The Final Push

There was a point when I ran the Ten-Miler last year - somewhere between mile 7 and 8 - when I knew I was going to finish that race.  Starting with the day I paid the registration fee and at least once a day every day in between, I had doubts.  Would I give up?  Would my feet survive? Would I get scooped up by the Van of Shame?  But that moment when I realized I could finish was even more emotional for me than when I actually did finish.  Sure, there are a hundred things that could have gone wrong in those last 2-3 miles.  But the doubts were gone.  I knew I was going to do it.  I was doing it.  The worst was behind me, and I was able to look around and enjoy my moment.

Fast-forward to today.  I got my 2013-14 academic planner in the mail from World Campus and flipped to May.  There it was in black and white, printed and bound and in my hands...

May 9-11
Spring Commencement Weekend

I took a picture of the planner page and posted it to Twitter. Someone from the World Campus team tweeted back and said, "you didn't fill it in yet!"  It hadn't even occurred to me.  It's still so far away... hundreds of things could still go wrong.  But then all of a sudden I knew. The doubts are gone.  I know I'm going to do it.  I am doing it. The worst is behind me and I'm going to enjoy this.  So I went online and looked up the spring commencement schedule and I filled it in:

I haven't decided whether I'll make the trip up.  It's expensive.  It's impersonal.  I don't want to go by myself.  But it's not the ceremony that matters.  283 days from today I will finally be a college graduate.  And 4-6 weeks after that, I'll have a piece of paper to prove it.

...and maybe, just maybe, a year from today I'll be getting ready to start grad school. 

To Be Continued...

For now, I want to remember this day, when I got irrationally emotional about filling in a date on a calendar.  Today I realized I might not be close enough to the end of the race to see the finish line, but I know exactly where it is and the route I need to take to get there.  This is my moment.

This is the day
See it sparkle and shine
When all I've lived for
Becomes mine!

Finding My Voice...in Bangladesh??

I was taken aback by my own passion earlier today.  Though I can rant about non-issues like door slamming neighbors and unfairness at work with aplomb (please tell me I'm using that right...), it's rare that I find myself really caring about something important. 

Global warming?  Bad...but not going to be solved by me.
Dogfighting? Bad...but what would I do?  It's not like I know anyone who participates...

Generally, I hear things that make me sad for a few minutes and then I move on to rainbows and puppies and unicorns.  But this thing keeps nipping at the back of my mind, and I think maybe this time I'm going to act.

My "History of Work in America" class requires a weekly discussion forum, where we read a series of required "primary source" articles (and occasionally watch video clips), choose one question from a list of about 10, form an opinion, cite two of the sources, and blather for a minimum of 150 words.  We then choose a classmate's post and comment on their use of the source materials and whether they proved their point, in a minimum of 100 words.  That's it - nothing to it - easy points.  So this week, the question I selected was the following:

Could you conclude that sweatshops exist in developing nations because a developing nation--like the United States was in the nineteenth century--must go through the historical phase of harsh economic development in order for that developing nation to develop a modern economy?

My Opinion:
Nope...Sweatshops are NOT OK

My answer to this question can be summed up in two words: absolutely not.  Arguing that slave wages and unsafe working conditions are in any way “necessary” promotes consumerism at the expense of basic human rights.

We meet John Keady in the video, “Nike Sweatshops and the Sydney Olympics.” Keady researched working conditions in Indonesia and decided to see for himself whether the jobs were livable.  Not only did Keady lose 25 pounds in the month he worked in a Nike factory, but his wages were barely enough to pay for a rat-infested room and enough food to subsist on.  His decision to put an American face and voice to a first-hand worker account brought the plight of the workers to middle-class consumers around the world.

Meanwhile, the Stossel video “Are Sweatshops factories good?” is nothing more than a condescension against human rights protestors.  He managed to find a few people from developing countries to extol the virtues of factories.  His report is not very in-depth, and sounds like a commercial for these factories.

Another first-person account came from the article “Working Overtime to Vanquish Sweatshops.”   One immigrant, the daughter of factory workers, recalls her childhood: ''My mother was working 15 hours days,'' Betty Yu said. ''I didn't know my mother. I didn't know my father. They were at work when I woke up and when I went to bed at night.”  While this account probably mirrors that of children of nineteenth century US factory workers, one important differentiation can be made: though conditions then were deplorable, with long hours and dangerous working conditions, people around the world were immigrating to the US in massive numbers.  The bad conditions here were still better than the terrible conditions they left behind.  Who is immigrating to Bangladesh today?

Sources:

John Stossel ABC News: Are Sweatshops Factories Good?Sky TV: Nike Sweatshops and the Sydney Olympics
NY Times: Working overtime to banish sweatshops

Generally speaking, my commentaries hit right around 175 words.  So the fact that I managed to ramble on so extensively on this topic surprised me.  But hey - it's good to enjoy an assignment every now and then!  Today, I read an opposing viewpoint from one of my classmates.  I'd also like to share her commentary, followed by my response...

Sweatshops Boost the Economy * I would absolutely agree that developing nations must endure the same phase of harsh economic development that the U.S. did in order to develop a thriving economy; and utilizing labor to produce products sold in America is a great way to develop that economy. It’s called globalization “the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets,” as defined by Webster. Newer generations in India, Africa, China and Korea live better than the older generations before them because of production for U.S. goods (Are Sweatshop Factories Good?).   

The video (Nike Sweatshops and the Sydney Olympics) proved that globalization does work. That video was made in 2000? According to the Jakarta Globe, by early 2013, Nike planned to make the manufacturing plant in Jakarta “the largest manufacturing base for Nike apart from China and Vietnam.” Minimum wage was raised by 44%. That’s more than a 3 ½ percent increase in the cost of living per year. That’s a bigger cost of living wage than some American workers earn in  a year. 

Response:
As much as I love the idea of globalization and a global economy, I believe that a truly global economy should have standardized minimum wages (based on the nation's economy, of course) and a certain minimum of guaranteed worker safety.  I acknowledge that factories are not all sweatshops, and that for some workers in developing countries (as well as workers in this country) factories are perfectly safe and pay a decent wage.

I am very confused by your perspective that the Sydney Olympics video shows globalization in a positive light.  And while I find your statistics on the rising minimum wage a positive sign, I'd also like to point out that money doesn't do these workers any good if they die in an industrial accident due to their deplorable working conditions.  Just in the past six months in Bangladesh:

* November 2012: 117 killed in clothing factory fire
* April 2013: 1,000+ killed in factory collapse
* May 2013: 8 people killed in factory fire
* ...and just this week: finally, Bangladesh gives factory workers the right to unionize.  However, I wanted to highlight the following quote, pulled from the last article (emphasis mine):

"The government is in talks with labour groups and factory owners on a new minimum wage for the garment sector. Its current $38-per-month minimum pay is half what Cambodian garment workers earn.

 

Bangladesh last increased its minimum garment-worker pay in late 2010, almost doubling the lowest pay. This time, wages are unlikely to go much higher as factory owners, who oppose the raise, say they cannot afford higher salaries as Western retailers are used to buying cheap clothing."

"Harsh economic development" is one thing.  However, ignoring the horrible treatment of human beings for the sake of a $3 t-shirt from Wal Mart isn't globalization - it's exploitation.

 

So...it looks like, of all things, I am passionate about global workers' rights.  Who'd have thought?!?  I remember trying to find clothes made in the US a few years ago, and determined that my options would literally be to look Amish or to sew my own.  And I justified my inaction by telling myself that not all clothing factories are sweatshops.  Maybe my $5 t-shirt was made by happy well-fed women putting children through college on their wages.  I can't possibly solve this problem on my own.  And what I do probably won't make a bit of difference.  But that's not going to stop me from acting.  With one exception, I've boycotted Wal Mart for over a year over the poor treatment of workers in their stores in this country!  

I pledge that I will no longer buy clothes made in Bangladesh until real substantive change is brought to the clothing factories.  A living wage and safe working conditions should be guaranteed to every worker on the planet, and I am willing to pay more to do my small part. 

Though I can't find an article to explain this point more clearly, I learned in my labor economics class that labor costs are a small piece of a very large cost-benefit equation, and increasing the labor rate does NOT cause the product on the shelf to go up by the same amount.  That means a labor raise of $1/hour might translate to $.10 per piece of clothing. However, of that $.10, only 2-3 cents would actually be passed along to the consumer.

...but even if the cost of every article of clothing you buy went up by $1 - from a $5 t-shirt to a $6 t-shirt - wouldn't that be worth it to know there aren't starving workers living in filth?  And before you say you can't afford that extra $1 per shirt, consider all the ways to pay less - sales, coupons, clearance racks, stores like Ross and TJ Maxx, consignment/second hand/thrift stores...

OK...so that was an awful lot for one post.  Sorry about that.  Like I said, apparently I found my voice. And I can't seem to stop singing!

Time to Learn and Move On

I don't think I've mentioned the Zimmerman case here before, and I probably won't mention it again, but I was sort of shocked to wake up this morning to a "not guilty" verdict and to find so many of my out-of-state friends on Facebook proclaiming once again how effed up Florida is. So...

Let's do a quick recap the story, leaving race out.  Neighborhood watch guy sees suspicious-looking adult male, reports to authorities, makes the bad decision to get out of his car and follow male, makes another bad decision to approach male, male engages, struggle ensues, someone gets shot.

George Zimmerman made a series of very bad decisions that resulted in the death of Trayvon Martin.  That was a tragedy that ended one life and ruined the lives of members of both families.  In my heart, I believe that he thought Trayvon would back down when approached and had no intention of engaging in any sort of violence. I have a lot of opinions about George being a wannabe cop who turned out to be a coward, but I don't think this is the time for character assassination.

Let's not forget that 16 months ago the police investigators determined that George had acted in self-defense.  And then the media got involved. The only reason he was charged with a crime was the outcry from the community (local and national).  They wanted a trial.  They got a trial. 

For those saying Trayvon was a child: yes, in the strictest sense of the law.  But he was a full-grown man, and if the tables were turned and George had ended up being the one hurt or killed, Trayvon would have been charged as an adult.

For those comparing this case to the Casey Anthony case: the similarity, I believe, is only that the respective District Attorneys were bullied by the media and other outside influences into pressing charges in weak cases.  Florida juries are not inherently flawed, nor are Florida laws.  Remember, "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" is a high standard built into the criminal justice to minimize the chance of an innocent person being convicted of a crime.

For those worried that this verdict will embolden nut jobs/racists to take the law into their own hands more often: I guess we'll see.  I'm inclined to disagree, but that's just a hunch.

It is my sincere hope that those who are unhappy with the verdict look at the laws they feel need to be changed and fight for their beliefs.  I hope that people on both sides stop being angry long enough to pray for the life lost.  And I hope that we all learn something and can move on.