December 2004
Students for Bhopal Justice
Some of them weren’t even born when the fire occurred, but So Cal student activists are keeping the pressure on Dow
The next time you hear cynical adults complaining about the apathy of young people today, tell them about the local representatives of Students for Bhopal. Two student groups are waging advocacy campaigns against Dow Chemical Company in an effort to alleviate the ongoing tragedy in Bhopal, bringing 21st century public relations savvy to the ‘60s creed of thinking globally and acting locally.
At Flintridge Preparatory School in La Cañada Flintridge, students meet at tables by the art building to plan their campaign. Senior Preeti Upadhyaya finds time to lead the group in between writing college applications. Passionate about the people of Bhopal, Upadhyaya clearly articulates her reasons for working so hard to spread the word throughout her school’s student body. “Bhopal is the absolute epitome of the big corporation against a rural village,” she emphasizes. “What really got me interested in working with the Bhopal campaign is the sheer tragedy of the whole ordeal. I think it’s an atrocity that people are still suffering, 20 years after the actual incident.”
The Flintridge group has accomplished a great deal in just over a year. They worked with the school’s Amnesty International club to raise $700 for the campaign and hospital in Bhopal. They gathered signatures for a petition demanding that Dow take responsibility for the suffering in Bhopal, and delivered the petition to local Dow board member Jackie Barton. They raised signatures for a petition to Senator Barbara Boxer, asking that she add her signature to a letter addressed to Dow already signed by 18 other legislators. They also delivered a sample of Bhopal water contaminated by Dow/Carbide’s practices to Barton.
At L.A.’s Occidental College, student leader Clayton Perry became involved with Students for Bhopal after he learned that two of Dow’s board members live in the Los Angeles area. (Willie Davis, president of All Pro Broadcasting, Inc., has been on Dow’s board since 1988; Jackie Barton is a professor of chemistry at California Institute of Technology and has been a board member since 1993.) “If we can influence them to give the people of Bhopal justice and humane treatment, that will be a huge leap forward,” Perry notes.
The Occidental group tried to get a meeting with Davis, but their efforts were stonewalled. Never one to give up, Perry followed with a letter and photos to Davis’ office and a 30-minute phone call to one of his employees. “At the end I told her to tell him that if he chooses not to respond to this, he could expect demonstrations at his house and office,” Perry related in a report for Students of Bhopal. “That night I got a call from ‘Dwayne,’ who was probably a lawyer.”
Undeterred, Perry and the Occidental group plan to continue applying pressure until the people in Bhopal get what they need. “I love what I do,” he says. Upadhyaya feels the same. “People are still suffering and dying today,” she observes. “If Dow does nothing to clean up the huge mess they’ve created, people will continue to suffer and die.”
For a national overview of student grassroots action on Bhopal, visit www.studentsforbhopal.org. To get involved locally, contact Clayton Perry at perry@oxy.edu. — Katie Winchell
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