Campers get serious about immigrants rights

Jewish teens from Camp Newman traded archery for activism when 102 of them hit the streets of San Francisco to press for immigrants' rights.

It was all part of Hevrah, a social-action program for ninth- and 10th-graders that has become an institution. Every year, campers study an important issue (environmentalism and gun control are two from past years), then come to the city to walk the walk. This year's Project Day was held Wednesday, Aug. 2.

"All of the programs [at Camp Newman] are meant to connect Jewish identity with social justice," says Hevrah session director Emily Kane. "But Hevrah is solely for that: to create a dynamic experience where they understand it's part of the Jewish responsibility to care about social justice issues."

Over the three weeks of the program campers learned about the history of immigration in the United States, current policy concerns and the Jewish perspective on this issue.

Rachel Biale, the Northern California coordinator for the Progressive Jewish Alliance, came to camp to meet with the kids and teach them about the link between immigration and sweatshop labor (a key issue for the PJA).

The Hevrah teens also studied talmudic and biblical injunctions against exploiting workers. They checked the tags on each other's T-shirts to see where they were made and what workers there would have been paid, using charts showing minimum wages in various countries.

They learned about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York, which killed 146 garment workers in 1911, and compared those working conditions to sweatshops today in the United States and the Third World.

At the end of the day, the campers somberly evaluated what they've learned. Sam Sugarman, 15, of Oakland, says he had thought about the issue before, but the workshop put it into Jewish perspective. "We feel that people should be treated fairly and get paid equal wages," he says.

"I realized that our lives are so much better than theirs," says Amy Barr, 15, of Santa Cruz. "And all our stuff is made by people like them."

The kids also watched the Oscar-winning film "Crash," which sparked a lengthy discussion about race, immigration, prejudice and other related social issues.

"At first I wasn't expecting immigration to be the theme," says camper Kayli Liberman, 14, of Redding. "But once I heard the stories and facts, and found out about the issue, that's when it hit me. All the hate toward the undocumented workers, I had no idea it existed."

She and fellow Hevrah participants then filled three buses and headed for San Francisco for Project Day. Once in town, they broke up into task forces, each with a distinct assignment. Some had chosen visual arts to make T-shirts and posters, some chose creative writing to create information packets to bring the issue back home.

Liberman chose the street theater task force. So when she and her friends came to Justin Herman Plaza in downtown San Francisco, they intended to make an impact.

"It was a very serious act about immigration," she says. "We wrote our own script and choreography. It went really good, and a lot of people enjoyed it. Everyone was having a lot of emotion going through it."

Ben Karp, a 15-year-old sophomore at Marin's Redwood High School, signed up for the tefillah task force. He and his friends wrote a prayer service, which was held after their day in the city. While at the plaza, he collected signatures for a petition demanding comprehensive immigration reform. For him the experience was fun.

For one of his fellow campers, it wasn't so fun. "This man came up to a friend," Karp recalls. "He was polite to her and asked questions, like where she was from. She said she was from Taiwan, then he said to her, 'You should know a lot about immigration, you stupid chink kike.'"

Despite that nastiness, the kids collected more than 800 signatures. Other teens from the lobbying task force met with representatives of Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

So, did the Hevrah experience impact the campers? Says Karp, "I have a totally new view on life. I feel everyone here is so fortunate for what we have, so lucky to be an American citizen and not have to worry about being deported."

Adds Liberman, "It changed my life. I had a lot of fun — I can't wait to do it again."

The Hevrah teens weren't the only Jewish campers with social action on their minds. Seven additional West Coast Jewish summer camps have signed onto a "kosher clothes campaign" sponsored by the Progressive Jewish Alliance.

That means they have pledged to buy all their garments from manufacturers that do not use sweatshop labor, and to educate students and campers on the connection between Jewish ethics and fair labor practices.

The alliance gives participating camps a list of approved garment manufacturers, Biale says. Some buy from that list, while others have their own sources.

Economics can complicate the issue. Barbara Chotiner, camp director at the Contra Costa JCC in Walnut Creek, says the camp can't commit to sweatshop-free garments because their T-shirts are donated to them.

Camp Kadima, a federation-supported Jewish community day camp in Pleasanton, had a long-standing relationship with a local Jewish T-shirt vendor when they signed onto the campaign. Camp director Sharon Cohen says she didn't want to hurt his business by switching vendors, and was delighted when the man produced certification showing that he bought garments from a sweatshop-free manufacturer.

"Even though we were already buying from a sweatshop-free place, it's good to be able to say that we're now doing it consciously," Cohen says. "We're a Jewish camp that teaches Jewish values, and I don't know a better value than to actively do what we teach."




JTA reporter Sue Fishkoff contributed to this report.