November 21, 2007 at 11:30 pm (peace)
Tags: Christianity, church, cross, crucifix, sweatshops
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2007
Crucifixes Made Under Horrific Sweatshop Conditions In China, Linked to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Trinity Church in New York, And Nationally to the $4.63 Billion Association for Christian Retail
At a press conference today in front of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee, released a 73 page report documenting the brutal sweatshop conditions under which crucifixes are made for Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Trinity Church and the Association for Christian Retail at the Junxingye factory in Southern China.
Holding up a crucifix made in the Junxingye factory and sold at Saint Patrick’s and Trinity, Kernaghan said, “This crucifix was made by young women—several just 15 and 16 years of age—who were forced to work 15 ½ hours a day, from 8:00 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., seven days a week, toiling for months on end without a single day off. Workers were routinely at the factory over 100 hours a week. Before the crucifixes had to be shipped to the U.S., there were also mandatory 22 ½ to 25-hour all-night shifts from 8:00 a.m. straight through to 6:30 or 9:00 a.m. the following morning. Workers were paid just 26 ½ cents an hour, $2.12 a day and $10.61 a week, which is less than half China’s legal minimum wage. After deductions for primitive company dorms and food, the workers’ take-home wages actually drops to just nine cents an hour.”
The report, titled: “Today, Workers Bear the Cross” details:
- Primitive dorm conditions with workers sleeping in narrow, double-level metal bunk beds. Dorm walls are filthy and smudged with black, while spider webs cling to the ceiling. The bathrooms are so damp and dirty that moss grows on the floor.
- Workers describe the company food as “awful.” The soup is just water with a few vegetable leaves and drops of oil floating at the top.
- Anyone missing a day is docked 2 ½ days’ wages.
- Workers fear they may be handling toxic chemicals, paints and solvents—which sting their eyes and cause skin rashes—but they are not allowed to know the names of the chemicals they are working with, let alone their health hazards.
Kernaghan commented that something has gone terribly wrong, “The Association for Christian Retail has decided, en masse, to follow Wal-Mart to China, where they can exploit defenseless workers and pay them pennies an hour to make their religious goods. These are workers who have no freedom of religion, no freedom of association, and no human or worker rights protections.”
“Especially during the holiday season,” he continued, “the American people can draw a line in the sand, refusing to allow crucifixes and other religious items to be turned into just another cheap sweatshop commodity. As things stand now, there are enforceable laws backed up by sanctions to protect corporate products and trademarks, but no similar laws to protect the legal rights of the young people around the world who made the religious or other goods we will purchase this holiday. This is morally wrong and must change.
To read the whole report, click here.
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November 11, 2007 at 10:34 pm (Fat, Feminisms, activism)
Tags: brethren priestess, Fat, health, nutrition, science, sizeism
So, it doesn’t increase the risk of dying from most illnesses to be 15-30 pounds ‘overweight,’ or to have a Body-Mass Index (BMI) of up to 30, according to a study published by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. Being highly obese can still lead to some problems, the study finds, but it doesn’t make much difference at all to be just a bit heavier than the ‘ideal’ people have decided on.
Except that it might keep you alive. You see, another finding in the same study was that people who are about 15 pounds ‘overweight’ actually are more likely to survive some illnesses.
The AP article on this study in the Oakland Tribune expressed absolute shock and dumbfoundedness about this finding. How in the world could it be healthier to be even one pound fatter than a stick figure? Being skinny is supposed to be an ultimate, unmediated good! Does this mean we have to stop harassing fatter people as if they are committing an ongoing, mortal sin?
But it’s hard to be surprised at the ‘news’ that being a little bit fat helps you get through periods of sickness. Duh. Don’t we all know that? Haven’t we all seen friends or family members get sick and visibly drop weight? Well, then, how could it not be better for someone in that situation to have a little buffer weight, instead of being nearly-bone-thin and then losing even more weight because of illness?
The article cites as one remaining supposed danger of being slightly ‘overweight’ (we have to retain some reason to feel smug about being thinner than other people, now, don’t we, mainstream media?): that being overweight could lead, down that slippery slope, to being obese. Yet, the article fails to note the equally obvious observation that being underweight can lead just as easily to anorexia or bulimia or other forms of starvation.
It never seems to cross the minds of these folks who are so concerned about other people’s eating habits that eating too little and being too thin is a problem worth their concern. Even when research smacks them in the face, these journalists and scientists and businesspeople and others cannot even fathom that their moral hierarchy of size, which deems overweight people second-class citizens, might be wrong.
What would they do without their prejudices? Perhaps do real science?
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November 6, 2007 at 1:36 am (Family, Oak Park)
Tags: Family, geezer, Halloween, Oak Park, rant, trick-or-treat
Is it politically incorrect to say that I think I will make a FABULOUS old lady? Once I’ve gotten to the age when (white, English-speaking) women can get away with much more ludicrous behavior, I am going to have fun. I already know what I’ll be like. I won’t feel propriety restraining me from going with my gut and sitting there on my front porch while the adorable trick-or-treaters come by, crotchety commentary about the kids’ costumes muttered out all the while, handing one piece of nasty orange and black hard candy to each kid, with a devilish look in my eye that says, “I’m keeping the chocolate-almond-caramel truffles inside. Mwahaha.” When the girls approach in their oh-so-clever ‘Dead Bride’ costumes, with lace smattered with fake blood, I’ll bend over, face in hands, mock-sobbing, as I scream about ‘my daughter who was killed on her wedding day!’ to make them realize the traumatizing potential of their garb. I can see it all now.
Halloween this year was wonderful. I was home in Oak Park, not on the silly, autumnless West Coast, so there were colorful leaves crunchy underfoot all along the sidewalk, dozens of kids from infancy through high school swarming up and down the block, crisp cool air that gently reminds you to be sensible and put on a sweater if you’re going outside, dearie.
Oak Park does trick-or-treating right. They only allow t-or-t-ing from 4-7 pm, i.e. during daylight. That means the packs of kiddies are concentrated, which not only makes the sidewalks teem beautifully with the wee masses, but also means you can focus on treat distribution and then rest for the evening.
We ran out of candy. Well, candy and pencils: we gave out at least 80 candies, and 70 pencils. (Given a choice, most kids chose pencils, which may be sorry commentary on Oak Park school funding.) We would have run out even earlier if the roving band of high schoolers
hadn’t skipped our house (for whatever reason of herd mentality they were operating by, since my mum was sitting out on the porch waiting to give out the treats). It was pretty desperate: we were getting down to airline crackers and granola bars.
The best costume on the block was a baby as an iPod, a white suit with a black operation panel on her torso, with her mom’s ear buds plugged into the top of her white cap. Pretty cute, even though the technology will be obsolete by the time the baby’s old enough to read the word ‘MENU.’ There were also plenty of Spidermen, Power Rangers (are they even on teevee anymore?), and whatever you’re pretending to be when you just slap an animal-ears-headband on your head and grab a plastic bag to collect the treats. I went as the crazy daughter the mom locks inside while she sits on the porch passing out candy, the one who peers with her big tinted glasses out the front door window at the families as they make their way up the porch steps, smiling to herself and planning her blog post on it all.
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November 2, 2007 at 12:33 am (Feminisms, Worldliness, sexism)
Tags: brethren priestess, eating disorder, Eva Mendes, fast food, feminism, Jay Leno, Tonight Show
Well, kinda.
Last night, Jay Leno hosted actress Eva Mendes on his nightly show. Mendes related how she loved to eat large meals of fast food – burger, fries, and a milkshake. (Sorry, I forget which chain it was, but what’s the difference?) It was refreshing to hear a famous actress admitting to eating like a normal person, even if her resulting image is unreachable without a team of ‘beauty’ specialists.
Leno said he liked to hear from a women who ate as much before a relationship as years into it. Okay, that’s a stupid enough comment, but it got worse.
Apparently, her admission to eating fast food was just too unladylike, and Leno felt the right (and duty) to proceed to list for his guest the CALORIE COUNT of the various food items she had mentioned, concluding with a shocking 900+ calories for the milkshake.
Sure, that’s shocking, and I don’t like fast food either. But it would be one thing to scold her for eating unsustainably grown and processed food. Instead, Leno felt himself to be in the position to scold his guest for eating too many calories. Public peer patriarch’s pressure. A woman admits that she sometimes eats large, fatty fast food meals, which we all know are unhealthy – and Leno picks up his patriarchal cue to rein her in, remind her that she should not be taking in so much for herself, that she should be carefully calculating her caloric intake, that she should FEEL BAD for being an actress with such plebeian culinary habits. What incredible BALLS that took (in the bad way) for this male host to feel it his responsibility to shame his female GUEST about what she eats.
Milkshakes as feminist revolt from patriarchy? Is it that pathetically simple to be a radical these days? Yuck.
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