Down Definitely Not Out

The face of Harvard’s student activist movement might just be that of Michael A. Gould-Wartofsky ’07, Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM) founder, former Crimson columnist, Kirkland House resident, and general provocateur. Easy to spot, he frequently sports a Che-style cap that seems a deliberate part of his urban-grunge, revolutionary aesthetic.

But Gould-Wartofsky says he is not someone who protests for the sake of protesting. His approach to campus activism is utilitarian, a goal-driven process rather than an activity in itself, he says.

"We always try not to be ‘against things,’" he says while sipping chai, methodically breaking his tea stirrer into smaller and smaller pieces. "We always try to have a vision for what we’re for." Recently, that vision was last fall’s "Justice for Janitors" campaign which successfully fought for higher wages for custodial staff; a dining hall workers support campaign that garnered 1,300 responses this spring; and the recently won fight to get Saintely Paul, a janitor who had been fired after allegedly fainting at work, reinstated.