so the indie darlings of a few years ago are now hocking coke. it wasn't enough that kerouac and ginsberg sold khakis for gap, now the whites go and conspire with coke.contact them and let them know you think they can do better. remind them that coke and the image that white is selling, are masking the fact that there have been multiple murders and an undocumented number of attempted murders of labor organizers and union members and affliiates.
click here for contact info (flash -- or something -- required)
the issues aren't just popping up in colombia; it's india, china, guatemala -- all over the place. except, ironically, here, because despite being this all-american icon, it's simply not "economical" to produce coke (or much of anything for that matter) here in the united states. that said, when human rights violations happen somewhere else, we know about them, and still do nothing, that's on us. today's labor struggles and efforts towards achieving international solidarity and economic justice run parallel to efforts of decades past, and unless we make a serious commitment to hold transnationals accountable for behavior conducted abroad, there's little hope for us or the world.
for an in depth, well-researched history of the highs and lows of coke's global, economic expansion, as well as coke and world culture, pick up a copy of Mark Pendergrast's For God, Country, and Coca-Cola (his description). if you're interested in a piece that focuses specifically on the acusations raised in colombia, try lesley gill's report to the anthropological human rights committee, "labor and human rights: 'the real thing' in colombia."
2 comments:
If working for Coke is worse than not working for Coke, why don't people in other countries just stop working for Coke? Then the labor troubles will be over. If the pool of potential laborers is smaller, the bottlers will have to increase wages and reduce hardship.
we hear things like this often, cardinal martini.
i believe that the only way to answer that is to say that it's about time that we use our imaginations and find another way to conceptualize the working relationship between wages, rights, and production.
must it always be that you either work in undesireable, and often harsh conditions or that you are unemployed and living in trash pile?
as a country we are quite wealthy; around the world, the economy, sciences, and technology have climbed to unprecedented heights. we can do things today that we never imagined possible. is it so difficult to imagine that there is another way to employ people? an ethical way, where people are paid a fair, liveable wage, and not expected to keep quiet when their basic rights as human beings are violated?
i think that this is the challenge that is being met today. and like so many other challenges our world has faced, this challenge, with a little imagination and compassion, will be overcome.
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