Economic Justice

Rose Marie Berger 6-01-2006

World Peace. A new Internet service provider, Peacenik.co.uk, will raise money for peacemakers working in conflict zones around the world.

Steve Thorngate 5-01-2006

Day Burtness and Dan Borek hoped to start an organic farm and community-supported agriculture program at St. Olaf College. But Northfield, Minnesota—a small, two-college town 35 miles south of Minneapolis-St. Paul—was already served by multiple CSAs and a food co-op. School officials were supportive but skeptical that a student-run farm would find any real market, even if the two students could come up with the necessary land and capital.

But Burtness and Borek obtained the use of a small piece of campus land and later received funding from the student government association. They also met with Hays Atkins, who runs St. Olaf’s food service for the Bon Appétit company, to discuss the possibility of a student farm that would function as a wholesaler instead of a CSA. In a move that would ensure both the college’s green light and, ultimately, the farm’s success, Atkins promised to purchase every piece of produce the farm could grow.

While Atkins’ commitment to a student-initiated project is surprising and impressive, it fits squarely with the considerable energy St. Olaf, a college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, has for several years invested in ecological sustainability. The school’s current strategic plan names sustainability as a goal, and a task force—comprised of students, faculty, and staff—supports several projects aimed at both reducing the college’s collective ecological footprint and facilitating education and conversation on the subject. As anyone who has scrutinized environmental impact knows, a primary concern is food—its production, use, and waste disposal.

Bumper stickers found in many college dormitories and church parking lots during the recent boycott of Taco Bell featured a Spanish-speaking Chihuahua—playing off the chain’s ads—turning down the fast- food chow to demand a penny more per pound for tomato pickers.

Heading the campaign was the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a farm worker-led organization based in Immokalee, Florida, with more than 2,500 members, most of whom are Latinos, Haitians, and Mayan Indians. The nearly four-year boycott put worker concerns—low wages, poor working conditions, and discrimination—in front of many consumers and led to an agreement with Yum! Brands, Taco Bell’s parent company.

The campaign is one of several recent examples of tapping into the power of consumers. Through education, boycotts, and other methods, farm workers can make those who eat the products they grow and pick aware of the conditions they experience—and ask for their help in changing those conditions.

“The life of an agricultural worker is one of exploitation,” said Lucas Benitez, a worker and organizer with the coalition who came to the U.S. from Mexico as a teenager. Farm laborers work long hours, with no benefits, health care, or overtime pay, he said. “The imbalance of power is tremendous.”

The agreement reached by the coalition and Yum! Brands established important precedents of increasing wages coming down the supply chain and involving workers in the monitoring of conditions in the fields, said Brigitte Gynther, an organizer with the coalition. The change for workers has been immediate, Benitez said, after more than 20 years of receiving the same salary. Each week, he said, “depending on how much they harvest, they receive between $15 and $40 more.” Also essential, Gynther said, are the safeguards against what the coalition believes to be inhumane working conditions the pickers have suffered.

Robert Roth 5-01-2006

Love binds and builds, heals and hallows, redeems and restores. A broken world can expect all this and more, say our Johannine scriptures, when God’s power courses mystically through human events. John 10 finds the shepherd Jesus foretelling self-sacrificial love for the sheep. In John 15, Jesus calls the faithful to be willing to lay down their lives for their friends.

1 John 4 focuses on the intimate nature of God’s love for us, which evokes our love for others, while the next chapter equates the love of God with keeping the divine commandments. On the stage of Acts 1, 4, 8, and 10, the fruit-bearing and inclusive nature of divinely inspired love is dramatized by the great cast that is the early church.

This month’s passages offer both a head-on command to love and a traveler’s guide to the nature of love itself. John makes up only 10 percent of the New Testament, yet it provides a full third of the references to love. “Love” appears in John more often as a verb than a noun. Feelings won’t suffice. Actions must prevail.

The Holy One leads us beside still waters and restores our souls, whether we are Gentiles, eunuchs, or the homeless of Detroit. This power of life originates from God in every moment, forming living, healthy relationships.

God chose to enter history and love us. We must choose to love others and head into a world that doesn’t like those who love unconditionally.

Molly Marsh 5-01-2006

Every movement needs its revolutionaries and spokespersons, and in the growing crusade for a healthy, ethical, and “fair” food system, Bryant Terry and Anna Lappé happen to be both. Terry is a chef and founder of b-healthy! (Build Healthy Eating and Lifestyles to Help Youth)—a nonprofit group in New York that teaches low-income kids not only about nutrition, but also how to prepare healthy food themselves. Lappé is a writer, speaker, and co-founder (with her mother, Frances Moore Lappé) of the Small Planet Institute and Small Planet Fund. The latter supports grassroots efforts around the world that address the causes of hunger and poverty.

The two packed their passion and experience into Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, a practical book that explains why our food system is the way it is, but also what we can do to change it. And don’t be surprised if, along the way, you pick up a few tips about cooking (pepper grinders are key) and music (Césaria Évora is nice accompaniment to cinnamon-dusted sweet potato fries). Associate editor Molly Marsh spoke recently with the author-activists.

Sojourners: So why the name Grub? What is grub?

Bryant Terry: When Anna and I started working on this project, we had so many people tell us that healthy organic food is for wealthy baby boomers. That’s a common misconception. We wanted people to understand that grub—healthy, local, sustainable food—is food that’s accessible to everyone. It’s something all people have a right to.

The Walton empire gets political.
Jim Wallis 4-01-2006
Would Jesus come to Davos if he were invited?
Donovan Jacobs 4-01-2006
Hollywood shows little respect for working-class and poor people.
Wanda Fries 4-01-2006

The poor are with you always—

Dee Dee Risher 4-01-2006

When the Sago mine explosion trapped 13 West Virginia miners 250 feet below ground in January, I was deep into Kettle Bottom, a stunning collection of poetry by Diane Gilliam Fisher that i

Robert H. Baker 3-01-2006

“Taking Back our Kids,” by Danny and Polly Duncan Collum (January 2006), has many important things to say about raising children in today’s American culture, but I take issue with one assertion: that it has been the “choice” of women to enter the workforce in the 1970s and beyond that is at least one cause of the degradation of the lives of children when compared to the 1950s.

Molly Marsh 3-01-2006

Communities at Risk

“AIDS is born in the house of poverty,” an Indian health worker says on Making Ends Meet: AIDS and Poverty, a new resource from the Mennonite Central Committee. The 18-minute DVD looks at communities in India and South Africa and how AIDS is impacting the economies of each. The DVD includes additional interviews, a 25-minute story on church workers in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, and other features. Excellent for Sunday school or study groups. www.mcc.org/aids

Jim Wallis 2-01-2006
'Have they no shame?' was a frequent response.
David Batstone 2-01-2006
Is 'cost-effective' the right criterion for judging AIDS drugs?
Duane Shank 2-01-2006
Poverty solutions that transcend ideology.

How community-based investing transforms individuals - and religious institutions.

James Ferguson 12-01-2005
Out of Sight, Out of Mind?

Atlanta’s city council passed a controversial bill in August banning panhandling within a “tourist triangle” that covers most of the central business district.

Debayani Kar 12-01-2005
The U.N. World Summit comes up short.
Robert Roth 11-01-2005
Whenever you helped the needy - or ignored the poor - Jesus said, "you did it to me."
Jim Wallis 11-01-2005

Hurricane Katrina opened the eyes of many to the reality of poverty in America. Will we take responsibility for the poor in our land of plenty?