When I get depressed about how hard it is to buy anything fair trade locally, I think of Britain, where FT awareness is much more widespread. Coldplay fans, for ex, were able to sign Oxfam’s “big noise” petition by texting “TRADE” (87233) on their cell phones during a Coldplay concert (via textually.org).

Then I remember how Chris Martin sang “Coachel-low” insteasd of “Yellow” at Coachella earlier this year. That, and his constant beseeching the fans to take pictures at specific moments during his songs, really turned me off of whatever love I had for “Yellow” when it first came out when I was in high school –

Anyway — hopefully things’ll change soon at USC, in terms of FT, if not Coldplay — The plan now: Since Starbucks seems to be the most-served coffee brand on campus, we’ll start by asking TrojHosp to ask Starbucks to switch their USC offerings to fair trade (served at:Town & Gown (USC’s official catering service, which caters to Davidson Conference Center and other locations), Cafe 84, Trojan Grounds, Annenberg Coffee Cart, and University Club, and possibly Upstairs Cafe, Popovich Cyber Cafe, and Shop Cafe at Harris Hall).

A second thing: Two locations on campus, Tutor Hall and Ground Zero Coffeehouse, currently serve fair trade coffee (Peet’s, and Roasterie Tea), though I don’t think Ground Zero’s 100%. Perhaps we can ask if we could change the coffee offered at the other outlets to these vendors, whom we have existing relationships with.

We’ll back up our argument by saying we have the support of USC Costa Rica (Sean’s group), who have already said they’ll donate the fair trade coffee they have from their Costa Rica program if we were to launch a campaign. In addition, Sean thought 3 other campus groups — Environment First (which USC-CR falls under), Human Rights Action, and Peace and Conflict Scholars — who have a combined mailing list of over 300, would be interested.

So going in with this info would, in the best case scenario, make TrojHosp decide they’ll go ahead and switch after our meeting, partly cuz it’s not too hard to switch — after all, they don’t have to swich vendors — and partly cuz they don’t want the headache of a fair trade campaign launched “against” them.

We’re gonna try to make the switch happen before FT month hits in October, at which point we can decide whether or not we want to try and launch a campaign. And if we do, we have the FT rice people, we have the free coffee from USC Costa Rica, we have a mailing list of 300 people we can try to canvass, and we have introverted, reclusive writers (English grad students) who can pen convincing letters to the Daily Trojan and beyond.

fair trade

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