Blog Relationships: Building Fair Trade through Social Media

Last night I was treated to a dinner party. This is one of my favorite ways to spend time: eating tasty pasta, sipping red wine, and enjoying interesting, insightful people I am blessed to call friends. In the course of our talking, the group realized that four of us at the table of eight were connected on Facebook, four of us not. We had a fun time discussing the pros and cons of all different types of social media (listservs, twitter, "old-fashioned" email) and concluded that sharing good food with good company was a much preferred way of spending time.

But I did offer one of the values of blogging for me: using the connectivity of the web to learn about the great work other people are doing around the globe. Case in point is a new colleague I have, Sharon Rose Goldberg of SAHA, a program of an Israeli nongovernmental organization working to build Fair Trade connections among Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews. Sharon had found my book on-line through Powell's. She was curious to learn more about domestic and regional Fair Trade initiatives such as the one in Brazil that I profile in my "Future of Fair Trade" chapter. Thanks to Skype she was soon able to have a conversation with a representative of FACES in Brazil to share ideas for promoting community trade. Sharon is obviously a really great networker because she has also connected with Zarah and the folks at change.org who recently profiled SAHA's work in their Faces of Fair Trade section.

When Sharon and I spoke we discussed other ways to learn from fellow Fair Traders, such as attending conferences and joining associations. The international travel part for me is going to have to be reduced this year due to our global economic woes (but hooray for my smaller carbon footprint!), and I'm grateful that I can "meet" people through the web, learn from fellow bloggers, and order Fair Trade wine for my next dinner party.


Here is a photo of my sister and me at my last party.

Dr. King's Triplets of Racism, Materialism and Militarism

My way of commemorating Dr. King's birthday is to use my "day off" to read some of his writings. When I was a public school teacher at Tilson Elementary in Decatur, Georgia, I was chagrined to recognize that I, a so-called "well-educated" white woman, could not recall any of Dr. King's oratory beyond the occasional "I Have a Dream" quip. At the same time, my 5th grade "at risk" African-American students could recite speeches in their entirety. That was the beginning of my understanding of how education in our country perpetuates patterns of poverty and disenfranchisement. Wouldn't a person of privilege such as myself need an understanding of Dr. King's vision and analysis as much minority students working to take their rightful place in a more just society? But somehow I hadn't been taught from the texts of Dr. King. Although my own elementary school was just a few miles away in Tucker, GA, my education was vastly different in terms of priorities. There are many reasons for that, but if I took anything away from my collegiate education, it was the call of life-long learning. Turning the pages of Dr. King's writings in adulthood is one way I try to keep educating myself.

Today on Democracy Now I was treated to audio excerpts from Dr. King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech at the Riverside Church in 1967. Listening I realized anew that although the body of Dr. King's work is important in its entirety, there is no denying the influence of his "sound bites." In this speech Dr. King invites Americans to a "radical revolution of values" that overturns a world in which profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people. Fair Traders often speak about putting "people before profit." I suspect we have Dr. King to thank for that turn of phrase and for the moral analysis behind it. And when I say that Fair Trade is an alternative that allows us to dismantle the systems that create poverty, I am recalling Dr. King's point that "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar;" It is working to restructure the system that caused the begging in the first place. While in 2009 we are still faced with the damage that comes from the triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism identified by Dr. King, his wisdom teaches we can overcome them with charity, justice, and hope.

Yes, there is that word "hope" on the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration. There are many causes for hope just as there are many reasons for "change." What I think that Dr. King reminds us is that we are each called in our own way to be a part of the solution. Doing so requires sacrifice, patience, and attention. But we have come so far in one generation's time! I believe that realizing his dream is possible, and I offer the words up for my education and your inspiration:

"I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'"

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963

Fair Household Budgets? Ideas please.

Go figure: I'm about to learn how to play an on-line 3D game. Frankly, "second life" and avatars and all that virtual world activity kind of creeps me out. But a teen services organization called Do Something has a game called "Karma Tycoon" that I want to play. Let me explain.

Like many of us in the Fair Trade movement, I often wonder how to apply the principles of Fair Trade to poverty in the United States. In a previous posting I came out in support of domestic Fair Trade initiatives and their links with farm worker justice in particular. But I've still felt like I didn't have much to say about the problems of the urban poor, who I encounter regularly in my Washington, DC neighborhood and because I work in Baltimore, MD.

Now, with unemployment rates in the US rising, I am even more concerned and curious about what Fair Trade offers in terms of solutions to poverty: rural, urban, suburban. In Chapter 10 of my book, I cast conscious consumption as an approach to managing one's resources in sustainable ways that helps others. But a presumption was that readers were using tools such as a household budget. Also I presumed that people had jobs--probably middle class ones, I admit.

What does Fair Trade offer to our citizens now, as they lose their jobs or get swamped with credit card debt and potential foreclosures that represent a lack of understanding about finances? Can the rationales and principles of Fair Trade and conscious consumption help us get out of the mess we are in? Can it help us steer a new path of financial responsibility?

My thinking is that we as Americans not only need to re-evaluate our spending in terms of our impact on people and the planet,we need to improve our skills at money management. Beyond the usual resources in the simplicity movement, though, I don't know who does work in this area. I reached out to a friend of mine provides credit counseling for a local government agency, and she pointed me in the direction of the "Karma Tycoon" game. I'm also going to check out mainstream resources such the new free financial planning action plan from Suze Orman's (yes, Suze).

I'm trying to figure out who is already helping our society manage money wisely so I can identify potential partners, build on existing wisdom and experience, not re-invent the wheel etc. If you have suggestions, please post them here to help my research and create connections. My ideas for bringing fairness into efforts to address current economic woes need a lot of shaping and influence.

Cast your Vote "to" not just "for" Obama

As the countdown continues to the Obama-Biden inauguration, we have another chance to use the voting process to help shape our new leader's agenda. The final round of the Ideas for Change in America competition has begun. Between now and January 15 you can indicate which of the top ideas in several categories should move forward. The following day Change.org is co-hosting an event at the National Press Club with the Case Foundation to announce the top 10 rated ideas and present them to the Obama administration. Then they'll launch a national campaign in coordination with our nonprofit partners to ensure that each idea gets the full consideration of the administration and 111th Congress.

Voting for a politican is an important first step for the democratic process, but then we have to continue to communicate our priorities to the people in power. With this informative effort, you can add your voice once again. The idea I got behind--declaring the White House a Fair Trade Zone--is in the running in the Fair Trade category, but I encourage to look at all the causes and cast your 10 votes throughout the ranked initiatives.

P.S. I want to acknowledge that not everyone who reads this blog voted for Obama originally; I hope the posting title doesn't distress you too much. It is hard to come up with catchy titles on regular basis!