The last week has been super-interesting politically speaking in Regina. Not only is there an election campaign underway, but Occupy Regina challenged bylaws and to this point has won us back our Charter rights to assemble peacefully in dissent of the government.
While people in the “first world” work out how best to peacefully gain back control of their political systems from the super-rich, there are some people in the world living with no power to change their circumstances. Our holidays unintentionally support their oppression, in part by design of those CEOs on Wall Street who put their shareholders and themselves above human decency. Buying Halloween candy chocolates, or Christmas gifts can show your friends and family you care about them, while simultaneously grinding a boot into the face of the enslaved by rewarding companies profiting from the slavery.
How?! This isn’t new news, but it may be new to you. Chocolate is sourced from child slavery in some places. If you are not buying “Fair Trade” chocolate, you don’t really know if your candy was the partial result of slavery or not. Yes, fair trade goods cost more – that’s why fewer people buy them. If more people made that choice to increase the demand, the prices would drop, although not down to what the slave-chocolate costs.
I’ll admit, I don’t eat only fair trade chocolate. If I’m offered chocolate, I don’t nitpick. I shouldn’t have to; would you assume food you’re being offered is being created through slavery? It’s unreal, this is 2011. For some people in the world, it might as well be 1611, and we Trick or Treaters may as well all be wearing top hats and monocles.
For Christmas this year, I’m going to actually have a gift suggestion for people when they ask me. I’d like anything that is Fair Trade. There are lots of fair trade stores in Regina, Ten Thousand Villages, and Eat Healthy Foods are just two of them. I want my gifts [both the ones I buy for giving, and the ones I receive] to be part of the solution this time, instead of part of the problem.
ADDED: Someone pointed out to me today that the reason Dollar Store items are so cheap is because they are “stolen”. They aren’t stolen in the sense that the store owner didn’t pay for them to resell, but someone in the supply line earlier wasn’t paid a fair price.
Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff 
Lol.
Yeah, slavery is hil.air.ee.ous. Laugh it up joker.
Slavery is hilarious? No, but your self-righteous pat on your own back is. It’s so easy to toss a slogan and claim some great victory in the defense of human rights but it’s totally another to look closely at what you are doing. Child slaves? Do you think that not buying the product of their labour they will somehow magically end up in school? Yeah, that’s the funny part as you nibble on your fair trade chocolate and drink fair trade coffee. You feel better and the child is out of work and out of luck. Enjoy your hundred mile diet and your organic food and screw the growers of Chile and the millions who would starve if we didn’t have modern pesticides and growing techniques.
I’m entitled to take credit for what I do Rat. This is a blog; it’s a window into how I live and think.
You’re confusing the removal of a problem with the creation of a solution. No, kids won’t end up in school magically, but if you keep buying chocolate from slave drivers, then they sure aren’t going to go to school AND they will be slaves.
I don’t drink coffee, I think the world is too heavily addicted to it for one thing.
I don’t see how creating higher paying co-op jobs picking cocoa is going to put these children or their parents out of “work”. You just called child slavery “work”, as if it’s something to protect. That’s hilarious, in the worst kind of way.