What exactly IS the anti-sweatshop campaign all about?

On college campuses all across the US, students have rallied, organized, educated and agitated around the issue of sweatshop labor and all of its abuses. But after five solid years of this sort of thing, even the New York Times can't really get the goal of the movement straight.

The first thing to understand is that THIS IS NOT A BOYCOTT. On a personal level, I don't generally engage in "lifestyle activism." I don't have any quarrel with people who do, and I think that vegetarianism, veganism, buying environmentally conscious products and so on are all positive things. But that's not what the sweatshop issue is about. It's about changing the system that causes these problems. I happen to get most of my clothes from Old Navy, which, along with The Gap and Banana Republic, is one of the biggest sweatshop abusers in the world. I'm not proud of this, but it doesn't keep me up nights. I have better things to do with my time.

I don't want the factories to pull out of the countries where they exist. Whether them being there in the first place is a good or bad thing is a debatable issue. But they exist now and people are dependent on them for survival. A boycott that would cause factories to close would only hurt the people who we're trying to help. So then what's the point of sweatshop activism? To improve labor conditions WORLDWIDE. I would never ask or expect anyone to boycott the companies that are abusing these peoples' human rights. But by putting pressure on them what we can do is cause companies to recognize the unions that their employees try to organize, to pay living wages, to install adequate health and safety protections, to respect women's reproductive rights. By getting Vassar College as an institution to withdraw its money from sweatshop-abusing corporations, along with the 62 other schools involved with the Workers' Rights Consortium, we can be a part of putting enormous pressure and attention on abusive companies.

So join us in fighting for the rights of workers everywhere. And you can wear whatever the hell you want to the meetings.

-Mike Scimone