At church on Sunday we read this quote by Martin Luther King Jr., said five months before his assassination –
“I say to you this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live. You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand of some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand. Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.
You died when you refused to stand up for right.
You died when you refused to stand up for truth.
You died when you refused to stand up for justice.”
It struck me because just the night before I had witnessed fear and bullying used to silence the voice of justice. I had bought a ticket to attend Austin’s first ever Fair Trade Film Festival sponsored by Austin’s Ten Thousand Villages. They had gathered local fair trade groups and stores for a very festive market and had rented out a local theater to show three films dealing with trade issues followed by panel discussions. One of those films to be shown was the award winning documentary The Price of Sugar which exposes the abuses committed against Haitians working on the sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic. But that film ended up not being shown after Ten Thousand Villages received a letter from the lawyers representing Dominican plantation owners Philipe and Juan Vicini. The Vicini family has filed a defamation lawsuit against the film after several attempts to stop distribution of the film. The letter implied that if the lawsuit is won then any group that had chosen to show the film would face possible legal action as well. The powers that be at the non-profit Mennonite ministry decided they could not afford that risk and so chose not to show the film.
Another film was shown and we were treated to hearing from a lawyer from the powerful law firm Patton Boggs as she read a prepared statement on behalf of the Vicini family. The family claims the film shows abuses and deplorable conditions and erroneously alleges that they occurred at plantations and sugar operations owned by the Vicinis. Their main argument is that a main subject in the film, the Rev. Christopher Hartley, who claimed to have discovered the atrocities, was “dismissed” from the Dominican Republic by the Catholic Church and therefore is an untrustworthy source. The lawyer actually told us that we should stop defending “sexy” films like this and focus on real issues in the world instead. When questioned she said that her purpose that night was to ensure that the Vicini’s side of the story was represented, but had no comment when confronted with the fact that their legal actions ensured that only the Vicini’s side got told at this film fest. Also when asked why her firm was defaming the Priest Christopher Hartley, she replied that since his bishop dismissed him there was cause to question his word.
I’ll be honest. Her words so enraged me, I was literally shaking. That money and power can bully those trying to bring justice into this world into silence infuriates me. I fully understand why Ten Thousand Villages backed down; they had to decide if they would risk their entire ministry to share this one particular story. But when the people who commit injustice are getting filthy rich off of abusing laborers and then can use that money to silence anyone who exposes their sin, there is something seriously wrong. And when the church takes their side as well, it is heartbreaking.
Father Christopher Hartley spent his early years working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. In 1997 he was sent to serve the poor in the Dominican Republic, but the more he witnessed the abuses the poor Haitian workers were subject to there, he realized he could not remain silent. Charity wasn’t enough; he had to fight against the systems that were causing the injustices in the first place. He started documenting what he saw and speaking up for improving worker conditions. This of course brought him into confrontation with the Vicini family – the wealthiest and most influential family in the DR. He was rocking the boat; the Vicini’s didn’t like it, so therefore the government didn’t like it, and so therefore the Catholic Church didn’t like it. His bishop removed him from the DR in 2006. Hartley commented, “The family, the government, and I think even the church was tired of me, I don’t think the church wanted to endure this constant bashing in every newspaper, day after day after day.” So like many priests that actually put into action a theology of liberation based on a deep appreciation of scripture, his voice became too controversial and had to be silenced. He is now working with the Sisters of Charity again.
It is one thing to give charity, but when people start addressing why charity is needed things get uncomfortable. Haitians are suffering from extreme abuses in the sugar fields in the DR, but when such a lucrative money-making enterprise gets questioned, those questioning voices are silenced in whatever way they can. Voices for justice, especially religious leaders who start acting like Jesus instead of just talking about him, face that silencing. Some end up murdered, others are shuffled to “safer” postings, and others are attacked by national media sources. Challenging injustice is dangerous, especially when it questions how people make their money.
It disgusts me that our world plays by the “he with the most money wins” rule. But when the legal system fails us, it is up to the people to work from below to make change. If money is all some people care about, then let’s make this about money. It took a grassroots boycott of sugar from the Caribbean slave plantations for the British government to finally start listening to William Wilberforce and ban slavery back in the 19th century. Almost all the sugar sold in the US comes from the DR, buying it funds the Vicinis and this system of modern day quasi-slavery and abuse. Buying fair trade sugar speaks with the only language these people hear – money – a language that is difficult to silence.
But it is also encouraging to hear Martin Luther King Jr. words. He had to pay the ultimate price for standing up for what is right. In the face of litigation and controversies like this, it is good to be reminded that if we fail to stand up for justice we are already dead.