All semester long I have been collecting signatures for a human rights petition with my fellow students.
Our goal was to collect a total of 10,000 student signatures calling on the University to “divest” from companies affiliated with human rights violations. Last week we completed this task and are now moving on to the next phase of our campaign: publicizing.
We have to let everyone know what our petition is about and how much support it has collected. We have been sending pitch letters to local and national media for a week now. There was little response at first, but that changed when the Huffington Post interviewed me live on Friday morning on their “World Brief” show with Ahmed Shihab-Eldin.
I was connected to the Ahmed via Facebook through a friend. I have been messaging him all semester long begging for media attention. He finally read the messages and thought it was interesting. Ever since the interview, it has been easier to get attention from journalists. The Huff post interview provided us with the credibility that we needed. Creative Loafing and the Tampa Times have been in contact with us and are currently writing stories about us.
The hope is that we can get our message out there first. We have critics who have resorted to blatant lies about us and we are concerned that they will harm the reputation of the petition. Last year after USF invalidated the results, an email was sent to 46,000 students’, faculty and staff claiming our referendum was illegal and “misleading.” This was horrible for us.
We hope to be better prepared this time around.
ahmadsaadaldin 