I’m going to link to the original post for this one, you’ll want to check out the audio and show notes from this interview.
I had the wonderful opportunity this morning of interviewing Eric Odier-Fink of The Justice Clothing Company. Eric graciously gave me a bit of his time to answer some questions about Justice Clothing, Sweatshops, Unions and Fair Trade.
Over a year ago, Jonathan Kozol came out with a new book, Still Separate, Still Unequal. I had read his previous book, Savage Inequalities and posted this brief intro to the two:
In the summer of 2003, in preparation for working in the public school system, I read the book, Savage Inequalities, by Jonathan Kozol. To say that the book changed my view of the public school system would be an understatement. Initially it shocked me that inequalities like this still existed even 30+ years after the Brown Ruling and that I had not heard about these recent (copyright 1990) inequalities. He opened my eyes to this injustice and made me forever an advocate of just public schools. In 1990 Kozol wrote revealing decrepit schools, out of date textbooks, segregated schools, and basically little of the change we thought had come from Brown vs. Board of Education on May 17, 1954.
Kozol has recently published a new book that gives a current account of the public school system, and the picture is not pretty. The Shame of the Nation, with a subtitle that speaks volumes: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.
To get more of a taste of Kozol before you go and check this book out of the library you can read an article pulled from the first chapter of the book.
For this week’s Flashback I thought I’d compile small collection of posts from January of ’06 that created some interesting conversation. Here they are.
A short lived, but extremely popular podcasting series called Ask Mindy:
That’s right folks, after much begging, appealing and convincing, Mindy has reluctantly agreed to give us a few minutes of her time each week.
ASK MINDY will feature a three minute podcast with Mindy where she will answer a question presented by her husband Ariah, or maybe even emailed in by a listener. She’ll share her brilliance with the rest of the world in bit size chunks for all to enjoy.
So, what are you waiting for? Check it out today.
Then I posted about yet another reason I don’t shop at the ever sexist and racist Abercrombie:
This quote from a recent interview of the CEO, Mike Jeffries, says pretty much everything:
Listen, do we go too far sometimes? Absolutely. But we push the envelope, and we try to be funny, and we try to stay authentic and relevant to our target customer. I really don’t care what anyone other than our target customer thinks.
This is his response to the many protest that Abercrombie has faced for it’s sexist and racist t-shirts.
We had an interesting discussion about Loving our Enemies:
It’s time to resurrect the “Thoughts on War” topic and address the passage that began my turn to pacifism.
I’d read it before, but not until the days after 9/11 did it hit me with such a radical challenge.But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.*
I was so challenged, and so struggled with what those words meant in our world and for us. I ran into the dilemma that no matter how I looked at it I couldn’t come to a conclusion that killing my enemy could be loving.
And we touched on the Radiant Magazine Advertisement controversy, with some nice comments from Radiant’s editorial staff:
From what I can see they decided to remove the ad with “It’s Our Turn Now” across the top. I’d like to think it has something to do with the discussion that was started here regarding the sexist implications of that statement.
