How to tank an economy:

This week's lesson brought to you by the Department of Homeland Security and our beloved POTUS.

Is he trying to make his poll numbers worse, or just create chaos for millions of people? You be the judge. Thank God for the AFL-CIO.

Meanwhile, back in Zimbabwe, President Mugabe accepts the challenge from our own Mr. Bush and seeks to regain the title of "worst leader ever" for himself. It's a race to the bottom.

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

Love God. Love people. Nothing else matters.

-Bart Campolo.

Meet Your (Legalized?) Neighbors

This is going to be a long one.

As some of you may know, and as most of you almost certainly don't, a piece of legislation was introduced into the House of Representatives this week under the name the "Gutierrez-Flake STRIVE Act of 2007." From what I can tell it made a very small splash.

To make an almost seven hundred page piece of public policy mercifully short, it's an immigration bill. The jury seems to be hung on whether it's the one we've been waiting for.

Some specifics for you, as digested by me:

1. This STRIVE Act includes amnesty. That means, more or less, that anyone living inside the United States without proper U.S. documentation since June 1st, 2006 or before will be given the opportunity to gain legal status, and eventually the possibility of citizenship. Among the criteria that must be met are proof of employment, a criminal background check, and payment of a series of fines. Not surprisingly, the details are complicated. Supposedly priority would be given to reuniting families.
2. A new type of visa, the H-2C, would be created to accommodate at least 400,000 new temporary immigrant workers per year. Workers would be given legal status for a period of 3 years, with the possibility of a further three year extension. Spouses and children would be given legal residency status during this period as well. Workers would be forced to leave the country if employment lapsed for more than 60 days. Employers hiring these workers would be required to prove that they first sought, and failed to find, domestic employees. This program would be monitored by a new, still undeveloped, electronic government system to be implemented at businesses across the country. The employment of unauthorized immigrant workers would carry stricter punishments.
3. Both the DREAM Act of 2007 and the AgJOBS Act of 2007 are included in the larger bill. The DREAM Act works to allow undocumented children in the United States to pursue their education past the high school level. The AgJOBS Act specifically targets migrants seeking employment in agriculture and offers them modified benefits for consistent work in this area.
4. Large amounts of new funding would be allocated to the Department of Homeland Security to ensure "operational control" of the border. This is a fancy little Border Patrol term that means that we decide who comes in and who doesn't. Technology, staff, and infrastructure would all be increased drastically. That means more cameras, more helicopters, more trucks, more agents, more buildings, more fence, more roads. More more more. The amnesty and legal guest worker clauses in the law would only be implemented after the DHS can prove to an unspecified degree that border security is being increased and that the employee tracking system has been designed and implemented.
5. Increased penalties and enforcement for illegal smuggling, gang activities, etc., having to do with illegal immigrants.

That's basically it. Now let's break this thing down.

1. Amnesty is going to be highly unpopular with a massive number of people living in the United States. Lou Dobbs might literally explode in outrage. Why? The Reagan amnesty, more than any other single factor, is blamed by many people to have caused such a massive surge in immigration. A second amnesty, in their view, would be repeating this fatal mistake. In some ways it's a valid criticism. Why reward people for breaking the law? Why reward people who broke the law last year but not any of the people who want to come to the United States right now? There's a simple answer for all of that. Basically, amnesty is a compromise. It recognizes the work that illegal immigrants have done in this country and accepts that we can't really kick them out now.It's a way to bring millions of people, some who have lived almost their entire lives here, into the folds of the United States' legal order. This is good for everyone. Immigrants will be more likely to report crimes without fear for their own status. They will be more able to participate in the conventional economy, a boon for everybody. It's a win-win-win-win-win situation, as many people are stating. Amnesty, in my view, is good. The way this amnesty is done isn't. Some estimates for the time it would take to achieve citizenship are as high as 25 years. What, exactly, is the point of that? Who does it benefit? And how long will it be before the system even kicks in? Before you dismiss this criticism as unimportant, think about the logistical nightmare, for everyone, that millions of people trapped in legal limbo would create. How is that even being proposed as a policy? That's the current policy with a sugar coating.
2. Worker visas. The good: We are currently arresting 1.2 million people a year as they try to cross illegally into this country. Worker visas are a very good way to bring those people out of the deserts and through the ports of entry. This would save lives, make border enforcement both possible and ethical, and legalize millions of hard workers and the people who employ them. Sounds great. The bad: Again, this system would not kick in until some unspecified date. Securing the borders means getting workers out of the desert. One is impossible without the other. Temporary visas, while having some attractive qualities (more participants, the ability for people to earn money and return to their country, etc.), invite all sorts of unethical business practices. Nothing says "take advantage of me!" like the guarantee that in a short time they will be gone. Strikes? You don't work for 60 days, you're gone. No provision for workers organizing. That's bad for all laborers in the U.S. You know what else is potentially bad for all U.S. workers? Short term employees of any kind. Long term health care? Retirement benefits? Higher wages? All of these things could suffer, depending on the fields of employment, when you have a large and disposable pool of workers. And now the ugly: Speaking of disposable, where are the worker protections in this bill? If a worker loses his arm in a meat plant, what rights are that worker guaranteed? Their family? Also terrible, but more so from a policy perspective, who actually thinks that the government can set up this program to hold employers accountable? Who actually wants them to? Are they going to somehow lure away google engineers to do it? It's enough to make any liberal want to starve the beast.
3. Agricultural workers are clearly needed. Molly sent me an article talking about how Colorado, after tough new enforcement standards scared of laborers, is using prisoners to do the field work once done by migrants. But is it good for a nation that is morbidly obese (literally, 3 in 5 overweight, 1 in 5 obese) to have an unending supply of cheap food labor? Shouldn't we be pursuing sustainable policies instead, ones that promote a higher quality and lower quantity of food? This might be a pipe dream, but don't forget that once public policy gets made it can be hard to change. A precedent once set is, well, set. Think about it. I clearly won't knock the DREAM Act. Kids going to college? You bet.
4. Supporting this one sort of depends on which side you fall on for increasing border militarization. I'm in favor of decreasing it, but I'm not a fan of human trafficking, the violence of the drug smuggling trade, or international gangs. So I think having a few guys watching the line is a good idea. But this is an incredibly stupid way to do it. I'll say it as many times as I can so that the point sticks: the border is impossible to secure without at least 5 times the number of agents we have now, or a drastic decrease in the people trying to cross. Personally I believe that it is impossible to secure in its current state. There is ample evidence to support that. Bizarrely, this is the border equivalent of the Iraq surge. Send more people to realize unspecified goals in an unspecified length of time. Democrats knock it there but want to try it here? Legalizing people is the only way to make them stop crossing illegally in a quick and relatively painless manner. And haven't we pretty much all agreed that these workers are good for the economy? Who's opposing regulating who comes in and out of the country? No one. Stopping illegal crossers means drastically increasing legal ones. When all the maids and cooks and roofers are out of the desert the only people remaining will be the ones you really don't want. Instead, they apparently want to spend tons of time and money on a policy that is killing people, just to appease the military industrial complex (Eisenhower's term, not mine) and the far-right wing. Why? Democrats really need to stop worrying about looking tough and start solving policy problems. It's hard to knock success.
5. Increased penalties for committing crimes is another non-starter. Our prisons are already overcrowded. Doesn't it make more sense to enforce the laws that we already have for things like gang activity and smuggling? Again, wouldn't that be a lot easier if we had the people not committing crimes, just looking for work, in a legal system as soon as possible?

So let me put it this way: this is not the bill we've been waiting for. It's got amnesty, sure. It's got the DREAM Act, which you have to be insane not to support. And what else does it have? I guess the promise that maybe at some point in the conceivable future we would get people out of the deserts. But when would that be? And then what? This thing's a mess. But what if it's the only mess we're going to get? I don't think so, and I'll pass. This problem's not going away and there's gotta be a better way than this. Thankfully I think the Senate has a lot more up its sleeve.

I think I'll fill this out in a later post, but many of the terms that I used here I strongly disagree with. Illegal, undocumented, amnesty, operational control...I could go on. I think that they obscure the truth and treat good people like criminals as an operating principle. Just for the record.

By the way, in spite of this post and my last one, I got a surprising amount of work done today. Some days you just have to blog. Some days you just have to work. I guess today was both. Academic deconstruction, public policy analysis, and non-profit social justice work. Plus I ate an avocado AND at my favorite burrito joint. Aaron's day for the win. On the other hand I only slept four hours last night. I've been up since three in the morning. I'm bound to crash soon.

That's A Nice Reminder

So I've been going a little bit crazy lately. I feel like my work is all out of sorts and I have been spending A LOT of annoying time on the phone with tech support companies.

I still feel that way, but stopping to play this game helped my perspective quite a bit.

Sim Sweatshop. Check it out. www.simsweatshop.com (link's aren't working for me again. My main problem with blooger.)

My Boxer Briefs Are Sweatfree

Last week I was really out of underwear.

I got to the point where I had worn through a few old pairs, left a good set in Chiapas, and needed to make the investment that every man I know tries desperately to put off, new underwear.

I had made it my goal to, if at all possible, meet this need without resorting to buying something that could have been made in a sweatshop. I'm equally unimpressed with companies that manufacture goods at rock-bottom wages, but not in what is technically a sweatshop, and then jack up the price on us. In this instance, however, I was simply looking to avoid anything possibly made in a sweatshop.

In a town like Douglas, AZ (as in most places in America), looking for a product not potentially made in a sweatshop was pretty much impossible, which sent me straight to the internet. Unsure of where to begin, I started my search for fair-trade underwear with a little trip to google.

My query of "sweatshop free boxer briefs" yielded "about" 19,900 results, the very first of which was the promising looking Justice Clothing.

Following that link brought me to http://www.justiceclothing.com/thereis/justice/lw20300.html (sorry, links aren't working for me again), which, sure enough, was a site where I could order a union made (in Pottstown, PA no less!) three pack of white, grey, or black boxer briefs, in my choice of size, and have them shipped right to my door.

That was pretty dang easy. And, sadly enough, quite costly. My three brand new boxer briefs cost me $21.00 plus $5.05 more for shipping and handling. "Ouch," I thought.

But then I checked it out.

Lowest of the low cost (so we are told) walmart.com had a four pack of boxer briefs for $15.34 plus $3.94 for shipping and handling.

Target was even worse, charging 9.99 for EACH boxer brief (less for Euro-trunks, but that's not something I'm prepared to wear), and offering me free shipping if I bought three. Thanks for the free shipping on my $30.00 of cotton!

Ok, let's do the math here.

Target's boxer briefs were obviously $9.99 each (provided you buy three, which is what I wanted).
Wal-Mart, including shipping and handling, came out to $4.82 per boxer brief for a pack of four.
My three boxer briefs from Justice Clothing/Lifewear (complete with a seriously so much better horizontal fly) cost me $8.68 cents each. If I had ordered more packs the price would have dropped even further.

So here's what we've got:
Target: $10.00, nice store aesthetics and clever advertisements, clear supporter of sweatshop labor, and marginal to bad employee pay.

Wal-Mart: $4.82, terrible shopping experience, proven price gouging, terrible employee pay and benefits, clear supporter of sweatshop labor.

Justice Clothing: $8.68, easy to use site, good pay and benefits for their employees, committed to fighting sweatshop labor.


To me the choice is very clear.

Even better than avoiding sweatshop labor was finding a company that I feel good about supporting. Justice Clothing, if you take a look, has a whole range of products at pretty affordable prices, especially when you consider that they are actually compensating their employees for their labor. How novel of them.

This whole exercise makes me that much more committed to using my money as a force for positive change, instead of just using it, as I say, "to do no harm." What I mean is that rather than trying to avoid making purchasing and lifestyle choices at places where I think that other people are paying a high cost for the price I receive, I intend to seek out purchases that help people to empower themselves. My experience with boxer briefs shows just how easy, simple, and cost-competitive that can be.

Next time you need something (anything), try looking for it on google first. Put in your ideal product (an environmentally friendly stove cleaner, for example) and see what happens. I think you'll be surprised. Even if it costs you a little bit more money, I think it's worth it. Try it, and let me know what you find.


*As another aside, most retail companies provide pictures of their products, on real people, when you shop online (see link to Justice Clothing). Needless to say, it proved to be somewhat awkward trying to buy boxer briefs at the office.*

Free Coffee= Sweet Perk of the Job

Still working on a largish post about Chiapas (I got the pictures onto the computer...just not this computer, but we're getting there).

I'm also wanting to get back into the business of posting about my job and about the border more, so I'm going to sort of combine both of those goals with this post.

This is an e-mail that I just sent out to friends and family in SoCal asking for some help with Just Coffee and explaining a little bit about what makes this project so special. I suspect that most of you would be interested in knowing this stuff as well, and I hope to get some questions out of it, and then maybe write more in some follow-up posts. We'll see. (Sorry Molly, you already read this so it won't be able to keep you occupied at work. Guess you'll have to do your actual job instead).

Hello West Coast friends and family!

For some of you this is going to come as a follow-up e-mail, so I apologize if any of this is repeat. For everyone else, well, this is a call for some help. Read on, all (well, lots) will be explained.

Let's start with a little bit of background:
Part of my job down here in Agua Prieta has been working with a coffee company called Just Coffee. Just Coffee was started by Frontera de Cristo, the Presbyterian border ministry that I work for, a little more than four years ago.

Just Coffee was started primarily as a response to immigration. My church in Agua Prieta, El Lirio de Los Valles Presbyterian Church, is a largely transient congregation, made up mostly of immigrants from southern Mexico. The church routinely gains and loses members as some families arrive at the border from the south, and others cross the border into the U.S. looking for work. The vision for Just Coffee came from a conversation between Mark, a staffer at Frontera, and Daniel, a member of the church. Mark was trying to understand why so many migrants came from the state of Chiapas, and Daniel was trying to explain the drop in coffee prices that growers had experienced there. The rest, as they say, is history.

Four years later, the Just Coffee Model (or Fair Trade Plus as it is also called) continues to address immigration and pursue economic justice in three fundamental ways:

1. Just Coffee allows coffee farmers to receive a just price for their crop. In Spanish, Just Coffee (Cafe Justo) literally means Justice Coffee. The almost forty members of the growing cooperative receive more than $1.30 per pound for their coffee (more than three times the amount they were receiving when Just Coffee started). They also receive health and retirement benefits for themselves and their families.

2. Just Coffee is owned by the growers. Although Frontera helped to found Just Coffee and has worked with it closely ever since, Just Coffee is 100% owned by the growers. This is in stark contrast to regular coffee, but also to most Fair Trade coffees as well. We call Just Coffee "Fair Trade Plus" because the traditional Fair Trade model does not include health care or retirement benefits, pays the farmers as much as $.40 per pound less, and exports a great deal of the profits out into the U.S. Not only are the farmers receiving a just price for their coffee, they are gaining business skills.

3. Just Coffee helps the local economy in Chiapas and on the border. The increased price that farmers have received from Just Coffee has gone out into the community around them. On the border, Just Coffee has created seven jobs for Mexican workers.

That's great...but how's the coffee?

1. Just Coffee is 100% shade grown organic coffee.
2. Just Coffee is shipped to you less than a week after it has been roasted.
3. 1 pound of Just Coffee costs $8.00 ($6.75) wholesale, about the price of 1 lb. of non-fair trade non-organic coffee at Safeway. 1 lb. of fair trade and organic Starbucks coffee runs about $12-16.
4. Just Coffee tastes amazing. Yeah, I love it.
5. It comes in all kinds- Arabica, Robusta, ground, bean, dark, light, regular, decaf. You name it. We also do custom roasts. Special, huh?

So...what does this have to do with all of you?
Just Coffee is also growing.

In 2007 the plan is to open two new coffee cooperatives in southern Mexico, and begin preparations for a cooperative in Haiti. The first new cooperative that we are launching is called El Aguila.

El Aguila is a small Mexican town in the state of Chiapas (near the border with Guatemala) made up of small scale coffee farmers. It is also just up the road from the Just Coffee cooperative in Salvador Urbina.

Just Coffee has been marketed and sold locally, with about 80% of sales happening right here in southern Arizona. That model is going to be replicated with El Aguila, but with a target on the Southern California area. That's where you all come in.

The plan for El Aguila is to put a roasting facility in Tijuana, and to focus marketing on San Diego, Los Angeles, and the Central Valley. For those of you in Washington and Oregon, don't worry, we would really like you to be involved too.

At this point, Just Coffee is also sold primarily through churches. Although we have a large number of individual customers, and even stores and coffee shops, a majority of our sales come through churches.

The way it works is that a church orders the coffee from us at the wholsale price of $6.75, and then sells it at their church for between $8-10 (their choice really). The difference in price is theirs to do with as they choose. Obviously this is not the only way to sell the coffee, but like I said, it's where most sales come from.

Initially I said this e-mail was about asking for some help, and I'm finally getting around to that part.

I would really like all of your help.

How?

1. If you like coffee, buy the coffee. It's good. I'll send it to you for free to try it out. Ask me.
2. Talk to your churches/people at your churches/friends at other churches about using the coffee at their fellowship hours and selling it at the church.
3. Send me names and contact info. for other people in your area who would be interested in participating and hearing more about it.

Mostly, I would just like to work with those of you who can make the time (I know all of you are busy) and have the interest in helping me (and a bunch of coffee farmers) out with this. The goal is to have the roasting facility in place by June, but orders are ready to be processed starting pretty much right now.

One of the really exciting things about this model for me is that it is about forming relationships and supporting people that I know. You have the oppurtunity to visit the roasting facility in Tijuana, to meet the staff, to learn about the people growing the coffee, and meet them as well.

So, if you're interested, here's what we can do:

1. Check out the website: www.justcoffee.org
2. Think about what other people would be interested and let me know (e-mail is best)
3. Think about the best way to get your own church involved. (Who would/has the authority make the decision to use Just Coffee? To sell it? What information would you need to present to them? Who would be a good person to handle ordering the coffee and making sure payments get sent?)
4. Ask me questions and talk to me. What do you want to know? What do you need? Let me know what you are thinking. Let me know if you don't have the time. I'd probably like to talk to you anyway. E-mail me. Call me (720-560-0460) Set up a time for us to talk further about ways that we can help one another. Anything. I'm all ears.
5. Pray. (Or as Stephen Colbert calls it, p-mail).

What we're not asking for: Donations (although those are nice). We are looking at building a customer base. Great coffee at a great price for a great cause. That simple.

That's about all from my end. As an aside, I'd love to hear from all of you, whether about coffee or not. If you've made it this far, just shoot me a quick e-mail back letting me know what you're thinking and where we can go from here. If we're already talking, expect to hear from me soon. I just got back from Chiapas and have a day or so of catching up to do.

Thanks so much for all your time and support.
Aaron

That's just adorable.

Please join me in welcoming Jane Elizabeth Hamilton into the world! The Hamilton family has been very near and dear to my heart since I worked for Rachel in Los Angeles at the Center for Student Missions. I'm so happy for them.

World Aids Day

Just a little reminder that today is World Aids Day. I can't help but think about the people I met in Uganda living with Aids, or widowed/orphaned by the disease, or about Project Angel Food, a Los Angeles non-profit that cooks and delivers nutritious meals to people living with HIV/Aids.

What is especially tragic on this World Aids Day is that HIV/Aids, contrary to many predictions just a few years ago, is still spreading unabated. Estimates today are that 40 million people around the world are living with the disease. Well, 40 million people around the world have HIV/Aids. The ones who can afford the treatments or who are fortunate enough to receive them free are living with it, the rest are dying from it. And this number neglects the millions of orphaned children like those I met in Uganda and Rwanda who. It also fails to capture the incredible social burden that the loss of generations of people has on everyone living in a society.

Sadly, even though a great deal of progress has been made, HIV/Aids is still largely linked to gender in most parts of the world. Although I suspect that many people, and probably many Americans, still associate it with homosexuality, the reality is that the burden of HIV/Aids is largely carried by women and young girls. An article in the Times today (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/world/africa/01madagascar.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin) highlights the persistance of child sexual abuse in Sub-Saharan Africa, and its role in spreading the disease. This same risk is shared by married women, sex-workers (both enslaved and not), and women living in conflict zones, where rape is often used as a weapon of war, as it was in the Rwandan genocide, and is currently being used against women and girls in Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan.

I'm trying to decide what my pro-active choice is going to be today to combat this disease. I'm considering a donation to The ONE Campaign or to World Vision, although I have not decided ultimately where it will go. Please consider giving money today, and every day if possible. The task ahead of us is great, but the consequences far greater if we do nothing at all.