NEWS
Monday, March 15, 2004
Today's visit to campus by the Declare Yourself Tour was interesting, and featured free American Apparel clothing for people who registered to vote. American Apparel is a clothing company from LA that manufactures their clothing "Sweatshop Free." This from the bio of the owner of the company:"Dov Charney's socially responsible initiatives have included affordable healthcare for employees and their families, immigration support, free English and computer classes, subsidized lunches and bus passes, as well as a commitment to paying decent wages (averaging over $12.50/hour) for the company's nearly 1500 workers. He has been instrumental in propelling American Apparel's growth to the status of largest and most profitable T-shirt manufacturing company in the United States. Recently Charney also expanded the company's environmental policies by launching a new line of organic T-shirts and a program that recycles over a million pounds of fiber scraps annually. Through American Apparel, Charney has proven that the industry does not need to exploit its workforce to be cost-efficient, but rather has used innovation to produce the highest quality garments."
Of course, ideally the company could be an employee-operated cooperative, but short of that it seems a smarter choice than gap. The tour also had demonstration electronic voting equipment, which I have blogged about before since the technology has proven highly flawed, and I support paper ballots counted by scantron (also one of the most accurate and re-countable voting techniques) instead of unproved voting machines whose internal workings are secret under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The visit was also sponsored by Clear Channel, the media conglomerate which pro-war rallies last year. (see my post - scroll down) Read more about Clear Channel here.
Posted by Rob at 7:02 PM
