by Hayley MacMillen
I may have been attending a “Real Food Challenge” event, but food itself wasn’t on my mind as I walked into the panel called “At Work in the Kitchen: Dining Workers Share Their Stories” on Saturday afternoon in Kresge Hall. I expected to hear more tales of poor treatment of campus food workers by managers or of the poverty that many of these workers face. These are the injustices the Living Wage Campaign focuses on, as these are the injustices this campaign seeks to end.
But at the panel and the rest of the Real Food Challenge conference, I began to understand that these injustices are part of a larger web of food injustice.
Legacy of X
by Kira Hooks
This past Saturday, February 19, FMO’s Political Action Committee, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., African American Freshmen Activities Board, and The Living Wage Campaign cosponsored the annual Legacy of X: Living the Legacy, a Harmonic Convergence of Talent. The event included brief lectures from Northwestern professors Martha Biondi and Ivy Wilson, a performance from African American Theater Ensemble and Soul4Real, and concluded with the showing of Spike Lee’s hit film, “X.”
In keeping with the theme of the event, Professor Biondi spoke about the student movements birthed after the biography of Malcolm X was released.
Wisconsin Workers Fight for Their Rights
A standoff in Wisconsin between Republican state lawmakers and their Democratic counterparts, as well as public workers and unions, has put the state capitol at center stage of a national struggle for workers’ rights, with peaceful protests not seen since the Vietnam War 40 years ago. Republican leaders are ignoring the interests of 200,000 state employees and their families, and so far are choosing to stand with big business and campaign contributors over working families.
We stand with the working families in Wisconsin and wish them luck in their struggle.
Sodexo accused of employee abuses, reported in The Washington Post
The TransAfrica Forum report points to widespread problems in the company, citing worker complaints of low or withheld wages and a hostile environment to unionizing. Members of the Living Wage Campaign have encountered many stories of labor abuse by Sodexo. Our fight for the rights of workers on this campus is part of a global effort to force multi-billion dollar companies like Sodexo to recognize their responsibility for all of the people they employ. We hope to use this blog and the new website to connect you to the stories of the workers on this campus, and why our action and support are crucial.
