the International Labor Rights Forum, in conjunction with the Not For Sale Campaign has posted a new website, Free2Work, grading a variety of corporations on their labor practices and social responsibility. beyond simple letter grades, the site lets the viewer know what each company is doing both proactively and passively to further, make public, ignore or justify their labor practices.  you can search the site by goods/services manufactured or by company.  The Gap, Apple/Mac and others are currently posted, with more on the way.

I have always been in favor of having something above my head. That’s why I don’t understand convertibles; not only is there nothing above your head but also your air conditioner doesn’t really work because natural air keeps blowing in your face. I like my air to come from gas powered engines or a hookers breath.

Celebrities also love roofs, that’s why many of them sell roofs in their spare time. Roofs do so much for us I can totally understand their love of roofs. Roofs cover us and if you think children in China are roofs then roofs are also responsible for most forms of toy production. Celebrities love to stand and be seen and when they stand on a roof more people get to see them and notice how they too have human skin. Roofs are also in many famous movie scenes such as…um…the titanic? Whatever, roofs make famous people more famous and that’s why celebrities try and own as many roofs as possible. It’s a simple algebraic equation; people are only as valuable as the number of roofs they stand on and the amount of money they put in their bank account.

Another great thing about roofs is that roof rhymes with doof, and not very many things rhyme with doof. Celebrities like words that rhyme with doof, I have never been able to figure out why but it has something to do with makeup and not making sense during television interviews.

I also love roofs because if you have one then I know not to make fun of you for being homeless. I am very good at making fun of homeless people; I am so good at making fun of homeless people that they often are unable to think of a witty reply and that has nothing to do with the fact that they don’t have lips.

So I also like roofs famous celebrities, come find me and we’ll pee off of some of our favorite roofs onto the shoulders of homeless families

I found these photos from a newspaper blog. There were others, but these two captured me.

A child searches for recyclable material in India.

Child laborers in a balloon shop in Bangladesh.

]]> http://angelgibson.com/2009/11/23/why-is-my-candy-bar-so-small-now/ Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:05:09 +0000 angelgibson http://angelgibson.com/2009/11/23/why-is-my-candy-bar-so-small-now/

This story from last week’s Wall Street Journal is an interesting example of why our clients need us to think and behave as business partners not just advertising or marketing or online (or insert catch phrase du jour) experts.

I’ve been reading a lot of late on recent West African history and the control of the cocoa production, the rise and fall of its price, is the story of the region’s fortune (or lack thereof.) The industry’s reliance on child labor has made this chocolate lover a much more choosy, questioning consumer.

Intercontinental Exchange Inc. purchased the New York Board of Trade in 2007, and converted it to an all-electronic exchange.

The move to all-electronic trading meant that virtually any one could get involved in the cocoa markets, buying and selling futures contracts online. The hope was to make the cocoa markets more like other commodities, such as oil, where contracts are traded almost around the clock.

But the move had the opposite effect on commodities like cocoa: Many cocoa floor traders and brokers, who made up about 40% of the market, have quit. Dapco Brokerage, which used to handle 30% of the cocoa trading on the floor, went out of business a year ago.

Its departure scared off other electronic-commodities traders, who have stayed out of the $4.3 billion market because of high volatility and thin liquidity.

Sometimes, fewer than 100 contracts change hands each hour in the early mornings.

That has made the market for cocoa a highly volatile one. Cocoa surged 65% in the first half of 2008, to a 28-year high of $3,360 a ton on July 1, then tanked 43% in four months before recovering 77% to hit $3,392 in late October, the highest since June 1979. On Wednesday, cocoa settled at $3,199, up 3.7%.

Soaring prices of cocoa drove chocolate makers to raise prices and cut the size of candy bars since mid-2007.

In August 2008, Hershey Co. raised prices an average of 11% to offset “significant increases” in the cost of raw materials such as cocoa, sugar and peanuts, said Hershey Chief Executive David West in a statement at the time. Andrew Bonfield, Cadbury’s chief financial officer, said on a September analysts’ call that reducing bar sizes enabled the company to avoid raising prices.

During the first 10 months of 2009, cocoa’s daily trading volumes fell 14% to a level not seen since 2005.

These very short videos powerfully convey the message that slavery and human trafficking are a grave reality in our world, even this very day. This is why we are doing what we do, so help us God.

(Hine)

Before the Civil War’s beginning on April 12th, 1861, the majority of the textile industry lay in the Northern United States. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, and others, were the heart of an industry that needed water power to survive, and with a steady flow of wool from New England and cotton from the South, the textile manufacturing plants flourished. Only a few short and bloody years later, however, the Northern industry stumbled to a halt due to a lack of Southern cooperation and material as well as the modern equivalent to globalization. In the wake of the war, the Southern states were left without slavery, the backbone of cultural structure. Their unpaid farmhands were gone and previous owners needed to become employees. New England mill owners saw in this destitution a massive career opportunity and moved their business to the South where they established mills in close proximity to their raw material of cotton, and provided labor to workers who could be paid next to nothing and were completely unorganized.

In the early 19th century, the cotton industry powered New England. Thousands of women and children from poor farming communities came to mill towns seeking employment and in the case of many, security, if there was no family patriarch. The same beginning was present in the Southern mills, but with one major difference. While the North had centuries of industry behind them and understood the ideas behind organization, the South failed again and again to form any long-lasting unions. There are many theories behind this phenomena, the most strongly argued of which is the idea of paternalism. The North had a long history of fighting against authority and especially of the family-centered life style, where the South had a tradition of community and race solidarity. Mills were not just a building. They owned the land, the houses of the workers, the water supply, and the lives of their laborers. Rather than seeing this as an overstepping of bounds as the North did, the Southern states viewed it as a strong, white, paternalistic, and altogether wholesome environment. Thus, when dissatisfaction arose, it was virtually impossible for workers to revolt against a master who seemed to share their views of white supremacy and family culture. (English, 75). From the beginning of Southern mill culture, mill owners attempted to make themselves appear to be on a common ground with the workers as both their white brothers and their philanthropic caretakers. In some respect, this was true. The mills “protected” white culture by not allowing black workers to infiltrate the mill towns, and provided a place for otherwise homeless and vulnerable women and children.

Due to the South’s initial success in the cotton industry, the North began to fear for its own manufacturing businesses. In an attempt to satisfy the complaints of their own workers, child and woman labor laws, especially in the late 1800s in Massachusetts, began to take effect. By 1898, after countless worker complaints and protests, no child under 14 and with less than 3 months of schooling from the previous year could work in a mill. (English, 22-23).

]]> http://americasos.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/open-letter-to-president-obama-market-ticker/ Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:53:24 +0000 americasos http://americasos.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/open-letter-to-president-obama-market-ticker/

Here is a great letter I read today:

You could have made quite a splash over there in China – and made a difference for all Americans.  But instead, you did nothing of the sort – you simply continued the sell-out that has been going on for the last two decades in the so-called “strong relationship” between China and America.

That “strength” has included selling China advanced radar technology allowing them to shortcut 20 years of development time off their ICBM targeting, making their nuclear weapons far more lethal to potential targets – including targets in the United States.  It has included turning a blind eye to the blatant and outrageous technology rip-offs that go on over in that nation every day.  You won’t see them because your Presidential Motorcade will never be allowed in the street markets found all over the nation, but if you were, you’d see literal millions of unlawfully-made copies of US-created software and music sold openly while the cops stand by to protect the vendors instead of enforcing internationally-agreed to laws that the Chinese pay only lip service to.  And it has included granting virtually tariff-free “trading” status to a nation that forces poor farmers off their land and into sweatshop factories, away from their families where they are paid a buck a day in US equivalent wages, turning out products for sale in the US.

And let’s not forget who these companies are.  They’re the WalMarts, Apples and Nikes of the world – many of them huge American firms.  Oh not directly – that would bring these firms under US labor and regulatory stricture.  No, they’re “independent companies” owned by Chinese slave-drivers who instruct their employees to lie when the “auditors” from WalMart and Apple show up, telling them to a single employee that they’re “complying” with reasonable wage and hour laws under penalty of losing their job, being blacklisted forever and literally starving to death.  Since there are no whistleblower protections in China (it is, after all, a Communist government) the big US companies can claim to be “responsible” while in the background you hear the slave-driver’s whip crack – and everyone smiles (except the Chinese worker who is being outrageously exploited.)

You ought to know something about this, given your heritage.  Kenya featured prominently in the global slave trade until the British put a stop to it.  There’s nothing like a bit of history to screw up the revisionism that finds its way into American Politics, is there?

You ran on a populist platform and won on the basis of “hope and change.”  But hope and change is not working at WalMart while offshoring the production of our various consumer goods to China where the replacement for our US workers are paid a buck a day.  Indeed, many of the 8 million American jobs lost since the top of the employment market in mid-2007 will never come back, simply because the small and mid-sized businesses that once dotted the landscape have been destroyed by this “offshoring” activity.  It is clearly not possible for a US supplier or vendor to compete with $1/day wages or anything approaching it, yet this is the “competitive supplier” environment over in China and elsewhere.

The Truth is that America and China are locked in a deadly embrace.  They’re not buying our Treasury Debt to be nice or “support” us.  They’re buying because we have exported our inflation to them for more than two decades, and they’re desperately trying to prevent it from destroying them.  See, when you make $1/day (or $2/day) inflation is the difference between eating and not eating, and hungry people have a habit of reaching for pitchforks.  Since there are about 1 billion of them (ordinary Chinese) and a much smaller number of military and leadership, well…. you do the math.

But that “buying” of our Treasury Debt has fueled your (and your Republican cronies) desire to spend beyond all reason.  This distortion has allowed the government to blow money it does not have for more than a decade without watching interest rates ratchet inexorably upward, as happened to Bill Clinton and those before him.

The problem is whatever can’t continue forever won’t, and if you’ve been induced to borrow “interest only” (as our government always has) and the interest rates start to rise you can be bankrupted even if you stop borrowing.  Your refusal to recognize that nobody can survive for long when you take in only half of what you spend, borrowing the rest, is an outrage and insult to anyone with an IQ larger than their shoe size.

Speaking of outrages, let’s go down the list of current ones.  We can start with the SIGTARP report on AIG and their counterparties.  While AIG might have been free (under the law) to sell “insurance-like contracts” with no capital behind them, there is nothing that forced The NY Fed (and The Federal Reserve generally) to allow regulated bank-like entities to purchase those swaps and count them as “money good hedges.”  Yet the very boob who apparently did that, along with intentionally overpaying counterparties, was appointed by you to head the Treasury.  I suppose none of us should be surprised at this revelation by Mr. Barofsky, given that one of Timmy’s qualifications to head the Internal Revenue Service was that he didn’t even bother paying his own taxes.  You do realize the example this set for other Americans, right?  Is that wise, given that the government is undoubtedly going to try to extract more and more tax money from the rest of us in the years to come?

Then there are people like Lloyd Blankfein, who yesterday “apologized” for “participating in things that were clearly wrong.”  I know you created a “government-wide task force” as of yesterday to “fight financial fraud”, but somehow I doubt we’ll see the person who made a public admission yesterday of “participating in things that were clearly wrong” in the dock.  Indeed, yesterday we were treated to a revelation that Sacramento is suing a bunch of banks for bid-rigging and kickbacks – suspiciously similar to what apparently happened in Jefferson County Alabama, in which JP Morgan/Chase agreed to a fine and “foregone profits” of nearly three quarters of a billion dollars – while “not admitting guilt.”  Pardon my cynicism, but I’ve yet to see anyone willingly hand over nearly 3/4 of a billion dollars unless they’re concerned that they might lose a lawsuit or worse, be found guilty in a criminal trial.  It would seem to me that this “task force”, if it really is intended to do something productive, would start at the top – with Racketeering prosecutions aimed at our largest financial firms.  But that’s not going to happen, is it?

Speaking of “OCCE” (operating a continuing criminal enterprise), what about drug companies?  There’s a bit of a problem there too, no? Are not the drug companies one of the beneficiaries of your alleged “Health Care Reform”?  After all, you’re not going to strip them of their re-importation protection, are you?  Why not?

Far more important however is where a ”gentlemen” (Kindler) wound up after not one but two criminal guilty pleas by Pfizer for the same crime.  He was elected to the board of the NY Fed.  Are you as proud of Pfizer’s record as is Mr. Kindler is as their former CEO and General Counsel?  It appears so – not only does your “health care” proposal not bar deals with drug companies that have twice pled guilty to the same felony, not only is Pfizer still operating as a corporation (where any “natural person” who did the same sort of thing would be sitting in the hoosegow) but in addition you’ve sat back silently while their CEO is appointed to one of the chief banking regulatory positions in The United States!

Here’s the problem at the end of the day Mr. President.

You were elected on a platform of “Hope and Change.”  In point of fact the only change we got is the change at the bottom of our pockets – all the rest of our money has been siphoned off by the very same robber barons and banksters that have corrupted our nation for decades.  You’ve done exactly nothing to prosecute them for their previous actions or prevent them from doing the same things in the future.  Nearly a year after your election Citibank served upon the American people a 29.9% “rate jack” on their credit cards – an “atomic bird” served up by one of the largest financial firms in The United States, and one that the government now owns a large stake in.  This was a slap in the face of Americans by THE GOVERNMENT – that is, YOUR ADMINISTRATION.

You claim to be for the working class people in this country, yet you bow down to China paying people $1/day to assemble junk products, from capacitors that explode (found in literally millions of pieces of electronics) to melamine-laced “food products” to poisonous toothpaste to corrosive drywall that destroys wiring, plumbing, and, allegedly, the lungs of US Citizens.

We continue to hear that we “must reform health care” yet just recently Pfizer pled guilty to a criminal felony that it previously, years ago, pled guilty to before. Nobody went to prison, and the fine levied was less than 1% of the firm’s market capitalization.  A mere cost of doing business.  These are the “engines” of Americans’ health you wish to protect with laws that force we the people to pay for the development of drugs and medical devices that are then used worldwide – without the rest of the world paying “their fair share” for the developments that save their lives.  We’re a generous people but don’t you think such charity should be by choice rather than extracted at gunpoint?

You refuse to step in and force The Fed to be audited, even though you could get behind Representative Paul and demand it happen.  Why?  Is it because you’re protecting the very people who ripped us all off?  There are those who believe the true purpose of your Chinese trip is to find a way to pry open the doors in China so our Banksters can loot them, since the blood all seems to be gone from Americans – the vampires simply drank too much and killed us all.  There’s one small problem with that plan, if indeed it is your intention - in China they shoot people for the sorts of things that the banksters did over here.  Call it a “feature” of Communism if you’d like.

Let’s face it: America may need some protectionism.  Americans can’t be expected to compete with $1/day – or $2/day – in wages.  While this “looks good” for a little while as prices come down just as business profits look good when you fire people in the quarter you do it (witness the last two quarters of “earnings”) those employees who lost their jobs can’t buy anything in the future, as their income has evaporated!  They wind up on the dole, and this drives our budget deficit from 20% of our Federal Budget to roughly 50%.  The pegs and forced buying of Treasuries that have allowed this to happen won’t last forever, and when (not if) they snap they will force a Federal Government default.  Thus, my statement in the open letter to China’s Premier – we’re not going to pay you.

Some have claimed in comments I received that my views in that letter are some sort of jingoistic orgasm.  Nothing could be further from the truth; my views are simply an expression of mathematical fact.  Math is the only true science.

Speaking of the math, I’m sure you’re aware that about half the nation loved you at the time of your election and the other half hated you.  That’s a “feature” of American politics, of course.  But I would be concerned for your job security down the road if you don’t change course.  After all, the SEUI and UAW both were strong supporters, as were the “ordinary people” who bought into your “hope and change” mantra.

The problem is that you haven’t kept any of those promises.  Your “stimulus” didn’t, your “Recovery Czar” has refused to certify the jobs “saved or gained” numbers (that’s because they’re flat lies, as is obvious from the employment situation report’s household survey) and a huge stock market rally aside, there hasn’t been any real turn in the economy.  Instead Wall Street is feasting on the destruction of the dollar, which is a direct consequence of your policies – spending more than one makes eventually destroys confidence in the strength of your balance sheet, and the puerile acts of a Fed Chairman who you claim to support for re-appointment in his futile attempt to keep the musical chairs game going isn’t helping matters.  You could stop this tomorrow by demanding that Bernanke raise rates to a mere 2% immediately or you’ll replace him with someone who will – after all, his reconfirmation has not yet occurred, and your nomination can be withdrawn.  You could fire Timmy and direct Mr. Holder to prosecute all of the crooks on Wall Street that stole the hopes and dreams of millions of Americans, then looted their retirement accounts on top of it.  While your admission of the obvious this morning – that “too much debt could lead to a double-dip” sounds good, the fact of the matter is that it is your administration that has piled on most of this debt – and continues to do so.  Are you admitting – in advance – to what’s to come next year?

Best of luck to you Mr. President – from where this commentator sits, given the underlying realities of the economy and exploitation of our working class and your willful blindness to the mathematical realities of our fiscal and economic situation, you’re going to need it.

(Audrey) As a Westerner, an American, and a human being, I have certain ethics. Particular beliefs about the way the world ought to be that are near and dear to my heart and that I try not to violate under any circumstances. As usual, South Asia complicates these. Many aspects of how I live my life here make me a participant in systems of exploitation, often better known as the Indian economy, that I’m not fully comfortable with. A few examples…

(1) I believe that employees ought to be given minimal levels of protection at their jobs in order to avoid unnecessary accidents. Why have machines cutting off people’s arms and construction projects that are measured in body counts when simple safeguards can prevent such things? But then you think about the coconuts. Coconut are a big business here, and no tourist trip to India is complete without drinking one (there’s delicious nectar inside)

… not to mention the coconut oil and plain coconut in various foods. As a recent NYT article points out, however, coconut picking is so dangerous that Indians are beginning to refuse to do it. You can see why—

So should I drink the coconuts or not? Should I participate in a trade so dangerous that even Indians, some of the world’s cheapest labor, are opting out, or condemn those that remain picking to poverty by withdrawing my business? I realize that in the grand scheme of the coconut industry, my personal decision matters little on this point, but it matters greatly to me.

(2) Child labor. I’m opposed, wholeheartedly. But you can hardly avoid it for some things… I’m reminded of going into the northern mountain regions of Pakistan (think: where Osama bin Laden probably is) in 2007. Ironically, we were in Pakistan at all because my husband was studying child labor. Up north we bought a bunch of hats from this kid…

Does the “when in Rome” mentality get us off the hook for supporting child labor here? I’m not so sure. But if we hadn’t bought the hats from him, what would have happened? Would he have seen the light and chosen to go back to school? Probably not; he probably just would’ve gone hungry that night.

(3) Back-breaking human labor is something I like to alleviate. If there’s an easier way that doesn’t seriously shorten people’s lifespans, I’m all for it. So what do you do about the infamous hand-pulled rickshaws of Kolkata? Is this good business, culture, or just barbaric?

I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about cycle rickshaws and my general support of them (although I confess that due to a series of disagreements over price between me and the cycle-wallahs, plus the weather improving, I’m currently on a one person strike from all cycles in my neighborhood). But why support cycles and not hand-pulled? When do the arbitrary lines become too hard to justify?

In closing let me point out that this question—how do we deal with being part of systems of exploitation—is not unique to India. We should probably all struggle with it in the West a well. How many items of clothing in the average American’s home were sewn by children’s hands? We’ll probably never know for sure, but any number other than zero is too high. Unfortunately, it’s easy, at least for me, not to think about such things when it’s so far away and part of a global system. But getting up close and dirty with exploitation it’s hard not to be more deeply troubled, even if I have no solutions.

One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis.
According to the latest official statistics, the country also counts at least 1.2 million young workers between the ages of 5 and 13 – even if Brazilian law forbids those under 14 to work. If you add teens up to 18 years-old, you will have more than 5 million underage Brazilians in the market place. A huge percentage of them receive no salary.
This number includes teens “adopted” informally to work as housekeepers and submitted to very long hours. It also includes many sexual workers. Brazil’s highway police recently identified more than 1,800 truck stops around the country where minors offer sexual services .
A report released in September by the US Department of Labor, aiming to shed lights on “exploitative working conditions in the production of goods” in 77 countries, concludes that there is fair evidence that several Brazilian industries are responsible for perpetrating these irregular labor practices.

But the report also acknowledges that the government “has taken an exemplary, multifaceted approach to the elimination of child and forced labor”. It has “improved its legislative framework, enforced these laws effectively, established targeted action plans to combat child labor, forced labor, and trafficking in persons”, among other initiatives.

Last October, Brazil and a few other countries signed an agreement to work together to eradicate child labor by 2020, with the support of the International Labor Organization.

The Brazilian government also created the so-called “Dirty List” (Lista Suja) of forced labor cases, including the names of companies and property owners who use workers under forced labor conditions. In my former job, as a Social and Environmental risk analyst for Banco Real, one of the main financial institutions in the country, we wouldn’t offer credit to companies included in the Dirty List without promoting extensive auditing of their labor conditions and verifying their compliance to a series of laws.

There are, in fact, evidences that all these federal initiatives are pretty effective.

Between 2003 and 2008, almost 27 thousand people submitted to forced labor were released. Child labor has been steadily declining (in the early nineties, there were around 8 million under age workers in the country). One of the reasons is that the Brazilian economy and middle class are growing. Many families that had to find their kids a job now afford to keep them in school.

It is still not good enough. Civil society and the government have to increase their engagement in this combat against labor practices that are both shameful and deeply rooted.

There was a bit of controversy a few weeks ago when Michael Jordan’s son refused to wear Adidas shoes (per the university’s sponsorship contract with the basketball team) and instead wanted to wear his father’s Air Jordans. On one hand, you have to admire the kid’s devotion to his father. And how neat is it that his dad has his own line of shoes. But on the other hand, his decision could jeopardize his school’s multi-million dollar contract with Adidas.

This got me thinking – how important is it to follow in your father’s footsteps?

When I was a sophomore in high school, my dad helped me get a summer job at the paint manufacturing plant where he worked. I spent every day that wretched summer working in a hot factory, smelling toxic chemicals and hearing union workers bitch about their jobs. More than anything else, that summer of work taught me that the last thing I wanted to do was follow in my father’s footsteps.

And now, years later, it is my dad who is following in my footsteps. He works a desk job. He uses a computer. He gripes about the crappy coffee in the breakroom. But there are still quite a few ways we’re different.

For instance, my dad recently came out to visit me from Arizona. It was his first trip to see me in years, so he had never seen my house nor had he met my son. After picking him up at the airport, we finally make it back to my house around midnight. Everyone is asleep, but I still gave my dad the nickel tour.

Normally a tour of the house goes something like – here’s the kitchen, here’s my giant TV, here’s the fireplace. But for whatever reason, my dad was fascinated in my neighbor’s backyard. So he walks across the wet lawn, peers over into the dark neighbor’s yard, and then heads back inside.

Now I’m a polite guy, so when I started smelling what I thought were rank farts, I didn’t want to offend my dad by saying anything. But I did make a beeline to show him the bathroom and the guest room. And as we walked down the hallway, I stopped in horror. My dad was tracking dog crap all through the house.

Now this is one of those cases where I couldn’t be more pleased that I didn’t’ follow in his footsteps. But, I did have a few piles of footsteps to clean up and a really rank house to air out fast. So there I was, at midnight, cleaning up dog crap that my dad tracked through the house. Trying to keep quiet so my son – and more importantly so my wife – wouldn’t wake up.

It took about an hour, two rolls of paper towels, two bottles of carpet cleaner, four votive candles and a few open windows to remedy the situation. And as my dad put it, “Gee man, I was only in your house 30 minutes and I already fucked it up.”

While my dad and I are about as different as they come, we have learned to put our differences aside over the years and have a mutual appreciation for each other’s lives. While I’ve never bought a lottery ticket and think gambling is a waste, I still cheer on my dad any time he tells me about winning a few bucks at keno. And while my dad thinks a $30 tab at Applebees is a fancy night out, he somehow restrains himself from calling me crazy when I drop $100+ every month or so at Mortons Steakhouse.

This weekend, my son Matthew entertained himself for about half an hour by wearing my shoes and stomping around the house. This got me thinking – will my son follow in my footsteps, or will it be like with my dad and we’ll just settle on agreeing to disagree in a lot of areas.

Good morning friends.  I’m sure this day will be a special day to all parents, especially to all children, as it is the Children’s Day.  Children will be our future hope that’s why all parents must guide our children in a good way and in a right way.  We should always boost and uplift our children while they are growing.  And it is the right time for them to teach everything. 

The day had something in store for every child. For once, the difference between the haves’ and the have-nots’ melted away, as children from every stratum of society had something to cheer their spirits on Children’s Day. 

The British Library had a workshop on the theme of story-telling for children aged 8-12. The library also unveiled a fresh collection of books by contemporary British authors, which had the children all excited.

Children of Visamo Kids Foundation, besides participating in a rally protesting against child labour, performed a skit narrating the differences between their life, before and after joining the NGO, punctuating it with little personal inputs on the way.

At Ahmedabad Management Association, YJ Trivedi AMA Academy for Intellectual Property Rights organized a workshop on Intellectual Property Rights’. Young minds got an insight into rights to protect trademark, patents, copyrights, industrial design and trade secrets.

At the Shahpur Memorial School, YUVA volunteers organized a magic show, where about 150 children had a memorable time trying their hands at various magic tricks. With free goodies distributed at the end, the children went back with large, bright smiles on their faces. Similarly, at a couple of municipal schools in the city, the Ahmedabad chapter of CII (Confederation of Indian Industry)’s Young Indians’ group put together an animated moral-based story-telling session as well as a puppet show, where about 300 children participated and had a whale of a time. – The Times of India

October 2008

So, it’s already October 17, two days away from Colton “Booger Britches” ‘ very first birthday and I just can’t believe it’s already been a year.  I just wanted to look back and write about this little guy’s birth because let me tell you it’s something worth telling. I must say, this whole writing thing that I used to do to vent whatever was on my mind, has been dearly missed. Although, the reason I used to do it so much before was because I had nothing else to do once Audrey was in bed and no one else to talk to. So, like I’ve said before, I would put fancier words to “talking to myself” and instead call it “blogging”. Here I sit “blogging” once again.

This year has been pretty huge. It seems like all my years in the last 4 have been that way. Better than the alternative of boredom, I reckon. Yup, my little family has done alot. This time last year, I was sitting (rather uncomfortably I KNOW) thinking to myself and telling everyone else that I was ready to just get “this thing” out of me. Please, Please, don’t think of me as a hoodlum for having these feelings until you yourself have been hugely pregnant. But then again, there are crazy stupid people out there who actually enjoy being hugely pregnant and would actually have the desire to do it for money…surrogate parenting that is…and who’s names will not be mentioned (my mom). This time last year I also had thoroughly frozen out two poor, innocent room mates because of my severe rise in body temperature. Cara and Sarah, I apologize. To you, Cara, I would like to say that I did find much enjoyment in seeing you as the Unibomber on the couch/computer. I will never forget that one particular time I walked in to the kitchen and saw you, poor dear, wadded up on that itty bitty chair with long pj’s and a hoody….wrapped all the way around your FACE…trying to talk to your man on the computer. Yes, that picture is etched into my memory and I occasionally pull it up when I’m feeling sorry for myself. I quickly feel like a jerk for having those feelings considering the pitiful state you lived in while at the Sammy DJ house. I also like to remember our Gidget Wars with the squirty bottle and how we began wishing Gidget would do something wrong just so we could chase her through the whole flippin’ house squirting her….and how Audrey thought it was a fun game for Gidget as well and tried to play it with the kitty herself…Yes, these are some good memories. I just wish we had had longer to have so much fun. I sure could have used it those previous 12 months! But it is true that the deployment both crawled AND flew by…

It wasn’t long before we were getting ready for the reunion. For me, this entailed waddling around Pearl City trying to find a dress that would not only fit, but attempt to make me look sex-ay. I was gigantuan. I was pretty much aware that “cute” was my best shot at looking good. But one would like to atleast think they would be sexy when they see their hubby for the first time in forever and ever. I do think I looked pretty adorable, though. Ok, I have wandered off subject. Let’s save this thing.

So I was monsterous (I’m trying to use a wide range of adjectives here) and wanting the baby out. The next doctor’s appointment I had, they asked if I would like them to…I won’t use gross words…make Colton’s house door alittle weaker. I said bring it on. So they did. Thinking this would lead to instant baby-having, I was very upset when it took a few days to work. But work it did.

Around noon, October 19th, I knew it was time to get to the hospital (that was 30 minutes away if traffic was good! My question…why was the Tripler ARMY Medical Center, the farthest away from the ARMY branch of service on the island!? grrr) But we get there and I am very upset. I don’t want to be graphic, so I’ll just say I was needing to be in a room. Let me just say how all this went down…We walk up to the desk and say “My water broke”. Now, we already did the paper work so I was thinking, I’d just be taken to a room immediately (like at the Medical Center in BG.) But no. I have to pull out my I.D. and listen to the nurses chit chat about how their shift was supposed to be done so their done working and so and so needed to get there…whatever…all I know is I had the meanest look on my face known to Samantha history. WHY DON’T THESE PEOPLE CARE I’M HAVING A BABY! I do not know. But it was tickin’ me off. Then they hand me a frickon paper to fill out! All this at the desk, people. THEN, they tell me to go sit in the waiting room! They FINALLY stop giggling and being stupid and put me into a room to VERIFY that my water had broken or some crap like that. It had. So they left and said they’d be back to move me,but the rooms were all full so they had to figure out WHERE. And Jesse (men, just don’t open your mouth at times like these) said, “You kind of overreacted. See, you’re getting a room.”….

They come back to move me…..to a closet…

Yes. A closet. It was a big closet atleast. There they told me they had to induce me because I hadn’t started contractions yet. They’re not strong enough…THEY said (jerks) and kept coming in to pump up the juice.My bum bum was getting numb to add to the annoyance and pain but I couldn’t lay down because my bed didn’t work.There were two different nurses that came in to try and figure this thing out! “I guess it’s broken” is all they had. Jesse, thankfully, loves playing with the doctor’s equipment when no one is looking, and discovered that the bed was just not plugged in….oh, my. Soon it was time for my favorite drug…dymeral. This is the shiznat my friends! It makes you giggle over NOTHING. (With Audrey, I started talking about Kermit the frog driving my brothers car when they gave me this stuff. ) And at this point in my closet labor, I was ready for some giggles before someone got punched in the face.Luckily I was kind of out of it because Jesse told me the nurse spilt alot of blood when she put it in, and “it was really gross”…this after they said I was extremely anemic and had high blood pressure. Stupids.

Then…it happened….”A room just opened up for you, Mrs. DJ.” HAALLLELUIAHH!!! So they unplug my bed and begin to roll me to my room. This acually made me even angrier because, in my (hardcore pain having drugged up) mind, these poopy heads were deliberately banging my bed into the door every chance they got. Jesse later told me they did no such thing. Whatever dude.

THEN…my personal favorite part…they tell me my epideral guy is on the way (I went 5 hours waiting for this guy!). I am so happy. But in walks this blonde haired surfer dude in a white coat and goes “woah! This is an old bed!” (Speaking about the bed my body was in in case you didn’t know) Oiy. Just shut up. And apparently this guy’s the guy who will in meer minutes stick a huge @$$ needle into my spinal cord. I was so mad. As usual, though, everyone else around me was just having a merry ol’ time. Surfer-Needle dude starts talking about how his daughter’s name is Samantha and how it obviously is a name for beautiful girls. Yea ok I’ll take that. Long story short…take the epideral over natural child birht. I’ve done both so I’m pretty much the expert here.

After all was said and done, I had a beautiful baby boy. As much as I like to rant and rave about my experience about his birth, looking back, it’s kind of cool. How many people get to start off in a closet? On a “broken” bed? With a surfer dude as their epideral doc.? It’s things like this that make life histerical. Even if at the time you want to bite someone’s big toe clear off. But if the closet labor, and the get-lost-for-3-hours-after-an-11-hour-middle-of-the-night-drive-because-your-husband-doesn’t-want-to-go-pee-at-the-gas-station-we-just-passed-so-he-pees-in-a-bottle-out-the-window-while-we’re-driving-down-the-interstate-and-the-last-part-of-the-directions-fly-out-the-window  incidents didn’t happen, life would be pretty boring. So, thank you Tripler, for such an experience I still find joy in ranting about. MAHALO

2008

Discuss with Tamil Mirchi your views on child labor in the entertainment industry – http://bit.ly/mirchifbdiscussion

Rachel Maddow reports here on business opposition to laws against slave and child labor (apparently no Repug has ever read Charles Dickens, and no, he wasn’t a Southern Civil War general – not the author, anyway).

Despite these poor conditions, children still applied to work. The main reason they agreed to work was because their families were poor. Children got low wages, but every possible income, no matter how small it was, was significant to an indigent family. Some families had enough money, but they sent their children to work in factories because they were greedy. Some children would go work just to get away from their abusive parents. Additionally, factory owners would hire orphans to work in their factories in exchange for food and shelter.

Image Credits

• http://online-history.org/images/smallmill.gif
• http://www.usm.maine.edu/~kuzma/security/welch/making.jpg

Slavery still exists in this world — always has.  Corporate America is worried that they might not be able to profit off of slavery in the future.  *sad face*

HT: ThinkProgress

From the HMS Beekeeper twitternets: “A 6 y/o girl and her 13 y/o brother just sold me their Dolores park ‘honey from the hood.’”

Damn, I wish I had been badass enough to milk bees when I was 6.

There is a seemingly instinctual, hair-trigger reaction from a lot of voters and policy makers alike, to support this concept of protectionism. Limiting exports, import tariffs, and other such policies in response to growing international competition, foreign exports, and as a weapon with which to combat child labour and corruption in third world nations.

This is indeed prevalent in nations suffering poverty and, more to the point, ones with a high rate of child labour.

My goal is to disprove the common misconception that child labour is fought through protectionism, like for example, the ‘Harkin Bill’ which caused trouble in Bangladesh. Which I will get to further on.

Before beginning my arguments I would like to acknowledge two things. Firstly, that I am assuming Child Labour is a bad thing that must be reduced (because I know not everyone here probably thinks that) and secondly, that free trade isn’t perfect, nor is globalisation. They don’t fix everything, and reduction of the importance of borders can sometimes also mean bad things, e.g. growth of sex tourism and other such things. However, this argument will be focussed on Child Labour specifically.

There will be three parts where I briefly examine an argument and base it off of a study. They will be (in order)

-Liberalisation encourages Growth, Growth reduces Child Labour
-Sanctions from First World Nations don’t work.
-Poor Credit Accessibility means Poor Education Opportunity

Lastly, I want to acknowledge ‘In Defence of Globalization’ by Jagdish Bhagwati to be the most persuasive and useful piece of literature to which I formed my position on the matter. Also, the original source from where I was able to find the studies I quoted.

Let’s begin.

[size=18][u][i][b]Liberalisation encourages Growth, Growth reduces Child Labour[/b][/i][/u][/size]

I am going to start by quoting an abstract from a study done at Dartmouth by Eric Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik on the relationship between child labour and market liberalisation. Most important parts are bolded.

[quote]This paper considers the impact of liberalized trade policy on child labor in a developing country. While trade liberalization entails an increase in the relative price of the exported product, trade theory provides ambiguous predictions on how this price change affects the incidence of child labor. In this paper, we exploit regional and intertemporal variation in the real price of rice to examine the relationship between price movements of a primary export and the economic activities of children. [b]Using a panel of Vietnamese households, we find that reductions in child labor are increasing with rice prices.[/b] Declines in child labor are largest for girls of secondary school age, and we find a corresponding increase in school attendance for this group. Overall, rice price increases can account for almost half of the decline in child labor that occurs in Vietnam in the 1990s. [b]Greater market integration, at least in this case, appears to be associated with less child labor. Our results suggest that the use of trade sanctions on exports from developing countries to eradicate child labor is unlikely to yield the desired outcome.[/b][/quote]
[url=http://sccie.ucsc.edu/conference/2002/Pavcnik_Paper.pdf]Entire Source Here[/url]

The basic idea is that poor agricultural workers, particularly farmers, who do not profit well off their rice produce must supplement their income by having their children work. When demand for rice goes up (thanks to exports, for the duration of this study Vietnam doubled its Rice export to 3 million tonnes) and the workers profit further from their sales, they no longer need their children to supplement their income. To further quote the study;

[quote]An increase in the relative price of rice (potentially stemming from liberalized trade policy) enhances rural household income. [b]Households appear to substitute the extra income captured by household landholdings for income previously earned by children.[/b] This extra income appears to particularly benefit older girls who experience the largest declines in child labor and the largest increases in school enrollment. [b]Hence, child labor declines even though globalization also raised the potential earnings of children. In this way, our evidence suggests that greater integration of unskilled labor abundant developing economies into world markets can be associated with less child labor.[/b][/quote]

So we can see that child labour demonstrably goes down in correlation to liberalisation of agriculture markets as families no longer need their children to work to help the family survive.

[size=18][u][i][b]Sanctions from First World Nations don’t work.[/b][/i][/u][/size]

Some argue that placing sanctions on countries that utilise child labour is a humane method of trade that forces third world nations and any countries allowing child labour to change for the better. The perfect example of this is when Democrats Senator Tom Harkin proposed a bill in 1993, known as ‘U.S. Child Labor Deterrence Act’ (or the ‘Harkin Bill’) which would prevent the USA from importing products which utilised Child Labour at any stage of production.

In Bangladesh, which has a large Child Labour workforce (12%, see source below) and whose garments were threatened by this bill, the results were very different to the intentions of Harkin and his supporters.

A study by Mohammad Mafizur Rahman, Rasheda Khanam and Nur Uddin Absar published in the December 1999 issue of the Journal of Economic Issues reviewed the reactions of Bangladeshi families.

Quoted below;

[quote]Unfortunately, the supporters of the bill mistakenly presume that if children are not allowed to work, they will attend school. Considering the socioeconomic realities of developing countries, this is far from the truth. For most of these children, school is not a choice, and work itself may be needed to sustain life. In Bangladesh, studies conducted by local NGOs and UNICEF[b], following the initial publicity of the bill have shown that children displaced from garment factories in January 1993 did not rush to school. Most of them found alternative, less secure, and less lucrative employment in the informal sector.[/b] Common occupations for children in this sector include working as ticket collectors or tempos and/or as lunch boys ferrying heavy tiffin carriers from office to office. Girls have found work as domestic servants or flower sellers [Sobhan 1994, 6]. [/quote]
[url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5437/is_4_33/ai_n28747994/]Source available here.[/url]

According to economist Jagdish Bhagwati (‘In Defence of Globilization’, P71) this included prostitution work for the girls. The amount of children displaced from formal work could have been as high as 50,000.

[size=18][u][i][b]Poor Credit Accessibility means Poor Education Opportunity[/u][/i][/b][/size]

As discussed in the Bangladesh and Vietnam examples, it was demonstrated that poor families supplement income needs with having their children work. It is interesting to note that poor families in first world nations do not make the same decisions. Not least of all because of the laws involved, but also because of the developed financial systems, or more specifically, access to credit.

This time I will quote a study by Rajeev H. Dehejia and Roberta Gatti based on the relationship between Child Labour and access to credit.

[quote]Our results show a strong link between child labor and access to credit even when these factors are accounted for and a range of estimation techniques is used. This relationship appears to be particularly sizeable in the sample of poor countries, which have both less developed financial markets and greater child labor and, as such, are in general of greater policy interest. Moreover, [b]we find that income variability has a sizeable impact on child labor in countries where financial markets are underdeveloped, suggesting that households resort to their children’s work to cope with income shocks[/b]. This is not the case though when financial markets are developed, which suggests that [b]access to credit might effectively cut households’ demands on children’s time.[/b][/quote]
[url=http://www.columbia.edu/cu/economics/discpapr/DP0102-69.pdf]Full Source Here.[/url]

The study, which is an interesting read, establishes that with an access to credit poorer families are more likely to keep their children out of work and in school. Which is a better long term strategy as the child increases their education, and subsequently their ability to earn capital.

Lack of access to credit institutions is something that can be fought through globalisation, as foreign banks are able to make loans. Not only this, programs like Microfinance and make credit more available and thus increase the flexibility that poorer third world households have.

[size=18][u][i][b]In Conclusion.[/u][/i][/b][/size]

Child Labour is a product it would seem, of poverty. As it is prevalent namely in countries suffering poverty and stuck in the third world. It is not a formal or cultural issue that can be solved by sanctions by first world nations as demonstrated by the implications and real reactions of the Harkin Bill in Bangladesh.

Furthermore, it is apparent that third world families do not want their children to work, but feel it necessary, as Child Labour goes down when their labour (such as Rice agriculture) becomes more valuable, or when they have access to credit (and more advanced, more accessible financial institutions).

So, what do you think of my arguments? What do you think is a good, comprehensive policy for First World countries in order to commit to reducing Child Labour?

Note: This blog posting was originally posted at Media Voices for Children, an Internet news agency for children’s rights.

By Reid Maki, Coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition

Most people don’t associate egregious forms of child labor with the United States. People tend to think that U.S. child labor laws have successfully done away with the worst forms of child labor. But there is a dirty little secret that not many Americas know: young children harvest fruits and vegetables on many of our farms.

Nightline, the ABC News show, highlighted agricultural child labor in an October 30th investigative report “Blueberry Children” that found several children under 12 in Michigan picking blueberries, including a 5- year-old. The children sometimes work till 9:00 p.m. One 11-year-old told reporters he was in his third year in the fields. Another small child talked about the danger when pesticides are sprayed nearby.

Josie Ellis, a nurse with Migrant Health, told Nightline that the fields in North Carolina, where she is based, are full of working children. She noted that the kids acquire severe rashes, respiratory illnesses, and neurological impairments from their contact with pesticides.

They also miss out on their childhoods because they are working long hours. “Play is something that migrant children know very little about. Work they know,” said Ellis. “We see frustration. We see really tired kids. We see depression in children….despair…the inability to dream…the inability to see past high school…the inability to see past junior high school….I think it’s shameful that our nation tolerates child labor,” added Ellis.

Recently, at a recent dinner in Washington, D.C. hosted by the National Consumers League, Norma Flores, a former child farm worker, now in her twenties, recalled her years in the fields. “I hated it,” said Norma. “I hated to work in the fields.  I hated getting sweaty and dirty. I hated getting blisters and cuts and sunburns. I hated finishing my row of work only to see there was no water to drink at the end. I hated to have to walk half a mile to go to a dirty portable toilet. I hated how the work affected me outside of the fields. I hated having to enroll in school late every year, to have to make up months of assignments and have to fight to get my school credits. More than anything, I hated knowing my parents needed me out there to make ends meet, because it meant I couldn’t say no. Even though I was only a kid, I knew I didn’t belong there. I knew I could do more than hoe weeds for 70 hours a week.”

The Michigan farm shown on Nightline is not an isolated example. The U.S. Department of Labor found eight other farms in Michigan with child labor or migrant housing violations. Earlier this year, nine farms in North Carolina and a farm in Vineland New Jersey were fined for child labor violations.

But these are example of illegal child labor—the problem is that there is a great deal of legal child labor in U.S. agriculture. Exemptions in U.S. child labor law allow kids who are 12- and 13-years-old to work. The law does not allow a 12-year-old to work for one hour in my air conditioned office making copies, but it allows a 12-year-old to work all day in a field in 100-degree heat performing work that would be too hard for many adult Americans.

In addition to the health problems already cited, the kids pay a very heavy price academically. The dropout rate fluctuates from 50 to 80 percent in most migrant communities. The kids are exhausted from work and migration. As Norma Flores noted, many leave their home school before the school year ends and return weeks after it begins in the fall. As they follow the crops around the country, some may enter other school systems, but they are often placed in the wrong classes or in the wrong levels. Understandably, these migrant students often become frustrated and discouraged, and often drop out.

Although some of the kids are immigrants from Mexico, more than half were born here in the U.S. and are American citizens. They are good kids trying to help their family escape poverty. The underlying problem is that adult farmworkers often do not earn a living wage, and they feel compelled to bring their children to the field with them to increase their income.

The working children—I discovered during field investigations—are more likely to wear little or no protective clothing to guard against the sun or pesticide contact. It’s not uncommon to see them working barefoot despite the presence of dangerous farm tools, pesticide residue, snakes, and scorpions.

In 2003, I joined Len Morris and Robin Romano of Galen films in South Texas when they filmed the U.S. farmworker section of their feature length documentary, Stolen Childhoods. We filmed and interviewed 9-year-old Mariela on her first day of work. In 90-plus degree heat, she stood there working beside her father, cleaning onion bulbs with giant adult-sized scissors. She was very ill with the flu or an allergic reaction to the onions, but her family needed the money, so she kept working. It’s hard to describe the amount of effort required to bend over and pick up an onion a thousand times a day. It’s exhausting work, extremely taxing for adults—and totally inappropriate for children.

The exemptions that allow these young children to work have been around since 1938 and the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The 22 members of the Child Labor Coalition (CLC), which I coordinate, believe it’s time to end this unfair treatment of farmworker children. Through the Children in the Fields Campaign, AFOP, the National Consumers League and the CLC have been working to pass the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment (CARE), which would close the exemptions and force the equal treatment of farmworker children.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) in September, would preserve an exemption for family farmers so their children could help  on the farm, but the children of migrant and seasonal farmworkers who work for wages would have to wait till they are at least 14 to work. The U.S. Department of Labor would evaluate the safety of agricultural jobs to determine if some can be performed by 14- and 15-year-olds. The CARE Act would also prohibit teens in agriculture from doing jobs recognized as very dangerous from doing those jobs until they were 18—the age limit in all other industries.

More than 20 national groups—Human Rights Watch, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union among them—have signed on to endorse the CARE Act. Please help us. Call your Congress member and urge the passage of the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment—the CARE Act—today. The unfair treatment of farmworker children is intolerable in 2009 in America, and it must end!

by Reid Maki, Coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition

For the last several years, the National Consumers League (NCL) has warned parents and teens that traveling sales crews are too dangerous for young workers. The discovery last week of the remains of Jennifer Hammond, who was only 18 when she disappeared from a sales crew six years ago, heightens our concern about the safety of traveling sales crews for teen workers.

Jennifer Hammond was one of those teenagers who knocks on your door and tries to sell you magazines. In August 2003, co-workers at Atlantic Circulation, Inc. dropped Hammond, a native of Littleton, Colorado, off in a mobile home park in Milton, New York. She failed to show up at the designated pickup spot two hours later. Six years later, a hunter found some bone fragments and teeth in a forest in Saratoga County, New York and forensic specialists identified the remains as Hammond’s. Local police are investigating the case as a homicide.

Each year, traveling sales has consistently appeared as one of NCL’s list of “Five Worst Jobs for Teens.” Going door-to-door is a risky proposition these days and when you add doing it in an unfamiliar town without parental supervision, the dangers add up quickly. After reviewing this industry and scores of problems we’ve heard about over the years, NCL came to the conclusion last spring that under no circumstances should a minor be allowed to travel as part of a sales crew.

Members of sales crews are vulnerable to assault and exploitation from customers, fellow crew members, and their superiors. Over the years, we’ve heard and read many stories of crew members who were beaten because they wanted to leave their crews or did not sell enough magazines.

On October 15^th, the New York Times published a story about two young magazine salesman who were beaten with baseball bats and golf clubs in Lakewood, Washington simply because they wanted to quit. The police arrested six men in the attack.

Unscrupulous traveling sales companies charge young workers for expenses like rent and food that in some cases requires them to turn over all the money they earn from selling magazines or goods. When they try to quit or leave the crew, they are told they can’t. Earlier this summer, NCL received a phone call from a young man who quit his crew and found himself stranded 1,000 miles from home. He was broke and trying to hitch-hike home.

Disreputable companies have been known to seize young workers’ money, phone cards, and IDs and restrict their ability to call their parents. Drug use and underage drinking are not uncommon. Another New York Times report in 2007 found that crew members often make little money after expenses are deducted.

Teen sales crews are often crammed into poorly maintained, unsafe vans and driven by young distracted drivers. In November 2005, two teenagers were killed and seven were injured when the van they were riding in flipped near Phoenix, Arizona. A month earlier, 20-year-old, James Crawford, was ejected and killed from a van crash in Georgia. Eighteen young adults were crammed into the 15-passenger van when the driver fell asleep.

Unfortunately, Jennifer Hammond’s suspected murder is not the first associated with work in traveling sales crews: In November 2007, Tracie Anaya Jones, 19, a member of a traveling sales crew, was found dead of stab wounds in Memphis, Tennessee. Her killing remains unsolved and is featured on “America’s Most Wanted” Web site. In Rapid City, South Dakota in April 2004, a 41-year-old man was charged with murdering a 21-year-old woman who came to his home to sell magazines.

Clearly, these are extreme examples of what can go wrong, but there is ample evidence that there is much to be concerned about when one contemplates traveling sales work. Last month’s Times article on the beating of the two young salesmen, noted that Parent Watch, an industry watchdog group, is receiving about 10 emergency calls a day from crew members with problems.

In Wisconsin, a new law designed to protect young sales people will take effect next April. We’ll take a closer look at it in the days ahead….Stay tuned.

Amanda Kloer

The folks over at the Kimberly Process certification scheme, the main body responsible for certifying diamonds as “conflict-free”, have threatened to suspend Zimbabwe’s participation in the program for six months. It appears Zimbabwe is still seeing a great deal of human rights abuses, exploitation, and slavery in the diamond industry.

The Kimberley Process (KP) is a coalition of governments, diamond industry representatives, and civil society stakeholders, which was created to stem the flow of conflict diamonds from countries in Africa to global markets. Rough diamonds have been used by rebel movements to finance wars against legitimate governments, and the diamond industry has become notorious for exploitation and slavery, especially of children. The trade conflict diamonds has fuelled devastating conflicts in countries such as Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sierra Leone and resulted in the abuse of thousands of workers and children. The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) imposes extensive requirements on participating members to enable them to certify shipments of rough diamonds as ‘conflict-free’.

Zimbabwe’s eastern diamond fields are the areas currently being questioned by the KP. Human Rights Watch has accused the military of killing a number of diamond diggers in the area and using the gems recovered from the dead diggers to line their own pockets. Zimbabwe is also accused of not having stringent enough regulations in place to prevent abuse in the diamond industry. A KP inspector recently recommended that Zimbabwe be barred from importing or exporting rough diamonds within the Process for at least six months “until such time as a KP team determines that minimum standards have been met.” Such a ban would be a huge blow to the diamond industry in that country, but might also allow KP members to put the additional regulations in place to help prevent exploitation in the industry.

It’s comforting to know the folks at KP are actively monitoring all of their members, and that they aren’t hesitating to call one out for failing to live up to the rigorous standards KP insists on. But it’s still important to know where the diamonds you buy have come from and how or if they are certified. You can find a wide selection of Fair Trade diamond and gold jewelry at Brilliant Earth’s website.

Photo credit: swamibu

It’s been a long time since I last posted something! Here’s a video super worth sharing:

This is one of the videos we watched in NSTP class earlier today. We were talking about how each child is entitled to his or her rights, and how these rights aren’t met/ respected by government and society.

STOP CHILD LABOR and ABUSE!

People, including children, deserve to know their rights!

visit CAUSECAST to learn more.

by Rose Danielle Austria
for Special Topics (MCM 190)

“Heartbreaking” would probably be the perfect way to describe the realities shown in the film Minsan Lang Sila Bata. I am not ignorant; in fact I am well aware, of the worsening conditions of poverty in the Philippines. I see it every time I step out the door. The news is bombarded daily with evidences and while the media is known for sensationalizing virtually everything, one cannot deny the distressing feeling that it inculcates.

I’ve watched countless videos, seen hundreds of photographs, and listened to a number of talks on poverty and child labor yet I’m stunned every time. I encounter street kids on a daily basis and feel the lack of hope in them. I’ve heard of children in sweat shops and for a while it was unimaginable what they go through. It was until we saw the footages of the kids in the slaughter house, the port area, and the hacienda.

Then I look back at my own childhood – including the times I complained to my parents for not buying me things I don’t really need – and realized how blessed I’ve been for the past eighteen years. Guilt clouds my heart as I look around and find that all my needs and wants are provided for – and I didn’t even have to work for any of it; while the kids in the film had to struggle every day for food that would not even satisfy anyone’s appetite.

American author Tom Robbins wrote in one of his books that “it is never too late to have a happy childhood.” But my heart breaks even more as I realize that there might not be a better future for most of these children. As the documentary puts it: once a “hornal,” always a “hornal.”

The story of the children in the port area and how that one boy collapsed in exhaustion; the young “hornals” who battle forces of nature and human injustice every day; and the children of the slaughter house as they are likened to dead meat replay in my head like scenes from a horror movie.

At this, I feel remorse for them and anger towards people who have the power to make life a little easier for them. Everyone has the power to make life livable for them. These kids have dreams – they want to study, play, and have fun – but somehow they feel helpless.

Children do not deserve to be treated like slaves. None of them did, no child does or will ever deserve such treatment. Their young minds warrant care, attention, education, nourishment and freedom. These kids need to know that they’re God’s little angels and they should not let anyone or anything to hinder them from living.

We would all agree that child labor is a social problem; but in reality you’d see the burden is not shared at all – some reason ignorance, others the lack of power to help, and disinterest for a few.

There’s a reason why humanity’s battle against such issue never ends: humanity, in its entirety, remains unmoved and indifferent. Sure, everyone desires to change the world but few are the ones who walk the talk. We cannot reason that we are powerless to do so because we are not. Wise men say to change the world, we need to start change within ourselves. We don’t have to be Superman to save lives. If there is a will, there is always a way.

“Do not withhold good from those who deserve it when it is in your power to act.”
Proverbs 3: 27