Sweatshop protesters need solutions

Dear Purdue Students Against Sweatshops,

Thank you for bringing Jim Keady and Leslie Kretzu to Purdue. Their experiences from adopting the lifestyle and wages of sweatshop workers should prove invaluable in showing the depth of the atrocities being committed around the globe.

That said, we would like to ask Jim Keady and Leslie Kretzu a favor — please bring both your anecdotes and some solutions.

This is not an attack, merely a suggestion. If you are still wondering what to say, be sure it includes definite solutions that our students can follow to help the crusade against sweatshops.

Most of us can generally agree that the idea of others starving and living in squalor is disturbing.

Give those of us who don't want to hunger strike or attack corporate logos a way to help. Students on this campus are fairly apathetic and this is an issue that has encouraged a lot of discussion.

Our student body has already had a schism over the protests of Students Against Sweatshops this semester, and it was far from the first.

Please don't just rile up the student body. There are those who want to help. Show them how; don't just irritate them and encourage the perception of Purdue Students Against Sweatshops as an extremist group. That won't help them; it won't help more moderate students, and it definitely won't help any sweatshop workers.

The cynicism and bitterness are already there; they don't need encouragement.

When Kretzu and Keady present "Real Life Survivor Story: Starving on a Nike Sweatshop Wage" at 7 tonight in Matthews Hall, Room 210, let’s hope they also present real life survivor solutions.

Real life, real world solutions give direction to the mob. Without solutions, you're just whining.

You survived to tell about it, now show us how to fix it.

n Editorial Board: Keith Thomas, Tom McHenry, Melissa Davis and Laura Pelner.

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