BLANKETS FOR VALLE VERDE

We’ve received a request from the women of the “Mujeres Mixtecas” sewing coop in the Mixtec indigenous community of Valle Verde, Tijuana—many people in the neighborhood need blankets.

We are coming into the coldest time of year, and many residents of Valle Verde live in pretty sparse conditions. A lot of the houses have thin walls, and some nights it can almost feel like you’re sleeping outdoors. When temperatures get this low, you need all the blankets you can get.

COLLECTION POINT

People in San Diego area can leave donated blankets and comforters at the following location:

“Western Service Workers Association”
Located in Barrio Logan
 3014 Imperial Avenue

Tell the folks at WSWA that the blankets are for Valle Verde or “C.A.F.E.”.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND INFO ON THE MIXTECS OF VALLE VERDE:

The Mixtec people are one of many indigenous ethnicities in Mexico. Often marginalized, discriminated against and exploited, unable to survive from rural agriculture because of unfair “free” trade agreements, many Mixtec people migrate to northern Mexico. Valle Verde was founded a couple decades ago by Mixtec people, mostly from the southern State of Guerrero. The community has a long history of community organizing, drawing from ancient traditions of “usos y costumbres” in indigenous communities.

“Mujeres Mixtecas” is a worker-owned business made up of Mixtec women from Valle Verde. The women have a sewing shop where they create clothing, blouses, aprons, school uniforms, and other articles. The women created the coop to try to develop alternative sources of income and provide for their families. This December, the women from the “Mujeres Mixtecas” coop have decided to help out their neighbors in Valle Verde. And they’ve asked for our solidarity with them, inviting us to collect donated blankets and comforters.

So if you have any extra blankets, or would like to buy some for the “Mujeres Mixtecas” coop to distribute, please send them our way!

Reflection on Maneadero Trip

Spacial Configurations in Maneadero
By Elizabeth Chaney

"Space depends crucially on the notion of articulation, in terms of the articulation of social relations which necessarily have a spatial form in their interactions with one another." (Doreen Massey, as quoted by Mary Pat Brady. Extinct Lands, Temporal Geographies. 2002. Duke University Press)

A rectangular pond/echoed/in/corrugated tin.

Los niños/están/jugando fútbol/en la calle polvorienta.

The ball flies/over clay levies/into irrigation water.

Hay un polo de PVC/Next to the pond.

They fish the ball out/every time.

Excepto en un ocasión/pero/piedras pueden ayuda mover el balón del centro.

It’s peculiar/how distant/los cuarteles son del campo/from the road.

Un hora en el camion/every morning/every night.

Hills fade into a patchwork of fields. The highway runs straight as a pole south from Ensenada. It later curves to hug the landscape as topography interrupts the patchwork. Si acuerdo correctamente, los cuarteles son oeste de donde los campos son interrumpidos por topografia.

I remember clearly a roll of bolsas de plastico, frijoles secos. Two scoops is about a pound-it becomes easy to visually approximate weight, after about 20 bags. "¿Cuáles son?" I feel very uncomfortable being blessed for the effort. We fill the shopping cart to the brim.

I'm hyper-aware of the make and condition of vehicle we drive over dusty roads. It's pretty fuel efficient, it's not a good use of time to fret over what the car may signify in this context. And I can't help but think in the same terms about the car I drive.

"But, the more its shown that "the sort of thing which happens in that place" is partly an outcome of policies designed in this place, the more responsibility we have to do something about it...There is a need, as Susan Sontag once said, to put privilege and suffering on the same map." (Nally, David. "Architectures of Violence: Famine and Profits." Al Jazeera. 2011. http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201181492658224754.html.)

The notion of privilege, I think, has to be wrestled with to avoid rendering it immobile. Its "inflexibility" can seem implicit in the notion of "charity," which depends on a unquestioned verticality of social relationships that extends moral privilege to the resource-privileged. It is, thus, an interesting predicament, when charity serves as a guise to initiate relationships based en horizontalidad. Shouldn't structural conditions that ensure verticality (i.e. polar conditions of resource access) be challenged (opposed) directly?

This is certainly one approach, which edges on allopathy. The basis of Modern Western medicine (i.e. introduce a factor that counters symptoms to attack the ailment), the allopathic approach is effective in sudden crises, but potentially sustains maladies of a more subtle variety. Might the appropriation-subversion of one mechanism that provides ideological backing for the verticality we aim to challenge provide an entry toward addressing structural violence behind conditions weathered by migrant workers?

Perhaps only when subversion of the mechanism runs its course. That is, when "charity" is twisted to serve simply as a means of initiating equitable relationships that may develop over time.

Trip to Maneadero

Recently CAFE members took a weekend trip to Maneadero, Baja California where they experienced firsthand the effects of “free trade”, NAFTA and the hidden cost of a cheap tomato. They brought humanitarian donations (food, vitamins, medical supplies) for the migrant laborers who work on the industrial farms, harvesting the vegetables that fill supermarkets in the U.S. Visiting various encampments where the migrant workers live, they saw the poverty that is created and reinforced by lopsided trade agreements and exploitative labor practices. Most of these workers are of the indigenous Mixtec ethnicity—unable to survive in their hometowns of southern Mexico, they face discrimination and marginalization in northern Mexico where they come to work on these “factory farms”. These “agro-maquiladoras” mirror the massive assembly line factories that dot the landscape near the border.

Participants learned about the economic and political forces that have created this situation, pushing Mixtec men, women and children north to labor in brutal conditions. In addition to visiting the encampments on the farms, visited an orphanage in Maneadero that provides care to the children of the farm workers who are born with birth defects. Back in Tijuana, they visited a group of Mixtec women in the Tijuana neighborhood of Valle Verde who have formed their own sewing coop as an alternative source of income.



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CAFE On Your TV!

Check out this video from "Progress in San Diego", as David Schmidt, from CAFE discusses fair trade:

Follow-up Strategy Session - Fair Trade in San Diego

We will be having a follow-up strategy session to the Fair Trade Session at the Border Studies Conference to continue to discuss how we can work together, as organizations and individuals, to push for Fair Trade and fight unfair trade at a local and national level. This strategy session will be an open conversation between all of us, to further discuss what we can do together to coordinate with each other and push to expand Fair Trade.

We are planning on holding it at San Diego City College Building A, Room 213 on Saturday March 19, 2011 at 10:30 a.m.

For more information, please email cafeontheborder@gmail.com.

Apple's 2011 Supplier Report Reveals Child Workers, Bribes, Unsafe Conditions

After ten suicides at Chinese manufacturer Foxconn last year, Apple has published a review of supplier responsibility practices, which reported child labor violations, toxic conditions, and other violations of their code of conduct.

Apple sent COO Tim Cook to Foxconn, where a team of suicide prevention specialists had been dispatched to deal with the issues there. "The team commended Foxconn for taking quick action on several fronts simultaneously, including hiring a large number of psychological counselors, establishing a 24-hour care center, and even attaching large nets to the factory buildings to prevent impulsive suicides," the report said, going on to conclude that "Foxconn's response had definitely saved lives."

Apple's response to the suicides at Foxconn has garnered significant media attention over the past year, but Apple did not cut ties with the factory. According to their recent report, they did cut ties with a number of other factories violating their code, including one company that tried to bribe Apple officials to overlook violations, another that falsified payroll records, and one with over 90 underage workers.

Apple continues to work with several other facilities employing child labor, who have promised to work with Apple to prevent future underage workers. For those facilities found to be employing workers under 16, China's legal labor age, Apple is forcing the supplier to pay for educational expenses and lost wages for 6 months or until the worker turns 16, whichever is longer.

"During our investigation, we also discovered that the vocational school involved in hiring the
underage workers had falsified student IDs and threatened retaliation against students who revealed their ages during our audits," the report went on to say. "We reported the school to appropriate authorities in the Chinese government."

Apple also discovered a facility that endangered their workers by exposing them to n-hexane, a chemical that reportedly left some workers unable to walk. "We required the facility to discontinue use of n-hexane, to fix the factory's ventilation systems," Apple said of the discovery.

Additionally, Apple found that less than a third of reviewed factories complied with the company's standards for working hours, which are a maximum of 60 hours a week. The company is working to improve management and oversight over these issues. Read the full report here.

The Huffington Post  Amy Lee  First Posted: 02/15/11 12:52 PM Updated: 02/15/11 04:03 PM

20,000 Sacrificed In Annual Blood Offering To Corporate America

WILMINGTON, DE, The Onion—The nation looked on in reverence Friday as 20,000 citizens were decapitated, dismembered, and burned alive in the name of Corporate America, continuing the age-old annual rite to ensure bounteous profits in the coming fiscal year.

"Corporate America has always provided us with plenty," said High Priest James N. Cahill, who opened the ceremony by plunging the horn of a bull into a fair-haired child's abdomen and using the freshly spilled blood to write the current value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average upon sacred parchment. "JPMorgan Chase, General Electric, and all in the great pantheon of publicly traded entities will continue to watch over us so long as we appease them each year with human lives."

"The prophecies are clear," Cahill continued. "As we utter the hallowed incantations and make our humble sacrifices of flesh, so shall the shelves of retailers overflow with the most desirable consumer products."

The blood offering follows last week's Feast of Increasing Market Values, a yearly celebration during which Americans gather with their families under the second Q4 full moon to give thanks to corporations and to pray for cash dividends during the holiday shopping season...

Go to article: 20,000 Sacrificed In Annual Blood Offering To Corporate America

Harry Potter and Social Justice

by Julie Clawson 11-17-2010

Seeking justice for the oppressed. Working to end the connection of child slavery to chocolate. Helping heal a devastated Haiti. Mobilizing young people to respond to a story of redemption by imaginatively working to build a better world. I think many of us Christians would hope that those words were describing the work of the body of Christ, intent on following the path of Jesus Christ in this world. In this case, they are actually descriptions of the Harry Potter Alliance. That’s right — the Harry Potter Alliance.|

Since 2005, the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) has existed as a nonprofit organization intent on using the weapon of love (and a common affinity for Harry Potter) to combat the dark arts of our world. As their mission statement states, they use “parallels from the Harry Potter books to educate and mobilize young people across the world toward issues of literacy, equality, and human rights. Our mission is to empower our members to act like the heroes that they love by acting for a better world.” And it’s working. With more than 100,000 members and nearly 60 chapters worldwide, this real world gathering of Dumbledore’s Army is making a difference.

For example, let’s examine the case of the chocolate industry, and its connections to child slavery and unfair wages. In the Harry Potter books, Hermione Granger discovers that the food served at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is made by house elves (unpaid servants), and so she organizes a campaign for their fair treatment. The HPA responded similarly by asking Time Warner, the parent company that markets all Harry Potter merchandise, to switch the chocolate used in their merchandise to fair trade chocolate. They do not want chocolate made in the name of the boy who used love to save the world to support systems of injustice like child slavery.

Go to article: Harry Potter and Social Justice

Presentations from the CAFE Trade and Immigration Strategy Session at Border Conference

Hola CAFE-teros!

Thank you to everyone who attended CAFE's strategy session on Trade and Immigration at the Border Conference at City College on December 1st!  We had over 50 participants, lots of great ideas and enthusiasm. We will be meeting in the new year to talk more about how we can turn our ideas for trade reform into action (details to be announced shortly). 

Below is the presentation given at the beginning of the strategy session, giving a brief overview of the connection between trade policies and immigration:

Also mentioned in the strategy session, by fellow presenter David Bacon, is the Dignity Campaign, which is a comprehensive immigration reform campaign that integrates trade policy reform. Here is a link to an Dignity Campaign proposal (as published by our Filipino allies at Filipinos for Justice!) :

http://www.filipinos4justice.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Dignity-Campaign-bulletpoints2.pdf

Also, CAFE David Schmidt, found the following excellent presentation on the concepts behind Fair Trade and how fair trade is working today across the globe.  Fair warning, its a rather large presentation, but work every megabyte!

Power Point Version:
http://www.fairtraderesource.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/the-new-conscious-consumer-vaug2010.ppt

Meeting with David Funkhouser from TransFair USA

Meeting with David Funkhouser from TransFair USA (a.k.a. Fair Trade USA)

September 30, 2010

Below are my notes from the meeting last week with David Funkhouser (again--awesome last name), he works with Fair Trade USA and talked with the folks from Fair Trade San Diego about how the process works--how coops in other countries become Fair Trade coops. D.S.

FLO—Fair Trade Labeling Organization

Located in Europe—sets the standards for producers to be certified

FLO sets the standards

And inspects the FT coop to make sure it adheres to FT standards

Fair Trade USA (used to be called “Transfair)

Here in the USA—FT USA cross-checks transactions, audits FT partners here in the USA

(like Rigo’s company, Café Virtuoso)

For artisanry / handcrafts, there is no certification process

The oldest FT org’s are those that work in handcrafts (artesanías): 10,000 Villages, SERRV, etc.)

They have criteria, different from standards

Depends a lot more on trust: handcraft producing org’s being members of a Fair Trade Federation, but there is no certification process for handcrafts (there is, on the other hand, for coffee, tea, etc.)

There is a “Fair Trade town” program to campaign for a city in the U.S. to be a “FT city”

This means that a certain percentage of stores per capita must sell Fair Trade certified products

Fair Trade clothing

Fair Trade USA is developing a standard for FT apparel; it’s still in its pilot year this year, just now being developed.

“HEY NOW”- a company in the US that is importing cotton clothing from a FT group in India.

“World of Good” – an org that is developing a ‘wage tool’ for calculating fair wages for producers of clothing

The FT standards for clothing are not yet in place enough to be implemented with a coop like the Valle Verde ladies. “It’s hard getting enough org’s together who are willing to go through the whole process”.

Companies involved in pilot program for FT textiles (including clothing):

Indigenous Designs

Maggie’s Organics

Hey Now

PRANA

Integrated Market Ecology Organizations – IMO

A different organization that provides certification

Located in Switzerland

Applies the same FLO standards for certifying producers as FT

David F. doesn’t know a lot about them—they don’t do much business in the USA

How FT coffee producers are paid

Guaranteed minimum is paid them for coffee: $1.25 US / pound

This is called the “floor price”—they are guaranteed this minimum price, even if the market price (conventional world market price) dips down lower

Plus a $0.10 / lb. “social premium”

However, if market price goes higher, FT coffee farmers are paid market price for their coffee

Right now, market price for coffee is above $2.00/lb, so floor price doesn’t matter right now.

Market price is referred to as the “C-price”

When the C-price is up, that’s when the social premium makes the difference for FT coffee farmers—they get that extra $0.10 / lb, no matter what the market price is

A management body within the coop decides how to invest / use this social premium

Some have spent it on: hospitals

Schools

Roads

Boats

A Colombian coop used it to buy cell phones for security concerns (kidnapping)

How do coffee farmers become FT coffee farmers?

The easiest way: to join an existing FT coop near them

Piggyback on their existing FT registration, become compliant

Otherwise—form a new FT coop (a lot of work)

Most coops out there have 100 – 200 member farmers

If they form their own coffee FT coop:

They would apply with FLO

FLO would send a list of standards (this list is online—what the standards are)

FLO would see if the coffee coop complies with the standards:

- Does it have the correct percentage of small producers? (i.e. not big plantations)

- Does it have an accounting system?

- Is the business collectively owned?

Etc….

Why is certification so expensive for producer org’s?

Up to around 2004—certification was cost-free.

But there were a lot of coops that wanted to get certified, and it just wasn’t feasible anymre—the line was too long, backlog, etc. So FLO started a for-profit company, “FLO-CERT”, to run certification. It couldn’t have been managed with just a non-profit or just volunteers.

Also—because, when you pay for something, there is a sense of investment, ownership.

And—the cost of audits on the business, to make sure it’s all legit.

Example of how the cost breaks down

It depends on the size of the coop

Example: in a 50-member coop, made up of 50 farmers, it costs about 1400 Euro to certify. (And less to renew certification, keep it current in following years.) This is for transportation, cost of tax auditors, etc. for 3 ½ days of work.

But, if you divide the cost up between the 50 members, it comes to 28 Euro per farmer—more doable.

And, there are scholarships for certification available.

In addition, an importer company (like Rigoberto’s roasting company, for instance) can opt to ‘sponsor’ the coop, covering the cost of certification. This establishes a relationship between the two, and lets the importer have a personal connection, put a face on the producer.

At any rate, FLO is trying to streamline the certification process to make it all more easy and cheaper.

(NOTE: David F. did not know why FLO had to set up a for-profit company—it was for some legal purpose. Regardless, it is not making profit from FT.)

Fees involved for coops

Certification fees (one-time)

Inspection fees (annual)

Licensing fees for using the FT label (10 cents / pound of coffee; cost goes down the more you produce)

Side note on coffee importing, comment by Rigo:

The reason they’re building a harbor in Ensenada is that right now, Wal Mart has a monopoly on the Long Beach harbor, can control what comes in.