Founder of Transfair USA lauds Students for Fair Trade

Our sister group got this email from Paul Rice, CEO and founder of Transfair USA yesterday.

paul@transfairusa.org

Dear Friends and Companeros,

I just today became aware of the incredible progress you guys have made at UH to get Fair Trade coffee on campus. Congratulations!!! What a fantastic accomplishment! I’m really impressed – and proud – of the great work you’re doing there. It truly makes a difference for so many people.

I was in Rwanda and Tanzania this summer, visiting Fair Trade coffee communities and farmers. Everywhere I went, every family I visited, I heard the same story: Fair Trade has changed our lives; Fair Trade gives us hope. In Tanzania, I saw new processing facilities and cupping laboratories, built with FT premiums, which allow farmers to improve their coffee quality and fetch a higher price for their harvest. I visited farmers who were converting to organics, allowing them to produce more safely, sustainably and profitably. In Rwanda, I met young women who had finished high school and are now in technical college – what they called their “dream come true” – thanks to scholarship programs set up with FT premiums. I saw Hutus and Tutsis, working together in the same co-ops, building true reconciliation from the grassroots up. Needless to say, I came home deeply inspired.

Know this: our efforts are working! YOUR efforts are working. Together, we are building a global movement that brings hope, pride and dignity back to millions of hard-working farmers and their family members. Your struggle there at UH is vital to the movement, showing other campus organizers across the country that it CAN be done. So keep the faith. Set new FT goals and continue your fantastic journey. I am proud to stand beside you, fighting the Good Fight – and if there’s ever anything that my team or I can personally do to help, please let me know.

With solidarity and admiration,

Paul

Paul D. Rice
President & CEO
TransFair USA
1500 Broadway, Suite 400
Oakland, CA   94612
Tel: 510-663-5260  ext. 312
Fax: 510-663-5264
www.transfairusa.org

Anti-sweatshop activists getting younger

Two year old Yuna O’Brien regularly attends anti-sweatshop and fair trade protests on the University of Houston campus. In fact if she isn’t given a sign to carry she quickly grabs one side of a sign another protester is carrying. Here is she is in action on August 11, 2008.

Yuna O

Fair Trade concert

Sideshow Tramps

Students for Fair Trade had a conscious raising concert in the UC Arbor today (Tuesday October 16) . Giant Princess played first followed by the Sideshow Tramps. The youngest member of the Students Against Sweatshops, Yuna O’Brien clapped her hands in approval for both bands. Click on the Sideshow Tramps links and thumbnail picture to see full size images.

tramps-_2.jpg

Ross Barnard standing tall and leading the way

UH Students for Fair Trade Stage Direct Action

UH fair traders Ross Barnard and Timothy O’Brien disrupted President John Rudley’s faculty senate meeting address on Wed. Sept 19 a little after noon. This press release followed:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

NO BID MINORITY EXCLUDING CONTRACTS BEING DOLED OUT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

UH STAFFER ALLEGES PAYOFFS TO PRESIDENT RUDLEY

At approximately 12:20 Wednesday afternoon members of registered student organization UH Students for Fair Trade hit U of Houston interim president and chancellor John Rudley with a direct action as they burst into the faculty senate meeting he was addressing with a banner that read “Rudley ignores student concerns.”

Rudley had suddenly canceled his previously scheduled faculty senate appearance after the UH Students against Sweatshops publicized his dishonest actions related to his ties to sweatshop labor.

Students for Fair Trade members were angered that Dr. Rudley was subverting the democratic process by ignoring the fair trade coffee resolution they had gotten passed in the Student Government Association last spring which held that an all fair trade coffee vendor be installed in the 24 hour study lounge in the M.D. Anderson library on campus.

Public information requests reveal no request for proposal (“RFP”) had been issued for the coffee shop contract and that the University and it’s food services contractor were rushing a non fair trade coffee vendor to install a coffee outlet in the library. This no bid action by Rudley staffers shuts out minority vendors and lacks the transparency required for true democracy to prosper.

Minority contractors are currently demanding that Board of Regents vice president Calvin W. Stephens conduct an investigation of similar charges concerning millions of dollars of no bid construction and maintenance contracts.