SF Bay Area STUDENTS FAST FOR A LIVING WAGE!

Students at Stanford University, 30 miles south of San Francisco, have been fasting since Friday the 13th to support an organizing campaign for stronger living wage policies for workers at their elite campus. Led by the Stanford Labor Action Coalition, students are demanding a Real Living Wage for Stanford workers!
To help, you can sign SLAC's petition endorsing a real living wage policy! or come out to the actions this week.
Students were joined today by Maribel Garcia and Ernesto Garcia, janitors subcontracted through ABM, and two alumni: Sofia Lee and Max Garcia. They also held a BBQ, rally and march at Stanford's Community Day, a big publicity day for the campus.

But the students and workers called theirs "CommUNITY Day: United for a Real Living Wage" and drew a couple hundred workers, students, alumni, and faculty. The rally featured solidarity statements and speeches by new and ongoing fasters. The fasters have moved their fast encampment now to the main quad, right outside Standord President John Hennessy's office. Today's actions secured a meeting with President Hennessy on Monday, April 16th, at 5:00pm with a delegation of six students. Join SLAC for actions this week.

Stanford students have organized for years to build stronger labor/community alliances.

SLAC was founded in 1998 during a student labor conference put on by MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) and SEAS (Students for Environmental justice At Stanford). While we have taken on a variety of campaigns and organized with various groups of campus workers, our long-term project is to ensure that Stanford fulfills the ethical responsibilities laid out in the University charter by adopting just, transparent and accountable employment mechanisms and policies. As described in our Mission Statement (below), this campaign is part of a larger committment to effecting broad social change and challenging all forms and structures of injustice and oppression.

According to the Stanford Daily, the Coalition more recently has been initiated by the Stanford Asian American Activism Committee (SAAAC). Co-organizer Mark Liu has helped build solidarity among students for workers struggles and to pressure their campus adminstration on economic justice issues:

“Students in the past have fought against discrimination and for voting rights,” he claimed. “On this campus, they have fought for ethnic studies and for workers’ rights. Now, it’s become an international movement.”