The issue of sweatshops, intimately linked to globalization, has spurred many demonstrations at colleges and universities across the country. Students object to companies that manufacture sportswear with their college's logo in foreign countries with exploitative labor conditions. When discussions with school officials are unfruitful, students engage in sit-ins and hunger strikes to press their demands. Ga. Raising awareness on college campuses, SOA Watch, a grassroots organization led by Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois, has motivated increasing numbers of students to bring the struggle to national prominence. Mobilization protesters risk arrest in non-violent blockade of IMF meeting.
World hunger is another issue compounded by globalization that motivates young activists.
These meals have not only generated conversations about food wasted in the cafeteria but also interest in the structural causes of hunger. At my grammar school in Pittsburgh, Pa., about 75 percent of the kids were on food stamps. Being a white, middle-class person at college is exactly why I need to learn more and do something about hunger. Many protest racial profiling and police brutality in U.S. cities, others agitate in support of Tibet's right to self-determination, while still others voice their opposition to U.S. economic sanctions on Iraq. For the global struggle, one needs to be prepared to go where the action is.