In an era of international outsourcing, your investments in
this fund--which focuses on labor practices and workers' rights--will
accrue exponential returns. The worker is the core of our system, so
the board takes a keen interest in quality assurance for this fund.
"Place this brochure advertising 'Deportation Class' seating in airline seat pockets and airport waiting rooms to help show how commercial airlines are complicit in government deportation programs that treat people as inferior to trade goods. Download and print before you fly!" See also project AIRP.
"Use and develop this software that turns the Cuecat, the freely available barcode scanner meant to aid shopping from home and to keep messy information away from 'consumers', into a tool for learning about corporate behavior."
"Dub this hilarious filmstrip about the racism of US drug laws over the previews of rented movies before returning the tapes to the store. To get filmstrip for dubbing, download and output file from above URL or order tape."
"Program a computer game designed to prepare the user to work in a fast-food restaurant. Distribute it free of charge to American public schools. The crowning achievement would be to have the game endorsed and distributed by one of the major fast-food chains. Publicize."
"Remake the story of Pinocchio so that he goes to Disney Land, and rather than being transformed into a pack animal, he becomes a real, live boy... who just happens to be from a Third-World country. He and several other kids are then taken to factually accurate animated representations of Disney's Third- World sweatshops. In the end Pinocchio is beaten to death by the guards for attempting to take one of the shirts he was forced to manufacture."
"A urinalysis lab worker should save and return as 'corporate property' all tested urine of new hires in a mass mailing to the CEO of a major corporation. The return of urine to its 'rightful owners' should be made into a highly visible press event."
"Stage a new trend in which the upward rise of housing costs in major cities leads corporations to lease office cubicles to workers who then live in them. Set up residences in an office building with personal belongings, cots, etc. Get the story on national news, use it as a way to talk about increasing dependence on large corporations."
"Manufacture cards to be placed with sweatshop-produced apparel (in shoe boxes, shirt/pant pockets, etc.) in department stores. Cards can contain such phrases as 'Handmade just for you by Juan, your Honduran friend. 3.5 cents of your purchase will go towards feeding my family. Thank you!'"
"An WTO/GATT investor will pay US$500 to anyone who successfully deploys a full size Trojan Horse against the fortress that has been built to keep protesters out of sight and away from the power brokers of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) meeting in Quebec. US$200 is being offered by the same investor for anyone who can deploy a siege tower, catapult or 'Trojan Rabbit.'"
"Print stickers resembling 'Inspected by' stickers but including as well pictures of either individual sweatshop workers, or the insides of sweatshops. Go into stores (Gap, Banana Republic, etc.) and paste away."
"Make a video segment about how copyrights protect the rich and record it over the anti-piracy message at the start of videos." (This image was sent in and could be used for such taping.)
"Find out which politicians voted for allowing drug testing in the work place, and lobby for them to have their urine tested too. Write letter as their constituents demanding they have their urine screened regularly."
"This is a low-tech, inexpensive agitprop tool that can be used for living wage campaigns. Alter the yellow plastic safety floor signs that are used when janitors mop floors...instead of the pictogram of the 'falling man' use pictogram of figure pulling it's pockets out, denotating poverty, and the words CAUTION - CUIDADO, WAGE SLAVERY! DON'T STAND FOR IT. Would be a great visual during a student or worker occupation of an administration building, especially an oversized one."
"Place 'Sally Struthers'-style leaflets, detailing the poor working conditions that exist for those who assemble athletic footwear, in major-brand athletic shoes, their shoeboxes, or the shoppings bags containing them, before or as they are being sold. Workers in many cities are being sought to plant the leaflets on an agreed-upon day, especially in 'flagship' stores. Media must report on it." Click here for a sample leaflet sent in by a NIKE subscriber (and here for high-res version of same).
"Make a database of all the worker-owned companies in the United States. A web page that has been started for this is here. Please submit any information about worker-owned companies."
"Using the Freedom of Information Act and your skills in investigative reporting, begin gathering all available information on stock holdings, job history, drug usage, etc from Bush Administration appointees and Congressional staffs in areas that have proven hostile to American consumers, the environment, and public safety, and begin a website to post the rogues gallery and their information."
"Get rich white guys in sports bars to pick oranges and pay for it by inventing a video game that activates telepresent robotic labor. Disguise the fact that game players are engaging in labor by camouflaging the game as a first person shoot-em-up. Donate video game profits to the UFW. This project could be accomplished by staging it for the media, but in that case the investment capital goes directly to the UFW."
"Produce a documentary linking the increasingly harsh realities of the American workplace and economy to the rise in mental illness within the American population. Perhaps compare with European rates; perhaps also discuss 'official' corporate solutions--Prozac etc.--within this context. Film must be scheduled as part of a major regional film festival."
"Insert realistic collector cards into cereal boxes, each with a photo and description of one of the many workers that has been killed or maimed at the cereal manufacturer's factory."
"Fight privatization of the rails by changing messages on the digital message boards of London Underground trains so that they support the drivers and staff instead of the Labor Government fuckups who are trying to swindle the public out of our fundamental right to decent public transportation."
"The Department of Space and Land Reclamation is a campaign to reclaim all space, land and visuals of Chicago. Throughout the city, citizens will tactically intervene in streets, allies, parks, corporate atria, and other crevices of the Chicago urban landscape. Additionally, at a secret hub participants will lounge, eat food, attend discussions and plot the more sustained redistribution of all space and land."
"Take old filthy clothes you are going to throw away, affix price tags of $100 or more, and place them on hangers on the racks of your local GAP, Abercrombie and Fitch, etc."
"Start an athletic apparel company called 'Sweatshop' which will sell t-shirts and other sportswear made ethically (but not marketed as such). Use media and word of mouth to popularize the brand as a constant reminder that most apparel is still made in conditions that are little better than slavery."