History

We are a relatively new organization on campus, but we have passed the semester mark, and here are some notable accomplishments (for a more detailed, blow by blow history, check out our home page and scroll down).

• We picked up the Fair Food campaign from UH Students for Fair Trade, and excalated and coordinated with other groups until we got Aramark to make an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee workers to:
  • pay almost double the wages for farmworkers,
  • work actively against modern-day slavery, and
  • promote space for worker participation in the tomato supply chain.
• Started actions in the Kroger campaign, including a mile-long march and a picket.
• Hosted the Spring 2010 Texas Regional Encuentro.
• Co-sponsored and co-organized the Houston/Rio Grande Valley caravan to the Farmworker Freedom March in Florida, which was a three day, thirty mile march involving over 1500 people from across the country.
• Co-sponsored and Co-organized the Houston Delegation to the 2010 US S0cial Forum in Detroit.

We are started as former members of UH Students for Fair Trade and UH Students Against Sweatshops, and we maintain our dedication to those issues. Collectively those groups have brought some of the biggest progressive changes to UH in recent history.

• We went from a campus with no Fair Trade coffee, to one that sells Fair Trade coffee in all coffee outlets on campus.
• We were able to get 5 all-Fair venues on campus, including both cafeterias and the heavily trafficked Java City in the University Center.
• UH now sells Fair Trade tea, greeting cards, chocolate and hot chocolate.
• We are the first school in Texas to affiliate with the Workers Rights Consortium, a third-party apparel worker watchdog organization, that inspects factories for violations of workers rights.
• We were the first school in Texas, and the second second school in the country to cut our apparel contract with Russell Athletics as part of a wildly successful national boycott that resulted in them reopening and rehiring people from a factory that was closed unjustly.

You can check out the history of these groups at:

UH Students for Fair Trade

UH Students Against Sweatshops