Social Justice - Julie Clawson

Human Trafficking, Justice, and CSI

Posted on November 16, 2009July 10, 2025

csi nyI’ve gotten used to popular TV shows going the after-school special route and highlighting some issue or another. Granted, it boosts their ratings, but it also brings attention to issues that need attention. So I was intrigued this past week when the CSI franchise did a story-arc across all three shows that focused on the issue of human trafficking. It pulled no punches. They showed the horror involved in trafficking and what a complicated system it is. From moving girls around to sell for sex, or as wombs, or for body parts there are a lot of people making money off of the exploitation of others. And there are so many people involved in such a large and complex system, that there are no easy solutions to the problems. The CSI’s weren’t able in other words to solve the crime and and have all the perpetrators behind bars by the end of the 60 minute episode. The writers were smart enough not to trivialize the issue by giving it a neat solution. But they were also smart enough to make trafficking about real people. These girls aren’t just nameless faces – they are someone’s daughter. And even if those working for justice can’t fix the entire system, they can do something to help one girl, and that is significant.

They also hit the (obvious) nail on the head in trying to explain why this happens. Basically because the demand is there. Trafficking isn’t just some evil crime committed by sociopaths, it’s done by corrupt and greed guys who know that there is a high demand for human flesh. If the businessmen at conferences in Vegas weren’t looking for sex on demand then kidnapping, abusing, raping, and breaking women into submissive prostitutes wouldn’t be such a lucrative business. But evil and injustice continue to exist because we demand it. From cheap sex to cheap clothes or candy, we demand that others be oppressed for our benefit.

At one point in the CSI episode, the bad-guy of the week, a Russian pimp (played by the amazing Mark Sheppard), tried to justify why girls supposedly choose to be prostitutes. He said, “inside, [all women] are whores. They will love to hear the things they want to believe – they are so beautiful, so fascinating, so special that they deserve the best of everything, the finest clothes, champagne, and jewels that money can buy. And you know how you get the whore to emerge? Tell her there is an easy way to get all of this.” His words were ironic coming after the unfolding story of girls being kidnapped, drugged, raped, beaten, and murdered by traffickers. Instead of describing the girls, they more accurately described the traffickers and the johns. But they also describe all of us who have found easy ways to get whatever we want even if it is at the expense of others. We will sell our souls because we believe we deserve the best of everything.

The sad thing is, there are no CSI’s out there working to put us behind bars so that the oppression stops. We are not going to be punished for benefiting from crimes like human trafficking and slave labor. And we wont be rewarded either for choosing to step outside of systems of oppression. There is no carrot or stick when it comes to making a deliberate choice to love others. We just have to decide that we care enough for someone else’s daughter or son to stop demanding that they be oppressed so that we can have everything we desire.

Discussing Everyday Justice 3

Posted on November 9, 2009July 10, 2025

The recent contest to win a copy of Everyday Justice generated some fantastic comments and questions about justice issues. So over the next few days I will be addressing some of those in blog posts. I don’t assume to have THE answers to anything, but just want to share my perspective and hope you will join in with yours as well.

Arthur asked –
I never did find a good answer to what happens when the big coffee growers quit paying even the token payment to the gatherers? Do they then starve because we refuse to support the corrupt corporations?

and mjb similarily asks –
“if we get too focused on buying local and not causing hardship to the environment by shipping over long distances, etc, are we taking away jobs from the poor in other countries who make the goods we import? ”

This is why I think a balanced perspective is always needed. I think those of us that care about workers and the environment often are assumed to be anti-globalization. The whole idea of buying local or ethically when stated persuasively can have that effect. I do support the idea of buying locally, forming relationships with the people who grow your food and bringing community back into commerce. But I think it is naïve to think we can just pretend that we don’t live in a globalized world. If we turn inward and start thinking only locally, we will end up hurting people around the world.

The world has changed. Most countries worldwide have taken those first steps (or more accurately have been forcefully pushed) into industrialization. Through colonialism, the mandates of the IMF and World Bank, and greedy power-hungry leaders most countries around the world are now trying to compete in an economy designed to oppress them. Decisions have been made that have committed them to developing industry and exporting goods whether the average citizen living there wants to do that or not. The line has been crossed, there is truly no turning back. So while I support the concept of American’s buying locally and of everyone reducing our consumption, the fact of the matter is that people around the world still need jobs in order to survive in this brave new world we’ve forced them into. I don’t want to hurt them even more by protesting the existence of globalization and taking those jobs away from them. Globalization exists. Period. The real question is how we deal with it.

The point of stopping sweatshops or agricultural slavery isn’t to shut those operations down. The point it to improve them, to call them to higher ethical standards. And while on one hand stricter laws and oversight will have to be part of that process. The tightening of the belt and the taking of responsibility should not be passed onto the oppressed workers. Choosing to vote with our money for ethically produced goods shouldn’t result in non-ethical companies shutting their doors and getting rid of jobs. When they see that the public is demanding that they be responsible human beings, they will work to supply the public with what it wants. The idea is for jobs to be retained – just improved.

The truth is though that improvements will not occur just by letting the markets work as they do now. When the rich and powerful prevent the idea of a truly free market economy from ever occurring, there have to be deliberate steps taken to end oppression. Systems like fair trade help eliminate the injustices while retaining jobs. I am uneasy with the people (like Jeffrey Sachs) who say that oppressive working environments like sweatshops are just a necessary part of a country developing. That might have been truly in a pre-globalized world where a country was generally able to end that oppression generally because the religious groups stood up to industry. But it’s going to take the ethically minded in the powerful countries that are home to the oppressive industries to be the voice for the oppressed. The powerful will have to create systems like (fair trade) and make laws to protect workers around the world in order to end oppression this time. It won’t just self-correct. We have to be aware of globalization and work within it in order to ever improve things.

Justice in Real Life

Posted on November 6, 2009July 11, 2025

I’m a mom. I have diapers to change, groceries to buy, and lunches to make. Between keeping up with the kids and paying the bills, most days I’m happy if I can squeeze in the luxurious “me moment” of a shower. But as a follower of Christ I also know that I am called to love my neighbor as Jesus did – by proclaiming good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, sight for the blind, and to set the oppressed free (as mentioned in Luke 4). Seeking justice for others in these ways is at the heart of what it means to follow Christ. It’s not just a call for some Christians; it’s for all of us – including us busy moms.

But it can be hard to figure out how I can be seeking justice for others in the midst of my chaotic life. I read books by guys like Shane Claiborne and am inspired by how they have fully committed their lives to serving others. Yet even as I am inspired by them, I know that I can’t move into a commune in the inner-city in order to devote my life to others. It’s a great idea, just not very doable at this stage in life. It’s frustrating that doing justice in this world often seems to fall into these all or nothing extremes. Either one devotes every aspect of who they are to seeking justice or they opt out because they just can’t see how they can fit it into their lives.

But seeking justice doesn’t have to be an all or nothing thing. Many of the most serious justice issues in our world today are actually intimately connected to our everyday lives and therefore can be addressed through simple everyday actions as well. Those diapers I change and those lunches I make are justice issues connecting me to people all over the world – my neighbors who Jesus has asked me to love. Even in my busy life as a mom, I can be choosing to serve others through these daily actions, seeking justice even in the everyday.

It took me awhile (and a decent amount of research) to realize these things, and even longer to start to implement them into my life. The whole process started for me with a deliberate choice to only buy fair trade coffee. I had read the stories that coffee farmers around the world were literally being cheated of their wages for the coffee they grew. They could no longer send their children to school, and were struggling to even put food on the table. Many of these farmers were being forced off their land simply because the price they were being paid for their work no longer allowed them to even survive. Fair trade companies though choose to respect the dignity of the coffee farmers. By purchasing fair trade coffee I know that the farmers were paid a decent wage for their work, allowed to have a say in how the coffee is grown, and were not abused or threatened as they worked. Sure, it costs me a little more to buy this coffee, but I’m fine paying the full cost of my coffee instead of cheating the farmers of their wages so I can have cheap coffee. My morning cup of coffee is a justice issue.

From there I learned how the clothes I wear often are made by children in abusive sweatshops, that the cell phone I use has connections to guerilla squads that terrorize and rape women, that the chocolate I eat was grown by children trafficked into slavery, and that the energy I use has destroyed communities in Appalachia and Nigeria. My daily life connects me to people around the world, and often my choices inadvertently harm others. If I wanted to seek justice for them, I needed to start by (slowly) changing habits in my everyday life. As with coffee, I could buy things that had been fairly produced, seeking alternatives to oppressive systems. But I could also use my power as a consumer to send letters to companies and the government telling them that I care about how those who produce the goods I consume are treated. My everyday life would continue, but I wanted to make sure that even in the small things I choose to pursue the paths of justice and love

My life is crazy as a mom, and it would have been easy to think that seeking justice is one of those things I’d get around to one of these days. But seeing the connections in my everyday life to worldwide justice issues changed me. I realized that I had no choice but to start seeking justice for others since I was already so intimately connected with the injustices they experience. It just took figuring out the small everyday ways that I could integrate justice into my life to start that journey.

Discussing Everyday Justice 2

Posted on November 4, 2009July 11, 2025

Jonathan asked –

to what aspect is Justice culturally relevant? or Universal? would an injustice in the US ever be seen as justice, or acceptable, in a different context?

This is a sticky question. It brings up the whole idea of cultural relativity. I agree that all cultures are different, but also believe that justice can transcend culture. That doesn’t mean that there are absolute ways justice can always be applied, just that the idea of seeking to love the other in all things isn’t limited by culture. But as Derrida rightly pointed out, whenever we start to codify justice we create injustice. Creating the absolute laws help us understand and promote justice, but they too can fail. There will always be exceptions to any blanket statement on justice – and there will be levels of injustices as well. That said, I don’t think this should prevent us from taking stands for what we think is right or to seek to love people, but to realize that our actions sometimes will have to be creative and will always be messy.

Take child labor for instance. It is illegal in the United States and in many other countries. We fought hard in this country to get laws in place to protect children. And technically it is against the law to import any goods into the U.S. that have been made using child labor. I think most of us would agree that children shouldn’t have to do work that is physically dangerous or that causes them developmental harm. In addition, most Americans would assert that children deserve to be children – to have time to play, be imaginative, and be educated. There may be some debate if the latter are rights per se, but most of us would agree that forcing a child to do work that stunts their growth is unjust.

This past week as the story emerged that in this tough economy children have started working alongside their migrant worker parents picking blueberries and tomatoes across the U.S. Around the world it is not uncommon for children to work alongside their parents in the fields. Heck, our school year is structured the way it is so that kids would be off to help their parents with the harvest. But to see pictures of 5 year old girls carrying large buckets of berries is hard. Not only is what she doing against the codified law of our country, she is not getting an education and is being exposed to dangerous pesticides. But she is working so her family can survive. Most children working in factories and fields around the world do so so that their family can put food on the table. Taking a stand for what is right in those situations is messy. One can’t call the situation unjust, force her to return to school, and prosecute the field owners without causing more injustices along the way.

Imposing one idea of justice shouldn’t cause more injustices, but sometimes in the short run, that is unfortunately what happens. Cultural habits or just what one has to do to survive in a culture clash with other culture’s ideas of justice. I personally don’t think we should ever excuse any injustice as inevitable or “just the way things are.” But sometimes seeking justice in diverse cultural setting will require us to look at the bigger picture and not just the moment. I believing rescuing individual children from dangerous situations is the right thing to do across cultures, but it must be done alongside of actions that address why that child was in that situation to begin with. Imposing laws without understand doesn’t help. Working for large scale healing can.

So we have to ask – if these families were being paid fair wages for their work, then perhaps they wouldn’t have to choose to send their children to the fields. If the U.S. didn’t impose harsh stipulations for foreign debt repayment perhaps children in other countries could leave the fields and go to school as well. Or if a religion wasn’t teaching that women are inferior if the girls would get an education and not be cast aside to literally die in sweatshops or brothels. We must work within the systems, understanding them, asking the hard questions to see justice work across the board.

Smashing Economic Idols

Posted on October 7, 2009July 10, 2025

So I’ve been having a few interesting conversations about my book Everyday Justice recently. I was being interviewed for a very conservative Christian talk radio show and when I mentioned that a simple way to define biblical justice was “the practical outworking of loving God and loving others” I was told that I need to be careful about encouraging people to love their neighbor because that could lead to socialism. In the soundbite world of talk radio, there wasn’t a chance to challenge that assertion, so I changed tactics and tried to talk about the need for Christians to embrace the spiritual discipline of simplicity and not be overcome by consumerism. Once again I was contradicted by the host who told me that I shouldn’t suggest that people stop or lower their consumption because it is our duty to support the economy by buying stuff. At that point I realized that we were on totally different planets, civilly made my way through the rest of the interview trying to speak a language he might understand, and choose not to then listen for the next hour as he proceeded to tear apart everything I said.

I’m fine with people disagreeing with me or not liking the book. I get that. But his mindset reminded me of the economic idolatry that has crept into our faith. More and more I find Christians who instead of letting their faith influence their economics, they interpret their faith through their preferred economic system. I’ve had to listen to sermons where the pastor went off on how capitalism was the only biblical economic system. I’ve read the books where the guys say stuff like “because the Bible doesn’t talk much about economics we need to bring economics to the Bible.” I’ve encountered those who play the “socialism” card at the first sign of any critique of capitalism. And I’ve heard those claiming that economics are absolute, we can’t change the market so we shouldn’t bother trying even for good biblical reasons.

I get that’s it’s complicated. I get that we like to have our pet philosophies. I get that socialism can be evil too. But none of that excuses making economics into an idol. When our economic theory leads us to make excuses for the oppression of workers, we have a problem. When modern day slavery is justified as being “just the way the market works,” we have a problem. When making a profit becomes more important that the dignity of human beings, we have a problem. When the words of Jesus Christ are dismissed because they might support an alternate economic system, we have a problem. It is as simple as that. When our allegiance to an economic system has us making excuses for injustices then that economic system has become an idol. And idols need to be torn down.

I’m a capitalist. I’m not anti-globalisation. I don’t have any problem with people making money or looking out for their own interests. I don’t think communism or forced socialism are better systems. But there comes a point where we have to say to a system that oppresses – this is wrong and must be changed. This is difficult if not impossible if we have allowed economic theory to become an idol and usurp our faith. We need to be able to “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” (Col 2:8) Loving God and loving others has to come before Wall Street or Adam Smith – there’s no way around it.

So as inspiration to smash the idols that need smashing, I want to include the following verse. Brian Walsh, co-author of Colossians Remixed, recently posted a targum of Romans 1:16-32 over at the Empire Remixed blog, A targum is a means of interpreting scripture by rewriting it for a particular cultural setting. Traditionally a Hebrew practice, some use the practice today to apply the Bible to contemporary life. This Romans 1 targum addresses this affinity to make idols of economic systems. I highly recommend reading the entire piece, but I wanted to highlight this short section –

So here’s the sad truth, my friends:
this empire of greed,
this narrative of economic growth,
this whole house of cards is based on lies and deception.
This whole culture of consumption,
this whole empire of money,
is based on self-willed ignorance.

Creation proclaims a better way
because creation bears witness to a God of grace.
But we have suppressed this truth,
engaged in denial and cover-up.

Refusing to live a life of gratitude,
refusing to live a life of thanks to the God
who called forth such a rich creation,
refusing to honour this Creator God,
and embracing a culture of entitlement and ingratitude,
we abandoned the God of light and embraced the dark.

And in all of our complex theories
in all of our sophisticated and incomprehensible economic talk,
we became futile in our thinking
we ended up with lots of talk but no sense,
theories that are empty,
vanity of vanities.

And we thought that we were so wise,
we thought that we had it all figured out,
but the joke has been on us,
and it is now clear that we have been fools.

You see, that’s what happens when you get in bed with idols.
That’s what happens when you don’t image God in faithful justice,
but embrace graven images,
cheap imitations,
that look so good,
look so powerful,
but will always fail you,
will always come up short
because they are impotent.

Empty idols, empty minds.
Dumb idols, lives of foolishness.
Betrayal and disappointment.
Fear and terror.

Rescuing the Other Jaycees

Posted on August 30, 2009July 11, 2025

I, along with the rest of the nation have watched in horror this past week as the details of the Jaycee Dugard captivity emerge. Very little angers me as much as hearing about the sexual assault of children. While I generally favor justice that restores criminals, cases like this almost make me want to support the death penalty or at least slow, painful castration for rapists. I can hardly imagine the damage done to Jaycee and the years of healing she and her family now face.

That said, I am a bit disturbed as to why this case has captured the media’s (and my) attention and outrage. It is of course horrific, but it is hardly unique. Thousands of girls around the world face similar terrors every day. Children are kidnapped off the streets in Africa, drugged on trains in India, or sold by uncles in Cambodia and end up as captive sex slaves in brothels around the world – including in the USA. At the Not for Sale site you can read the story of Srey Neang – a young girl sold to a Karaoke bar owner who repeatedly raped her and forced her to service up to ten men a day. Once when the police raided the club, this 15 year old’s “rescuers” charged her with prostitution and but her in jail until her owner bought her back. At the Polaris Project site one can hear the story of Katya, a 20-year-old Ukrainian girl who thought she had landed a waitressing job in America. But instead she found herself in captivity in Detroit forced to work in a strip club and locked into a tiny apartment with other women. Fear of getting caught as an illegal immigrant and imprisoned as a prostitute bought their silence.

Theirs is a story common to thousands of women and children, but those stories don’t make the 24/7 news channels. Maybe it’s because they aren’t cute little white girls from middle class families. Maybe because Jaycee seems so “girl next door” and these other women seem worlds away. I have a feeling the guys visiting the massage parlours or the bachelor parties at the strip clubs don’t see the girls there (often trafficked slaves) as sentimentally as the nation does Jaycee. But shouldn’t we be just as outraged at the captivity and rape of each of these girls as we are about Jaycee Dugard? I think we are right to be outraged and disgusted by what was done to her, but I don’t want that anger to simmer down just because she is now safe. There are girls all over the world, many of them in our local U.S. neighborhoods that are still living that day to day terror. They need rescue too.

So I hope this news coverage of Jaycee Dugard is not just the next sensational story to capture our attention after the death of Michael Jackson. I hope it is a wake-up call for Americans that there are girls being treated as chattel in our very midst. They may not all be cute white girls kidnapped from bus stops, but they are all someone’s daughter and children of God. Their rape, captivity, and exploitation should be pissing us off and causing us to do whatever we can to restore their lives too.

Human Trafficking and the Average Joe

Posted on August 9, 2009July 11, 2025

So a friend of mine, Shelton Green, has started an organization to help fight human trafficking – What’s Your Response. The purpose of the group is – “Bringing the issues of human trafficking and modern day slavery into the consciousness of our city and giving everyone avenues for action to end this tragedy.” It’s a great group, and Shelton is really committed to helping raise awareness about this issue. This weekend the group organized a Coaster Crawl – delivering coasters with stories of trafficked people to local pubs and coffee shops. The point was to get people aware that slaves exist in our very midst. Their endeavor was featured in the Austin-American Statesman on Saturday.

While I think its fantastic that the local paper is getting the word out about how people can work to help stop human trafficking, the responses to the article were a sobering wake-up call. Yes, maybe I am just naive, but I want to believe that ordinary people have the capacity to be good. That they are capable of compassion and of living out the call to love our neighbor. Instead the majority of responses to this article merely revealed that hatred and prejudice run deep. (and yes, I know that people who leave responses to newspaper articles are generally the freaks on the extremes – but they are still saying out loud what generally only gets said in the privacy of people’s homes – the sentiments are real). In this case the hated took the form of the attitude “screw the victims, it’s their own fault anyway. what’s in it for me?” Here’s a brief sampling of these sorts of responses –

“Very commendable effort in an attempt to stop human trafficing.However,the unlining cause of this slavery is illegal immigration.Stop the illegals from entering our land and this crime will almost disappear.I am addressing this to not only illegal mexicans,but also to other Hispanics countries,Asian,European and Africans. White,black,brown,yellow,red,race does not matter.As mentioned below and we have seen examples of this trafficing on tv,the main hold that slavers have on these poor souls is thier fear of arrest and deportation.However,we need to bear in mind that these immigrants make their own decision to enter our country illegally and to break our laws. They must also realize that there is a correct and legal available to them if the wish to enter. If not,then they create their own hell…”

“uh….let’s see….do i wanna quit selling people at 30k per person or do i wanna feel really good about myself and NOT do it because of this coaster…hmmmm…30k vs. nothing….hmmm…”

“How about a spay and neuter program for our illegal immigrant visitors?”

Ugh. So let’s pretend for just a moment that human trafficking can be reduced to only the cases where people willingly immigrate illegally and then get tricked into slavery. Do these responders honestly support SLAVERY as punishment for those who seek a better life? That we should do nothing to help them because they created this situation for themselves? Do people cease to be people when they make the decision to immigrate illegally? I can understand, if not always agree, with the arguments against illegal immigration. But this tendency to treat immigrants as less-than-human and as people undeserving of justice and compassion is disgusting. None of us messed-up, fallen, finite human being are deserving of God’s love and mercy and Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice, but because we are all God’s children created in his image, God loves us anyway. This self-righteous hubris that has people asserting that they know better than God who should and shouldn’t be loved is truly a depressing reminder that most people aren’t basically good.

But enough pretending. While traffickers do regularly take advantage of those vulnerable enough that they would even consider illegal immigration to begin with, many trafficking victims have no choice in the matter. They are told that they are being hired for a job in their country and after being drugged find themselves in a completely different country. With no papers, of course they fear being punished as illegal immigrants (especially after they are fed nothing but lies by their captures regarding the punishment of such immigrants). And why shouldn’t they fear when there are American citizens calling for a “spay and neuter” program for them? When people are seen as less than dogs to be used and abused for our personal gain, justice will never happen. Until even Joe Prejudice can get over his hatred and learn to love his neighbor, we will still see atrocities like this occur.

Fighting human trafficking is a huge and daunting task. But reading stuff like this makes me realize that the task is far larger than simply defeating the traffickers. It involves teaching the average guy on the street how to get over himself and his self-centered attitude and learn how to love others and in humility consider others better than themselves. You know, only the message that got Jesus killed and which the church has failed to do for 2000 years. Nothing difficult there.

So who’s with me?

Olympic Injustice

Posted on July 13, 2009July 11, 2025

I’ve been following the news story of New Zealand Olympic hopeful Logan Campbell. If you haven’t heard, he’s the taekwondo athlete who said he was forced to open a brothel to cover his training expenses for the 2012 London Olympics. Prostitution is legal in New Zealand, but this has caused some to question if he should be barred from the sport. On one hand, I see how it would be difficult to uphold the taekwondo mandate that one always display high moral standards and respect others at all times if one is a pimp. But I also think this incident hints at some of the deeper injustices prevalent in the Olympic games.

When a follower of a discipline that stresses the respect of others finds the need to oppress other in order to pay to continue in that discipline there are issues with the system. The exorbitant costs of training athletes these days effectively leads to injustice of some sort. Either only the wealthy are able to use their talents and compete in what is far from being an equal opportunity world competition. Or athletes must sell their soul to their government to be trained, or they must oppress others to acquire the money they need. This isn’t about sports – or good sportsmanship – its about letting the privileged few succeed.

To make the economic disparity worse, just the occasion of hosting the Olympics itself results in the oppression of the poor. As cities create huge stadiums and hotels to accommodate the event, they generally raze lower-income housing developments in the process. The poor get displaced in the name of the event. In 1988, some 720,000 people were forcibly displaced in Seoul, South Korea, in preparation for the Summer Olympic Games. And some 1.5 million Chinese were forced from their homes during preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. And even though Mayor Daley has said no one will be displaced if Chicago wins its 2016 Olympic bid, it is obvious that the property value increase will effectively force lower-income renters out of areas surrounding the Olympic village. But that still might be better than having Rio de Janeiro win the bid (one of the other 4 finalist cities). It is common knowledge that local businesses in Rio fund “death squads” to clean up their streets. They want the poor street kids to disappear and pay the squads to make it happen – especially before big events like the World Cup. A recent congressional study revealed that in Rio de Janeiro alone at least 180 different death squads operate. Fifteen of these groups target children exclusively and work “under the protection of the police and justice system,” according to Congresswoman Rita Camata. The investigation named 103 people–including lawyers, police and former police officers–involved in death squads that murder children.

In truth I love the Olympics. The Olympics are one of the few times I ever watch sports. I support the idea – letting the world come together to share their gifts and talents through the common language of sport. But not when it is just a guise for injustice. When it encourages the disparity between rich and poor. When it has a man selling women as chattel to fund his training. When it has cities hiding away their poor – displacing or worse, slaughtering them – in order to present a “clean” face to the world. The official goal of the Olympic movement is stated as – “to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.” But the question must be asked – are they really building a better world or just helping injustice flourish?

Movie Review: Food, Inc.

Posted on July 5, 2009July 11, 2025

“The industry doesn’t want you to know the truth about what you are eating, because if you knew you might not want to eat it ” – Food, Inc.

I recently headed out to a sold-out showing of the documentary Food, Inc. at Austin’s own Alamo Drafthouse. Generally, getting dinner and drinks along with my movie is my favorite “night out” activity, but in watching a film which critically examines our industrial food system, it was a bit strange. Granted, all around me I heard orders for veggie burgers and the local organic veggie platter and there wasn’t a high fructose corn syrup soda to be seen, but I was glad to have finished my (veggie) burger by the time the previews ended. Although I have sought to inform myself about the injustices in our modern food system, Food, Inc., presents the most comprehensive and disturbing summary of that system I have seen yet. It is a necessary film for basically anyone who eats food.

A film which took three years to make with a large part of its budget going to pay the legal fees defending itself against lawsuits from the industrial food companies, Food, Inc. takes a hard look at how corporations now control the production of our food, resulting in generally unhealthy, environmentally hazardous, and completely unsustainable food that in truth threatens the very well-being of our country. From the animals that are confined in inhumane cages, left to stand in their own mire, fed unnatural diets and cocktails of drugs and hormones to the impoverished workers who are treated with the same disrespect this system has sacrificed the respect and well-being of living creatures and people for the sake of profit. But Food Inc. doesn’t just stop with detailing those atrocities, it delves into the problems with government subsidies and the ways the fearmongering enforcement of genetically modified food copyrights are destroying the small farmer. People are being hurt by this industrial food system that dumps chemicals into our environment with reckless abandon and produces unnatural and unhealthy food for our consumption.

I appreciated though how Food, Inc. didn’t simply present the issues with industrial food as a clear cut, good vs. evil scenario. It acknowledged that poor workers have no choice but to take jobs on the factory farms, and that farmers have no choice but to give into the pressure to work with the huge industries. Those industries have so altered our nation’s laws and have so many lawyers working for them, that any farmer who resists joining their ranks finds themselves out of work at best, and sued penniless for simply encouraging people to not buy the big company’s products. The farmers and workers are desperate for a better system where real freedom and healthy standards exist, but for now they have to work with what they’ve got.

Food, Inc. also explores why for the average working class family in America, buying healthy food isn’t an option. It is far cheaper to buy the cheeseburger from the drive-thru dollar menu than it is to buy fruit or vegetables. That is because everything in that cheeseburger comes from corn which our government subsidizes so much that farmers can sell it below the cost of production. So the poor American eats the extremely unhealthy food because it is cheaper. But the rising epidemic of type 2 diabetes shows the hidden cost of that value meal. The poor in our country – those with no health or job insurance – are getting sick at alarming rates due to the unhealthy cheap food they eat. This is injustice of the highest extreme – but it’s all part of our industrial food system. It’s a complicated system that gives us unhealthy, unsustainable food that disrespects the earth, animals, and people all in the name of making the greatest profit for a handful of corporations. This is the story of the food we eat every day.

But in truth, I have a lot of friends who don’t want to know anything about their food. They shelter their kids from knowing the whole “circle of life” stuff, but also tell me point blank that they don’t want to know the story behind their food. In their mind, what they don’t know won’t hurt them. Unfortunately, as Food Inc. shows, that isn’t always the case. I wasn’t expecting this film to be a tear-jerker, but hearing a mom talk about how her toddler son ate a hamburger and was dead in 12 days had me weeping. This mom, was the typical middle-American Republican mom on vacation, but the hamburger they bought their son on the way home was tainted with e. coli 0157:H7, a deadly antibiotic resistant bacteria common in factory farmed cows. These cows, fed unnatural diets of corn develop diseases (like e.coli) and are treated regularly with antibiotics, which leads to drug-resistant strains like this one. This mom has become the unlikely activist for food safety. The meat company who sent out the tainted meat knew it was tainted and didn’t issue a recall until two weeks after her son was dead. As she puts it, all she wants is an apology from the company and a guarantee that they are doing everything possible to prevent it from ever happening again. Instead she finds the companies fighting for more lax food safety laws and herself under threat of a lawsuit under the “veggie libel” laws for discouraging people to buy meat products. Yeah, look up these laws – express fears about the safety of your food and you could be sued for causing these companies loss of revenue. So much for free speech, much less safe food. It’s hard to know the truth if you are not allowed to talk about it.

But for all the doom and gloom that Food, Inc. rightly covers, I was grateful that it didn’t end the story there. Instead of throwing up it’s arms and admitting defeat or even insisting that we all go join some intentional community/ hippie commune immediately, Food, Inc. details the practical ways we can start changing the system from within. It profiles the organic dairy farmers who although they had boycotted Wal-Mart all their lives, were now selling their product to the them. Some may call them sell outs, and they are under no illusion that Wal-Mart jumped on the organic bandwagon out of the goodness of their hearts, but to get a store with a distribution as huge as Wal-Marts means significant amounts of pesticides, fertilizers, and antibiotics are kept from polluting our ecosystem. That’s a really big deal, and one of the main reason to buy organic to anyway. Working within the system, even if it is with Wal-Mart, makes progress happen faster and on a much larger scale. Similarly, the movie concludes with the reminder that we can each make a difference every time we go to the store. The point isn’t to abandon the food system, or stop buying food, but to simply demand healthier, sustainable food. We can choose to vote with our pocketbooks for the type of food we want to support. Do we want to support the food that oppresses animals, workers, and the environment or the food that does its best to care for all those things? We have that choice, we just have to be willing to make it.

Food, Inc. opens across the US during Summer 2009. Check the Food, Inc. website to see if it is playing near you.