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Pittsburgh Pirates Sweat through ALL STAR 2005

No Sweatshops Bucco! Takes the Night Train to Ft Wayne at the end of July

By Kenneth Miller

Members of the Pittsburgh Anti Sweatshop Community Alliance are pleased to announce the content of a 2-hour meeting with the Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Club on April 11, 2005. Michelle Gaffey, Celeste Taylor and Kenneth Miller represented PASCA. The Pittsburgh Pirates, significantly, brought their Director of Merchandising -- Joe B., the person who knows the most about licensing agreements and promotional items, to the table. We discussed the urgent need to identify exactly who the workers that make Pirate gear are and what their rights are. We presented the testimony of workers who make Gildan Activewear in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Haiti. We presented the testimony of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity that visited Pittsburgh on October 16, 2004. The Pittsburgh Pirates agreed to do many things in advance of a follow up meeting but have so far refused to meet with us again.

Individuals and organizations can be a part of PASCA bargaining by contacting the Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Club, demand a report from the April 11 meeting with PASCA and join us at the table when we meet again. Stop by TMC for sets of the 4th Edition Major League Sweatshop Baseball Cards, educate yourself and others about the struggle of workers in the Global Apparel Industry. A SweatFree Baseball Campaign website is graciously hosted by the Industrial Workers of the World.  You can learn about our strategies and Major League Sweatshop Education at http://www.iww.org/unions/iu410/mlb

Some of the activities of the Pittsburgh Anti-Sweatshop Community Alliance are unique in the anti sweatshop movement. Our success requires that we bring in knowledge and information from many different sources. Members of this Pittsburgh community have been very generous by helping to make this possible.

In particular, at this time we would like to thank the Steel Valley Printers for nearly $1,000 worth of discounted printing over the course of our 4-year effort and those that have made cash donations to pay for the recent trips.

Denver, CO - SweatFree Communities Conference May 5-6 Nearly 80 people from across the United States attended this meeting to discuss the winning and implementation of legislative sweatfree procurement policies. Pittsburgh has one of the oldest policies, put forward by Jim Ferlo and passed by the City Counsel in 1997. PASCA has a meeting scheduled with the County Solicitor who will be responsible for
further implementation of our policy in the soon-to-be merged City/County purchasing departments scheduled at the end of June. Notes from the meeting in Denver are now available on the SweatFree Communities website. http://www.behindthelabel.org/campaigns/sfc.asp

 

It was most encouraging to meet worker representatives from three different countries in Central America, learn how they are working together and with workers on other continents. A plan fo global organization of the apparel industry is coming from the workers themselves.  What they need from the North American students and workers is defense and solidarity, they need an extension of our civil rights and civil liberties on the floor of their work places and they need it now in the context of ongoing union
organizing. This successful conference was organized by Bjorn Claeson and Liana Foxvog of SweatFree Communities. SweatFree Communities also provided PASCA with $450 in scholarship funds.

Topeka, KS - Dedication of the Lucinda Todd Memorial Bridge May 16 It was an honor for members of the Pittsburgh AntiSweatshop Community Alliance and Allegheny County ACORN to travel to Topeka KS for the 2nd time this year for the Dedication of the Lucinda Todd Memorial Bridge. We brought with us the TESTIMONY about educational opportunities for young people here in Pittsburgh and from Bangladesh as presented at Freedom Corner on October 16, 2004. Lucinda Todd?s example of organizing educational testimony is an example that the anti sweatshop movement sorely needs. 90% of sweatshop workers are young women between the ages of 14 and 25 that need and have a right to nothing less than the same educational opportunities that we expect for ourselves.

 

As we win disclosure of factory locations and wage disclosure, empowering workers with the ability to verify these things and compare working conditions in sweatshops throughout the world -- we have to keep our eyes on what other "objective measures" we will require factories to report to our cities and states, colleges and universities. In Pittsburgh, we are going to be focusing on educational opportunities.

In recent years and in years to come workers from sweatshops will be touring our communities to encourage our solidarity and explicate our common struggles for dignity on the job and justice in our societies. It is not always clear what it that we can
give them to take home with them, what our solidarity will feel like and how it will be experienced as on the floor of the factory. One of the things that workers can take home with them and that we need to make sure they get when they visit our communities is the lessons and experience of our civil rights struggle. Every community has this to give, and there is nothing more valuable or immediately relevant for us to share.

The things that we learned in Kansas are things we will bring back to Pittsburgh and revisit repeatedly.  It is one of the most radical histories in America,
KANSAS FEVER, John Brown, the first Free State in the West, the Buffalo Soldiers, and a hot bed of the Black Press. They know Pittsburgh in Kansas through the long history of the Pittsburgh Courier, amongst other things, and the links between our communities run deep.


We express our gratitude to Sonny Scoggins, the Bias Busters of Kansas and the Kansas Committee to Commemorate Brown v Board of Education for their relentless organizing and willingness to share their gifts, like Lucinda Todd. The Civil Rights Bridge from Kansas to the rest of the world is wide and reaches far. Thank you to Counsel Person Twanda Carlisle who introduced a proclamation naming May 16, 2005 Lucinda Todd Day in the City of Pittsburgh.