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I Am Appalled

The more research I do, the more I feel like I should dig a hole and climb in.
Is there nothing in this world that we use that isn't using slave labour to produce?
How hard is it to find products that aren't being made by slaves?
And child slaves too?

I'm using an iPad. I have an iPhone. The research I've done says it was very likely produced by bonded workers or child slaves.

Starbucks. Tim Hortons. And I don't know how many others. Slave labour coffee.
Too many chocolate companies to name, using slave labour.

This could become a ten page diatribe, but I just don't know what it would help. The whole thing makes me cry. Makes me sick.

This is just one site; one article I've read in the last couple of days. If you can bear to read about our guilt, then read this. If not, I don't blame you.

http://listverse.com/2014/12/16/10-everyday-products-that-are-made-with-slave-labor/

I almost wish I hadn't done the research, because I have discovered that it's nigh on impossible to not use something that slaves of all ages have made for us, in our safe little spaces to use, for fun and food. Clothing. Bedding. Pet products. All our luxuries and most of our necessities. Brought to us by slaves.

Oct. 30/16
6:48 am

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MartinTheFirst · 22-25, M

Well... slave and slave... they do have a weigh, and most of them to my knowledge are not held there against their will.

Serenitree · F

Do some reading. I won't argue with anyone about this. Learn or don't, but you are saying to your knowledge.....meaning you don't know.

MartinTheFirst · 22-25, M

@Serenitree: I have done some reading, I've read about china and north korea. Just because we havent seen the same side of it doesnt mean that either of us are wrong, you know? 😊

Serenitree · F

@MartinTheFirst: This is just one small part of just one of the dozens of things I've looked up.

and independent journalists have found that both child laborers and enslaved child laborers are routinely employed to work cocoa farms in Ivory Coast. Boys and girls, usually between the ages of 12 and 16 but some as young as 7 and 9, are smuggled from neighboring countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and sold to cocoa bean plantation owners. The children are often lured into slavery under the pretenses of paid work. Upon being sold to plantation owners, the children are forced to engage in grueling manual labor, carrying extremely heavy bags, working with machetes and pesticides. They often work long hours, as many as 80 a week, but they are rarely, if ever, paid. Those failing to work fast enough are beaten with branches and bicycle chains while those attempting escape have been bound with rope and beaten so severely scars remain.[4] One boy who managed to escape his enslavement, 15-year-old Zanga Traore said, “If you work slow or refuse to work, they will beat you.” Those who comply nevertheless suffer. A 2005 survey concluded that 92-percent of child workers engaged in work such as carrying heavy loads that caused open wounds.

Oct. 30/16
7:04 am

MartinTheFirst · 22-25, M

@Serenitree: Yeah the cases where that happens are horrible. And the cases where people have a weigh on 8 cents per day is bad. It's all really bad. 🤗

Serenitree · F

This isn't only going on in other places.

In Florida, Slavery Still Haunts the Fields
August 05, 2010

A museum-trailer traveling the Northeast reveals a look into one of most shameful secrets of the American system of food production—modern-day slavery among farmworkers. Photo: Fritz Myer.

The trailer, 24 feet deep by 8 feet wide, is muggy this early August afternoon in Manhattan. Eight of us—church ladies, iPhone-wielding denizens, curious tourists—mop our brows as we clamber inside for a look at one the most shameful secrets of the American system of food production: modern-day slavery among farmworkers.

Our guide, Romeo Ramirez, tells us straight away that the trailer, which already feels uncomfortably small, is a replica of one in southwest Florida where 12 farmworkers were forcibly kept between 2005 and 2007. Locked in at night, they had no place to relieve themselves and were forced to foul a corner of their cramped quarters. When someone fought back, he was beaten and chained to a pole. The chain and padlock, still twisted from when workers finally forced it off, rest on the trailer’s wall.

After two workers pounded a hole in the trailer’s ventilator hatch large enough to squeeze out, they found a ladder and extricated the rest. Their escape began the seventh of eight prosecutions for involuntary servitude among U.S. farmworkers since 1997. (The eighth indictments, involving dozens of Haitian nationals victimized by trafficking, were announced last month, two days after Independence Day.)

Oct. 30/16
7:21 am