Gap Campaign

The High Schools Group joined the boycott of Gap Inc. and its chains (The Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy) due to sweatshop labor, poor working conditions, and low wages in factories in developing countries. Gap Inc. misrepresented the origin of its clothing, using tags that read “Made in the USA” when they were actually produced under exploitative conditions in US territories or other countries where labor standards were not enforced. The Schools Group gathered hundreds of signatures on petitions, organized dozens of protests from Los Gatos to San Francisco, received widespread news coverage, clipped hundreds of tags out of Gap clothes and sent them back, and undertook sit-ins and other actions.

Members of the SG were eventually contacted by Gap Inc. and invited to the company’s headquarters for a tête-à-tête, which resulted in no real headway, but proved that the company was feeling the heat.

Other organizations participating in the boycott included Global Exchange, Sweatshop Watch, and Oxfam.

The SG hosted Chie Abad — a former garment worker from US Territory Saipan, where she worked under harsh conditions for a company that supplied garments to Gap and other retailers — to speak at Deep Green Global Training 2000.