>This one's a bit dated, but good enough:..
>In any case, here is a clear case where the attempt to achieve an
>"academic victory" was demonstrably a higher priority over a real
>victory-one that would have return tangible benefits to one small fraction
>of the victims of the new economy.
The first line is the correct one...your anecdote is dated. At schools across the country, the anti-sweatshop movement has been prioritizing worker demands both in the third world and for university workers in all sorts of ways, from the sit-ins at Harvard to the mass rallies in New Haven in support of the unions to the whole series of sit-ins for labor codes in university clothing contracting.
Considering that most students at the elite schools are way on the wrong side of the class divide, it is encouraging that even a significant fraction of them are allying with the workers fighting for justice on those campuses. During the recent 300th aniversary of Yale, the unions had a mass rally of thousands of students and community folks. There was an incredibly pathetic counter-protest by a rightwing group against the unions, but they had trouble getting more than about seven folks at their anti-union position.
Why folks on this list are so adamant about the marginal importance of left protest after Seattle et al, the mass rallies against police brutality, increasing union militancy, and the campus anti-sweatshop mobilizations is beyond me. We aren't at the revolution but we are also in far better shape on left mobilization and unity than we were a decade ago.
So cheer up. Go to a local rally and maybe you can turn those academic frowns upside down :)
Nathan Newman