Next fall, the campaign will build on the momentum created by these victories. There is talk of organizing a referendum on the demands by the student body. If the administration remains intransigent, organizers will consider occupying the administrative offices, since this has proven to be the most effective tactic in the anti-sweatshop movement and in campaigns with campus workers. Their success has spurred a debate on how to move beyond battling for the Workers' Rights Consortium. The campaign against SMS offers a concrete rallying point to move from consumer action to labor organizing.
Student activists see the devastating effects of global capitalism on campuses and communities.
SMS has around 103,000 employees and only 12,000 are unionized. It has a long record of aggressive anti-union organizing and leads big business' fight to slash wages and conditions. Recently the population incarcerated in the US surpassed two million, up from one million in 1990 and 500,000 in 1985. Communities besieged by state repression and police brutality, along with other left and progressive forces, are mounting small but promising resistance campaigns. The large, high-profile demonstrations against the police murder of Amadou Diallo last year, and the protests when Diallo's murderers were acquitted, illustrate the explosive situation that has developed in New York after years of police repression.