Thousands of Kids Will Give Chocolates Back Tonight, With a Message
NEW YORK - Traditionally, it’s the kids who receive sweets from the elders on Halloween, but that years-old ritual is getting a makeover this year in hundreds of communities across North America.
Anti-poverty activists say thousands of children will go door-to-door tonight handing out chocolates to adults in some 300 cities across the United States and Canada.
Their decision to turn the ritual on its head is part of an international campaign to highlight the plight of tens of thousands of children who are forced to work on cocoa plantations instead of going to school in developing countries.
Campaigners said on Halloween costumed children would fill streets to hand out samples of “Fair Trade Certified” chocolates as a reminder to local communities that there exists an alternative to traditional chocolates, which usually rely on child labor or other abusive processes abroad to grow and harvest the cocoa for their candies.
Calling their campaign “Reverse Trick-or-Treating,” activists said it would address the persistent problems of chronic poverty in cocoa-growing communities, abysmal working conditions, and the massive abuse of child labor in the West African nation of Cote d’Ivoire in particular, where 40 percent of the world’s cocoa is produced.
The campaign is sponsored by human rights advocacy groups including Global Exchange, the International Labor Rights Fund, Co-op America, and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, along with Fair Trade chocolate companies Equal Exchange, Sweet Earth, and Theo Chocolate to raise awareness among children and grown-ups about Fair Trade Certified chocolate as a solution to labor abuses in the cocoa industry.
Fair Trade Certified farmers are required to abide by international labor laws that prohibit illegal child labor. In addition, the Fair Trade system ensures that farmers receive a fair, stable price for their cocoa and that environmentally sustainable farming practices are applied.
“Chocolate connects the millions of Americans who eat it daily to the millions of growers around the world who depend on cocoa for their livelihoods,” said Adrienne Fitch-Frankel of Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human rights group that has successfully pressured many corporations to adopt new business practices.
“It is unthinkable that our children are eating chocolate made with illegal child labor or slave labor; especially when a viable solution, Fair Trade, exists right now,” Fitch-Frankel added in a statement.
According to Global Exchange, every year, U.S. consumers eat 2.8 billion pounds of chocolate, representing nearly half the world’s supply.
Citing a study by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture for USAID, the group says there are currently 284,000 children who work in abusive conditions on cocoa farms in West Africa, the world’s largest cocoa producing region.
Despite continued pressure from politicians and advocacy groups to identify and eliminate any use of child labor in the growing and processing of cocoa beans, the industry has failed to meet the substantive benchmarks, according to Fitch-Frankel and other international labor rights activists.
Their concerns have been validated by a recently conducted study, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor. It shows how the industry has largely failed to act responsibly. The study is due to be released next week.
“Chocolate isn’t so sweet if it’s made by kids in Africa who don’t get to go to school,” said 6-year-old Lucas Rich of Santa Monica, California — one of thousands passing out Fair Trade chocolate to grown-ups tonight.
Activists said, this Halloween, the distribution of Fair Trade products will raise the profile of the chocolate made available by companies committed to using only ethically sourced cocoa. They hope to put public pressure on the large chocolate companies to follow suit.
The reverse trick-or-treaters will also be handing out tens of thousands of informational flyers on Fair Trade Certified chocolate downloaded from the Global Exchange Web site.
Reverse-trick-or-treating comes on the heels of a statement released by 47 organizations and fair trade companies around the world outlining key elements needed in an ethical cocoa sourcing policy.
© 2007 One World
Who knew? I like fair trade coffee — it tastes better. So will fair trade chocolate. Now the trick is to find this treat!
Babajobs.com, which hooks up internet tycoons in Bangalore with servants willing to work for less than subsistence wages, is currently being celebrated by the New York Times as a new form of altruism in the Global Village.
Something similar could probably be accomplished in the realm of child labor. After all, if the children are going to be hauling bricks or manufacturing chocolate anyway, what’s the harm in hooking them up with corporations that need a little cheap labor?
You can read more about The New Altruism and Babajobs for Babies here, with links to the jolly New York Times article about babajobs.com.
these geedy corporate pigs are the scum of the earth. how do these assholes sleep at night?
You know, we progressives need to expand the concept of fair trade. This theory should first be applied to citizens of the USA. Stop depressing US wages and displacing US workers! As a labor union member, I see the effects of outsourcing first hand! We need to pay higher, livable wages to US citizens first. Only than can we start truly taking about fair trade.
In addition, many of the child labor violations are perpetrated by employers from their OWN country, with little to no knowledge of US companies. Yes, that’s right folks! Perpetrated by their own countrymen. But this inconvenient truth isn’t really covered in this article. Gee, I wonder why.
Kate Anne: You can find ALL of your needed FAIR trade items at your local cooperative grocery store. If you don’t have one in your town, see if you can make your purchases on the WEB. I prefer to support local business though.
Love this reverse trick or treat idea! By the way, does anyone have a list of the companies that use child labor chocolate in their products? I say, let’s boycott ‘em!
Go here to find out more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_8094.cfm
Outsourcing seems to ruin the quality of the food too. I have noticed a lot of the chocolates do not taste as good and the coffee is bland and weak. Yet the price keeps going up.
rrivera is not progressive.
great idea rebel farmer.
If we truly wanted to do something about child labor in developing countries, we would see to it that the children had housing, food, medicine, and then we could think about education. Why isn’t everyone refusing to shop at all stores, especially Wal Mart, that carry products manufactured or produced by the children? And once we have boycotted these products and stores, how will the children and their families survive? Witty comments and sage words are not enough.
I did not know this, and as an insulin junkie this could help me stay away from chocolate! Good information.
Any chance we can hand back our politicians??
Good stuff here — but I will speak up for rrivera asking for good wages here. I will also remind everyone that coffee isn’t grown in the US outside of Hawaii that I know of — and yes, let’s support our local folks first. Buy American whenever possible, and support local area farmers. That said, when buying non-American stuff, look for fair trade. (The idea of overworked underpaid Chinese creating our Halloween and Christmas ornaments just boggles my mind. — Support local CRAFTERS — though hopefully there not mainly using supplies from China.) Fairness — here and everywhere. And child labor — argh!!!
international living wage. why should anyone get more pay for the same job?
poor kids.
for real ch473.
not a fun time to be a kid.
I am s ympathetic with Riverra’s comments on a living wage in the United States, but it is not an either/or issue. By allowing companies to buy and produce products at less than a living wage overseas, we give them the power to bust unions in the United States and outsource their production to other countries. Cocoa and coffee are not grown in the contiguous 48 states or Alaska, but we sure consume alot of it. These are two products that we can have a significant impact on with little loss to our economic lifestyle, so why not do some good with our dollars?
Hi all, I don’t know about you, but I think it’s time, as much as possible, to boycott goods made in China (or wherever abuses occur or quality is compromised), and especially the profiteering Corps who care nothing about people and only about profit. First they gave away our jobs, started producing goods with forced child labor (which the recent report about the gap has just brought to light–again), and now they’re allowing the poisoning of us and our children (that was the last straw for me), while a complicit government aids and abets them (time for some civil disobedience as well? Makes me think of poor Thoreau). If this doesn’t stir the slothful population to non-action (non-participatory action), I don’t believe anything will. Here we are scared sick of
terrorists and terrorism while allowing ourselves to rot from within. Personally, I’m not for any kind of violence, and I think the best way to bring down the pirates is simply not to buy their booty. Drive less, walk more, go the farmers market as much as possible for your veggies (and eschew chocolates), and take your children to the park or library instead. This Christmas don’t buy anything from Mattel or Fischer-Price. Perhaps just a few ways that we can hit ‘em where it hurts the most.
Kare Anne asked
“I like fair trade coffee — it tastes better. So will fair trade chocolate. Now the trick is to find this treat!”
Health Food stores usually have it. Two in our area have organic, fair-trade chocolate, coffee, and other items. It seems to taste better. Maybe part of it is the idea.
The people who run the chocolate corporations are not actually “human” while performing day-to-day business functions. They are acting solely for the sake of the corporations. The logic of capital drives the whole process, the logic of increasing profits. Capital is an inhuman logic.
And we, we consumers, we accept this logic because it suits us. It suits our laziness and greed and our lust for the tawdry.
Ahhh, some great insight! Yes, the key concepts here are Rebel Farmers’ “local cooperative grocery store” and “boycott,” and Kate Anne’s “Support local CRAFTERS.” Here, here!
Fair trade is shopping at farmer’s markets, craft fairs, swap meets, thrift stores, garage sales, carpenter guilds, consignment shops, cooperative groceries, and trade shows, all of which support US workers. We vote with our money at the cash register. Yes, that’s right folks. This is US fair trade in it’s purest progressive form. Stop all the outsourcing damn it!
I second Claudius’ comment. We need to give Clinton and Gore a good public scolding for enacting NAFTA. We need to join our good friend Hugo Chavez and resoundly reject any form of NAFTA, CAFTA, and FTAA.
Ahhh, sometimes it feels so good to be a progressive.
For more information on this important issue and for ways to take action, check out the International Labor Rights Forum at http://www.LaborRights.org. In addition to the campaign to stop child labor in the cocoa industry, ILRF has campaigns fighting child labor on Firestone’s rubber plantation in Liberia and in industries like cotton and sugar. ILRF is also targeting Wal-Mart and other retailers for their sweatshops and labor rights abuses.
Check out the website and most importantly: TAKE ACTION!!
(Also, for the latest news on these types of issues, check out the Labor is Not a Commodity blog here: http://laborrightsblog.typepad.com/)
rrivera:
Ahhh, sometimes it feels so good to be a progressive.
Glad it feels good. But you still shoot yourself in the foot with the “america first” narrative. Like it’s some slippery slope to wages raising world wide.
It’s not only a rejection of NAFTA that’s taking place across Latin America. It’s an embracement of another vision for trade and human relations. At it’s core is the belief that another world is possible. A world where cooperation trumps competition. A world where common interests trump corporate interests. Yes, where human rights prevail over the narrow interests of capital.
Two principles that are at least a start:
If corporations, capital and services can cross borders without tax or tariff, so too should labor and human beings.
Wages must be the same for the same job, everywhere in the world.