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:
- Make friends with influential people — you need to build
a coalition university-wide, not just with students - Contact the media - school newspaper are always looking for something to do a story about
- 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
- Strategic Research - know the issue! This is what the ONE Campus blog should hopefully help with
