Return to Main
The following article appeared in the November 1996 issue of Salt of the Earth. It is posted here for private use only. It may not be reprinted in whole or in part in any manner without the permission of Salt of the Earth magazine.
Salt of the Earth is published by the Claretians. For more information about Salt of the Earth or to seek reprint permission, contact: Salt of the Earth, 205 West Monroe Street, Chicago, IL 60606, or call: 312-236-7782.
For subscription information, call 1-800-328-6515.
by Darren Maloney
Idealistic. Utopian. Pie in the sky. Ask an average, world-hardened consumer about the notion of shopping with a social conscience, and these are some of the terms you might hear. Yeah, maybe it's a nice idea to shop for a better world, but big companies aren't going to change. Right?
Wrong. In the past couple years, some well-known corporations--the Gap, Starbucks, and Wal-Mart among them--have changed their act in response to public demands for goods made in more socially responsible ways. Companies have been pressured to ensure a more humane and reasonable treatment of their workers, to end child labor, to institute more environmentally sound business practices, or to address a wide range of other ethical concerns.
Last year, relatively short consumer campaigns against the Gap and Starbucks--both regarding the conditions of contracted labor--ended with breakthrough endorsements of business codes of conduct from both companies and with the Gap making an unprecedented commitment to independent monitoring.
"There's clearly a movement by some companies to move to a new level of social responsibility," says Stephen Coats, executive director of the U.S./Guatemala Labor Education Project, which was instrumental in the Starbucks campaign. "At a minimum it's an inoculation against bad press."
In most cases, given a choice between two products of comparable quality, people buy what is least expensive. For aware consumers, however, deciding what to buy will become more complicated. Referring specifically to the abuse of laborers in some Central and South American garment factories, Sister Dolores Brooks of the 8th Day Center for Justice in Chicago was surprised to find that "the exploitation of workers in those countries is far worse than anyone thought. It's difficult to buy companies' products when they exploit people so badly."
A 1996 survey reports that over 70 percent of the American public would refuse to buy a product if they knew it were made by exploited or child labor. Consumers are "basically saying, 'If we had this information we'd use it,'" says Todd Putnam, founder and director of the Institute for Consumer Responsibility in Seattle, Washington.
There is plenty of information to help consumers reward responsible companies with their business and to avoid those companies' product whose practices fall short of their values and principles. There is also a wealth of experience and innovative strategies from those who have dedicated themselves to consumer campaigns over the years.
The following are just eight easy ways to shop--or stop shopping--for a better world. Some detailed background is provided along with specific sources and tips from seasoned activists to help you act on your good impulses.
Being vocal is most important in shopping for a better world. But for the beginning socially responsible consumer, confronting the A&P checkout clerk over the origin of some fruit or asking the Sears manager where the union label is on a shirt may be off-putting.
For those shy shoppers, the advice of Ginny Coughlin of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) may be a good start: simply thank the Gap.
Coughlin, who was a director of last year's highly successful Gap campaign for UNITE, says this simple action will help encourage speedy compliance with corporate pledges for improving worker conditions.
The campaign involved a particular factory in El Salvador--the Taiwanese-owned Mandarin International factory in San Salvador. Workers at this export factory, or maquiladora, earned just 56 cents an hour and were subjected to hellish conditions under a site manager who was a former colonel in the Salvadoran military, says Brooks of the 8th Day Center. Management was armed and intimidating, sometimes erupting into physical abuse.
Union organizers were summarily fired. In the words of the Mandarin International president, 168 people "left" the company in a three-day period in June 1995. Their union activities were also crushed with threats and violence.
Eddie Bauer, J.C. Penney, and Dayton-Hudson had also used Mandarin International as a garment producer, but the Gap became the campaign's main focus. It had its own "Sourcing Principles and Guidelines," but it clearly was not enforcing them. Gap representatives claimed they saw no violations at the plant.
In response to the abuses, the tiny National Labor Committee arranged for two maquiladora workers to come to the United States for interviews with U.S. media in June 1995. One of them was Judith Yanira Viera, who as a 14-year-old had worked at Mandarin International. She told interviewers that she had logged 14-hour days six days a week. When big orders from the U.S. came in, the work day could stretch to 18 hours. For sewing a T-shirt that sold for $20 in the U.S., Viera, now 19, earned about 12 cents.
She wanted to go to school but "the bosses said, 'School or work.' ... If you go to school, they fire you." After supporting the union, Viera was among those fired.
The campaign that developed was not a boycott, but rather, Coughlin explains, a combination of direct actions at stores, over the phone, and through letters. Supporters leafleted stores and asked store managers, often in small groups, about how and under what conditions clothing items were made.
In December 1995, only six months after the campaign was started, the Gap signed a resolution, agreeing to work with groups like the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) to establish an independent monitoring program to give teeth to the unenforced sourcing principles. Also, Mandarin International agreed to a plan to negotiate with and hire back nonworking union leaders.
The Rev. David Schilling of the ICCR reported last summer that productive meetings had already taken place with Gap representatives, whose efforts showed "they're serious." Schilling explains that the independent monitors at the plant are volunteers who are being drawn from the Archdiocese of San Salvador and other groups.
At this point Coughlin says consumers can reinforce efforts by thanking the Gap. She also says customers can ask store managers for an update.
-- To thank the Gap or request an official update, contact: Millard S. Drexler, CEO, The Gap, One Harrison Street, San Francisco, CA 94105; phone: 415-952-4400.
Another campaign for which thanks and watchful waiting are prescribed involves the trendy coffeehouse chain Starbucks.
While the corporation aims to create a warm and friendly atmosphere at its outlets, supporters of the Justice for Coffee Workers Campaign were concerned about how Starbucks' coffee beans were picked on the fincas, or plantations. The campaign supporters focused on Guatemala.
Depressed wages and child labor persist among Guatemala's nearly 700,000 plantation workers.
Many of the 300,000 year-round workers live in dirt-floor shacks with no running water. Temporary campesinos get only 15-day contracts that allow employers to sidestep rights and benefits laws. Sometimes whole families, children included, work 12-hour days, but only the father gets paid. Typically such pay is below the largely unenforced legal minimum wage of $2.60 a day, according to the U.S./Guatemalan Labor Education Project (US/GLEP). "It's worse than the apparel business," says Coats. "Rural workers work longer and get paid less."
In addition, without any established and enforced Guatemalan health and safety standards, workers face risks from pesticides.
The goal of the campaign was to persuade Starbucks, one of the dozens of U.S. companies who import over half of Guatemala's coffee production, to take responsibility for the coffee they sell.
According to Coats, the campaign began informational leafleting at Starbucks stores and requested a meeting in December 1994. After the Seattle-based company failed to make good on its promise to get back to the campaign, a coordinated effort to leaflet 75 stores in over 25 U.S. and Canadian cities was held in February 1995. Four days later Starbucks announced it would adopt a code of conduct.
The code, to be implemented next year, outlines minimum standards for working conditions for the company's foreign producers, including the right to a basic-needs wage and the right to freely associate and organize.
Although pressure was concurrently applied on Starbucks from other sources--religious, labor, and human rights groups and responsible-investment firms formally supporting the campaign--Coats says consumer direct action was essential to its success.
In April, the Council for Economic Priorities named Starbucks one of ten winners of its 1996 Corporate Conscience Awards for being the first U.S. importer to establish a framework for a code of conduct to protect workers producing an agricultural commodity.
The initial framework isn't perfect; for example, it doesn't address how the conduct will be enforced or directly endorse collective bargaining. "We're waiting to see how the company follows the code," says Coats. Despite Starbucks' strides, he urges vigilance, adding, "I think it's time for a progress report."
-- To thank Starbucks for adopting a code of conduct important to your buying choice, to request a copy of the code of conduct, or to ask for a progress report on its implementation, contact: Starbucks, Howard Schultz, CEO & Chairman, P.O. Box 34067, Seattle, WA 98124-1067; phone: 206-447-1575.
-- For more information on how to support workers' efforts for justice in Guatemala and Central America, contact: U.S./Guatemala Labor Education Project, P.O. Box 268-290, Chicago, IL 60626; phone: 312-262-6502; e-mail: usglep@igc.apc.org.
Boycotts have proved to be effective consumer tools for socially responsible shopping and for sending a message to corporate suppliers with less than enlightened practices.
One of the best-known and most effective boycotts in recent times was the canned-tuna boycott, which drove the tuna industry into adopting fishing practices that are safe for dolphins.
Earth Island Institute targeted Heinz, the parent company of the tuna-industry leader Star-Kist, and its affiliated companies to convince them that dolphin safety practices would be economically feasible. Within two years the institute's campaign persuaded Starkist to change its practices, thus setting the trend for the other tuna companies to follow.
Over the past several years, disturbed by events such as the huge oil spill of the Exxon Valdez tanker, the American public is putting less faith in government leaders to protect them or the environment, according to Zachary Lyons at the Center for Economic Democracy (CED) in Seattle. "What I've been seeing happening is people waking up and finding that their power is with their consumer dollars and not their political votes," says Lyons.
Although boycotts often involve many complex issues, Lyons says well-run boycotts can achieve results much faster than in years past. He cites a June 1995 boycott of the Shell corporation in Europe over an offshore oil-drilling rig that achieved its goal in just 10 days.
To faithfully follow a boycott requires current information and working avenues of communication. But because boycotts bother advertisers, media outlets often do not cover them. What is more, says Putnam, there are about 200 organized, nationally known boycott campaigns at any given time.
Therefore, a must for any consumer seeking up-to-date boycott information is the Boycott Quarterly, which is published through the CED and costs $20 for a one-year subscription. All in all BQ covers hundreds of boycotts in articles, updates, and concise "nutshell" listings.
-- To subscribe to or contact the Boycott Quarterly, write or e-mail: The Boycott Quarterly, P.O. Box 30727, Seattle, WA 98103; e-mail: Boycottguy@aol.com
-- For more general information on resources, organizations, historical background, boycotts, and other actions, contact: Institute for Consumer Responsibility, 3618 Wallingford Avenue N., Seattle, WA 98103; phone: 206-632-5230; internet: http://seattlecafe.com/boycott.
Other guides are available. Co-op America, an organization dedicated to promoting "green" and socially responsible companies, publishes an insert, the Boycott Action News, within its Co-op America Quarterly magazine, which is available with a $20 membership. To support a boycott, Co-op America instructs consumers to write a letter to the company boycotted and send a copy to boycott organizers in addition to boycotting the product.
Another guide of boycotts is available from the AFL-CIO; it lists the campaigns the union federation sanctions.
Current prolife boycotts include the Life Decisions International campaign targeting corporate supporters of Planned Parenthood and a boycott coordinated by Pro Vita Advisors against pharmaceutical companies that make abortion-inducing drugs as well as medical groups and health insurance companies that perform or pay for abortions.
-- To join or contact Co-op America: Co-op America, 1612 K Street NW, #600, Washington, DC 20006; phone: 202-872-5307.
-- To obtain the AFL-CIO boycott list, contact: AFL-CIO, 815 16th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20006; phone: 202-637-5000. The list is available on the Internet at http://www.aflcio.org/boycott.htm.
-- For more information on prolife boycotts, contact: Tom Strohbar, Pro Vita Advisors, P.O. Box 292813, Dayton, OH 45429; phone: 513-298-8125; e-mail: ProVitaAdv@aol.com; or: Patricia Bainbridge, Life Decisions International, P.O. Box 419, Amherst, NY 14226-0419; phone: 716-839-4420.
The reverse image of traditional boycotts are "buycotts"--the intentional buying of products that are deemed socially responsible and otherwise "good."
An essential for consumers looking to "buy right" is Shopping for a Better World: The Quick and Easy Guide to All Your Socially Responsible Shopping (Sierra Club Books, 1994). Prepared by the Council on Economic Priorities (CEP), it is the most comprehensive such guide available, although it may take some time getting used to its rating system and layout.
The 400-page handbook provides information on company and product ratings in separate sections, with more than 75 product categories in the latter list. Letter grades are given in eight issue areas: environment, charitable giving, community outreach, women's advancement, minority advancement, family, workplace issues, and disclosure of information.
It's probably worth the time to first check out the icons at the bottom of the guide and commit at least some of them to memory. Before diving into the many gridded pages, readers should take a look at the criteria the publishers have used in evaluating the eight areas and check them against their own values and priorities.
For those who want to cut to the chase and start buying responsibly, the guide has an "honor-roll list." Of the 191 companies rated, 20 achieved grade-point averages of 3.5. Thirteen of those honor-roll companies are highlighted in a special chapter. (Likewise, eight poor performers are collected in an "X-rated list.")
The honor-roll list companies include Aveda Corp. (organic hair, beauty, and household products); General Mills, Inc.; Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc.; Rhino Records, Inc.; and those perennial "good guys," Ben and Jerry's Homemade, Inc.
Another worthy guide for the environmentally and socially conscious is Co-op America's National Green Pages. This year's fourth edition is the size of a thick magazine, with hundreds of paragraph-sized listings of "green" businesses committed to jobs, empowerment, community, and environmental health.
For a holistic approach, the Summer 1996 issue of Co-op America Quarterly describes everyday spending on 15 green businesses that "every community should have." These include a secondhand-clothes store, an enviro-friendly auto mechanic, and a bank that invests in the community.
There are also hundreds of alternative shops springing up across the country that stock socially responsible products. Businesses for Social Responsibility in San Francisco is an association many such companies have joined. One of its members, for example, is Global Exchange, a store that offers handcrafted gifts from indigenous peoples around the world.
Among a growing group of alternative trade organizations, SERVV International (Sales Exchange for Refugee Rehabilitation Vocation) of the Church of Brethren and SELFHELP Crafts of the World, a project of the Mennonite Central Committee, are the oldest and perhaps most successful.
Last year, SERVV began a partnership project with Catholic Relief Services. The Work of Human Hands Project is designed to assist parishes with organizing Christmas bazaars and other sales events for international handcrafts. The project is committed to promoting economic justice through fair trade and to serving poor people by purchasing and marketing their crafts in a just and direct manner.
Project Equality, a national interfaith coalition that works in partnership with businesses to counter discrimination and racism and to promote diversity and equal opportunity, publishes an annual Buyer's Guide that lists companies committed to equal employment opportunity.
-- To order the latest edition of Shopping for a Better World ($14) or to subscribe to the CEP newsletter and Research Reports, contact: Council on Economic Priorities, 30 Irving Place, New York, NY 10003-2386; phone: 800-729-4237; e-mail: cep@echonyc.com; internet: http://www.accesspt.com/cep or: aol@ Keyword: CEP.
-- Co-op America's National Green Pages ($5.95) can be ordered by calling 800-58-GREEN.
-- For information on organizing a parish Christmas bazaar or other parish events selling international crafts, contact: CRS Work of Human Hands, P.O. Box 365, New Windsor, MD 21776; phone: 800-685-7572.
-- To order the Project Equality Buyer's Guide ($25) or for more information on the organization, contact: Project Equality, 6301 Rockhill Road, Ste. 315, Kansas City, MO 64131; phone: 816-361-9222.
Once you've made some choices and you feel ready, assert your buying power in the stores. Advocates agree that vocal shoppers are vastly more effective than those who keep their concerns to themselves.
Experienced boycott organizers and advocacy-group leaders emphasize the need to make oneself heard by contacting organizations; notifying corporate CEOs; discussing issues with neighbors, co-workers, and fellow parishioners; and, perhaps most of all, asking questions of store managers.
Laura Brown, director of public education for Co-op America, says her organization has a working rule of thumb they've seen borne out by research: if 2 percent of a company's customers voice their concerns, the company will change its practices in response. Why? Companies know that the vocal clients represent many more silent consumers.
This principle was put to tremendous effect during the breakthrough Gap campaign in which there was no strict boycott called. Rather, "We asked people to talk to managers of Gap stores," says Ann Hoffman, associate legislative director of UNITE.
"They went to the store manager and asked, 'What can you tell me about how this garment was made?' The first time you talk to the manager, he'll look at you like you're crazy. When the third person asks, he'll be trying to figure out how to give an answer. The sixth time, he'll call corporate headquarters."
The melodrama of national talk show host Kathie Lee Gifford brought the pervasive problem of sweatshops to light this year. Under fire because of the use of illegal child labor in the manufacture of her clothing line, she pledged last June to urge her exclusive retailer, Wal-Mart, the world's largest, to use its influence to force improvements at its garment contractors.
Just days before, Gifford had threatened legal action against labor advocates who said she didn't care about children. After the National Labor Committee and UNITE raised questions about conditions at a Honduran contractor, Global Fashions, Gifford met representatives of these groups and others, including 15-year-old Wendy Diaz, a seamstress from the contractor, at the Manhattan residence of Cardinal John O'Connor.
"I believe all children are God's children. I had no idea what was happening, but now that I know I will do everything I can to help you," Gifford said in a statement.
Conscripted into the anti-sweatshop movement, Gifford continued on to the nation's capital. She spoke before a congressional hearing, and in August was present at the White House when President Bill Clinton announced the appointment of a sweatshop advisory panel.
The battle to eliminate sweatshops continues, and you can be part of it. One particular effort, the Retailer Accountability Campaign--coordinated by Sweatshop Watch, a coalition of labor, immigrant, and other groups based in California--targets several department stores.
The campaign arose from one of the most notorious cases of garment-industry abuse. It came to light in August 1995 when a barbed-wire enclosed sweatshop of indentured, illegal Thai workers toiling under slave-like conditions was raided in a Los Angeles suburb. The 72 Thai workers at the El Monte, California factory joined with 84 Hispanic workers, some of whom worked at another affiliated sweatshop, to launch the campaign.
A search of the big retailers found evidence that the garments these sweatshop workers had sewn had made their way into their department stores. "The workers can identify each garment by a particular mark or pattern of stitching," explains Sweatshop Watch's Paul Lee.
Lee, coordinator for the campaign at Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates, says: "We're not asking consumers to boycott retailers. We're asking consumers to be aware and ask questions on garments and to keep in touch with organizations. Stay informed and make informed choices."
The campaign is aimed at seven common department-store retailers who all did business with vendors acting as go-betweens with the sweatshop operator: Sears, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Robinsons-May, Bullocks/Macy's (Federated Department Stores), Montgomery Ward, and Target.
The campaign is asking retailers to adopt a "Retailer Code of Conduct" that promotes "practices which ensure a safe environment, safe work conditions, and an adequate standard of living for garment workers and their families." Among the demands are: no forced labor, no child labor, a living wage, limited working hours, freedom of association, a healthful and safe work environment, and no trade with companies in "outlaw nations."
People who want to participate in the campaign are asked to approach department store retailers. Lee has some tips for such actions:
Garments under these four specific labels were made at the targeted California sweatshops and can be found all over the country, he says. While these labels themselves don't mean the garments were sweatshop-made, they warrant questions as to their origins, Lee says. "When you see these labels, an attention light should go off."
-- For more information on anti-sweatshop actions or to join Sweatshop Watch, contact: Sweatshop Watch, c/o Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates, 2430 W. 3rd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90057; phone: 213-738-9050.
You can also exercise your moral consumer power at the grocery store by joining one of the longest-running boycotts--the United Farm Workers boycott against California table grapes.
The first grape boycott was called in the 1960s, but a more recent effort started in the 1980s because growers use more dangerous pesticides on grapes than on any other food crop. Church support for this campaign is being coordinated by the National Farm Worker Ministry (NFWM), a 75-year-old organization supporting farmworker efforts.
The boycott targets the use of the five most dangerous pesticides, says NFWM's executive director, the Rev. David Crump, who points out that pesticides "are bad for consumers as well as workers."
Indeed, a 1993 National Research Council report concluded that some children's regular diets may result in pesticide-residue exposures high enough to cause poisoning.
The boycott also supports the grape pickers' fight for better wages and working and living conditions and their efforts to organize union elections. Crump, a minister in the Reformed Church in America, says, "Housing situations are just unspeakable" at grape pickers' camps.
In a camp he visited in Wattsonville, California, for example, Crump says it was fairly typical to see two or three families in one- or two-room dwellings, often made of concrete. Crump says farmworkers toil under 19th-century, company-store type practices that force workers, short on options, to "shop" their company credit against their paychecks.
The NFWM and United Farm Workers will continue the boycott until the grower-industry representatives sign an agreement with farmworkers to make grapes safe and to ensure fair worker elections and collective bargaining.
From June through December, nearly all supermarket grapes in the U.S. are California table grapes, targeted for boycott. There are some grapes from UFW-contracted sources, says Crump, explaining that "it's good to push and see the boxes they come from." Boxes with UFW labels fall outside the ban.
Crump, too, has some tips for effective boycotting:
-- For more information on the table-grape boycott and other NFWM campaigns, contact: National Farm Worker Ministry, 1337 West Ohio Street, Chicago, IL 60622; phone: 312-829-6436.
-- For other informed choices at the supermarket, the Council on Economic Priorities publishes a six-page flyer for cart-top cramming, Take Me Shopping! Turn Your Cart into a Vehicle for Social Change. (See Step 3 for CEP's address).
An advanced step in shopping with a conscience involves a "gang" effort with UNITE's Partnership for Responsibility.
The partnership, consisting of about 40 different religious, social-justice, and other groups, believes that consumers, corporations, and governments should share in trying to empower apparel workers. The campaign maintains that eradicating lower wages and substandard conditions in foreign factories will give U.S. companies less incentive to relocate and will ultimately benefit domestic workers.
Toward this end, Ann Hoffman, UNITE's coordinator of the anti-sweatshop campaign, has been organizing "Let's Go Shopping Actions"--outings during which groups of people examine labels and ask store managers about the origins of sales items.
At one such event in Dearborn, Michigan, about 100 women from a meeting sponsored by the Coalition of Labor Union Women visited a local mall and descended upon several different stores. Most of the stores were fielding these questions for the first time, but the Gap had a specially prepared letter from corporate headquarters on hand.
Hoffman advises people to rehearse their action by role-playing and practicing with friends or family.
For such a group shopping trip, the Partnership for Responsibility provides a simple, useful tool--a 3" x 5" card titled "Consumer guide to decent clothes."
"The care tag tells you how to treat the garment," the guide says, "but not how the worker who made it was treated." It suggests to look for a union label, and if you can't find one, to ask the store manager four questions about the treatment of workers, a code of conduct, and monitoring.
-- To arrange a "Let's Go Shopping Action," to order consumer-guide cards, or for more information on the Partnership for Responsibility, contact one of the following coordinators: ù Ann Hoffman, UNITE, 815 16th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20006; phone: 202-347-7417. ù Darlene Adkins, National Consumers League, 1701K Street NW, Ste. 1200, Washington, DC 20006; phone: 202-835-3323. ù Ginny Coughlin, UNITE, 218 W. 40th St., 5th floor, New York, NY 10018; phone: 212-819-0959.
Creative activists have used Shell corporation's own credit-card mailings to get their message about Nigeria through. Groups concerned with human rights and the environment in Africa have called a boycott against Shell for its business in dictator-run Nigeria.
In collusion with the government, Shell Multinational Oil Company has been destroying the environment and resources of the country, particularly the tribal land of the Ogoni people, boycotters say. Since 1958, Shell has been extracting oil from this country and is now its largest producer, pumping over 50 percent of Nigeria's oil.
The oppressive nature of the Nigerian military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha was illustrated horrifically on November 10, 1995, when writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged along with eight other minority-rights campaigners on what many organizations believe were spurious murder charges. Saro-Wiwa was an Ogoni tribesman and founder of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. Within a heavily fortified prison, EarthAction reports, Wiwa spoke his last words: "Lord take my soul. The struggle continues."
One man who has a personal view of the wrongdoings in Nigeria is Father Emmanuel Orobator, S.J., a Catholic priest now studying in the U.S. The Africa Faith and Justice Network (AFJN) has distributed a booklet of his writings.
The AFJN urges people to obtain credit-card applications and write, "Shell Out of Nigeria," or at least some message of disapproval. Ezekiel Pajibo, an AFJN analyst, says that while $30 billion worth of oil has been removed from Nigeria in the last few decades, the people, especially the Ogonis, have only been left with pollution and a military dictatorship.
The Service Employees International Union mobilized over 1,000 of its members to participate in this campaign. Besides applications, people are also asked to cut up and return their credit cards with a message written on the final bill. The union's Folabi Olagbaju says the goal of the boycott is to increase public awareness and consumer pressure on Shell to the point where people are no longer willing to support companies that do business with dictatorships and governments that kill activists.
In a standardized response to vocal customers, Shell International Limited maintains that Shell sought clemency for Saro-Wiwa through "quiet diplomacy," that its environmental problems do not constitute "devastation," that it is committed to remedying environmental damages it causes, and that it is a responsible company that has created jobs and in other ways helped community development in the region.
-- To join the credit-card application campaign or for more information, contact: Africa Faith & Justice Network, 401 Michigan Ave., N.E., P.O. Box 29378, Washington, D.C. 20017; phone: 202-832-3412; e-mail: afjn@igc.apc.org.
Be sure not to miss the next issue of Salt of the Earth. In it, look for the results of our Reader Roundtable survey on Responsible Shopping.
One parish that has taken up the cause of socially responsible shopping is Our Lady of Lourdes in Toledo, Ohio, which is holding a yearlong educational campaign on the theme.
Sister Dorothy Forman, who heads the parish's social-justice committee, explains that the committee decided to take up a different aspect of social consumerism every month. In February, for instance, the parish looked at stewardship in the context of human stewardship on earth.
Other months' themes have had a more practical edge. In March, literature on responsible consumerism was discussed. In May, when food labeling was the topic, the group showed a video and talked about labels on various items they had collected.
Different members presented the topic each month, and to make their efforts more practical they planned some topics to coincide with events throughout the year. For example, the area of socially responsible investments was highlighted in April so that parishioners might make financial plans while preparing their tax forms.
Committee member Mike Durst, a businessman with his own investments, prepared a two-page summary on socially responsible investing, which was inserted into the weekly bulletin. It showed parishioners, says Forman, that "there are alternatives to the blue chips and the New York Stock Exchange."
In November the topic is toys. As parents just start to get their Christmas shopping lists together, the committee will examine questions on how and where toys are made, product safety, and the effects of violent toys on children, Forman explains.
A social-justice fair was held in September, at which group members set up information booths and tables after Sunday Masses. Other monthly topics on socially responsible shopping for the year have included people with disabilities, entertainment, politics, and recycling.
Forman says the program has been a success so far. In fact the committee is considering a special workshop on socially responsible investing because there has been so much interest.
--DM
Copyright 1996 by the Claretians