USAS-NMSU We are pacifists and advocate only NON-VIOLENT ACTIONS

The New Mexico State Chapter of USAS is working hard to educate and inform students and the public about harmful working conditions throughout the world. Sweatshops are devouring human life around the world. We practice and advocate a non-violence philosophy of peaceful action called AHIMSA to resist the spread and proliferation of sweatshops. The Sanskrit word, Ahimsa came from India well over 3000 years ago to symbolize reverence for all life. We think this includes work life and consumer life. The violence of sweatshops is spreading like wildfire all over the world. It is spreading in our global supply chain sweatshop factories, in the police violence against anti-sweatshop demonstrators, and it threatens to transform Ahimsa acts of resistance and peaceful street theater into equally violent forms of action of those being opposed.  We do not want to become that which we resist. We therefore promote non-violent action and resistance to sweatshops around the world.  Practicing Ahimsa in our everyday university, work, and consumer life by creating theater, literature, teach-ins, and raising consciousness of Reverence for the lives of factory workers -  these are ways to peacefully transform the global economy.

We as students, faculty, and staff can make a difference, increase awareness, and enhance education in our university and community by taking non-violent actions:

  1. Please SEE RACHEL's WAY, Non-violent student action examples from Washington D.C. http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/nf/rachael_story.htm

  2. NAKED FEET CAMPAIGN Good Naked Feet stepping into our classroom, sending vibrations throughout the global empire.

  3. AHIMSA is a Sanskrit word that means all life is precious and the practice of non-violence in mind, speech, and body to all life. "AHIMSA means the dignity and sacredness of the human person in relation with all other living beings" (In Jain). For the Jains, Buddhists, and Hindi of the world, this includes respect for all life, but Ahimsa is a philosophy anyone can advocate; it is not a religion.  Ahimsa can lead people to becoming vegetarian (out of respect for animal life), to eliminating the euthanasia of companion animals in community animal shelters, to respect for Mother Nature, and to respect for all working life. Ahimsa is not a religion, it is a philosophy and a way of life.

Mahatma Gandhi acknowledged the powerful impact the Jain philosophy of Ahimsa had upon his personal and political decisions.  His example inspired pacifists around the world, including the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.( SOURCE: "Ahimsa is not a religion...  It is a way of life" By - Clare Rosenfield and Linda Segall).

Most women in sweatshops can not speak out about their oppressive, and by most accounts, violent working conditions, because most transnational corporations locate in nations where voicing dissent is punishable by fines, firing, beating, imprisonment, or death. Corporations blame their subcontractors or the culture of violence of a nation. We need to experience the plight and pain of all people (mostly women) working to make the clothing we wear and the products we consume. And we need to continue the Ahimsa example of non-violent action. This is the cure for greed that breeds violence in factories, and makes them into sweatshop houses of terror, fear, and pain.

INFORMED CHOICE - Our choice of clothing is a place where it is easy to express our preference for non-violence in all workplaces and an end to all sweatshop forms of factory production, in every nation. To make non-violent choices, we must be well informed.

First Step is awareness - We are grossly unaware of the inhumanity and suffering occurring in sweatshops in our inner cities and in nations around the globe. Why? Currently the media and corporate-hired consulting and monitoring firms, are not informing us as to the location of all their factories. Rather, we see the model factories, but not the hidden ones. Further, the level of disinformation, propaganda, and false storytelling by PR hacks and advertising agents replaces the voices of the working women in sweatshops.  When these women speak in front of managers, or to foreigners they presume to be managerial spies, the women must keep silent.  The voice of women in sweatshop is kept in a cage of terror, humiliation, and violence. Awareness will lead us to examine the historical and political economy roots of poverty, racism and violence in sweatshops around the world.

Second Step is liberation - We as consumers are becoming more aware of how our life style and fashion choices affect the lives of millions of women workers in sweatshops around the world. Through awareness we can liberate our minds from attachment to fetish fashion, greed, and our complicity in sweatshop violence.

Effective Reduction in Himsa (Violence) - We can reduce the Himsa in the workplace,  and liberate working women from violence by holding ourselves as consumers and our transnational sweatshop-contractors accountable to Ahimsa values of respect for all life.  We can resist the widespread practice of purchasing and wearing sweatshop fashion at our universities or anywhere in our communities. Our dignity as consumers is enhanced if we respect the dignity of the workers who make our clothing.

Third Step is befriending those who are practicing Himsa - This would include consumers, corporations, subcontractors, supervisors, retailers, university students, faculty, administration, and the unconscious consumer.  Violent words and violent social action can escalate the cycle of violent. When peaceful demonstration is opposed by acts of police or corporate violence, then it is obvious to all spectators, which path is victorious. When we befriend those who are violent, and exhibit Ahimsa, we are able to illuminate a pathway out of the current problem of the greed for sweatshops.

Fourth Step is non-violent action - There are peaceful, non-violent Ahimsa actions we can take, and this is perhaps the best answer to the widespread and mushrooming problem of the sweatshop contracting of transnational corporations, the advertising that misinforms our choices, and the plight of workers (mostly women) who make our clothing.

ACTIONS

 

 References