Hampshire Activism Roundup

Hey everybody! It’s been awhile. I’ve decided to start aggregating some interesting links & whatnot on the Signboard again, since there’s so much rad stuff going on these days and I figure it’d be nice for folx to have a central place to find info. about stuff on & off campus. Keep your eyes peeled for more posts as developments come in!

To inaugurate this new season for the Signboard, I thought I’d just do a quick Hampshire activist-trip roundup. Three really cool and super important actions occurred on February 26th, February 27th, and March 2nd–and there just so happens to be video for all three of them! Thanks to Will Delphia for being the all-around media point person for this kind of thing :).

• On the 26th, Hampshire students turned out in droves to support Planned Parenthood against massive budget cuts being pushed through the House from the right wing. In response to this threat to Planned Parenthood’s continued ability to provide reproductive health services from abortions, to STI prevention, breast exams, and education, they called on supporters to mobilize in support of women’s health and publicly available family planning. Students managed to organize two buses and mobilized over 90 students to the march in New York City (not to mention the amount of “Div 4s” I saw when I got there!). Video embedded below:
  

• On the 27th, Hampshire students as well as others from the Pioneer Valley turned out to support the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in their fight against Stop & Shop in Boston for what they’re calling the “Do the Right Thing Tour”. The CIW is an amazing, wonderful group that has been consistently winning its demands and building its power for about 15 years now. Nowadays they’ve got their hands in a whole lot of things, including the Excluded Workers Congress formed at the US Social Forum this past summer, but they’ve still got enough steam to shame Publix & Ahold on a regular basis! You’ve got to admire that tenacity. Video below!
• Finally, on March 2nd, a big rally was held at the UMass Student Union in solidarity with striking workers in Wisconsin. Check out the Facebook page for a list of sponsoring groups & unions–this kind of stuff is really invigorating! And the video…

I will note one thing that sticks out to me when we put all these videos side-by-side: we need to make the connections between our movements. I know this can kind of sound like a truism, what with “intersectionality” being so important to radical/left discourse in this country for the last few decades, but I can’t emphasise enough how much we need to show up at each other’s meetings, rallies, etc. Let me explain.

The most salient example of this, for me, was going to the Planned Parenthood rally in NYC. I happened to arrive early enough to attend a huge Wisconsin solidarity rally just before. What was really great was how much gushy solidarity was being passed around–the organisers made it clear multiple times that everyone should march from the Wisconsin rally to the Planned Parenthood rally when it was over. Really invigorating stuff all around–with a healthy dose of American nationalism–but after arriving at the PP rally, one thing really, really stuck out.

An organiser thanked Mayor Bloomberg for his stance on reproductive rights in no uncertain terms. The rally in general had a strong focus on elected officials which always unsettles me, but this in particular seemed like the biggest slap in the face to folks who had just come from the Wisconsin rally. Why?

Because when speakers were relating the struggle for workers’ rights back home, they went on at length about Bloomberg’s escalations against workers in New York City. Bloomberg is not a friend. He is a bureaucrat who makes calculated choices. And to come from a rousing rally where much verbiage was devoted to specifically outlining what the stakes were in NYC and the state in general for workers, to go to this next rally and hear the very same politicians being upheld & lauded on the basis of their support for another issue is mind-boggling to me.

Of course, it is better than Bloomberg being a rabidly anti-abortion freak. But this is precisely how movements are divided–giving hand-outs to one at the expense of the other. I think it calls for more caution and never letting the pressure off of talking heads like Bloomberg–pat him on the head for being sensible and supporting reproductive rights, but by god don’t give him a medal while he’s putting workers in danger.

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So, that’s all for now–like I said, expect more from the Signboard in the coming weeks! Thanks for reading.

A final note: The Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program (CLPP) offered invaluable logistics support to the effort and the CLPP student group used the rally as an opportunity to get the word out about the annual on-campus reproductive justice conference, this year April 8-10. Please consider coming to this wonderful conference and making precisely some of these linkages and connections I’ve been talking about with activists around the country!