I have been associated with the University of Houston since 1998 - first as an undergraduate student, and now as a PhD candidate, former graduate assistant and sometimes adjunct instructor. One of the things that struck me as an undergrad was that it took a lot to get students angry - indeed in the first few years I was there, the only real controversy was over a setup sponsored by a right to life organization that showed graphic photos of aborted fetuses, as well as lots of strong language, cajoling, and invectives hurled at each other by supporters on both sides of the issue.
In this milieu, the jokes by people like Stephen Colbert ("what are you supposed to do when you're fighting the man and he tells you not to?") make a lot of sense, and carry a great amount of currency at places like UH. A group like the Students for Fair Trade should be the type of organization that students who bemoan the lack of direct action at UH would come out and support. In fact, I could see myself supporting them. They argue with the UH administration about requiring fair trade coffee in various spots on campus. They demand that UH disassociate with companies that operate sweatshops. They demand the administration follow through on promises, on meetings, on investigations. These are great ideals, things people could get behind. They do it thorugh direct action that would make any activist proud. Recently they (meaning two members) disrupted a Faculty Senate Meeting, interrupting UH's interim president, John Rudley's remarks. The faculty members present replied weakly with "this isn't the forum," kind of missing the point. It would be easy on it's face to support this group, but a lot of people on the campus of UH who have similar beliefs as UH Students for Fair Trade and the Students Against Sweatships would not be caught dead with either of these groups. Despite sharing comparable ideas about social justice, equality, human rights, globalization, and corporatization, these people who could be assets refuse to stand with these two organizations
So why do they refuse?
It could be the group's leader Tim O'Brien.
Mr. O'Brien lists himself as the "historian" of the group, but that is incredibly disingenuous, as he is the de facto leader of the group - he is the person who runs the group, he is the face of the group, he is the mouthpiece of the group. If one listens to the group's efforts on KPFT, it is O'Brien who is clearly the head. If one goes to the group's website, his name is mentioned most prominently (in one of the most hilariously insincere things on the site, the group's history is a virtual homage to O'Brien - "Take notice that our campus campaign began with only one member" and then goes on to mention him 34 times). When the group has been interviewed or featured on local news, their spokesperson is not their president, vice-president, or oddly enough their public relations person (probably because this same person also functions as the group's secretary and treasurer, so they have a lot to do, no doubt), but rather their historian.
So why is the real leader the "historian" and why is he the most likely reason why so many stay as far away as possible?
The UH chapter of the NAACP invited UH Students for Fair Trade, via O'Brien to speak at a meeting that occurred last spring. O'Brien, invited to speak about fair trade, and the rights of African coffee growers instead used his platform to launch a diatribe against UH's African American Studies (AAS) program. While this was distasteful, dishonest, and a miscalculation of epic proportions (given the chapter favored fair trade but would be disinclined to support an attack on the African American Studies program), O'Brien found a way to make it worse. While O'Brien's overall questions about AAS might in fact have merit and could be a step toward transforming AAS into an academic department (rather than a certification program) O'Brien uttered a racial slur toward the AAS director, undercutting the validity of his argument. The incident is murky, as there is no true consensus about what O'Brien said - in interviews conducted by myself and another graduate student in the UH History Dept., one interviewee claimed O'Brien called "someone a house nigger." Another interviewee admitted they did not hear O'Brien utter the actual words, but that the message O'Brien conveyed through the context of the rest of his remarks was consistent with him uttering the epithet. Another source noted that the person at whom O'Brien aimed the epithet has confirmed O'Brien said it. Perhaps this is why O'Brien lists himself as "only" the historian - who in their right mind would join a group with this type of person at its head, who not only personally attacks people who are ON HIS SIDE, but then uses racially charged language to do so? I question whether O'Brien truly understands social justice.
On a personal note I will offer a full disclosure here. I know Tim O'Brien. I don't like Tim O'Brien. I shared an office with him (and others) while a graduate assistant and found Tim to be one of the more reprehensible people I've ever met. I have not observed this concern for others that O'Brien proclaims, except when he and his coterie of sycophants showed up to our office to pick up flyers, or, oddly enough, when the cameras are rolling and Tim is trolling for responses.
I have watched Tim treat people from the IT department here with quite less than the humanity he demands be paid to coffee growers and slave laborers at sweat shops (and utilize a very subtle racism in the process). I have read him (in a Houston Press editorial) preposterously draw a comparison between himself and Rosa Parks over a department that did not employ him refusing to issue him a key to a staff-only restroom. I have personally witnessed him call an archivist a liar at a History Department sponsored event, an incident that was so personally offensive to me that I apologized to the archivist in question and assured this person that not all in the UH History Department behaved this way.
I took my own steps to disassociate myself while officing with him. I was appalled when I heard about the incident at the NAACP to the point that when Tim was in the office I would neither speak to him nor share space, preferring to conduct my office hours in the History Department's conference room rather than in his presence. Additionally, I made a fateful decision that I would not allow Tim to associate his group with the people who shared his office. Tim put flyers on a shared office door which I (and I alone) ripped down on a near daily basis. I had concluded that Tim's attack on the director of AAS was that type that any sane person would disassociate themselves from. I had substantial collegial support, all of whom came to the same conclusion - we did want people to see Tim's flyers on OUR doors and make the assumption that we supported his group, him, or his actions, particularly the personal attack on the director of AAS (yes, I am emphasizing this for a reason - to be perfectly clear, had this been Tim's office alone, I would not have even considered ripping the flyers down).
Typical of Tim's public persona, he challenged the person ripping the flyers down to come to his office hours to discuss it. Oddly enough, after I wrote on that flyer that I would be there to discuss it with him - during his office hours, on his terms, Tim was nowhere to be found. I subsequently discovered Tim went to a talk being given by someone applying for a job on campus. I found it ironic that the same sort of tactics O'Brien charged then-UH President Jay Gogue, and subsequently Rudley, of emplying were precisely the same ones he used in avoiding a confrontation with someone.
So this is who leads the UH Students for Fair Trade, and the Students Against Sweat Shops. I don't know whether it is fair or too harsh to call someone like this a hypocrite. Such a person could be perceived by some as a subtle racist while claiming to fight for racial justice, perhaps the most insidious form of racism. He is more than likely THE REASON why people who otherwise would pick up the banner, add articulate voices, and add people power simply shake their head and walk away (at best) when they see these groups coming.
