Category: Social Justice

Justice Around the Web

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It’s been awhile since I’ve done this, but today is all about the links. All justice related, so enjoy!

  • 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!

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The World Cup and Human Trafficking

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When South Africa was selected to host the World Cup, there was much rejoicing and reflection on how far the country had come. From the days of apartheid where human beings were not treated as fully human, the country has worked hard at reconciliation. The world used to forbid South Africa from even participating in global sporting events like the Olympics because of apartheid, so certainly, hosting an event like this was a great symbolic act for the country. No one is naïve enough to assume that all is well in South Africa. Dire poverty and economic disparity still plague the country. Old resentments still surface, as forgiveness is not always easy. As with most countries, racial wounds do not heal quickly.

But amidst this celebration, it is troubling to hear one of the major stories coming out of the World Cup is the issue of all the sex slaves trafficked into the country for the event. While human trafficking is common for any major event like the World Cup or the Olympics, the problem is seemingly worse in a country like South Africa. The U.S. State Department considers South Africa to be a source of sexual slavery and forced labor, as well as a destination for human trafficking from other countries and a transit nation for the modern slave trade. South African human rights groups estimate that 38,000 children are trapped in the country’s sex trade. While there have been disputed reports regarding how many people have been trafficked in for the games, the fact remains that it is occurring.

For games meant to symbolically celebrate a country’s efforts to see all of its citizens as full human beings worthy of respect, the widespread presence of human trafficking simply undermines that message. But while the country might be responsible for not trying harder to prevent trafficking in their borders, the real problem comes from the tourists and fans that create the demand for sex slaves. When the world gathers to celebrate sport and national pride together and the result is thousands of women and children abused and oppressed, good sportsmanship is nonexistent.

So what causes a celebration of national identity and a love of sports to end up in the oppression and demeaning of women and children? Is it an expression of power? Misplaced masculinity? There’s been much talk about what the governments did or did not do to prevent the trafficking, but why aren’t we talking about how to get fans to stop raping children as part of their celebration?

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After Pentecost

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What type of spirituality can it be when one can feel good in one’s spirit but still be a white racist, a sexist, a heterosexist, or an ignorer of the poor? Spirituality should make us feel so good that we cannot stand seeing the sins of the world. We would then be so filled with the Spirit that we would seek to change the world.” – Dwight Hopkins in Opting for the Margins

When I read that quote recently my first reaction was that in my experience the very opposite has been true. Apart from being the place where we are so filled with the Spirit that we have no choice but to spend our energy on creating a better world, it is actually in the church where I hear the most excuses as to why Christians shouldn’t get involved. It’s really a strange thing to think about. On one hand, it’s hard to argue with the sentiment expressed in this quote. If we are truly filled with the Spirit we will care so deeply about the things God cares about that we couldn’t help but devote ourselves to seeking to serve. In practicality, it is of course harder. I know I often fail miserably at the whole “devote my life to creating a better world” thing. But I at least do my best, or know that I should be doing more.

What really confuses me though are the Christians who find any excuse to not work for a better world. I couldn’t even begin to tell you the number of times I’ve heard the phrase “but Jesus said the poor will always be with us” used as a reason why Christians shouldn’t care for the poor and suffering. It’s not that the phrase is even used as comfort to those who feel like their efforts are not doing enough. It’s straight out used as a God-given reason to do nothing. And not just do nothing, but often to actively oppose or resist other Christians who are trying to do something. And it’s usually followed by some sermonette about how the poor are poor because of their own sinful choices. I even heard a pastor pray once after Katrina hit New Orleans for God to help the people there even though they don’t deserve it because they are such sinners.

Now, of course, it’s trendy in the church to label any sort of work that helps the poor as socialism. I read an article recently that said Christians who supported health care for all were in fact breaking the 8th Commandment. By saying that all people regardless of income level deserve basic health care we are stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Apparently the only time that’s acceptable is when it is in blockbuster form and includes lots of scenes of gratuitous violence. But in the day to day, “when I was hungry and you fed me, when I was sick and you took care of me” has been spun as actually being anti-Christian.

Far from being so filled with the Spirit that we want to act like Jesus and love our neighbor, Christians today are finding whatever way they can to twist the words of Jesus to mean the exact opposite. It’s hard to love our neighbors. It takes sacrifice. It takes empathy. It takes repentance of our own sins. It is a lot easier to simple pretend that Jesus said something else instead. Why care for the poor when it is easier to continue to make money off of their oppression and call it prosperity and blessing? Why be filled with the Spirit when the status quo is so much more attractive? Why listen to Jesus when the pundits just make so much more sense?

It is nice to have our Pentecost Sunday and marvel in the pyrotechnics of the event. It’s great to talk with longing about amazing church growth where thousands join in one day. But after Pentecost – then what? Does the body of Christ really want to be filled with the Spirit and see the world through the Spirit’s eyes? Are we ready for that? Or is it just easier to give lip-service to the event, re-interpret Jesus for our own benefit, and do nothing?

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Money, Power, and The Price of Sugar

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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.

TPOS GENERIC 9_25_07 SMALLAnother 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.

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World Fair Trade Day

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May 8 is World Fair Trade Day. I thought I’d post the declaration for the day here. It’s a good reminder of why fair trade is important for helping bring about a better world. Check out the World Fair Trade Day site to see all the activities going on around the world. People whose lives have been changed simply because others are willing to trade fairly have great reason to celebrate on this day. So I encourage everyone to support them – in spirit, but also in choosing to tangibly help by purchasing fairly traded items whenever possible. As Trade As One told churches last Christmas, if every churchgoing American bought just one Fairly Traded item it would lift one million families out of abusive poverty for a year. That’s huge – but think of the impact if we choose to make ethical consumption part of our daily lifestyle.

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.

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Reconnecting with Our Food

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Farming is trendy again thanks to Facebook.  The simulation game Farmville allows the otherwise farming ignorant to participate in the growing and caring of plants and animals.  It’s addicting and popular, and I’ve even heard it lauded as a great tool for connecting children to the actual sources of our food.

It’s no secret that in modern America, we are disconnected from the food we eat.  Most kids couldn’t tell you where food comes from beyond the grocery store shelves.  Hence, the excitement on the part of some that a computer game is helping kids understand that the food we eat is grown.  On farms.  While I’m not sure that the immediate gratification of harvesting a virtual crop connects children with the earth in quite the same way as actually getting dirt under their fingernails, I resonate with the need to alter this disconnect we have with food.

I have friends who will eat chicken or steak as long as it is not on the bone since that reminds them that it came from an animal.  I’ve had parents at a petting zoo yell at me for mentioning to my daughter that the turkeys we were viewing were like the turkey we ate at Thanksgiving.  I’ve been told by others that they would rather just not know if there are pesticides on their produce or hormones in their meat.  We have disconnected ourselves so far from the sources of our food that we often not only don’t know what we are eating, but we are no longer aware of the implications of our food choices.

But just because we aren’t aware doesn’t mean that our choices don’t have impact.   Disconnecting ourselves from our food, disconnects us from the land, from the people growing our food, from the people receiving our food, and from our God who calls us to care for the earth.

God called creation good and commanded us to steward this earth.  But often we act as absent caretakers, outsourcing the care of the earth to others and losing that intimate connection with God.  This broken spirituality is reflected in our broken earth.  We allow others to destroy fields and groundwater with the excess use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers; we allow animals to be abused and pumped full of antibiotics and hormones; we allow field workers to be mistreated and exposed to hazardous working conditions.  Our food choices have consequences even if we are unaware of the problems they are causing.

I recently met two students who had visited relatives in Mexico for Christmas and were surprised to find oranges everywhere they went there.  The town they visited grows oranges, but that year the companies that buy their crops offered so little for their oranges that it wasn’t worth their effort to pick them.  So the workers earned nothing for their crop and hard work that year.   The students for the first time saw their connection to the food they buy, realizing that buying oranges in the U.S. directly links them to the families they spent the holidays with.

Or consider rice.  Government subsidies encourage the production of more rice than we will ever need each year in America.  So the rice gets sold overseas, often very cheaply to countries where the U.S. has trade policies guaranteeing that imported U.S. goods will not have tariffs or taxes imposed on them.  When a local market gets flooded with cheap food from the U.S., native farmers get put out of business.  They can’t compete with the subsidized food and so the local food supply dwindles and the country becomes reliant on imported food.  When the cost of that food rises unexpectedly, like rice did in 2007, the local people can no longer afford to buy the imported goods and have no local alternatives to turn to.  In the case of Haiti this lead to people literally eating mud to assuage their hunger and taking to the streets in riots.

Or take the migrant workers in Michigan who send their young children out into the fields to pick blueberries because the wages they earn are not enough to sustain their family.  The field owners turn a blind eye, allowing the law to be broken by having six year olds pick the berries we buy in the store.  Or take the families living in the rural areas around factory farms.  When a home is surrounded by literally thousands of cows, it becomes impossible to play outside because the stench is so great.  The local rivers and streams are too full of excrement runoff to swim or fish in, and even the well-water gives local families diarrhea.  The antibiotics given to the cows make that runoff breeding grounds for antibiotic resistant bacteria, causing deadly and difficult to treat illnesses for families who are often too poor to pay the high medical bills.  These families are paying the full cost of the cheap meat we consume.

When we start to see that food has a larger story than just appearing on our grocery store shelves, we see that it connects us to this world.  From the land it grows on to the people who grow it to the people who eat it, food affects us.  If we desire to end our habits of disconnectedness these are the stories we need to know – for only when we understand that we are connected to habits that hurt God’s creation and his people can we start to make changes that help heal.

The simplest change we can make is to start choosing to eat food that is good.  By good, I mean food that doesn’t hurt the earth by dumping toxins, drugs, and disease into our fragile land and food that was produced and sold fairly.  This may involve buying organic or fairly traded foods, but it also might involve getting to know the people who produce your food.  So frequent local farmers markets and get to know the farmers.  Reconnect with the land yourself by growing some of your own food – even a few herbs on the kitchen counter or a tomato plant on the balcony can bring us closer to the cycles of life God called us to tend.  Being aware and choosing to eat what is good will require diligence, research, and sacrifice and it often requires us to simplify and give up the indulgences of cheap but harmful food.  That is all just part of being connected.

Beyond choosing to eat differently, long term changes in our food system are needed to bring lasting healing.  The point of food should not be to get what we enjoy as cheaply as possible, but to nourish all people.  We can support farming reform by encouraging the government to subsidize healthy food not just the crops used to make junk food.  We can tell companies that as consumers we care about how they treat their employees, their animals, and the earth.  We can campaign for trade policies that don’t just benefit American interests, but respect and support the needs of local economies worldwide.  And we can raise our children to be connected – to not need a computer game to tell them where their food comes from, to understand how to care for the earth and its people, to eat simply and healthily, and to be responsible global citizens.

Food is never just food – it connects us to life, to relationships, to the world.  Eating with an awareness of those connections restores our spiritual relationship with creation and provides opportunities for us to love our neighbors and follow God.  It is time to reconnect with our food.

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Walking the Justice Walk

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I had an interesting conversation while I was at Urbana with a man who works on a university campus with InterVarsity. I had told him that my seminars were on social justice issues, and he commented that he hears more and more about students saying they care for the poor and the oppressed, but that he rarely sees them actually doing anything about it. When he challenges them on this, most on them reply that while they know they should be caring about these issues they have no idea how to put it into action. It isn’t that they are too lazy to make an effort, they honestly don’t know where to even begin. We went on to discuss how even great events like Urbana feed that dichotomy, educating people to talk the talk but not always resourcing them to walk the walk.

For example, in the large sessions I attended at Urbana, I heard a lot about the pain in the world. I saw that there were starving and hurting people. I was also told that I am self-centered for Facebooking and Twittering. I heard the stories of immigrants who have nothing and are desperately trying to survive. I was shown the magnitude of my consumption habits. And Shane Claiborne even told me how evil it is to live in empire that hurts instead of helps the world. I got the message. I felt guilty. I understood that I should care for others. But nowhere did I hear what I should be doing instead. I heard loud and clear what is wrong with the world, but nothing about what I need to do to make it right.

And these are the sorts of messages that students and churches are hearing over and over these days.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m overjoyed that message is getting out. We have to be confronted with the pain in the world and the truth about how our political and economic choices are contributing to it. The church has been silent for far too long about how to truly love our neighbor and care for the oppressed. But unless we are resourcing people at the same time with tangible ways they can be making a difference today, all we are selling is hollow idealism.

july09 067I had that conversation at Urbana, then I got on the plane to come home. On the plane next to me was one of the lead builders of the Earthship community in Taos, New Mexico. The Earthships are fascinating (and well worth the visit if you are ever in the area) – they are basically homes that are built from recycled materials and dirt and made to be off-the-grid and sustainable. They use the sun and wind and earth to heat and cool the home. All water is collected from the rain and used 4-5 times. They leave a light footprint on this earth. Well, this guy spent most of the plane ride talking about ways to make sustainable living a practical reality for every person in the world. He understands that the Earthships are a tad out there for the average person, but he was full of forward-thinking ideas as to how to make sustainable living doable for everyone. As he was talking, I realized that this was what was missing at Urbana and in most Christians discussions about justice. We focus so much on the negatives that we fail to actually make a positive difference. We need to be just as creatively full of ideas as this Earthship guy. If we want to make a difference we need to be out there resourcing any and everyone with doable everyday ways of how we can be loving and serving others.

I know a lot of people who live/write/talk about justice issues are often wary of suggesting practical steps for others to follow. I understand they don’t want to create a new legalism or limit the ways people can love others. But people are desperate for guidance. They want to do something but have no idea where to begin. Or they think they have to wait until they have enough time or resources to start. And then they end up getting mocked or condemned for talking about justice but not actually living it out. But what if we changed that? What if we stopped being afraid of telling people what they should do and just do it already? Not in a domineering or legalistic way, but as friends sharing resources – equipping each other to serve. If I can see examples of how others like me are serving others, I can have a better idea of what I can be doing as well. This isn’t hopeless, we don’t have to get bogged down with guilt or doom and gloom scenarios, we just need to be more like the hippie guy living in a mud hut in the New Mexican desert and just figure out the creative yet practical ways to start living differently today.

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Ask Why

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I fully admit that people like Pat Robertson, Danny Glover, and Rachel Maddow need to shut up from time to time. Telling us why this disaster came upon Haiti reveals far more of their own issues than any real truth, and they could be doing a lot more good if they would just keep their mouth shut. Finding someone to blame will not make the disaster go away even if it makes us feel slightly better about ourselves. Pointing our finger a the people we hate and saying this is their fault does nothing to help the people of Haiti.

But blaming others and being responsible are not the same thing.

I was a bit unsettled recently when I read mega-pastor Erwin McManus’ tweet – “There are those certain they can tell us “why” this happened in Haiti when we should be asking “what” can we do to help the people of Haiti.” I agree, we must be asking what we can do to help others. And explaining away the whys by pointing fingers is just a futile exercise. But in order to know what really needs to be done, some of those why questions really needs to be asked. No, I’m not talking about those rhetorical “why did God allow this to happen?” questions, but more of the “why is Haiti in such dire straits because of this?” questions.

As a recent New York Times op-ed piece pointed out –

On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died. This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story.

This didn’t have to be this bad. If Haiti wasn’t the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, if Haiti hadn’t been screwed over time after time, if we loved Haiti instead of oppressed it – this earthquake wouldn’t have destroyed the country. There are some hard why questions to be asked here. And if we shrink away from asking them, the what questions will fail to bring about real lasting healing.

Why have Haitian farmers been run out of business? Why is the Haitian soil stripped and the country plagued by mudslides? Why are Haitian girls sold into slavery? Why is 80% of the Haitian budget going to pay other countries? Why are the people there eating mud? Why is their government corrupt? Why are there hardly any jobs in Haiti? Why are there no supplies to build decent buildings? Why is it so hard for kids there to get education? Why are there no roads? And when we discover that the answers to many of those questions are unjust U.S. trade and military policies, it can be hard to swallow. We can brush it aside as just trying to pass blame and point fingers – and continue to give aid and remake the country in our image. Or we can own up to our collective sins and take responsibility for making amends.

If we don’t ask why, we allow ourselves to be ignorant. If we don’t know the history and culture of Haiti, we are doomed to just continue to make things worse. We have to ask why even when we don’t want to know the answer. We have to get over the blame game and just be responsible human beings. Ignorance is deadly. If we really want to know what we can do to help, we need to do more than emotionally donate a few bucks and start looking at what Haiti really needs (like debt relief, and better trade policies). But to do that we first have to face our fears and ask why.

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Hope and Despair for Haiti

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It’s been a week of strange juxtapositions.

Apparently in the American church, a star football player can say how he played all his games for Jesus and people respond with “awww, what a nice Christian boy.” But say that you are working to put an end to human trafficking in the name of Jesus, and people wonder if you are really a Christian.

043Then this morning I was at the gym watching the two TVs in front of me. On one was a story about a rich lady with a huge house who had started a rescue mission for disabled dogs. Each dog is given medical attention, a custom-made “wheelchair”, and lots of love and attention so they can live out their days as happy dogs. On the other TV were images from Haiti. A father carrying his young daughter whose face had been partly smashed-in. It sickened me to think that those dogs were getting far more spent on them and far better medical attention than that young girl ever would. Those dogs get to live as happy dogs, while that girl if she survives, will be deformed for life. With a facial deformity, she cannot get education or find a job. If she manages to not be trafficked into slavery as maid/sextoy in a wealthier house (Haiti being one of the worst offenders for child slavery), her only options will be to beg or prostitute herself in order to survive. She will become the “scum and riff-raff” that gets condemned for making poor countries the corrupt and sinful places many Western Christians see them as. We might pity her for the few seconds she is on CNN and maybe even send enough food to feed her for a few days, but we’d rather build retirement homes for dogs than do the radical work to change the system that oppresses her. What is our problem?

123And then there are the true scum like Rush Limbaugh or Pat Robertson who have pulled their typical jackass moves in the aftermath of this tragedy. Pat in your twisted rewriting of history you display perfectly the juxtaposition between what Jesus actually said and what you want him to have said. You want to blame tragedy on personal sins. You take an old Haitian MYTH and read it as fact to support your cause. Sure, the Haitians in order to explain all the shit that has happened to them have a myth saying that when the Spanish came to Hispaniola (the small island shared between the Dominican Republic and Haiti) they surrendered Haiti to the devil in order to dedicate the Dominican Republic to God. Maybe it helps deal with the pain of being a slave nation, that once they threw off the chains of slavery had the US lead a worldwide trade boycott of them and France force them to pay them pack for loss of slave revenue, and then who struggled to survive under that debt, and then were occupied by the US military in 1915 who slaughtered thousands of peasants, stripped their forests of valuable wood, and left the country barren, and who had to deal with the IMF and World Bank funding dictators who destroyed their country and left them with debt that was only forgiven a couple of months ago, and then another US occupation in 1994, and then with trade stipulations and tariff-free US goods that have destroyed their local economy. I would try to create a myth to explain away all that oppression too. But to twist it and say the Haitians deliberately sold themselves to Satan and are now being punished for their own sins (like emancipating themselves from slavery), just shows how out of touch you are with not only reality but with Jesus. When asked whose sin made a man blind, Jesus replied that no one had sinned but that this was a chance for him to be light to the world – to restore sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free. So get your history straight, or at least get Jesus straight and use this opportunity to be a light to the world instead of another harbinger of darkness.

078But then I see the wonderful outpouring of aid to Haiti juxtaposed against the fact that most of it will never reach the actual people who need it most. The government in Haiti is so corrupt that most aid that is sent to the country gets funneled into special-interests groups. The privileged just keep getting richer while the poor in Haiti are making mud cookies because they can’t afford food. So I want to just beg everyone to be careful where your money goes. Any relief that has to go through the Haitian government won’t reach the people. So support organizations that are on the ground with the people in Haiti. We’ve partnered with New Life for Haiti before – a group that works to build schools and clinics in the Marfranc region of Haiti. They are seeking aid now to help rebuild homes that collapsed in the earthquake. Bread for the World has also created a list of trusted agencies working to help the people of Haiti. The system needs to be fixed. We can’t put a bandaid on this wound and hopes it goes away. Unless we push for real change, more people will die, children will start being rounded-up and trafficked, starvation will slowly overtake the country, corporations will seize land from its rightful owners, and the 4,000 troops we are sending in will make Haiti a US occupied territory for the third time in a century. Haiti is the only country to successfully stage a slave-rebellion in the name of freedom. We need to help them be free – free from oppression, free from hunger, free from exploitation, and free from poverty.

My heart is breaking over Haiti. I see the state of Christianity in our country and I despair if with our shallow faith and judgmental hearts we can work for good in this world. But as messy and as hopeless as it all can seem, I realize I have no choice but to have hope.

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What You Can Do To Fight Human Trafficking

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Today is Human Trafficking Awareness Day. There are some 27 million people held in slavery in our world today – many of them kidnapped and trafficked victims. Children stolen from their families to work in the cocoa fields. Young girls who know of no other life than give sex to men – girls as young as 5 or 6. Women promised a decent job who end up locked inside some rich persons house without papers forced to clean, cook, and provide sex for the husband. People are used, people are treated as objects to make our life easier or more pleasurable. We all participate in the system. Even if we don’t pay for sex – our cheap produce was picked by slaves, our clothes were sewn by slaves, our dishes were washed by slaves. We are all funding systems of slavery and human trafficking. We are all pimps.

If that pisses you off – it should. Don’t roll your eyes, or say it’s preposterous. Get over yourself and deal with it. Truth is truth even if it hurts.

So be aware. Be responsible. And help put an end to oppression.

Here are just a few really basic ways to get started fighting human trafficking and modern day slavery.

  • Encourage lawmakers to stop punishing prostitutes and illegal immigrants. Most trafficked people in the US are afraid to speak up or escape because they fear the government – with good cause. They need to have the freedom to escape from bondage, and we need to be there to help restore them – not punish them.
  • Stop buying/downloading porn. Statistically a majority of the people who read this site do. Stop encouraging a system that objectifies women and feeds the idea that they can just be used for men’s pleasure.
  • Encourage feminism. Many of the girls sold into sex slavery are the unwanted girls of families in cultures that value males. Selling them is easier on the family than feeding an unwanted mouth. If women were seen as equals everywhere, less men would use them as mere objects.
  • Buy only fairly traded clothing and food. Slavery exists in sweatshops and farms. Recently the U.S. government has rounded up slaves in New York clothing factories, Florida tomato farms, and among Katrina clean up crews in New Orleans. Tell companies with your dollars that you only support practices where employees are treated and paid fairly – and allowed to be a free human being.
  • Support microloans and charity for education. Desperation and lack of education create the conditions for slavery to thrive. Those conditions must change if slavery is to end.

Or check out sites like What’s Your Response?, Or IJM, or Not for Sale, Or Stop the Traffick. Get informed and start working for change. The truth is if we aren’t doing crap about this – we are complicit in supporting slavery. Let’s follow Jesus and release the chains of oppression instead.

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