A Tale of Effective Activism

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

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