[Fwd: update on "footlocker 8"]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: update on "footlocker 8"
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 13:05:46 -0500
From: Arnie Alpert <aalpert@afsc.org>
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Anti-sweatshop activists lose "competing harms" bid; 
free speech fight goes on

MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE---Despite evidence of serious crimes and
flagrant
abuses associated with clothing and footwear "sweatshops" in the United
States and overseas, Judge William Lyons of the Manchester District
Court
has ruled that eight human rights activists cannot use the "competing
harms" principle in their defense against trespass charges.

The eight New Hampshire residents, arrested outside the Foot Locker
store
at the Mall of New Hampshire last April, had asserted that it was
necessary
for them to pass out leaflets inside the privately owned mall in order
to
stop the exploitation of workers who make products for Nike, Disney,
J.C.
Penney, and other companies.  The leafleting action was organized by the
New Hampshire Office of the American Friends Service Committee in
conjunction with international protests targeting Nike and Foot Locker,
a
chain which is Nike’s number one wholesale customer.

Known as "The Footlocker Eight," the activists also have made the claim
that shopping malls, which function as social gathering places
equivalent
to public parks or the old village green, must permit peaceful free
speech.

Under "competing harms," an otherwise illegal act is permissible if it
is
taken in order to prevent a greater crime from being committed.   "The
abuses committed in sweatshops—exploitation of children, starvation
wages,
and repression of union organizing—are much worse than any harm caused
by
our leafleting," said Judy Elliott of Canterbury, one of the defendants.

At a hearing before Judge Lyons February 15, Robert Ross, a Clark
University sociologist, said starvation wages, illegal child labor,
excessive hours, repression of unions, and near-slavery conditions
prevail
in shops that make products for companies such as Nike, Disney, and J.C.
Penney, and sold at the Mall of New Hampshire.  Although the
manufacturers
and retailers do not own the factories, he explained, their purchasing
power is so great that they can control wages and working conditions in
their sub-contractors’ shops.

Ross explained that within a month of the April protest, Nike announced
it
would reduce the use of cancer-causing chemicals at factories in
Vietnam.
According to Ross, the distribution of leaflets by the defendants at the
Mall "contributed to the cessation of the air quality problems at the
Nike
factories."

But Judge Lyons rejected the argument, holding that the defendants had
other lawful ways to make their point.   And while acknowledging
practices
such as "exposing workers to excessively high levels of solvent fumes,
confining workers to compounds 7 days a week, where they work 12 hours
per
day, 7 days a week, the use of child labor, and paying wages that will
not
sustain an individual’s basic needs," the judge said such hazards do not
justify use of competing harms because they do not pose "the sudden,
life-threatening emergency contemplated" under the law.  The judge had
issued an earlier ruling in which he rejected the defendants’ claim that
their leafleting was a constitutionally protected activity.

With the competing harms option foreclosed, the eight defendants expect
to
be found guilty of criminal trespass.  If this occurs, they intend to
appeal to the State Supreme Court on free speech grounds.

Courts in some other states have ruled that malls cannot prohibit free
speech, but the issue has never before been tested in New Hampshire.

The free speech argument will be made for the defendants by Larry
Vogelman,
a cooperating attorney with the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union. 
Other
groups that already have lined up behind the free speech claim include
the
American Friends Service Committee, the NH AFL-CIO, the NH State
Employees
Association, the NH Council of Churches, NH Peace Action, the NH
Democratic
Party, the NH Sierra Club, the NH Association for the Elderly, and the
NH
Animal Rights League.

The International Council of Shopping Centers, a shopping mall trade
association, filed a "friend of the court" brief opposing the
defendants’
free speech claim.

The members of the Footlocker Eight are Arnie Alpert, Beth Campbell,
Irza
Collinson, Judy Elliott, Jim Giddings, Doug Grant, Will Thomas, and
David
Van Strien.  

The case has drawn widespread public attention in the year since the
arrests, which took place April 18, 1998.  The Footlocker Eight’s
assertion
of free speech rights in popular among journalists, who are also
frequently
kicked out of privately owned malls.  The Concord Monitor, Monadnock
Ledger, Keene Sentinel, Valley News, and even the right-wing Union
Leader
have editorialized in support of the anti-sweatshop protesters.  The
defendants have appeared on numerous radio talk shows and community TV
shows, and have been the subjects of feature stories in print and
broadcast
media.

At a more grassroots level, the story of the Footlocker Eight has been
covered in The Little Green, the student newspaper at Central High
School
in Manchester, where Will Thomas teaches.  Members of Monadnock Friends
Meeting, where Jim Giddings is a member, attended all the court
hearings.
The Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church, where David Van Strien
is
Minister Emeritus, adopted a resolution supporting the activists.  The
Manchester Unitarian Church, where Doug Campbell is a member, keeps its
members updated through its Social Action Newsletter.  Beth Campbell, a
Executive Board member of the NH State Employees Association (SEIU Local
1984) has found great support among her union brothers and sisters. 
Arnie
Alpert, AFSC’s New Hampshire Program Coordinator, has spoken in several
high schools and colleges about sweatshops and free speech.

A Concord Monitor editorial, published in October, revealed how the case
has provoked people to think and act.   Reviewing Adam Hochshild’s book
about Belgium’s colonial exploitation of the Congo in the 19th century,
the
editor observed, "Exploitation of the Third World remains common.  The
hunger for consumer goods in the West is so great that efforts to
mitigate
or expose this exploitation are routinely suppressed.  This is the issue
at
the core of the current case of the Footlocker Eight."

The editorial observed that "in New Hampshire, protesters against poor
working conditions in Third World factories caught the public’s
attention
recently because they raised a free-speech issue at the mall.  Their
more
important message derives from the information they have gathered on
where
the Nikes on our fee and the shirts on our backs come from. 

"As the Congo experience shows, the industrialized world has a long
record
of caring little about the sources of goods as long as the goods are
useful.  These days, it is big corporations—not kings—who would just as
soon consumers look the other way.  We have a duty not to.  Whatever
they
cost at the cash register, goods made by exploited workers exact a heavy
price on the conscience."

The case of the Footlocker Eight will drag on in an appeal process that
could take a year or more.  But along the way, the defendants and their
supporters will find more ways to raise awareness about actions people
can
take to end sweatshops and support workers’ rights.

For more information, contact Arnie Alpert at the AFSC-NH Office, PO Box
1081, Concord NH 03302.  Tel:  (603) 224-2407.  e-mail: 
aalpert@afsc.org.

March 16, 1999

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