We the People in Progress

So we have stopped buying chocolate that contains cocoa harvested by child slaves – we have right?  No?  Well stop now then.  We have substituted it with Fair-trade chocolate. No?  Do that – it’s really good.  If you want some advice on the best kinds check out my blog on that because honestly if I am going to put in the hard work of taste testing I want as many people to benefit as possible.  And we have called, e-mailed or personally asked our stores to carry Fair-trade chocolate to make it more available to  us and others.  No?  Let’s get on that because demand is what makes this fair economy go round and the stores need to hear our demands from our lips or keyboards and then see the results in their inventories for it to really make a difference!

And now we come to the world of politics.  It’s not as bad as everyone thinks. I’ll walk you through it.  Not to be all Mr. Smith (from  Mr. Smith goes to Washington just in case the uniqueness of the name didn’t immediately call the reference to mind) but our government is meant to be accessible to us, to be responsive.  I think someone once said ours is a government – of the people, by the people, for the people (Gettysburg Address btw).  That’s us, the people.  So if we the people think that children in West Africa should not be trafficked, enslaved and exploited so that we can eat chocolate than our government should be made to care as well.

So we, the people, are going to try and get our government back on the track it started in 2001 with the Harkin-Engel Protocol.  For a start.   Little old me and little old you.  Yes.  We are going to attempt to get the Congress of the United States of America to do something effective and important.  Yes!  It has happened and it can happen.  What we know for sure.  For absolute certain.  100% of surveys agree 100% of the time is that if we do nothing nothing will change.  We don’t know that our actions will bring about the change we seek but we can know for certain that if we choose to do nothing that things will stay exactly as they are.

Let me just say this.  My senior year of college I did a semester in DC.  Perhaps the best semester in all my many many years in academia.  And oh there were many.  Anyway half the time we were in class and half the time we were at our internships.  Somehow I ended up interning in Senator Kennedy’s office.  It was an amazing experience. Learned a ton.  Highlight – attending the Nelson Mandela Congressional Gold Medal of Honor ceremony .  Lowlight –that would have to be the many occasions I was “asked” to walk the Senator’s dog.  I’d be traipsing around with this little yippy dog in my cute little skirts suit and high heels around the outside of the Capitol Building.  Not humiliating at all. 

Anyway, back to the relevant point.  Senator Kennedy was about as tenured as you could possibly get.  He didn’t even need to run for reelection.  His biggest concern when his six year term was up was if anyone knew the name of his opponent and whether he would get ninety-eight instead of ninety-nine percent of the vote.  Even someone as insulated as him kept very careful track of constituent communications.  Two people in the main lobby office and several others at different locations tracked constituent calls on specific issues and for general matters.  These were communicated to higher level staffers and became part of the discussion on bills and policy.  My point being our representatives do care what we think, they need to because their jobs are connected to it, but also, because I hope and want to believe  they take seriously their responsibility to represent US with the power and position they hold.

If you do not know who your representatives are you can follow the links below.

www.senate.gov

www.house.gov

 After you use the links to find out who your representatives are (quick primer – we each are represented by two Senators in the Senate and one Representative in the House).  Most of them have links on their pages to contact them directly.  I would encourage you to either call or e-mail and ask your representative and both of your Senators to reintroduce this issue.  I have included below the e-mail I sent to my representatives.  Yours can be shorter, longer, more eloquent I'm sure.  But just say something.  Let them know this is an important issue.  Use my words if you want.  Feel free.  Use your own.  Whatever works!

Having recently become aware of the fact that most of the chocolate we buy in the United States is made with cocoa harvested by child slaves in west Africa I have switched my own small consumer power to fair trade encouraging friends and family to do the same.  In my research on the issue I have also discovered that Congress almost did something about this issue in 2001 but was persuaded against real action.  Although something called the Harkin Engel Protocol was established and was meant to set a deadline for ending child slavery in cocoa and force the industry to change.  But 12 years later it has not.  I am very interested in seeing this issue brought before Congress.  It is hard to believe that in 2013 we are still having to work to eradicate slavery in different parts of the world.  The fact that children are stolen from their homes or lured away with promises of jobs and then forced to work as slaves on cocoa plantations is deplorable and sickening.   At the very least Congress should put pressure on the chocolate industry to make good on the many promises they have made over the twelve years since the passage of the Protocol.  At the time they acknowledged the existence of slavery and the need for reform.   Why has no one held them accountable?

 Please reintroduce this issue and help me and those who are passionate about it bring us one step closer to a world without slavery.

Thank you for your time and prompt attention to this important matter.

Elizabeth Grady Harper

Go make the most of this great democracy of ours!

 

Rabid Biker in Progress!

So I recently went for my first bike ride of the season.  I mean my first one out on the open road.  Not on my Wii or on a bike at the gym which is hard but doesn’t actually go anywhere despite reporting back to me that I have gone some fabulous distance (these I do all the time). 

So this is the first clue (many more to follow) that I’m not what you’d call a serious biker - my first ride comes in June and not say March when you can conceivably get on the road without frost bite and snow banks.  But I thought it was time as I am allegedly doing another triathlon this year.  Another clue as to my lack of biking prowess is that this was in fact my first time on my bike since I got off my bike to start my run at a triathlon last September – the number was still on it.  Getting going was quite an ordeal.  I couldn’t find my helmet and when I did I discovered that a fairly large family of spiders had made a home of it.  Getting them out was not as scream and freak free as I would have liked but it happened (ok fine my husband may have been involved but spiders are my Achilles heel.  They have too many limbs, it’s not right.  So then I couldn’t find my sneakers.  These I do wear a little more frequently but still they seemed to have gotten lost and just when I was ready to don a pair of flip flops because seriously what’s the difference I’m just pedaling not running (clue number three I’m not a real biker?) I found them in my car. 

So then I’m off.  It’s 2 miles to the bike trails by my house and I’m all “ok this isn’t so bad” when I get there thinking I can do this.  The trail is about 4 miles and then it’s another 3 back to my house.  That’s 9 miles ( I am so much better at math than biking).  It would have to do even though the course of the Tri would be 12.5.  I’d work my way up to something closer to 12 miles at some point in the summer. 

It does start to feel a little harder a mile or so into the trails but I soldier on.  Maybe I am a biker after all?  Oh no, not so fast.  Confidence begins to waiver on the trail however as Mrs. Van Uppity speeds by me on a banana yellow bike ringing her bell (that part may be as made up as her name) with a neon pink shirt and matching neon pink helmet.  Yup she passed me.  Like I was standing still.  I took a deep breath and tried to keep up using her scrunchied pony tail swishing back and forth up ahead as motivation. 

Then a gentleman passes me. A gentleman of somewhat advanced years with folds in his elbows that reminded me of that game we used to play in middle school.  The fortune teller one where you pick a color and then the person counts out the letters and then opens one of the panels.  Anyway, he passes me too.  Clue number 67 that I’m not a real biker I suppose (one for each fold).  Then come to find out they are a couple.  I know this because as the trail passes over the road they stop to fight about whether they needed to wait to cross as traffic may or may not yield.  I take this opportunity to speed ahead.  I may be the world’s slowest biker but I can tempt traffic with the best of them.   I did go to school in Boston where if you wait for the cars to actually stop as opposed to slow down you’d forever remain on the sidewalk.  So I start pedaling faster trying to leave Mr. and Mrs. Van Uppity in the dust sure that any minute little Susie Van Uppity on her little Schwinn ten speed with the banana seat and a basket full of Barbies will whiz by.  But I mange to stay ahead, thanks mostly to three more road passes where I’m sure more arguing about the best way to proceed slows them down considerably.

So now I have to do this like a hundred more time before my race in August and I wonder  . . . how will I survive?  Maybe with some more motivation from the Van Uppties I’ll be ready in time. 

We’ll talk chocolate again on Monday!

 

 

An education in progress

Ok we are back and hitting the ground running.  Sorry for my long absence.  A Little unplanned hiatus there.  Long uninteresting story as to why but hopefully we will be back at it regularly from now on.  At least weekly although my goal is to post on Mondays and then throw in an extra blog or two throughout the week on various topics so please stay tuned and bring a friend (or ten) . . .

If you are interested in the issue of Fair Trade or Consumer Justice or want to learn more about that treat we all know and love – CHOCOLATE! - and haven’t seen the previous posts – please go back and review them I think they provide a good background for the issues we are trying to tackle here.  We have been talking about the underlying injustice of the cocoa industry and what we can do to change things.  My goal is to provide information about the state of things so we can become knowledgeable as well as specific ideas about steps we can take to actually impact the situation to make a difference.  So far we have identified three actions steps that anyone who chooses to can take to make a difference:

1.      Stop buying chocolate that was grown or harvested by slaves – this essentially means any non fair trade chocolate (except Ghiardelli which uses cocoa from South and Central America where slavery is not known to be a problem);

2.       Buy fair-trade chocolate; and

3.       Contact the stores where you normally buy chocolate and urge them to carry fair trade.

Now what we have been addressing thus far is not supporting a great evil (chocolate touched by slavery) and choosing instead to support companies that ensure their products are also not touched by slavery.  The second and third action step moves us into the positive change arena.  By buying fair-trade and urging our stores to carry more fair-trade we are attempting further support for an industry that makes real and important efforts to create products that compensate laborers fairly and do not harm the environment.

But the other side of the coin is the cocoa industry itself and the chocolate companies that profit from the atrocities of slavery and forced labor.  It’s all well and good to support those outside the mainstream cocoa industry and hope they will become more popular and commonplace.  But in the mean time children are trafficked, beaten and oppressed in the service of the major chocolate companies. 

So we turn our attention now to the political arena.

First a little history lesson because well I love history and our government did actually try and address this issue back in 2001 with something I referred to in one of my earlier posts called the Harkin-Engel protocol.

It was an amendment to an agriculture bill.  It would have given the FDA $250,000 to develop a label to put on chocolate products to indicate no child slave labor was used in growing or harvesting the cocoa used– similar to the dolphin safe tuna label.  Honestly not sure why the development of a label cost a quarter of a million dollars but there it is.  The bill passed the House 291-115.

Then the Cocoa lobby got involved.  Didn’t know there was a cocoa lobby?  I think there is perhaps a lobby for everyone and everything hidden somewhere in the recesses of Washington DC just waiting to be needed.  Like they hit a button and a secret cave emerges and the necessary forces emerge. The Cocoa lobby hired some big guns though, former Senators George Mitchell and Bob Dole.  They lobbied hard against the Protocol and before the Senate even voted on it the Cocoa industry agreed to address the problem itself without any formal legislation – why was no one even slightly skeptical?

So then Senator Tom Harkin from Iowa and Representative Eliot Engel from New York negotiated a deal with representatives from the cocoa industry that they called the Harkin-Engel Protocol.  Somewhat narcissistic but I’m sure they would have named it something else if they had realized how forgettable and/or useless it would end up being.  It was signed in September of 2001.  Its stated objective was to eliminate the worst forms of child labor and adult forced labor on cocoa farms in West Africa.  It was signed and witnessed by the heads of the eight major chocolate companies, Senator Harkin, Representative Engel, the Ambassador from Cote d’Ivoire, the Director of the International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor and others.  So frankly I’m thinking where have all of these people been for the last twelve years as this thing has been completely ignored . . . but more on that in the future. 

The protocol laid out  - key word coming – NON BINDING – agreements for the cocoa industry to regulate itself without any legal implications if they did not but Engel threatened to reintroduce the deadlines form the original bill if they did not – kind of an empty threat I guess because well twelve years later and  not much has changed slavery is still rampant in the cocoa fields of west Africa. . . So this seems to be how lobbyist earn their big fat paychecks.  They get Congressman to drop bills that will affect real change and sign on to “protocol” that sound good and leave child slaves hacking away with machetes in the fields of West Africa.

 

So what can we do besides rant and rave as I have done above just a little? 

We will talk about that next time.  Hopefully I have gotten you angry enough to want to do something more than our reps did and we’ll walk through the what and the how next time.  Did I say stay tuned yet?  Well please do!