Now admittedly, this was in Austin, a town whose motto is “Keep Austin Weird,” so there wasn’t too much shock value in our march, but there was a good deal of interest. As we walked through a sports bazaar behind Lance Armstrong’s bike shop, the farmer’s market, a fair for designer dog houses (seriously), and the Gypsy Fair (remember this is Austin), we shared with numerous people about the reason for our march — the launch of the Good & Fair Clothing company.

Over the last few years my friend Shelton Green has had his world turned upside down. Stories of oppression, human trafficking, and unfair labor practices entered his world and changed it forever. He started advocating for justice, doing whatever he could to raise awareness about injustice in our world and what we can do to fight it. But he wanted to do more than just use his voice to help; he wanted to help create alternative systems that subvert oppressive economic systems. Out of that passion was born Good & Fair Clothing.

Shelton created a clothing company to produce basic clothing — underwear, t-shirts — that was both good and fair. He had found a number of companies that made fair or organic specialty clothing, mostly for women, but few that supplied the everyday necessities. He wanted to produce clothing that was good and fair from the ground up. From the growing of the cotton, to the milling, to the sewing — the earth must be treated sustainably and the people who worked in the process had to be treated and paid fairly. His dream is to create clothing that doesn’t hurt anyone and to give consumers total confidence that their clothing is made by hands that are treated fairly. To do so, he partners with various fair trade companies in India.

It was in traveling to India this past summer to visit these companies that his intellectual passion for fair trade took on human form. He quickly abandoned any notion that fair trade grants workers the same life of ease and comfort that most of us enjoy in the states. He saw instead that fair trade is the lifeline out of extreme poverty and allows people to live without fear of whether their families will survive until the next day. He met with the workers who produced the clothes for his company and entered into their lives. Being good and fair moved from being an ideal to the very least consumers could be doing to treat people with respect and dignity. It isn’t charity or a path to riches; it is simply meeting the basic ethical standard for our interaction with other human beings.

Hearing the people’s stories and seeing the basic way fair trade systems affect people’s lives confirmed for Shelton that participating in good and fair economic systems has to be a core part of his faith. The trip to India convinced him that “the systems of our world ought to reflect the ideals of our faith; that being, to love and respect the people who grow our food, make our clothes, and work in so many different ways to provide us the things and services we use every day.” To be Christian is to care, to stand up for ensuring these basic standards for all the people our daily consumer habits bring us in contact with — to put our money where our heart is and shop in good and fair ways.

As Shelton commented, “We are their voice. We are the voice that demands fair and equitable standards from the brands and companies we support with our pocket book. Yes, it is massively inconvenient, hard, time consuming and doesn’t fit with the pace of life in the west, to make ‘buying’ decisions according to this new matrix; a matrix where the treatment and wages of the producers is weighted heavily and given greater importance than simply the cost of goods. How else can we bring about the kind of changed needed to improve the lives of people in our own communities and across the world?”

To support a passion and a calling like that, I had no problem giving a Saturday morning to walk around town in underwear to help get the word out about Good & Fair Clothing. Shelton is helping me put faces to the ideas of justice and giving us all tangible ways to seek justice with something as simple as the underwear we buy.

• Jennifer Gainer Wildeboer has embarked on an ethical eating project and is blogging her way through it. She writes –
  

  I'm developing a blog (and eventually a book, if the door opens) over the next calendar year. I am calling it Whole Food/Soul Food: A Year of Eating Ethically. I am changing my family's eating habits to remove all foods that I can't pronounce as well as trying to eat fresh, local food and not eating factory farmed meat or dairy. The goal of the project is to get healthier, eat more ethically, make my actions match up the ethics of my faith, and to prove that it can all be done without being rich. I am planning on blogging and writing about the experience as well as interviewing local farmers and the like.

  Fantastic endeavor. I wish her luck and I am eager to read what she discovers about food, her faith, and herself along the way.

• Also my friend Shelton Green in currently in India forging relationships with fair trade factories for his newly launched fair trade clothing company Good & Fair. He is awesome, the company is awesome, and I love that he just went to India to really get to know the people he will be working with. He has been blogging through his travels there, reporting on what he is experiencing and the people he is meeting – I highly recommend checking it out. This recent entry is a great perspective on the impact of fair trade –
  

  I have spent the last two days at the factory of a fairtrade clothing producer here in Kolkata, India. I have conducted a few interviews and begun to take pictures. I have spoken with people at all levels of the company. Honestly, I am struggling a bit to understand how people live in such abject poverty. Culture shock set in right away when I arrived and I am now beginning to tread my way thru it as I attempt to understand the cultural context in which I find myself.

  I think I expected “fairtrade” clothing production to look very different than what I found. Without thinking thru my expectations, I now see that I wanted it to be “western” and easy to identify. Fairtrade simply looks different “in the flesh.” It is very relative. The wages are enough to lift people out of poverty, allowing them to a place to live and the basics of life for the wage earner and his or her family. The company I am looking at and will likely partner with, does more than pay a living wage (which, as you would expect, is more than minimum wage). They pay for the children of employees to go to school, they pay part of the employees premium in order them and their family (including parents) to access the government health care program, and several other things that are benefits on top of wages. This company is the only company in India that is fairtrade certified by one of the U.S. based fairtrade organizations.

  Even after all of that I am struggling to understand that what I am seeing is what fairtrade looks like in the real world. Fairtrade gives the poor a life, it doesn’t give them the life that I have and luxuries I enjoy. I want them to want the things that I want, to look like me and to act like me, then they will no longer be “the poor.” That’s what the unreformed, unacknowledged, old school “missionary” in me wants to do. And that is the worst thing I could hope for them. They deserve the life they want, and not one that conforms to my ideas of prosperity.

  The work of Good & Fair is to tell the story of these workers who are treated and paid fairly, and who are safe and free at work; and to support them by utilizing ethical supply chains. Their is more to fairtrade, but I am learning those things are at the heart of it.

• And finally, in a completely self-serving bit of self-promotion – as I mentioned on Facebook, I submitted an entry into the Anthony Bourdain Medium Raw essay contest. The topic was, “Why Cook Well?” and I wrote from the perspective that cooking well helps us get over ourselves by pushing us to care for the people we are cooking for as well as the people who grow our food and the earth it grows in. I just wanted the larger voice of justice to be represented among the essays. So if you want to support me and those ideas, I invite you to go read and vote for my piece. You can vote once a day, so if you really love me… Okay, end of Julie commercial.

Enjoy the links!

So let's celebrate the opportunity to love and care for the world by being fair with our dollars.

World Fair Trade Day 2010
8 May 2010, A Big Day for the Planet

World Fair Trade Day is a worldwide celebration of Fair Trade, initiative of the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO).

Fair Trade is a tangible and efficient response to poverty, economic and global food crises and climate change. The economic crisis confirms the need for trade to deliver sustainable livelihoods and development opportunities to small producers in the poorest countries of the world. This is evidenced by the fact that a third of the world population survives on less than US$2 per day.

“Fair Trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers – especially in the South. Fair Trade Organizations, backed by consumers, are engaged actively in supporting producers, awareness raising and in campaigning for changes in the rules and practice of conventional international trade.” FINE definition

The Fair Trade movement shares a vision of a world in which justice and sustainable development are at the heart of trade structures and practices which allow for a decent work and dignified livelihood and a fully developed human potential of small producers. Trade can be a fundamental driver of poverty reduction and greater sustainable development. Through Fair Trade small producers have the capacity to take more control over their work and their lives. Citizens, from small producers to informed consumers, and institutions worldwide are supportive of responsible production, trading and consumption practices and of Fair Trade.

World Fair Trade Day (WFTDay) is an initiative of the WFTO, and is supported by thousands of citizens, from producers to consumers, Fair Trade Organizations, social and environmental movements, local authorities, national governments and multilateral institutions all around the planet. During WFTDay hundreds of events will celebrate Fair Trade and trade justice.

The World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) is the global network of Fair Trade Organizations around the planet, from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and North America Pacific Rim. It represents more than 350 Fair Trade Organizations from more than 70 countries.

So I'm excited by Trade As One's campaign this holiday season to encourage all of us to buy Fair Trade gifts this Christmas. We turn our traditions into a way to help and love others through such purchases. And if enough of us do it, we can make a big difference. They write – "Think about this: Just One Fair Trade purchase from every American churchgoer this Christmas would lift one million families out of abusive poverty for one whole year. Let’s make sure that when gifts are given, they speak of the sort of world that Jesus came to show us—one where the last is first, where the poor are included, the sick are healed, and the captive is set free."

Fantastic idea. And they created this great video to help get the message out there -

There are numerous ways one can support Fair Trade or other justice causes this Christmas. We are excited this year to find a Fair Trade Chocolate Advent Calendar. And I take time with the kids to support families around the world by purchasing animals from Heifer International. But there are numerous places online where one can find Fair Trade items to give this Christmas. I've listed some of my favorite sites below. But all it takes is just a little tweak to our holiday habits this Christmas to help show love to people around the world.

Clothing and Accessories

• Be The Change Elements
• Earth Creations
• Ecoland
• Fair Indigo
• Greenheart
• Indigenous Designs
• Mata Traders
• No Sweat Apparel
• Rawganique
• Simple Shoes
• Tinctoria Designs
• Tom's Shoes

Food, Coffee, and Gifts

• Cafe Justo
• Equal Exchange
• Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee
• Natural Candy Store
• SERRV
• Taraluna
• Ten Thousand Villages
• Trade As One
• World of Good

Other

• Fair Trade Sports
• Reusable Bags

So have yourself a merry little fair trade Christmas. Celebrate traditions and do some good while you are at it.