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In line with Human Rights Week, Socialist and Marxist Studies held a student panel last Thursday in the Bangor Room on the topic of “Human Rights and the University of Maine.” The event was moderated by Isaac Curtis, a member of the Maine Peace Action Committee. The other students on the panel were Sarah Bigney and Alec Aman, members of the Progressive Student Alliance, and Jeff Lowell, another MPAC member. From tacos to tsunamis, topics ranged from a variety of issues in an attempt to raise awareness.
Bigney was first to speak and addressed dining services and bookstore policies. Her main focus was Taco Bell. Bigney said there is a farm in Florida where workers are paid only 40 to 50 cents for every 32 pound bucket they fill with tomatoes, which means they would have to pick 320 tomatoes per hour to make minimum wage, which is nearly impossible. Most of these tomatoes go to Taco Bell.
According to Bigney, the farm workers aren’t able to afford housing, so they must live in places near the farm and owned by the people who run the farm, who charge more than the workers make. Bigney said this forces workers to live with seven to eight others in a small area just to pay rent. The workers are not given benefits, vacations, or paid overtime. These workers have just recently begun to organize and try to better their conditions, but the corporate owners of Taco Bell, Yum Food Brands, refuse to meet with them.
Outrage over these conditions has begun a movement to boycott Taco Bell and has caused 21 universities to remove Taco Bell from their schools. Bigney said that students have been the main drive behind the movement and have caused these results.
“It’s really important that students start to learn about workers’ rights and that they are directly responsible for the living conditions and the lives of the people behind the food here,” Bigney said.
Bigney also criticized the UMaine Bookstore for selling products made by workers in poor conditions. She is trying to get the Bookstore to become a member of the Workers Rights Consortium, which monitors factories and the standards of purchasing schools have.
Douglas Allen, philosophy professor at UMaine and MPAC advisor who helped to organize the event, said that the bookstore had agreed to join the WRC three years ago after much demand from the MPAC, but never did. Allen said that this was partly because a female student who had been the main drive of the movement graduated, leaving no one to put serious pressure on the bookstore to follow through.
Bigney also mentioned Starbucks as a human rights violator. She said that the average coffee grower for Starbucks only makes $300 a year.
Aman said the human rights issues of the colonial days have only progressed and become more bureaucratic. America realized it could make money if they gave large loans out to South American countries and charge interest. This has been going on for quite a while and has caused huge problems with embezzlement and interest payments.
In one example, Aman said that 75 percent of a particular country’s loan was unaccounted for, presumably embezzled by the elite of the country, leading to oppression and poor living conditions for the country’s population.
“It’s a systematic problem within developing worlds that they can literally not afford to take care of their own people because they’re paying foreign governments money,” Aman said.
Aman also touched on issues of sustainability, saying that a footprint mapping quiz online shows that most Americans use twenty times their global allotment of resources. He said students need to be aware of how what we use, from computers to paper cups, affect other people.
Lowell then spoke briefly about the contract the UMaine has with Coca Cola and with their sponsorship of an event last year concerning Iraq. Lowell said that America’s view of Coca Cola is much different from what the rest of the world thinks of them.
“Here we think about polar bears, but around the world, they’re not such a nice corporation,” he said.
Lowell said the company is a major human rights violator, citing an incident where someone saw a worker killed by people coming out of a Coca Cola truck.
Lowell said that last year there was a large uproar when the university sponsored an event at the Black Point Inn called “Doing Business in Iraq.” The event was going to cost eight-hundred dollars a plate, marked down from fifteen-hundred, Lowell said. The benefit the event would provide the students was questionable and it was eventually canceled.
“We need to be vigilant in keeping an eye on what the university does and who they’re signing contracts with and how that affects other people around the world,” Lowell said.
Lastly, Curtis spoke about the contradiction of non-profit humanitarian groups and organizations who, though they save many lives at critical times, fail to take political action on the causes of crises, such as the tsunami disaster.
As for the tsunami disaster, Curtis said that the money raised and donated by people and countries were done for the wrong reason.
“It’s no less racist to denigrate another than to believe that we’re needed to go and save them,” Curtis said.
Curtis said the money raised from charity concerts and the like are basically irrelevant considering the damage done.
“Human rights can’t be achieved by charity, by aid,” Curtis said.
He said the issue relates to the university because many students are being trained to work at non-profit organizations.
Aman said the main goal the students on the panel had was simply increasing knowledge of these issues.
“What’s so important about this week is that we create a fundamental awareness of what our impact is,” Aman said.
Mark Kline, a member of MPAC who attended the student panel event, said he appreciated the students giving such a critical analysis of the university and human rights and is pleased that the mood was still able to remain positive.
“It gives me hope as a student that I can come out of here doing something,” he said.
Allen said he was happy with the attendance to the event and the performance of the students.
Bangor Daily News