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Protesting Dow Recruiting
(click here for photos; here for the press release!)

The AID chapter at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN added another leaf to their Bhopal campaign by organizing a protest against Dow Corning, which was present at a career fair the IU campus on Thursday, November 2nd, 2006. Over 30 volunteers from AID, enthused by their recent hosting of the Students for Bhopal conference at Bloomington, wielded banners outside the career fair and distributed flyers to students entering the venue. A steady stream of protestors visited the Dow Corning representatives at their table and questioned the negligence of their company. A concerted PR campaign before, during, and after the protest ensured that the protest was covered by the Campus newspaper as well as the city newspaper through press releases, press reports, and letters to the editors. This helped spread the message that "Students need to make an Informed Choice" when applying for jobs. All that the Dow people could do was utter feeble responses that they were not part of Dow. Yeah right! Just 50% Dow, but 100% death!

The Prelude
The moment we got to know about the arrival of Dow Corning at the Life Sciences Career fair hosted by the University, it was natural to think that we should use this opportunity to organize a protest to help spread the awareness about "the dark side of DOW" amongst the students at IU. There was a two fold agenda drawn up in order to make an organized show of resistance against the company that was the perpetrator of the death of thousands on December 3, 1984. The main goal was to help enable IU students to make an "informed choice" on their career by getting to know the whole story about a company, and the second one was to ask the University to set a standard for the kind of companies that they allow on campus for such events in future. After all, setting the bar high on the companies invited to a career fair raises the standard of the University itself and in turn helps the students who invest their future on the makings of such companies.

The preparations for the protest began 10 days before the fair and were masked in secrecy to surprise Dow and avoid preemptive interference by University officials. We used an AID sponsored Diwali Potluck to spread the word on the protest and started collecting pledges from students that "I wont work for Dow". We also collected resumes from students marked with the pledge not to work for Dow, with the intent of handing them over to Dow. This would send a symbolic message that Dow came to get resumes of students interested in working for them, but instead got many more resumes of students who would NOT work for them. We also started digging up information about Dow Corning, which was a joint venture of Dow and had its own set of issues, such as the Breast Implant litigation in the early 1990’s. We also collected information on IU/departmental policies on on-campus recruitment and networked with other student groups like the Indian Students Association, No Sweat, and Graduate Student Groups. One of the best things we did was the PR campaign where we put the knowledge gained from Media Training Workshop at the SfB Conference to work. We prepared press releases and press kits with background information, called up reporters and went in person to talk to editors, sent reminders to them to make sure they turned up and brought photographers, and prepared juicy sound bites for them. All of these ensured that the protest turn out to be a great success!

Talking to the press

The Big Day
The night before the protest, several volunteers went chalking and flyering all around the career fair venue. We drew outlines of dead bodies and named them after real victims of the Bhopal disaster. We also added quotes like "Don’t work for Dirty Dow" and "Dow = Death". We wanted to make sure anyone even close to the venue would not miss the protest.

The career fair was between 10 AM and 2AM at the IU Auditorium, and by 9:45 there were more than 10 people holding up banners and posters taking their positions. We were mildly disappointed (though not surprised) that flyers within 30 feet of the venue had been removed/washed out by the career fair organizers, but those further away had survived. The posters we held were graphic and based on a parody of Dow’s Human Element campaign. There were volunteers who were distributing flyers with pictures of Dow’s atrocities around the world (Bhopal, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Africa, and USA). We found these to be more effective in grabbing people’s attention than written material – pictures do speak more than words. These graphic evidence would remain glued to the memory of any passerby who would cringe at the thought of associating himself/herself with Dow in the future. Protestors braving the cold and the wind kindled the curiosity of students visiting the fair and only a few avoided us. The volunteers told them of the reason for the protest and how could make a difference through signing a pledge and talking to the Dow representatives inside!! Signatures for the "I won’t work for DOW" pledge form started pouring in!!

The protesters were not allowed into the venue though it was open to all IU Students. We were politely warned to keep a 30 feet distance from the venue and a couple of cop cars were on standby just to get the message across to us. A few of us, in the guise of seeking a job (we were, after all, IU Students), took the responsibility of walking in and speaking to the Dow Corning representatives on what they thought about Dow’s handling of Bhopal and on the protest being staged outside. They outright denied any association with Dow Chemical, claiming that Dow was just a share holder (a 50% share holder!) in their company, and acted surprised that we were protesting against a company that was not even present at the Career Fair. Well, that did not fool many. Looks like owning 50% of the company's shares is not much of an association!!

Most students who went in or came out of the fair stopped at the Showalter Fountain to talk with us and many signed the pledge form not to work for a company that indulges in such "inhuman activities". Over 100 people have taken the pledge and that is about 25% of all people who were at the career fair! We even had a bunch of middle schools students visit the fountain and all of them got Bhopal flyers :-)

Signing the pledge not to work for Dow

We had several members from other student groups also join us through the day and it was a wonderful exercise in coalition building. We had several reporters coming in at different points in the protest, talking to protestors, with the Dow Corning representative, and taking pictures. The campus newspaper, Indiana Daily Student, and the city newspaper, Herald Times, carried the campaign report the next day on their 2nd page. The much desired goal of creating awareness among the students to create an "informed decision" was achieved! In a nutshell, you could not have asked for a better first campaign!

Inspired by Armstrong's words, I would call this a giant leap for the Bloomington chapter, who was/is still a newbie to the world of protesting and showing resent against a giant corporation! All these would not have been possible without the humungous efforts of many a people, both on and off stage. Thanks to each and every one of them. Every small effort was counted and seen, and each of us are proud to have made an attempt to make these people accountable for a horrendous deed committed 22 years ago, whose wounds are still afresh among the affected!

The Aftermath & Post-mortem
The PR campaign did not stop with the reports. We made sure we followed up with the reporters and sent letters to the editor rebutting the claims of the Dow Corning representatives that they were independent of Dow. Two of these letters were published in the campus newspaper. The 200 graphic flyers that we printed we all used up by the end of the protest! That showed us not to under-estimate the effectiveness of our efforts.

While we managed to retort to Dow Corning’s claims that they were not part of Dow, we did not expect such a defense from them, though in hindsight, it seems obvious. We should have pre-empted them from giving such a justification by having posters about it or having facts like Dow has 4 board members in Dow Corning’s board of directors. This would have made the press report more in our favor, instead of having to use letters to the editor to fill the gaps.

It is not clear if our efforts at secrecy were worth it. While we did have over 30 protestors in all, we could have get more if we’d actively used mailing lists to publicize the protest. Dow Corning had a surprise for sure, but they may have had the surprise even if we’re publicized the protest more. We may have just been a bit paranoid.

Dow has got the message, loud and clear, that students at IU will not stand by as people continue to shrivel and die at Bhopal -- without clean water, without medical care, without livelihood, without justice!

This is just the beginning. Several other groups have expressed support to kick out dirty companies like Dow from the IU campus. As we take this movement forward, each one of our voices will count!

Check out the press coverage in the Indiana Daily Student (see the Letters to the Editor too) and Herald Times!

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Confronting Dow's CEO

In the cold morning of Feb 28th 2007, outside the RCA dome in downtown Indianapolis, a group of people from Association for India’s Development (AID) and Amnesty International held a protest against Mr. Andrew Liveris, CEO of DOW Chemicals, speaking at the 61st Conference for Energy and Environment.The conference hosted by the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, was attended by over 1000 people including students and executives from various major corporations. The protestors held a banner “DOW clean up or shut up! Justice for Bhopal” which captures the irony of the CEO of Dow Chemicals, a company with a record of tarnishing the environment, preaching about energy and environment.

Since 2001, Dow Chemicals fully owns Union Carbide, which was responsible got the Bhopal gas tragedy in India. This gas leak caused by the total failure of the plant’s safety systems killed over 22,000 people and left behind an accident site where, even today, hundreds of thousands of people are being exposed to toxic wastes. The banner and posters held by the protestors attracted the attention of the conference attendees and several by-passers. The protestors also distributed flyers and spoke to several pedestrians about the Bhopal disaster and Dow chemicals’ involvement. Earlier in the month, representatives from AID and Amnesty International had expressed their concerns to the Dean of Kelly School of Business which had lead to invitations for the two groups to attend the conference and question Mr. Liveris directly.

Three members from AID and Amnesty were present inside the conference venue and made use of the Question & Answer session to ask Mr. Liveris about their role in Bhopal. Ms. Harini Gopalakrishnan, the spokesperson for AID and graduate student at Indiana University, described the plight of the 200,000 Bhopal victims in her question and asked if Dow will take any steps to shed its apathy. “[B]eing the CEO of the largest chemical company in the world and also the parent company of Union Carbide, I would like to know, what you would like to do about this (Bhopal) in the future”, Ms. Gopalakrishnan wanted to know. Mr. Liveris, calling it a tough question, declined all responibility on Dow Chemical for the disaster. “Union Carbide settled with the government of India, and the state Government of Madhya Pradesh, for four seventy million dollars in 1989….. it is really not the DOW chemical company’s responsibility at all”.

Mr. Tom Benner from Amnesty International countered Dow's position with a follow-up question referring Amnesty's 2002 report on the Bhopal disaster. Mr. Benner asked Mr. Liveris, “… [e]veryone here understands that when you purchase a company, you acquire all its assets, but also it liabilities. You talked about sending four seventy million dollars to the government of India. But with all due respect, I don’t think that’s sufficient. When I was a child, my parents taught me that when I made a mess, it was my job, my responsibility, to clean it up. Shouldn’t the same thing apply to corporations as well?”. Mr. Liveris was clearly irritated by the question and tersely reiterated his earlier position taking cover behind the limited settlement arrived at in the Indian courts. He added, “the settlement was justified and ... by the Supreme Court of India. So, I will again urge you to get on a flight to New Delhi, and ask exactly that question to the Government of India, who has access to four seventy million dollars from 1989.”. He failed to mention that the settlementwas only for the current victims of the disaster in 1989 and did not cover the cleanup of the accident site or the fallout of the toxic pollutants in the site on the health of thousands living in the Bhopal community.

Finally, Giri Krishnan, president of AID and graduate student at Indiana University, confronted Mr. Liveris on their using the law to justify their compensation yet not appearing in the Indian courts to face criminal charges. Mr. Krishnan said, “In 1991, the Supreme Court of India has reacted against Union Carbide 'culpable homicide' against the Union Carbide industry and Union carbide is right now, a fully subsidiary of DOW, and it has not shown up in the courts of India”, and went on to ask if Dow would put any pressure on Union Carbide to face trial and provide justice to the affected people. before Mr. Liveris could address their criminal liability, the moderator of the conference intervened saying the most people in the audience did not take the environmental issues raised on Bhopal seriously and that we move on to other questions. This was met with applause from the audience, which seemed to reflect the futility of tying environmental responsibility with business.

Despite Mr. Liveris failng to adequately answer the questions and the disinterest of the audience to environmental issues that were poisoning people in developing countries, the protest served to highlight to continued negligence of Dow Chemical to the Bhopal victims. The protestors attested that they would continue to fight for justice for the Bhopal victims and their actions against Dow would endure till the victims are rehabilitated.

Listen to the Q & A session:

Question & Answer #1 (Ms. Gopalakrishnan and Mr. Liveris)
Question & Answer #2 (Mr. Benner and Mr. Liveris)
Question & Answer #3 (Mr. Krishnan and moderator)

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Film Screening and Discussion

On December 3rd, 2004, the Bloomington chapter of the Association for India's Development screened the documentary Bhopal: The Search for Justice at Indiana University. Following this was a talk by Law School Associate Professor, Dr. Christiana Ochoa, on the legal implications of the tragedy. Dr. Ochoa talked about the civil case pending against Union Carbide before the courts of New York and the Alien Torts Claim Act under which the case is based. She also described the EPCRA law that was passed in the United States following Bhopal to improve corporate disclosure of chemicals stored in residential communities. It remains to be seen if the courts of the United States will finally bring justice to the victims of the worst industrial disaster in world history.

The program was co-sponsored by the Association for India’s Development (AID), Bloomington Chapter, Indian Students Association, and India Studies Programme.

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Candlelight Vigil
(click here for the video; here for the press release!)

On December 6th, 2004, the Association for India's Development (AID) held a candle-light vigil at Dunn Meadows, Indiana University, to mark the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. The vigil was intended to raise awareness about the gas leak at Bhopal on the midnight of December 2nd, 1984, from the Union Carbide pesticide factory at Bhopal, India. Half a million people were exposed to the gas and it claimed the lives of over 8000 people immediately after the accident. Over 15,000 people have died since then and the toxic effects of the gas is manifest even in children born to exposed parents. It is estimated that 150,000 people are currently suffering from acute medical ailments due to the exposure.

The Bloomington Chapter of AID is part of over 60 college campuses and international organizations worldwide protesting the failure of Union Carbide, now owned by DOW Chemicals, in cleaning up the factory and its surroundings following the gas leak. The citizens of Bhopal are still exposed to the hazardous chemicals from the factory that have seeped into the ground water, contaminating their primary source of drinking water. Amnesty International reports that 5000 tons of toxic waste is present in the accident site. They also want Union Carbide and its then CEO, Warren Anderson, to face charges of manslaughter at Indian courts. Both Union Carbide and Anderson have warrants pending against them for 13 years and been declared fugitives from justice.

Members of AID and students from various departments on campus observed a silent protest at Dunn Meadows and had posters condemning DOW Chemical's lack of efforts to clean up the hazardous environment at Bhopal. Students who passed by stopped to learn about the protest and many signed a petition urging DOW Chemicals to clean up the polluted site and provide just compensation to the affected. Union Carbide's earlier settlement of $470 million with the Government of India now works to about $500 per affected victim and numerous deaths are still being reported each week.

Read more in the Indiana Daily Student! (Also this IDS article)

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Panel Discussion & Photo Exhibit

On April 20, 2006, the AID Bloomington chapter hosted a public talk by Ryan Bodanyi, the Coordinator of Students for Bhopal, and Rajan Sharma, the attorney for the Bhopal victims in their US federal lawsuit against Union Carbide. About 30 people attended the event, which included a public screening of "We Are Not Flowers, We Are Flames," the stirring exhibit of photographs from Bhopal taken by Raghu Rai and Maude Dorr. Ryan spoke at length about the recent victory the Bhopalis won in response to their 500-mile March to Delhi and the overwhelming international support they received, coordinated by Students for Bhopal. Rajan, predictably, spoke about the legal case and its status, and answered several questions from the audience regarding the tangled legal history surrounding Bhopal.

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Rachna Dhingra Speaks About Bhopal

On July 3rd, 2003, Rachna Dhingra, the India Coordinator of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, visited the Bloomington chapter of the Association for India's Development at Indiana University to discuss the Bhopal disaster and the ongoing campaign for justice. Rachna started her talk by playing a documentary video on Bhopal Gas tragedy. The video gave a description of what happened and how. It also had interviews of local residents and volunteers working in the affected area. A few government officials' responses were also recorded. Rachna then answered questions from the audience about the current state of the campaign and how AID-Bloomington can contribute.

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Anniversary Film Screening & Discussion
(click here for photos!)

On December 2nd, 2005, the Bloomington chapter of the Association for India’s Development hosted a vigil and documentary screening to mark the 21st anniversary of the world’s worst-ever industrial disaster.

“We had a good turnout for the vigil though the documentary was a washout since we were screening the same one as last year.

“We had the vigil for 2hrs on Dec 2nd at the heart of the campus and close to downtown. Over 20 people joined us and stood thro the bitter cold and held posters. We talked to faculty, students, and staff who passed by and over 30 people stopped and interacted with us braving the cold. We explained about Bhopal and gave them flyers with things they could do to help.

“Unlike last year, this year we did not manage to get media attention for our vigil. We'll have to work closer with the campus newsdesk to make sure we get press coverage in future.”

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