Monthly Archives: March 2007

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Make your Sweet Tooth an Equal Exchange

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Corporate Responsibility Mondays
Corporate Responsibility Mondays continue as we discuss your ever so addictive and greedy sweet tooth. As we’ve done before, Josh will be discussing a corporation whose history is nothing to be proud of, and I’ll be talking about a company that is worth supporting. Sort of like Good cop, Bad cop. So be sure to check out Josh’s post about a not so equal food company.

I was first introduced to Equal Exchange when our Food Not Bombs group received a donation of a couple boxes of their dark chocolate candy bars. The label told a wonderful story of ethical and fair consumerism. Like Maggie’s last week, they run as a co-op:

Our Mission

Equal Exchange’s mission is to build long-term trade partnerships that are economically just and environmentally sound, to foster mutually beneficial relationships between farmers and consumers and to demonstrate, through our success, the contribution of worker co-operatives and Fair Trade to a more equitable, democratic and sustainable world.

Our Guiding Principles

* Trade directly with democratically organized small farmer cooperatives.
* Facilitate access to credit for producer organizations.
* Pay producers a guaranteed minimum price that provides a stable source of income as well as improved social services.
* Provide high quality food products.
* Support sustainable farming practices.
* Build a democratically-run cooperative workplace.
* Develop more environmentally-sound business practices.

All in all the goals and motives behind Equal Exchange are a beautiful example of ethical and responsible Corporate practice. The difficult part is making the decision that buying something is more then just getting the “best value” as in, the most goods for the least money.

Equal Exchange products are just that, an equal exchange. Too often we face products, side by side, aisle by aisle, in the grocery store with no knowledge or story behind how they got there. Our only concern usually is which one has the best price per ounce (they’ve made it so easy now). The unfortunate thing is there is a lot of unequal, unfair, and irresponsible ways that those chocolate bars, candies and other items end up the shelf.
Equal Exchange chocolate bars will run you about $3 a piece, a bit more then the ones in the checkout aisle. And unfortunately it’s way too easy to justify spending 50 cents on the chocolate and saying to yourself you’ll donate the difference later (if you’ve ever done that before, here’s your chance to make amends and make that donation now). The other option you have, is simply not to buy chocolate, your sweet tooth isn’t an essential part of your balanced diet.

Equal Exchange also has a neat video that talks about their coffee and fair trade process. Here’s a trailer:

Now that your throughly convinced Fair Trade is the way to go, step up to the plate and spread the word about Equal Exchange.

  1. Convince a Local Business to Offer Equal Exchange Products
  2. Host a House Party
  3. Student’s can be involved too!
  4. even churches.
  5. Or you could just buy some chocolate or Coffee

Oh, and be sure to check out Josh’s post about a not so equal food company.

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What about the Children?

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I found this article, about a town not to far from the town I went to college in, a place where there are supposedly a lot of practicing Christians…

From Daily Southtown: Residents oppose shelter for immigrant children

The children rarely leave the federal immigrant shelter, a former nursing home near the city’s lakefront that houses undocumented children found alone in the United States.

Teachers and doctors are brought to them. And aside from occasional field trips or visits to a nearby park, the children spend almost all their time indoors — although it may be months before they know whether they will be deported or allowed to stay.

But plans to provide more room by converting a 2.5-acre estate near Naperville — with an 11,000-square-foot house, tennis court and swimming pool — into a first-of-its-kind shelter for undocumented Indian and Chinese children hit a snag:

Neighbors in wealthy Lisle Township don’t want them.

They say the shelter, which would house as many as 30 children, could create traffic problems, lower property values and strain water and sewer services.

But some also worry that the children could escape and pose a threat to their own children. A flier circulated throughout the neighborhood said the shelter would be “WORSE than a halfway house!”

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Scheming Swindlers

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I think this is one of the most brilliant statements about the current state of Christians and the church today.

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”
-Soren Kierkegaard

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War Tax Resistance

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It’s a crazy idea to go against your government, but if your against the War, not fueling it with your tax dollars maybe isn’t such a crazy idea.
War Tax
Tax Pie Chart
Total Outlays (Federal Funds): $2,387 billion
MILITARY: 51% and $1,228 billion
NON-MILITARY: 49% and $1,159 billion

Links:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/251575_wartax10.html

http://www.hanguponwar.org/

http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0414/p02s02-wmgn.html

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By the way, I’m on Vacation

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Just thought I should mention that I’m on vacation.

I future posted all the posts this week, and most of them are just interesting links, not much of my writing. I am writing a bit this week, but just as I feel like it and I’m not blogging them at least currently. Reading a lot too.

And this also means I won’t be replying to comments either. I’ll get to it next week.

Hope all is well.

Ariah.

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Demotorize your Soul

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Demotorize Your Soul Car in the Sand

The De-Motorize Your Soul campaign is a spirited foray into the post-oil era.

For the past 100 years the average speed at which human beings and their souls travel has steadily increased. But what if we’re not meant to go that fast? What if it’s spiritually unnatural, and slowly messing us up inside? Can we live at an ever-escalating pace without it affecting our spiritual health?

In addition to a stressful and abnormal pace of life, this age of hyper-mobility also has us tangled up in climate chaos, global power games and the biggest business on earth.

But how do we opt out? (And how do we keep from whithering with guilt?) We know what’s wrong, we know what needs to be done, but we’re somehow stuck on fast forward.

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Corporate Responsibility: For Clothing Meet Maggie

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Corporate Responsibility Mondays

Corporate Responsibility Mondays continue as we turn toward clothing
companies. It’s something you and many generations before and after you
need, whether you like it or not. Ever since the fall there’s been a
market for us to cover ourselves, and a beautiful opportunity for us to
do so in a responsible way. What you wear is not just about fashion and
style, there is so much more to it, there are real people behind the
label.

In cooperation with Josh, Corporate Responsibility Mondays are our chance to introduce you to both the troubling facts behind some of our big brands (thanks to Josh)
and to people and corporations that are doing business in a way you can
support and believe in. Today we are talking about the clothing
industry. Josh will talk about one of the big names in the business, and I’ll introduce you to a company that is doing business in a way I think we can all be excited about.

Maggie's Organics

The most common response I hear when I start talking about trying to
make purchases in a way that is just and fair, is “yeah, but I’m sure
every company has problems if you look for it.” In other words, people
justify their choices by convincing themselves that everyone’s corrupt
so there’s no real point. We’ll I’m proud to say that you can point all
the Cynic’s to Maggie’s Organics. From the plant to your foot, every step of the clothing production and process is something to be proud of.

Maggie’s purchases their merchandise from Nueva Vida Women’s Sewing
Cooperative (COMAMNUVI), the world’s first WORKER-OWNED Free Trade
Zone. This isn’t just a big corporation out to make money in the name
of social responsibility, this is a genuine business, where the power
rests in the hands of those that matter most, the workers.

Their website says it all:

In Nicaragua there are many free trade zones where mainly women work in “sweat shops”, producing clothing under unacceptable labor conditions, long hours and low pay. In a cooperative,
the workers are the owners. We are working together to create
sustainable employment in the community so that we can support
ourselves and our families.

If your even more interested in how the cooperative came to be, I’d
encourage you to check out their video, Ants that Move Mountains, which
I made available on youtube (Ants 1 and 2).

Maggie’s Organics
is a great distributer and has most of the basics that everyone needs,
from socks to simple t-shirts. The neat thing is that there prices are
fairly reasonable too. You can buy t-shirts from $13 and score them on closeout for $10. Socks are more expensive then the sweatshop made ones, but I think the trade off is worth it.

When compared to companies with practices like Josh describes, a fair
trade cooperative, is clearly the best option out there. An interview
of a local worker at a major factory (possibly one operated by the company Josh discussed) and one at the coop shows some of the differences (pdf).
Everything from working conditions and wages, to paid time off and
vested interest in the product and company, it’s apparent that Maggie’s
Organics and the Nicaraguan Cooperative are doing some amazing things.

When it comes to the clothing industry I don’t think we can make
excuses about not doing what’s right. I see two options… Either buy
your clothing second-hand or buy it new from a fair trade company like Maggie’s Organics.