Image by Hawk Eyes via Flickr

As the history-political science-professor-writer guy, people tend to ask me questions when big events happen around the world. As quiet as I’ve been about the recent death of Osama bin Laden, I still hear from plenty of folks wondering what I think.

Combine that historic occasion with today’s controversy over comments made on Twitter by Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall and these questions aren’t going away.

So let me offer a short perspective before asking you a question of my own.

First, what did I think/how did I feel upon hearing the news Sunday evening that bin Laden had been killed. A comment response I left at Lessons from Teachers and Twits on Renee’s thoughtful post should suffice. Quoting myself:

“I felt pretty unmoved when I first heard the news. Bin Laden was dead. Brought to justice is a fitting description of that. I thought of the forces on the ground and was happy they did not suffer a loss.

I turned on the news and saw the celebrants. I had an unpleasant feeling too. I thought of the Scriptures and wondered how I should react. Just me. What was the right thing for me to feel and do. The love your enemies part still makes my head twist.

Then I went back to work because my life is no different today than it was before Sunday.”

Secondly, when I awoke today the Rashard Mendenhall story was already raging. If you are unfamiliar, Mendenhall is the Steelers running back (yes, my hometown team) who led the team in rushing on the way to and fumbled during Super Bowl 45. Continue Reading…

[This post is part of the SUMMER JUSTICE SERIES. You can start with Part 1 here.]

(Final) Part 7: Make Justice Personal

One of my crunchy friends recently told me about Freegans.  I am officially fascinated.  As I began to learn about these folks, my mind felt like someone had sawed open my head and sprinkled pop rocks amidst the brain tissue up there.  I believe there is hope for the future while simultaneously wondering how long our civilization could possibly go on.  We humans are capable of making absolutely anything unhealthy, including virtue.

This week’s finale to our summer justice series is all about making justice personal by creating rhythyms of social awareness and focusing on caring for those we are most compelled to help.  I suppose there’s all sorts of levels to this type of living.  And then there are Freegans. 

When I read about Freegans, I see a group of people that has decided to fight social injustices like poverty and societal decay by creating a system of poverty and societal decay.  Lewis Black once said he saw the end of the universe, and it was a Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks.  Well, there are people rooting through the dumpsters behind those Starbucks, and those people are Freegans.

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Remarkably, I don’t even need Wikipedia here because Freegan.Info says it all.  Take a look and you’ll see this stuff writes itself.  According to this mother ship page, “Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.”  I’m almost with them so far except for the part where they pretend human nature doesn’t exist.

Let me see if I can sum up the basic philosophy here.  Freeganism combines freedom and veganism.  These folks once believed in all the possibilities of being conscientious in a society run by businesses that consistently hurt people.  They tried all the things we’ve discussed here over the past few weeks only to find that no matter what they did they just ended up supporting some other evil company.  So basically they’re socialists; no surprises there.

Now let’s look at their principle based “strategies for practical living,” or as I like to call it, acid candy in my brain matter.

1) “Urban Foraging”

Let’s get right to it: what we’re talking about here is dumpster diving for whatever you need including food.  I’m not making this up.  Take it from their own site.  “Despite our society’s sterotypes about garbage, the goods recovered by freegans are safe, useable, clean, and in perfect or near-perfect condition…”  Am I the only one who didn’t realize we had societal stereotypes about garbage?  I mean, garbage earned its reputation without being attacked by organized groups.

"Can you believe someone would throw this away?"

So you shouldn’t eat food unless it comes from a dumpster or has been discarded.  Oh yeah, anything else you want must never be purchased at a store, but if you find those products in the trash then have at them.  So shopping at Ikea is evil, but owning Ikea furniture is fine.  Sound principles there.  I could say so much here but my brain is really starting to sizzle.

2) “Rent-Free Housing”

The real word here is squatting, to live in a building where you have no legal claim.  It’s not just about residences either.  (Remember this actually comes from their site.)  “…squatters often convert abandoned buildings into community centers with programs including art activities for children…”  I know you were probably thinking children weren’t involved, but who else is gonna squeeze into all those tight corners where the good potato chunks fall? Continue Reading…

[This post is part of the SUMMER JUSTICE SERIES. You can start with Part 1 here.]

Part 5: Reduce Your Waste 

A couple of weeks back, Paul Lawrence saw an air conditioner sitting on a sidewalk in Queens, New York.  He decided to grab it since the thing had been left for trash.  As Lawrence placed the unit in his car, borrowed from an aunt, a city official from the Department of Sanitation approached him, slapped a $2,000 fine on him, and impounded the car.  His 73-year-old aunt was also slapped with a $2,000 fine for allowing him to use the vehicle for such a heinous crime.

One of my childhood heroes actually LIVES in garbage.

This is normally the part where I fight back an aneurysm over civilization-dooming government control but not today.  We’re past the halfway post of a series on social justice issues, and this week is about how much waste we create, whether or not it matters, and what should be done about it.  

Apparently trash on a city sidewalk is city property, and recycling is a major source of revenueso we’ll leave Mr. Lawrence to the court battle he no doubt has coming.  Call me naive, but I never realized how massive the business of garbage is in our country.  Government controls are just the tip of a trashy heap of problems connected to our waste. 

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We live in a disposable world.  According to Julie Clawson–whose book Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of our Daily Choices inspired this series–the average American creates a few pounds of trash everyday.  She continues by saying: 

“…for every 100 pounds of product we acquire, 3,200 pounds of waste were created in the  manufacturing process.  This waste adds up…” 

I agree that waste adds up (check out the video below), but the impact of that waste is being debated by many different voices. 

The first argument against waste is usually the claim that we are filling landfills and running out of space.  Then I read articles with statistics saying we have way too much space to even come close to filling it all.  

Before long recycling enters the debate.  I always thought recycling was a fairly positive thing and had no idea how many problems exist worldwide as a result of saving plastics, metals, and more for reuse.  I never thought of recycling as an expensive government venture that costs states millions of dollars.  The UK found this out not long ago as entire warehouses were filled with discarded products that were supposed to be used as raw materials for future production.  That production isn’t always there so governments have to pay to store garbage.  But read a few more articles and you’ll hear how recycling creates jobs while saving the planet!    

Finally, I’ve heard that the real problem of disposable things is the pollution it creates in our rivers and oceans while harmful toxins are released into the air.  So I’m hearing a lot, but what is true? Continue Reading…

[This post is part of the SUMMER JUSTICE SERIES. You can start with Part 1 here.]

Part 4: Sweatshop-Free Goods

What do you think of when you hear the word sweatshop?  What images enter your mind?  Maybe you’re picturing a dark room somewhere on the other side of the world.  What type of people are there?  What are these individuals doing?  Have you formed some kind of scene in your mind?

The ideas that inform our perspective come from many different places.  Depending on your personal view you could have envisioned women in Asia, children in Africa, illegal immigrants in the United States, or even poor white folks somewhere in Alabama.  Regardless of your view, most people immediately think of negative, perhaps evil, things.  Sweatshops are violative places where laws, rights, and sometimes even workers are abused.  You don’t need me to tell you what’s wrong with such pratices. 

Like the previous issues in this Summer Justice series, most of us would never support systems that promote injustice if we knew what they were and how to disconnect.  The problem is that the line we seek is often blurry and gray.  That’s why we’re examining the most common ways people around the world are exploited.  The existence of sweatshops gets people passionate in a hurry, but the debate includes prominent voices from all sides.

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Sweatshops are most easily defined as places that produce goods while violating labor laws.  They are most common in developing countries but still exist in the most powerful nations on the earth.  These facilities exist in the largest cities of the world, and that includes New York and Los Angeles.  Common violations include child labor, low pay, long hours, and poor working conditions. 

One common misconception is that sweatshops have only existed in recent years.  They’ve acutally been around since the Industrial Revolution early in the 19th century.  Governments have been instituting labor laws since the 1820s and 30s.  Some groups (abolitionists) of those times fought to eliminate slavery.  Once they accomplished that objective they turned their attention to abusive labor practices.  America finally changed laws to end some of the worst of these practices in the early 20th century.

In the past century companies have continued to receive goods, finished and raw, from facilities where the overhead is low enough to increase profits.  Everybody talks about “made in China” but you’ll find goods made in Honduras, Bangladesh, Jordan, Taiwan, and beyond.  I just saw hacky sacks at the mall made in Guatemala.  In America we swim through millions of products made cheaply in a variety of ways in countries all over the world. 

The system is not going to change.  Globalization is not going to end.  So what are we to do?  Some people tell us to stop buying clothing and goods made in sweatshops, but that’s easier said than done when you consider the confusion over the origins of our products and the amount of cheap labor involved in our national marketplace.  We’ve already established that we consume too much, but that doesn’t mean we will never consume.

The average person can’t always afford to buy from companies offering a sweatshop-free guarantee.  In some ways, you’ll do just as much good buying your goods second-hand.  March with me fellow thrift-shoppers and we’ll change the world!  Continue Reading…

[This post is part of the SUMMER JUSTICE SERIES. You can start with Part 1 here.]

Part 3: Slave-Free Chocolate

How many of us really think about child slavery when we grab a candy bar?  Most of us just don’t; that doesn’t make us bad people.  What is slave chocolate?  I set out to learn if any of my snack money could possibly be going to companies  that are operating a business on the backs of children falling victims to human trafficking.

To be honest, I didn’t know very much about the exploitation of people to produce one of our favorite treats, but I’ve been eager to learn more for some time.  This issue is one of the main reasons I chose to focus on what is often called social justice for these few short weeks. 

In case you’re not sure how this works, chocolate comes from cocoa beans.  Most of the world’s chocolate originates from the Cote d’Ivoire or Ivory Coast in Africa.  Chocolate became all the rage in Europe by the 1600s after the Spaniards discovered it as a favored treat of Aztec royalty.  Moctezuma was a huge fan, a total chocoholic by modern standards. 

Although centuries have passed, reports indicate that our basest cruelty instincts persist.  Let’s establish two straight-forward aspects here.  First, what kind of abuse is reportedly taking place in pursuit of “brown gold” as it’s called around the globe?  Secondly, are we supporting companies that offer products tainted by these terrible practices?

“The Bitter Truth”

The involvement of slave labor in chocolate production became a major issue about a decade ago.  Since then, international community leaders including the U.S. Congress have been setting threatening deadlines warning the global chocolate industry to avoid all involvement with child slavery.

Nothing pierces the heart like some of the first-hand accounts of young people who have escaped or been rescued from these farms.  A recent entry on Tropic Post details a small bit of the experiences of these children, usually boys but sometimes girls between ages 11-16.

“The children work under inhumane conditions and extreme abuse, working with sharp machetes and poisonous sprays, from 6 in the morning, till 6 at night…One ex-child slave said 18 children were locked into a 24 X 20 foot room, sleeping on a wooden plank.  A small hole was just big enough to let in some air, but they were forced to urinate in a can.”

The article goes onto say the kids were too afraid to attempt escape after others were caught and brutally beaten for attempting to do so.

At this point, slave chocolate gets a lot more attention in other parts of the world than here in the states.  BBC News produced this short video on child cocoa workers in 2007.  More recently, Paul Kenyon went undercover for a BBC Panorama investigation called Chocolate: The Bitter Truth.  He discovered plenty of injustices still occuring in West Africa. Continue Reading…

SUMMER JUSTICE SERIES

PART 1: Do With Less

Can you do something today that will change the life of someone on the other side of the planet?  The choices we make everyday impact people–many of them desperately poor–all over the world.  We need to recognize the consequences that result from our decisions.  We may be the land of the free, but as Uncle Ben told Peter Parker, ”With great power comes great responsibility.” 

The world is changed one decision at a time.  Our focus here is often how to impact lives around us, but what about thousands in far away lands?  Many of us in the West see pictures and hear stories of poverty and hunger around the globe but feel helpless to do anything about it.  Throughout the summer, this site will look at ways we can help improve the lives of needy men, women, and children across the Earth. 

And we can start right now.

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Earlier this year, Relevant Magazine ran a piece by Texan author Julie Clawson which is based on her 2009 book Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices.  She has highlighted ways our lifestyles and purchases impact our neighbors around the world. 

The focus of this summer series is often called social justice, although I would call it The Golden Rule globalized.  Most of us decry suffering when we see it, but it’s easy to feel distanced from far away problems.  We may not be directly doing anything wrong or hurting anybody, but we’re often unaware of the price that’s paid elsewhere so that we can have great items at a low-cost.  As we’ll see, the cost is often higher than we’ve ever known.

Clawson covers some important issues.  Each week I’m going to expand on one of these.  If we can change the lives of people who are hurting by simply altering our daily habits yet don’t, do we become complicit in the suffering of others?  Knowledge is power but must be unleashed through action.  What can you do for “the least of these?”  There’s only one place to begin. Continue Reading…