SWEATFREE COMMUNITIES
If you wish there was something you could do about some of the worst abuses of corporate globalization, check out a fast-spreading grassroots movement called SweatFree Communities.
Its concept is simple: While one shopper can’t make a dent in the ethics of global manufacturers, each of us can have an impact if we team up as citizens to harness the purchasing power of our city and county governments, getting them to reject products made with sweatshop labor. We often forget that the biggest consumer in most places is local government, which buys huge quantities of uniforms, computers, office furniture, and such from various corporations. We can say to these vendors: No public dollars for sweatshop goods.
In Austin, City Council recently voted unanimously to join about 170 other localities across the country in the SweatFree network. These cities, school districts, and other public entities have committed to buy only from contractors and subcontractors who do not engage in such sweatshop abuses as the use of child labor, poverty wages, toxic workplaces, etc.
To enforce the “no sweat” commitment, the consortium sends independent monitors directly to the factories for periodic, unannounced reviews of labor conditions. The shared cost is minimal – Austin’s share, for example, is only about $17,000 a year. In turn, the assurance the city’s purchases reflect our people’s sense of justice is priceless.
SweatFree Communities was founded in 2003 and is supported by a wide range of churches, student organizations, unions, advocacy groups, and community leaders. The notion is there is power in numbers – with each new community that signs on, new strength is added to change industry practices … and end the shame of sweatshop labor.
To learn more, call 207/262-7277 or go to www.sweatfree.org.
BIG-SPENDING GEORGE
George W. likes to pose as the Texas president – in the rough-hewn, rancher model of Lyndon Johnson.
George isn’t actually a Texan, however. He was born in Connecticut, went to an East Coast prep school and Ivy League colleges, and he summered in Kennebunkport, Maine, at his family’s oceanfront estate. Nor is he a rancher, as Lyndon was. Yes, George bought a ranchette to boost his cowboy image when he decided to run for president, but this “cowboy” has no cattle and is even afraid of horses – that’s not quite a “tall-in-the-saddle” president like Johnson.
Yet, there is one area where George W. has stood taller than the real Texas president: federal spending. LBJ was derided as a big-spending liberal, but he was tightfisted compared to Bush. While George is now trying to pretend he’s a small-government fiscal conservative, federal spending in his administration has grown by 5.3% a year, nearly a full point higher than the rate of increase in the Johnson years, and more than double the annual spending growth under Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
Of course, the Bush White House takes no responsibility for anything negative, so it’s now trying to blame the billions of dollars that it’s dumping into his “war on terrorism” for distorting Bush’s spending numbers (maybe the Bushites don’t remember that LBJ had a war to finance, too, since so few of them actually served in it). But Bush spending is not just about his mismanaged wars. He has also hiked budgets in most agencies, with a disproportionate share of the increases going to privatization of government, corporate welfare, and right-wing ideological boondoggles.
So, now that we hear free-spending George W. suddenly posing as Mr. Frugal and demanding Congress hold the line on spending, remember that no president has spent more of your tax dollars and gotten so little for it as he has.
This article appears in November 30 • 2007.