A Tale of Effective Activism

May 12th, 2008 at 7:50 pm

A friend recommended this article from a few years back about students working to make essential medicines–namely antiretrovirals for AIDS–available in Africa.

Amy Kapczynsk, a first year law student at Yale, was a leader in the movement and became a founding member of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines or UAEM and the story profiles her work. She is now a law professor at UC Berkeley I’ve been told.

Another founding member of UAEM recently spoke at my university and described some lessons for student activism he learned from their work:

1. Make friends with influential people — you need to build
   a coalition university-wide, not just with students
2. Contact the media – school newspaper are always looking for something to do a story about
3. Mobilize students – start a petition or letter campaign for something concrete and try to get other student groups to sign on and get their members to
4. Strategic Research – know the issue! This is what the ONE Campus blog should hopefully help with