DEMOCRACY NOW! MAKES MOST RECENT BOOT THE BELL VICTORY HEADLINE NEWS!

The recent Boot the Bell victory at Cal State San Bernardino caught the eye of the nation’s leading progressive news digest, Democracy Now!, which featured the story among its headlines for December 27th. Click here for link to Democracy Now! audio story.

You can also read more about the student-led campaign at Cal State San Bernadino and the decision to drop Taco Bell there in the Dec. 26th article entitled “Cal State Dropping Taco Bell,” from the Cal State newspaper, the San Bernadino Sun. The article begins:

“Students have taken a bite out of Taco Bell and not the kind the fast-food giant wants. Taco Bell will not return to Cal State San Bernardino when the student union reopens next fall after students complained that Florida tomato pickers are underpaid and mistreated. It is the 21st college in the country to remove Taco Bell.” Read more

It’s a great article about this unprecedented student-led, campus-based movement calling for not just fast, but fair, food.

BOOT THE BELL CAMPAIGN RAGING IN THE WEST; WENDELL BERRY ENDORSES BOYCOTT!…

The very latest boycott news comes from the campus-based “Boot the Bell” campaign, where student-led efforts to remove or block Taco Bell from doing business on campus are heating up at Boise State University and Portland State University.

At BSU, the campaign against the sale of naming rights for the school’s basketball arena to Taco Bell continues to build momentum. In an excellent opinion piece wriiten by BSU faculty member Robert McCarl, entitled, “Taco Bell causing a rift on campus,” Professor McCarl writes, “(T)he purpose of a university is to open up debate and create discourse about the issues of the day, placing these issues in wider intellectual and cultural frames of reference through all disciplines. Perhaps that notion is old-fashioned. If Boise State becomes known as a university where corporate contributions from anyone with a big checkbook can buy complicity and silence, then I as a faculty member and a citizen have not only failed in my job, I would seek other employment.” Read more of this compelling editorial, published in the BSU “Arbiter”, by clicking here.

Meanwhile, at Portland State University, students are using creative new tactics to ramp up their campaign to remove Taco Bell from their campus. According to an article from the “Daily Vanguard,” the PSU daily, “One hundred tomatoes were delivered to various members of PSU faculty and staff yesterday in a move intended to raise awareness of the campus boycott against Taco Bell,” (above right, a student paints one of the tomatoes). Read more about the campaign on the PSU campus by clicking here.