2008 Woodie Awards
Living Wage Campaign
Solidarity inaugurates two weeks of events
Anna Sedney
Issue date: 3/19/03 Section: News
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Fifty students armed with backpacks and a passion for workers' rights storm a building, chanting, shouting and breaking through lines of police. Sound like a revolution? This was the first day of the Harvard Living Wage Campaign's sit-in of Massachusetts Hall, as shown in the documentary Occupation. The screening of the 45-minute film kicked off the Georgetown Solidarity Committee's Living Wage Awareness Fortnight.
The film traces the three-week sit-in of the main administration building of Harvard University by protesting students. They were trying to get the Harvard administration to agree to granting a living wage to all service employees of Harvard and all the companies with which it contracts.
The GSC's plan for the next two weeks is nowhere near as dramatic or confrontational as Harvard's sit-in. Planned events include training for English as a Second Language teachers for workers and a debate on the "Economics of the Living Wage" between two economists.
According to Occupation, the Harvard campaign spent the three years before the sit-in using similar tactics to raise awareness among the student body, but did not gain national attention until the sit-in.
While the three weeks began with a small group of students occupying one campus building, other students and even Harvard employees eventually joined the protest. The protesters won the support of many unions, including the AFL-CIO and the SEIU, two of the largest union organizations in the country.
Although Georgetown's Living Wage Awareness Campaign is not facing quite the struggle of the Harvard campaign, it does face obstacles that Harvard did not -- primarily, money.
Georgetown's endowment is paltry compared to Harvard's, and Georgetown has been running a deficit for several years. According to Doug Shaw of University Communications, "[The University] is committed to doing the best [it] can given the realities of [its] financial situation."
Ginny Leavell, a justice and peace sophomore and GSC member, countered this, saying, "It's not a question of can we do it, but should we do it ... Why are we paying the people who work here wages that leave them in poverty ... that they can't survive on?"
The film traces the three-week sit-in of the main administration building of Harvard University by protesting students. They were trying to get the Harvard administration to agree to granting a living wage to all service employees of Harvard and all the companies with which it contracts.
The GSC's plan for the next two weeks is nowhere near as dramatic or confrontational as Harvard's sit-in. Planned events include training for English as a Second Language teachers for workers and a debate on the "Economics of the Living Wage" between two economists.
According to Occupation, the Harvard campaign spent the three years before the sit-in using similar tactics to raise awareness among the student body, but did not gain national attention until the sit-in.
While the three weeks began with a small group of students occupying one campus building, other students and even Harvard employees eventually joined the protest. The protesters won the support of many unions, including the AFL-CIO and the SEIU, two of the largest union organizations in the country.
Although Georgetown's Living Wage Awareness Campaign is not facing quite the struggle of the Harvard campaign, it does face obstacles that Harvard did not -- primarily, money.
Georgetown's endowment is paltry compared to Harvard's, and Georgetown has been running a deficit for several years. According to Doug Shaw of University Communications, "[The University] is committed to doing the best [it] can given the realities of [its] financial situation."
Ginny Leavell, a justice and peace sophomore and GSC member, countered this, saying, "It's not a question of can we do it, but should we do it ... Why are we paying the people who work here wages that leave them in poverty ... that they can't survive on?"