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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Disney’s lack of respect for human rights exposed at ISU |
Current rating: 0 |
by Nick Berveiler
Email: naberve (nospam) ilstu.edu (unverified!) |
23 Mar 2001
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Here at ISU we have a student group, United Students Against Sweatshops, and have been protesting Disney’s college program since Spring ’00 trying to create a dialogue between ourselves and Disney about sweatshop abuse and what Disney is doing. This week Wednesday, Disney held their recruiting session and we had 30 people protesting this event. |
Disney has been involved with Illinois State University for many years promoting a college internship program at Walt Disney World in which students work at retail or janitorial positions for low wages. These jobs are considered by Disney to be a “magical experience” because Disney is such a well known name and putting Disney College Program on your resume will supposedly make it easier to get jobs elsewhere.
Disney is also well known for its rampant sweatshop abuse in China and Haiti. The National Labor Committee has written several reports and produced the film “Mickey Mouse goes to Haiti” documenting sweatshop abuse. After this film was released Disney moved their sweatshops from Haiti to avoid bad publicity.
Here at ISU we have a student group, United Students Against Sweatshops, and have been protesting Disney’s college program since Spring ’00 trying to create a dialogue between ourselves and Disney about sweatshop abuse and what Disney is doing. This week Wednesday, Disney held their recruiting session and we had 30 people protesting this event. I was at this protest, however I was not present for all of what happened because I was outside while a demonstration was going on inside and I had to leave early to go to a night class. A lot of this is word of mouth from discussion in our Human Rights class.
Nino Selvaggio, an active member of United Students Against Sweatshops planned an act of civil disobedience inside the recruiting, interrupting Disney before they had the chance to start. Nino was dressed nicely and had a Mickey Mouse tie on, confusing the audience who assumed he was working for Disney. After listening to my friends who were inside when this began, this is what Nino had said to the audience.
“Okay everyone, lets get started. Everyone take out a pen and paper.”
Everyone does as told.
“Now, everyone close your eyes for a minute and imagine you are at a far away place. Imagine you are inside a huge building with barbed wire and fences. Imagine that you do not have a pen and paper in front of you but instead a sewing machine. Imagine you are working the same task over and over again for 18 hours and only have two bathroom breaks. Imagine your home is three hours away and you took a bus to get here and you have children at home starving. Imagine that you are working in a factory and the conditions are that of working in a sweatshop.”
It was after hearing this that the audience knew that Nino did not work for Disney and that this was not information Disney had planned to be presented. Nino continued to talk about human rights violations to the crowd of Disney supporters while the PR people for Disney stepped away and called the police. Nino encouraged the Disney recruiters to respond and ask questions about this issue, to create dialogue about this issue. People from the audience yelled for talk about sweatshop abuse to end and for the Disney presentation to start.
When the police arrived, Nino was asked to leave and said he would not leave until he was handcuffed and arrested. Police officers explained that they would not put handcuffs on him in front of everyone and it was not until 4 police officers arrived on the scene that Nino left with the police. Cheering from the audience was made as Nino left the lecture hall.
After 5 minutes of the Disney recruiter talking inside the lecture hall, it was as if the protest had never happened and business as usual for the Disney people who then put on their performance to recruit people to work retail and janitorial positions at Walt Disney World.
During the presentation, several protesters attempted to enter the lecture hall and were stopped by police. The police would not identify themselves and then locked the door the CVA building so that we could not enter. The police would not let us enter because we were considered a threat to Disney’s recruiting even though we had not caused the initial disturbance inside the CVA.
These events led to a decision by United Students Against Sweatshops to hold another protest the next day, Thursday, at noon in front of the Student Services Building to continue protesting Disney’s presence on campus. Our second protest was about raising awareness to more students and faculty by holding signs, passing out fliers and talking to anyone who walked by about our concerns.
There have been mixed feeling going on within our group as to if we want to try to continue to attempt to communicate with Disney or demand that they should not have the right to recruit students on our campus. The Academic Senate is going to take up this issue and question the legitimacy of receiving credit at ISU for participating in the Disney College Program.
ISU’s United Students Against Sweatshops will continue to work on this issue and protest Disney every time they come on our campus. Our student group meets every Monday night at 9 pm in Stevenson 211.
For more information about Sweatshop abuse: www.nlcnet.org
For more information about Disney’s College Program: www.wdwcollegeprogram.com
If you search Yahoo under Disney College Program you will get several results of people who put up websites of their Disney experiences. Decide for yourself if you want to work for a company that employs sweatshop labor in China.
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update |
by Adam Jones
adjameson (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
27 Mar 2001
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The charges against Nino have been dropped—Go Nino! Thanks to everyone who's helped. Please support United Students Against Sweatshops! |
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Sources? |
by Max Jones
max_jones (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
10 Apr 2001
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Just curious, where do you get your facts and figures? How does the National Labor Committee gather their information. You seem like a fairly decent writer, but this report is very biased. I'd love to see some actual research from an authoritative, unbiased, and credible source that proves your point. That would really strengthen your point, because right now you don't have one at all and you're probably making your organization's position worse. Just a clue for you. |
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Disney and sweatshop abuse |
by Nick Berveiler
naberve (nospam) ilstu.edu (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
22 Apr 2001
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Max,
I wrote the article on our protest at ISU against the Disney recruiting and since you asked about credibility, I would have to say that it is unlikely you will find a more reliable source than the NLC who will actually report issues of sweatshop abuse. Disney refuses to talk about the issue. Disney also has a policy of having all employees sign a contract forbidding them from talking about Disney's labor practices. Several of the NLC's reports use information provided by the US dept. of Labor. The latest campaign the NLC had against Disney in 1999 used several Human Rights organizations in China to provide factual information. I think that a lot of times the NLC does not do much more than report facts and testimony. When Charles Kernaghan, the executive director of the NLC, came to ISU last fall he had two women who had worked in a Maquila in Nicaragua and were fired unfairly for supposedly trying to organize a union. To read about the National Labor Committee please go to www.nlcnet.org and under resources and reports you will find specific documentation about the issue. I listed the website in my article and I highly doubt you actually did look on their website.
Next time you criticize an article please e-mail the author so they have the appropriate chance of responding. Before reading criticism on the wal-mart article I did not know to check my own article to see if someone was criticizing me.
Nick Berveiler |
