26-day hunger strike to protest sweatshops could end soon.(News)

0 Comments | Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL), December, 2006

Byline: Burt Constable Now in his 25th day of a hunger strike, drinking only fruit juice, Purdue University senior Mark Franciose can't go on much longer. Neither can the sweatshop labor practices he's trying to stop, says the 2002 graduate of Conant High School in Hoffman Estates. "It's something that can't wait.

It affects people every day and has real life-and-death consequences," says Franciose, 22, during a telephone interview Monday afternoon from the Purdue campus in West Lafayette, Ind. Franciose and about a dozen other students in the Purdue Organization for Labor Equality have been waging a hunger strike since Nov. 17, urging the university to adopt a Designated Supplier Program the students say would protect people who work in foreign...