See No Evil

There are some things we all would rather not know about, for example how that meat on our table got there.

Most of us at least know that animals die so that we can feel satiated, but we would like to believe that they were treated humanely up until the moment they were...hmmm, put to sleep?  We've all seen how chickens and pigs are caged in factory farms, without even enough room to turn around or roll over. We know how cattle in feedlots frequently live in shit and mud up to their calves (pun intended). But we would rather that information would just go away.

In another post I wrote about the U.S. clothing manufacturers who profit from slave labor in Haiti and how our very own State Department went to bat for them. Now there is a story in The Nation about one woman's protest against how U.S. firms profit from the violence against garment workers in Cambodia, workers who earn about $2.75 per day, which isn't even remotely a living wage there.

None of us, understandably, want to have to do the research to ensure that the clothes we buy are not made with what is essentially slave labor. Just as we don't want to have to do research about the conditions at the slaughter house(s) where our hamburger originated. This is one of the reasons we have governments for crissakes.

I don't know what laws might already be on the books that prohibit profiting from slave labor. You would think such laws exist. But, if they do, they are clearly ineffective.

The answer is activism, but instead I prefer to live in Brasil. In the meanwhile, I have nothing but praise and admiration for women like the one in this video.