaching other organizations:
Approaching other community groups that you consider allies might help fund you. After all, they too have a vested interest in the presence of well-trained, experienced organizers in your area. Offer to let them set up an information table, or give a presentation during lunch one day in exchange for a donation.

5. Other ways to raise money:
a. Events. Ask ‘progressive’ acts, (e.g. bands, poets, performance artists) in your area to do a freebie and let your group have the door money. It’s usually not too hard to find a club, pub, or bar that’s willing to let you have a benefit night. Then just make sure everyone shows up and has a blast.
b. Pass the hat. Take up a collection for the group at your meetings (five or more people discussing your group is considered a meeting). It’s a great way to give a little at a time and to actually have money when you need it.
c. The list goes on. You can do anything from having your own walk-a-thon to a yard sale or the classic bake sale (not just for church ladies and PTAs anymore). Just remember to be creative and have fun!

Sample letter:

Dear Professor Progressive,

I’d like to take the time to tell you about a very unique movement that has swept across campuses in the United States, and literally around the world. You may already know about it.

The student movement against sweatshops, largely made up of a national network of thousands called United Students Against Sweatshops, has galvanized student organizing like no other issue since South African apartheid in the 1980s. And sweatshops go beyond the meaning of the word: USAS activists are organizing campus worker living wage campaigns, farmworker solidarity campaigns, and doing many other things to eliminate global inequality.

At this university, we’ve participated in a number of ways. [List the number of ways, and don’t forget to put them in a positive light.] We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished here and what USAS has as a whole, making real gains in workers’ rights, in the collegiate apparel industry, and on our own campuses.

This January, USAS will be holding its national organizing conference in Los Angeles, California, the sweatshop capital of the United States. There we will be marching with L.A. garment workers to protest Forever 21, a company which the L.A. Garment Workers Center has been protesting for sweatshop abuses right here in the US.

This is a very important conference as many new and yound USAS activists are coming otgether for the first time to share in fun, skill-building, and strategizing for the upcoming years. Now, more than ever, it is important that we, as students, get serious about organizing for social change. These are unprecedented times for the global economy and no one knows the next disaster around the corner!

We are raising money locally for our group to travel to this conference, as travel expenses are a little higher than usual for this particular event. We also think it is crucial that we attend: students have so much more power when we can support each other from campus to campus. We are asking you for a $100 to $200 donation towards our expenses. Your donation will go a long way towards supporting one of the most important student movements in recent years.

I’ll be calling you soon after you receive this letter to discuss your thoughts on student organizing and to ask for a contribution. Please consider donating to our group very seriously. Thank you very much.

In Solidarity,

Student Radical

Hey all! The Southeast Regional USAS Conference is rapidly approaching! It will be held in Hattiesburg, Mississippi during the weekend of March 3-4, and you can register for it HERE. Please do so!

Your food and lodging will be provided at no cost and travel scholarships will be available for those who need them. BUT please make every effort to meet the costs of your own transportation! It can be done. . . ask your school, for instance any office that manages community service activities, or other entities you think would be generous.

As far as fundraising goes, you can: 1) straight up ask for the moolah - from your school, a local union, your church if you have one, and so on, 2) have a fundraising event (such as a bake sale, which can have very mixed results from super-successful to flop - we have had the most success with these when we make a bunch of chocolate chip cookies for sale “by donation” and explain what a great cause the donations will support), 3) your other ideas.

Don’t forget that people around you who have done fundraising before - and that may mean more people than you’d think - are good resources for you too. Ask them how they would do it!

I will try to put actual fundraising resources up here soon.

This is where the conference is happening:

Map of University of Southern Ms CU:601-261-5302 3205 Hardy St Hattiesburg, MS 39401, US

NOTE: This address is not the address where workshops will be held - we have yet to confirm the exact location. The linked map is just to help you get to the immediate vicinity of the conference.

More information will follow.

The DSP summit has been postponed until the end of March - probably the 24th, but we have yet to confirm this date. We felt we needed to put more into it and get more people to come so that it can be as useful as possible for attendees.

I apologize for the last-minute change, and I hope nobody is too pissed off . . . please continue to check back on this blog for updates and feel free to email me with questions: liza (at) usasnet.org.

Thanks!

This link is to a map of the environs of the DSP Summit. The summit will be held in room 148 of this building, which is primarily a dorm building, called Eaton Residential College. If you get lost, call Liza: 740 605 1665.

Map of 1211 Dickinson Dr
Coral Gables, FL 33146-2501, US

And here’s the schedule for the day:

9:00 – Breakfast and mingling
9:45 – Introductions
10:00 – 12:15 – Presentation period:
a. Scott Nova, Workers Rights Consortium Director
b. Mel Tenen, University of Miami Administrator & DSP Working group representative
c. Student DSP Working Group participant
12:15 – 1:00 – “Rising Sun” video and discussion
1:00 – 2:00 – Lunch
2:00 – 4:30 – Discussion on student activism, how to wage a successful sweat-free/DSP campaign on your campus.
4:30 – 6:30 – Optional driving tour of Miami, including Umoja Village (Liberty City shanty town) and other places of note.
6:30 – whenever – Cook-out, frisbee and schmoozing.

Well, it looks like we’ll have the ever-delightful Hevily down here to visit instead of Zack. So that’s cool. Hevily is also USAS national staff.

The Southeast Regional Conference is coming up in just one short month! Crap!

It’ll be the first weekend of March, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. And . . . it’s going to be the first outdoor USAS conference, ever! Woop.

We’re working on getting y’all some funds to help you out with travel expenses, but please ask your schools for help with plane tickets or whatnot, or carpool if you’re nearby. You’ll probably be flying into New Orleans, for those that are flying, and we’ll be organizing trips to drive you up to Hattiesburg. That means, get in on Friday night, NOT Saturday, because it’s a long drive and we want you to be there for the programming that we’re getting lined up, which is going to be AWESOME.

As always, check back here for updates, and you can also email me or Brian at liza (at) usasnet.org and brian (at) usasnet.org, respectively.

Hello all! Unfortunately, Zack Knorr won’t be able to come to the summit because he’s attending a conference in Canada that weekend. He will be missed, but the summit is still on for the 10th of February and Scott Nova from the WRC is confirmed for that date. Hope to see you there! Once again, please email me at liza (at) usasnet.org with questions.

Also, love to all our friends who are bringing the good word of peace to Washington this weekend!

On the 10th of February, we’ll be holding a day-long summit about the Designated Suppliers Program at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, FL (about 10 mins. south of Miami proper). The DSP is, in very short, a program that allows schools to ensure that their licensed apparel (the sweatshirts and whatnot that bear the school’s name or logo) is produced under conditions of which the schools can be proud. The WRC investigates specific factories to make sure that workers are paid a living wage and that their rights, including their rights of association among others, are not hindered. More information is available at the WRC website.

UM joined the Workers Rights Consortium and the DSP working group in 2006, following a successful student-labor solidarity campaign centering around associational rights violations perpetrated against UM’s contract employees as they tried to form a union to bargain for better wages and benefits. Since then, our administration’s representatives on the DSP working group have been exceedingly helpful and cooperative, and seem earnestly interested in making the DSP as big as it can be. One of their top objectives, and ours, is to bring other colleges and universities on board. The summit is designed to give students at other Florida schools a solid knowledge of the DSP and how it works, and provide some resources for effective organizing around this important program. It will also be a great networking opportunity!

The program will include presentations from our administrators, who will explain why they decided to put their faith in the relatively new DSP. We also anticipate the presence of Scott Nova, director of the Workers Rights Consortium, and Zack Knorr, who heads the international campaigns department of United Students Against Sweatshops. All presenters and attendees will have their own experiences and knowledge to share, so there will be a substantial discussion section, as well as other as-yet-undecided organizing workshops. If you are planning on attending the summit, please comment to let us know what type of help or information would be most useful to you, or you can email me at liza (at) usasnet.org. We’ll also be organizing a social event, probably along the lines of a cook-out, for Saturday night, to make sure we get to have some fun and get to know each other better.

All of this is at no charge - food and lodging will be provided for free, although if you drive you may have to purchase a day parking pass for $5 in order to park in a UM garage. (I have to double check to see if this applies on weekends.)

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns, and check back on this blog for updates.

Yesterday an RO, whom I shall refer to as ∑, had to resign because this person came from a background that made financial independence a necessity, even while ∑ attended a challenging university. The obligations of ROship were incompatible with this person’s more pressing responsibilities.

This person is truly remarkable, and an asset to the movement for an abundance of reasons. ∑ will certainly go on to do great things and be an inspiration to the people this person meets, regardless of this person’s educational attainment or tenure with USAS. However, ∑’s experience reminds us that we live in a world where the community with which we identify - namely, the college/university community - remains one of privilege. This privilege, for some of us, is extremely tenuous, and something we must fight extremely hard to keep.

Personally, I am attending university because of my parents’ affluence and generosity, and while I don’t feel this is something I need to be ashamed of, it is a great privilege that I must keep in mind throughout my life, and must try my best to deserve. I don’t have to work to support my basic needs while I go to school, and though I will have to pay off loans after I graduate, I have the luxury of not worrying about my tuition now. These are all great blessings that I, and other college students that share this situation with me, must be conscious of and grateful for.

Students without these fortunes obviously face much harder roads. This division between those who must work and those who don’t have to is a random one - no one has control over their family background, nor is there any reason why those of us whose families are more affluent should consider our families inherently better, or ourselves more deserving of a college education (or the converse). I’m not trying to suggest that the readers of this blog actually believe these things, but they are ideas that are implicit in a system that so often denies higher education to people whose families don’t have the rather incredible wealth required to pay for a college education, particularly if financial aid or scholarships aren’t available or are in scant supply.

We should all remember that the experience of higher education is, in every way, easier for those of us who come from families in the middle and upper income brackets than those of us who come from families of more limited financial means. This should temper anyone’s confidence in the famous American upward mobility. Those with the money can, with minimal effort, join the ranks of our society’s college-educated people, while others are mechanically excluded from the outset on the basis of their financial situation, not on their intellect or their spirit. Those who, through whatever means, win the opportunity to go to university can have that snatched away from them at a moment’s notice, arbitrarily, unpredictably.

By so regularly predicating access to higher education on material wealth rather than the wealth of the mind and depth of the heart, I believe we are perpetuating a culture that emphasizes the wrong things. Those of us who are becoming part of that college-educated category, no matter our background, have a responsibility to lead our lives in a way that honors the opportunities with which we have been blessed, and to lead our communities in true unity and friendship with those who have had fewer opportunities. It behooves every human being to make what effort he or she can to provide to the future an egalitarian distribution of the opportunities that some of us have enjoyed, and of which some of us have been unfairly deprived.

Brian and I didn’t do a thing for the blog last year, but hopefully in the New Year (2007, woop!) we can update it more or less regularly, as it is a good way to make regional news easily accessible to anyone who is interested. Part of this is keeping up with our colleagues in the Southeast, but since we have limited time (and the limited patience of those people) we can’t call constantly - so if you have Southeast news, post it as a comment or email us - brian (at) usasnet.org or liza (at) usasnet.org.