idea
Labels for slave labor produced goods (a.k.a., Wal Mart's worst nightmare)
What if on every product produced in factories that pays their workers two cents an hour or something, there was a label on the packaging that said, “Inspector general’s warning: This product may have been produced by slave labor.”?
Like the same deal as with cigarettes, except it’s a public service for a moral, not a health issue. It'd be like giving a scarlet letter to all the companies treating people like shit.
Products that rise above a certain standard would be allowed to not have the label. For example, most American-made products wouldn’t have to carry it because the majority of our workers are not mistreated. Where the line could be drawn is debatable, but it's just be nice to have an explicit, obvious way to identify the worst offenders.
Congressional District Strikes
(note: there are no new ideas here, just a bunch of old ones
I ripped off, combined and applied to the current situation)
Project Idea: Antiwar Tuesday
What if every Tuesday, we all did something small to express our opposition to the war? Nothing huge or organized, just slightly out of the ordinary, and in solidarity with strangers from all over the country. It's not going to stop the war, obviously, but it at least affords the opportunity to try, and show your support for other people doing the same.
Possible actions could include not buying gas, wearing a black armband, drawing a peace sign on your hand, not shopping, skipping work or class, shouting "STOP THE WAR" at the top of your lungs, putting up a flier, calling your congressperson or the president, or whatever else you can think of.
Every Tuesday.
Notes on Summer Activism
Three types of activism Lose the Label can launch this summer:
Divestment campaign
Boycott of a specific corporation
Fundraising for existing groups/causes/individuals
If you can think of others, please leave a comment.
A little more about the first three approaches:
Funding
Unfortunately, this isn't an idea for how to get funding. This is an idea for a way to use it.
We could offer money to projects. Like, we have a 'projects fund' set aside. And we parcel it out as needed whenever someone needs a boost to make something happen. We could decide democratically; there could be a finance committee with 4 or 5 people responsible for parceling it out.
Here are some pros and cons to the idea.
On the plus side:
Black Armbands -- May 1st: Chain Invite
This is a tactic meant to create explosive, exponential growth for the "Black Armbands -- May 1st" project Jerome started. I have no idea if this will work, but I'm trying anyway. There's nothing to lose.
First, the straightforward part.
- you RSVP for the event.
- I make you an admin
- you invite 100+ people
That's when it gets more complicated.
facebook group idea
Have you ever searched through the groups on Facebook? There are literally tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands or millions of them. A lot of them are devoted to causes, too. Not like they actually do anything, but still.
There's no umbrella group for activists.
I think we should create a group called "Activists Unite" and push it really really really really really hard. It could be a center for publicizing events, networking with other schools, chatting, procrastination...
Yeah, I know. That's Lose the Label.
But if we launched it, it could become a satellite group and we could spam the walls as much as we wanted. That'd translate into membership, obviously.
ActivistNet: The Coolest Group in the Entire History of Lose the Label!
Let me tell ya a story. There are 2 parts.
PART 1
Antiwar Bob goes to Berkeley. He wants to link up with antiwar activists at UC Santa Cruz to talk about coordinating some events, but he doesn't know anyone there. And he doesn't want to email some stranger because that'll get him nowhere and probably take a lot of time.
But it's ok because he's a member of *drumrolllllll* ActivistNet.