For No Reason

Heading home from downtown Oakland tonight, eight BART cops carrying helmets and an array of belt-holstered weaponry got on my train at 12th St. I did not feel safer. They were the only ones talking until the next stop, Lake Merritt, where they got off.

Next down the line at Fruitvale, the infamous and familiar Fruitvale, a young woman came through the car weeping and yelling, “That shit is fucked up. They killed him for no reason. That poor little girl is gonna have to grow up without a daddy. It’s fucked up, y’all, no reason for that shit…” She got off at my stop, Hayward, Oscar Grant’s erstwhile home. I watched the less weaponized BART police on hand treat her with concern until she walked off, screaming epithets back over over her shoulder, stumbling into our own downtown streets through her fury and her grief.

An Open Letter to BART

Dear BART,

Even though I am not personally young and black, I was hoping you could reassure me that I could expect not to be fatally shot in the back while incapacitated by your employees. While I recognize that the odds are statistically very low of this happening, Oscar Grant (no relation) had not been treated to due process, so there is nothing verifiable to suggest that he was any more deserving of a bullet on New Years than I was on my way into work this morning. If you can provide me with a convincing reason I should not live in terror of your police force before I begin my trip home this evening, I would deeply appreciate it.

Sincerely,
David Grant
Frequent Rider

Of Chocolate and the Whip

There I was, blissfully clicking around the Internet and reading up on local sources of super-fancy chocolate because, you know, yum, when I clicked onto this:

http://www.tcho.com/tcho-is/no-slavery

and now, stomach fully turned, I’ve sworn off eating chocolate
that doesn’t identify its origins. To summarize, 37% of the world’s
chocolate comes from the Ivory Coast, where according to the US Department of State over 100,000 child slaves (not “just” wage or contract slaves, actual forced-labor kidnapees) are working on the cocoa farms. International Labor Organizations projections are lower, but add the delightful statistic that “30% of children under age 15 in sub-Saharan Africa engage in child labor, mostly in agricultural activities including cocoa farming,” and that around 200,000 children are working the Ivorian cocoa farms in total.

The big chocolate producers — you know, the ones whose tempting treats line the checkout stands of North America and Europe — all buy chocolate as a bulk commodity, with the Ivorian stuff mixed in, per an Oxfam report. This means that if you impulse-buy a bar to tide you over until you get home with your dinner, or any chocolate product that doesn’t identify its origins, it is safe to assume that a portion of each bite was brought to you buy the hands of a young African slave, toiling in conditions worse than those of the American Antebellum cotton plantations. If you luck out and chance upon a bar for which this isn’t literally true, the economic effect of buying that brand is the same.

Since I started reading up on this, I’ve been looking into what sorts of actions different groups are taking to fight this specific slave industry. While there are some good groups working to fight global slavery in general, inclusive of this form, I have not yet found anyone working the US corporate angle. With all the good press Wal-Mart has been getting about drawing lines in the sand with their Chinese suppliers on environmental issues, not to mention the popularity of Fair Trade labeled coffee and yes even chocolate, this just might be the right time to start pushing on companies like Hershey’s, Nestle, and Cadbury’s to reassure the world that their confections are not produced in any part by child slavery.

My contact at Corporate Accountability International tells me that this doesn’t fit their focus well enough (I am a big fan, regardless, of what they do). My contacts at other orgs are, sadly, non-existent. If any of my readers has suggestions about who I might do well to contact, they will be appreciated; meanwhile, my research will continue.

There are many things in this world that are Not OK, and to be sure there are far too many to count. That said, I can think of few things more despicable than child slavery.

Just put the damn Crunch bar down.

UPDATE: Hershey’s is doing some good work on this already. Kudos to them. The International Labor Rights Fund is currently going after ADM, Cargill, and Nestle over Malian slaves kidnapped by Ivorian cocoa farmers with a lawsuit.

UPDATE 2: Many of the big corporations that produce and sell chocolate worldwide, including Nestle’s and Cadbury’s, signed onto the International Cocoa Initiative in 2002, which was created in part to fulfill the goals of a “no child slavery” label as put forward in the Harkin-Engel Protocol, and of ending child slavery in cocoa production by 2005. Three years past that deadline, they have succeeded in a small amount of outreach work in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, but the idea of a slavery-free label as I would like to see it has apparently languished altogether.

Maybe the idea of a top-down approach like the Harkin-Engel Protocol was never enough to get something like this done. I will continue to look into consumer, non-profit, and NGO campaigns to pressure chocolate producers into selling only slavery-free goods, as well as continuing to contact smaller chocolatiers who don’t make their sources known. For being so direct about the issue and the part they are taking in it, I would like to suggest that the San Francisco chocolatier TCHO deserves your business; if you want something a bit less fancy or from the check-out aisle, please do stick to Hershey’s and the other brands they own (Scharffenberger, Dagoba, etc.).

But I’m Still Not Buying $200 Loafers

Good on Kenneth Cole. Whether they are motivated entirely or just primarily by the profit motive, this ad effectively makes the statement that it appears to, and without coming off as exploitative (at least not to this viewer, a cisgendered man). Of course, the Kenneth Cole web site still separates all clothing items as being for men or women, but expecting them to address intersex issues in their web design is perhaps a touch premature. Either way, a public endorsement of not only transgender rights but transgender pride is sure as hell OK by me.

Via piratepurple’s LiveJournal.

An Object and an Object Lesson in How It’s Never Safe to Assume That the Next Generation Will Have it Better or That We are in Any Way not Just Totally Fucked

For the young girl in your life who hasn’t yet been utterly crushed under the yoke of unrealistic chauvinistic expectations and impossible standards, I guess. You’ll forgive me if I don’t link directly to the product page. My blog feels bad enough about this already.

Via Sociological Images.

Is Justice Still Possible?

Salt Lake Tribune: “California’s Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) confirmed Monday that it will investigate allegations that the LDS Church failed to report nonmonetary contributions to the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign.”

The LDS Church is of course dismissive of this development, but it is worth noting that the FPPC reportedly follows up on fewer than 5% of complaints. The potential penalties from this state agency amount to fines and other fines, so while it wouldn’t exactly be justice on the scale or in the direct sense that I think is needed, it would be a very clear message that, at least in our fair state, the separation of church and state still means something, god damn it.

Now back to your regularly scheduled steaming over Obama’s appointees *cough*larrysummers*cough*.

An Open Letter to the Obama Transition Team

To Whom it May Concern,

I wish to register my deep concern over reports that “transition officials… made clear that economic conditions are dire, and suggested Obama might be forced to delay his pledge to repeal President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy” until 2011, to quote the Washington Post. The idea that continuing to give multimillionaires and others who can afford to coast through almost any sort of economic turmoil a free ride will somehow spur growth while the rest of America is out on a limb, facing potential ruin every day, is ludicrous, offensive, and as Obama himself put it not so long ago, it is not change, it’s more of the same failed policies.

Through most of the Bush years up until just before this year’s market downturn, we saw just the kind of growth that stimulates: for the first time in history we had a growth economy wherein the average family — in fact, 80% of Americans — did not gain any significant wealth whatsoever, as made famous by Nobel laureate Paul Krugman. Meanwhile, the majority of the top 20% is doing just fine, golden parachutes or no, and those at the very top who stand to gain the most by our new President casting aside his credibility so soon have more wealth than any other class in history. Barack Obama’s promised rollback of the Bush tax cuts would not even, on its own, do anything significant to address this existing wealth gap, merely to stem the rate at which it grows.

To insist that the middle class should continue to pay more than its fair share is offensive.

To suggest that those at the top should not contribute anything more at a time like this, but instead to pander to their self-interest, is outrageous.

To claim that a free ride for the very same people who have steered our economy into this iceberg after building it up with the cheapest available materials and outsourced labor will fix anything at all is ludicrous.

To suggest that we can better fix anything by financing the stimulus strategy with more foreign debt and domestic inflation, when the alternative is asking those who can help pay to do so, is bordering on treasonous.

To turn around and spit in the face of all those average Americans who worked to put President Barack Obama in the White House on day one is the best way to put out that shining light of “HOPE” that anything can be done to put American politics back in the hands of its people.

With all due respect and admiration for the public servants and sharp minds on the Obama transition team, the nascent administration, and the President-elect himself, I strongly urge you to reconsider. We still need the change we need, and we still want to let ourselves hope that Barack Obama can provide it.

Sincerely,
David Grant

High and Dry

Communism, as we knew it, fell not so long ago. Now fundamentalist capitalism, as we have come to know it through Milton Friedman and his disciples, is falling on as grand a scale (which is not to say for the first time). What does this tell us about grand, overreaching, narrative-based theories as guiding principles for running nations and multi-national entities? When can we go back to common sense, empathy, and the evidence of our senses?

We heard over and over again from the Dow Jones cheerleaders: a rising tide lifts all boats. But what about those without boats who find themselves underwater? What about those on the other side of the globe where the tide is going out? Here in the United States, only a small minority can afford the boats in question. Those with the more affordable dinghies, to stretch this metaphor as far as it will go, are the ones stranded on the rocks as that magic tide, inevitably, recedes.

I’m not interested in arguing the specific details of the internals of Friedman’s theories, or about whether or not we had a truly free market and if it is in fact the lack of total freedom that led to the recent crash (although I wonder if Pinochet’s Chile and Yeltsin’s Russia wouldn’t prove valuable object lessons). This is for the same reason that I don’t care to argue the mechanisms of absolution with Catholics: I don’t accept the premise. I don’t believe in The Holy Trinity, I don’t believe that abstract forces compelled by greed are wiser than altruistic humans motivated to do what works best for their communities, and perhaps most controversial of all I do not believe that the whole world can or should be monetized.

Our health care debate has become a squabble over who pays for what how more than a question of how we can make sure everyone gets the medicine they need. If we filter out ideology and greed, how can the financial side of it possibly be more important than satisfying this most basic of human rights? Do we, as a nation, really care more about who profits than about who dies? For many years, the apparent answer to this question has been yes. When we step outside ideology, it is plain to see that this has as firm an ethical footing as beating a child and taking all her parents’ money. The violence is less visible, but the result is the same.

It is not simply Communism or radical Islam or Neo-Conservatism that kills, it is ideology. Whatever yours might be, rest assured that the world will benefit most when you drop it in favor of reality. If you’re bent on fixing something, after all, doesn’t it make sense to make sure you can see that thing first?

Subtracting 8

In pushing its members in California to vote yes on Proposition 8, and in pushing its members everywhere to contribute time and money to the campaign against relationship equality in our state, the Mormon church (LDS) has violated the terms of its federal tax-exempt status. Section 501(c)(3) of US Code Title 26 provides such status to entities “…organized and operated exclusively for religious… no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation…” That it was in violation of this requirement could not be clearer, and it was exactly the sort of violation this section of the law was intended to protect against. Churches cannot become PACs, in whole or in part, and expect to still be treated as nothing more than churches in the eyes of the law.

A blog has been set up at lds501c3.wordpress.com with further details and instructions on how you can register a formal complaint with the IRS, including a partially pre-filled form to take some of the pain out of the process. I encourage all of my readers to do so. This isn’t simply about revenge (if you want to be unkind) or justice (as is my view of it), but about upholding the principle of separation between church and state and preventing the unfettered setting of a very dangerous precedent.

For those interested in the legal side of the fight, both the context leading up to where we are now and the suits filed to undo the damage, LiveJournal user maradydd has been parsing the legalese into something human readable here and here. If you live in California, I encourage you to read it and, as a nice side effect, gain a deeper understanding of your inalienable rights as a citizen.

Finally, if you live near San Francisco you might want to consider joining the protest march down Market St tomorrow, November 7th. If my health were to permit it, I would certainly be there with you and with my love, whose gender is none of the State of California’s business.

The Last 2 Words on Proposition 8

Fuck you, California.

Fuck the 5.3 million of you and counting who, when it came time to vote, found a way to rationalize bigotry. You have no excuses. Discrimination is simply that, and you cannot say, “I believe in equality, but” as I have heard in more interviews than I can now count. You did not protect marriage or children from anything but the idea that people are only that, people, whether or not you personally approve of their romantic choices.

Fuck all of you at the Yes on 8 campaign, which was run on nothing but lies and thinly veiled (when dressed up at all) intolerance. Fuck the lies that gay marriage would be taught in schools, that churches would lose rights and privileges, and that our new President-elect was on your side. Fuck the threats, blackmail, and DDOS attacks on the No on 8 campaign servers. I hope it eats away at what’s left of your bilious insides for the rest of your lives that you had to resort to tactics like these in lieu of a single defensible argument for your position.

Fuck the Mormon Church of the LDS, and any other organization in or out or our state which pushed its members to give their money and their time to telling non-heterosexual Californians that you still don’t count, not really, not until you deign to live a lie like we teach our sick deviants to do. There’s no such thing as separate but equal, after all, and in this case there isn’t even the illusion.

Fuck the Yes on 8 supporters who screamed homophobic and misogynistic slurs and insults at people, some of them friends of mine, who dared to disagree with you or even just look like they might. Fuck those of you who tried to intimidate No on 8 campaigners, who tore down No yard signs, who bought up ads that would display on web sites that wanted no part of your cause but wouldn’t know what was happening until it was too late. Fuck those of you who did none of these things too, but instead managed to keep you personal bigotry hidden beneath an absurd and unsupportable sham of rationalizations and lies the whole time.

Fuck any one of you who didn’t get out to vote this down yesterday because the presidential race was already decided.

Fuck any one of you who did vote against this measure, but who kept your mouths shut when the topic came up at work, at school, or at home, so that you could continue to get along well with the bigots you know. That can be hard, and believe me I’ve been there, but there are consequences to only letting one side gets its say in any arena.

Fuck you, California, for dragging your heels into the twenty-first century. There will be further legal challenges, and possibly further referendums, and in time I know our side will win, but for today our state has voted not to respect a huge portion of itself, and so I say for this huge vote of confidence for hatred our state deserves no respect.

Finally, thank you to everyone who helped out with the campaign to keep same-sex marriage from being banned in our constitution. Take heart that we were almost there, and that they had to pull out every nasty play in the book to get this thing passed. We will win next time if we remember how close we came, and not just how disappointed we feel today.

UPDATE: There is already one reason to be hopeful. If you feel as strongly as I do, please join me in donating to the ALCU today and make sure to let them know why, and to thank them for acting quickly in defense of civil rights.

UPDATE 2: According to the No on 8 campaign, “…possibly as many as 4 million absentee and provisional ballots are yet to be counted.” That sounds like a high estimate, but even 1 million could be more than enough to turn the tide. It doesn’t look good right now, but we simply won’t know for sure until Secretary of State Debra Bowen gives us the final count.