July 11, 2006

"No Sweatshops, Bucco!" March/Carnival -- Today!

WHEN: Today! 7/11/2006, 4:30 PM
WHERE: Meet at Freedom Corner
(Centre and Crawford Avenues) at 4:30 and then march to the Roberto Clemente Bridge (aka 6th street bridge).

The Sweatshop Carnival (a moveable celebration) will be on the bridge and also around PNC Park. The Sweatshop Carnival is a global message of peace and solidarity from the 2006 All Star Game at PNC Park.

It will include games such as:
Close this Factory
Toss that Worker a Peanut
The Wage of Poverty Wages
Baseball for Workers
No Sweatshops Bucco Mural coloring contest


Speakers will also be present.

This is being sponsored by The Pittsburgh Anti-Sweatshop Community Alliance.

An editorial from the Post-Gazette on this subject can be found here. It asks:

Would you mind if that Pittsburgh Pirates shirt you bought last week was sewn by a 14-year-old girl in Bangladesh during her 12th hour of labor in a factory that pays her in pocket change and certainly no overtime?

and notes:

Polls have shown that most Americans do mind. And certainly Pittsburghers, with their long tradition of improving labor conditions through collective bargaining, are even more likely to balk at their hometown team's shirts being manufactured in sweatshops.
For more information:
nosweatshopsbucco@yahoo.com
Thomas Merton Center
5125 Penn Ave
412-241-1339


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great...use the All-Star game for your political crap. Nice image you're projecting of our city. You i-d-i-o-t-s.

Maria said...

Gee, I'm so disappointed!

I expected someone to say this as soon as I posted this entry.

I had to wait 12 hours for it.

Sean McDaniel said...

hey maria,
there's no law against using the all star game as a forum for your views...the sweat shop folks are earnest in their beliefs and didn't try to upset set anyone too much on a fun night...the same can't be said for the anti-abortion types who took up positions at the end of the sixth street bridge with their gruesome six foot tall photos of aborted fetuses. yes the have the same right to express their views as anyone, but there's always a more discrete way to do so...too bad that other groups (the jews for jesus, for example) had to be lumped in with the pro-life zealots.

Maria said...

I hope you realize I was being sarcastic when I said I was disappointed.

A friend told me about the anti choice folks who were there.

While I too acknowledge their free speech rights, my friend said that she was amazed to see them not only arguing with a cop who wanted them to move a little further from the corner, but that one actually shoved their large sign into the cop, and from what my friend saw, was not arrested for doing that.

Sean McDaniel said...

hey, i would have been disappointed for the usuaul suspects to log a snarky opinion about the sweat shop protest. honestly, i expect them to be more vigilant.