Mary Beth Danielson: Buy Less. Pay More. What Did She Just Say?

By Mary Beth Danielson

This Saturday, Dec 19, 8AM-2PM -- there will be a Mayaworks Sale at Wilson’s Coffee & Tea, 3306 Washington Avenue. Please come to buy some Fair Trade products created by Maya artisans. Every item you buy (from a large selection of weavings, pretty household things, beaded jewelry, purses, totes and more) is a product that will have to be replaced by a fairly paid worker in Guatemala, thereby doubling your holiday investment of care and kindness.

That’s my main point and message -- in case you’re too busy to read the rest of this.

Fair Trade strengthens her world and ours.

Everything from here on out is “Why you should sometimes buy Fair Trade stuff.” The simple answer is that if you earn a paycheck - Fair Trade helps keep your paycheck plump, too.

Consider: My cousin recently knitted a handsome pair of blue socks for me. In a chipper conversation about the gift, I asked her how much the socks would cost if she included the price of the wool plus minimum wage for her hours of work. We cracked ourselves up when we realized I now possess $42 socks.

In this humor is the cockeyed truth of our global economy. Cheap goods are cheap because someone is being paid very low wages. In fact some say the current economic brouhaha is basically a worldwide adjustment of wages. This is because (duh) workers in other countries work for lower wages than Americans do. An article I read lately suggests that for North American workers to be competitive in our modern world, most of us should consider working for about 20% less than we do. This goes for everyone – from the CEO to the guy who sweeps his office; from the heart surgeon to the short order cook in the hospital cafeteria.

Great, huh?

Yet here is how we Americans are already paving the way to lowered wages.

Do you shop for bargains? Of course you do. Who doesn’t?

Consider… Each time you buy a $10 shirt, shoes for $15, electronics at rock bottom prices – what you are saying when you put your credit card down is that $.50 - 4.00 per hour is a fine wage for adults to earn.

Keep this clear in your mind – cheap pay is one of the main factors your purchase price is low. Someone somewhere worked for pay varying between low and near-slavery.

Many of the things we buy are made by people working 60-90 hours a week for less than a dollar an hour in sweatshop conditions. Not every foreign factory operates this way, but many do. One of the ways manufacturers coerce people into these situations is to set up a factory in one unregulated country, then bring in “guest workers” from another very poor country. If the workers resist horrible conditions, their worker status is revoked and they are sent back to their own nation, often with no payment at all. It’s an ugly business, though it enables us to buy stuff for prices far below what they would cost if manufactured in the US. Like socks for a dollar.

The important thing, in the keeping of the wool over our eyes, is to gently assume people in distant places are not quite as human as we are. Maybe they don’t mind exploitation and fatigue as much as we would. They live closer to the equator so they don’t have to pay heating bills. If they don’t have a house, then they won’t need furniture. And you know, a lot of those people are just fine eating a minimal amount of the same starchy grain over and over and over again.

We are under economic duress. We respond by looking for cheaper goods, which creates a downward spiral that causes workers to earn too little to live decently. Which causes workers in the US to lose their jobs altogether. And which enables only owners and investors to get richer.

This is too simplistic, because this is a short article. But it isn’t wrong.

You know how to fight this?

Inform yourself. Look at the labels in your favorite clothes. Google working conditions in those companies. It doesn’t take long to discover too much. Join organizations that work for economic justice at home and abroad.

But you know what else you can do?

Buy less. Pay more.

Seriously. Very few of us can do this with every purchase - but as we can, make choices that value workers.

Instead of purchasing two $10 shirts, consider buy one for $30, treat it well and make it last. Buy some of the things you need for your life secondhand. Borrow, hand down, share.

Explore Fair Trade coffee, chocolate (did you know most non-Fair Trade chocolate is picked by children?), jewelry, household goods. Every time you purchase Fair Trade, you are saying that the world belongs to the people who make and serve and care.

Value your hard work by valuing the work of others.

Mary Beth Danielson: Sunday afternoon in a Guatemalan Cemetery; Wednesday evening in the Racine Library

By Mary Beth Danielson

It was Sunday afternoon and I was staying with a family of twelve in the highlands of Guatemala. (The mother and daughter-in-law are weavers for MayaWorks.) When they asked if I would like to go with them to the cemetery, I responded enthusiastically. I've known since I was a teenager that Latin American cultures have many traditions built around visits to cemeteries. And now I was being invited, by a Maya family, to go with them to theirs!

Adults and kids piled into the cab and bed of a truly worn-out pick-up truck. Twenty jouncing, spring-less miles further into the mountains, we piled back out at the side of a dusty lane.

The small cemetery was nestled into the wooded side of a mountain. Straight ahead, over the edge of a cliff, was a blue-misted valley. The sky was azure above us, the air was warm and breezy. Maybe there was a hundred graves, maybe less; it was just the right size for a family reunion. Many graves were simply humps of dirt covered with blankets of grass, marked by painted crosses announcing the simple poetry of loss. A name, a date of birth and then of dying. No granite tombstones, no urns, no statues, no pageantry. Just hillocks of graves.

Others resting sites were a bit more formal. Stucco finished slabs and uprights marked the grave, most were painted vivid blues and greens. It was to two side-by-side turquoise graves that we all gravitated. These were the graves of the mother and father of my hostess, Mrs. Sepet. Today was an anniversary of the passing of one of them, so adult children, their spouses, children, and grandchildren (and unexpected visitors) all attended the cemetery to clean and decorate these graves of the heads of this family.

Children of this extended family circled me. They told me their names, then asked me what they’d said. I didn’t understand them very well because my Spanish is so poor, so we soon were into a rousing game of “Que es mi nombre, Senora?” I would wrack my brain for one more noun I know, then respond, “Usted eres Gato Pequeno, no?” (“What’s my name, Ma’am?” “Ummm, Sir, you are Little Cat, aren’t you? Or kitchen. Or blue. Or rain. Or pancake mixing bowl.”) I don’t think the kids ever tumbled to the fact I didn’t know what I was doing.

Other family members arrived. The women wore their Maya clothing; hand woven jaspe skirts (jaspe is muted, heathery plaid in shades of blue, lavender, green) and tunic style blouses, called huipils (wee-pills). Huipils are art. Lusciously colorful, woven with roses, birds, zigzags and stripes.

The women walked across the grass, in their colorful clothes, carrying heavy armloads of flowers. Pink, lavender, yellow flowers – along with dozens of the creamy calla lilies that are native to Guatemala. The beauty was stunning.

The women worked smoothly together (the way my mother and aunts did when they cleaned up a kitchen after a holiday dinner). They swept the flat graves while men cut and stripped pine branches. When the graves were cleaned, the fresh and fragrant pine needles were laid on the tombs. The masses of flowers were arranged into huge bouquets at the head stones. Candles were set into clear plastic soda bottles that had been rinsed, trimmed and filled with a little water to keep the candles safe.

The graves were done. People murmured respectfully, said quiet prayers, and the next thing I knew, snacks were being handed out to everyone. Grape soda and wrapped packages of wafer cookies. Sugar is apparently the universal language of togetherness.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in that quiet cemetery. Kids played with their cousins. Men talked to each other, then went over by the various trucks to look at engines and tires. One boy had a new puppy that all the kids adored. A baby was held by everyone, including me.

It’s curious, isn’t it, how much strength and identity we find when we get together? Children learn what’s acceptable behavior in our group - and what’s not. The stress we feel in our individual homes is released for a few hours; we stop thinking about all the things we have to do; we relax into shared conversation. We tell the stories of people who aren’t with us. We meander in our spirits, as we become community.

This coming Wednesday evening, November 12, 6-8PM, at the Racine Public library, there will be an event opened to all to hang out, rub elbows, share conversation, practice community.

MayaWorks Executive Director Jeannie Balanda and Board Member (her connections with MayaWorks go back to 1992) Phyllis Nickel will talk about the stories and challenges of creating economic justice in a Guatemala, among these beautiful, determined people.

You are cordially invited to attend. Hear stories, ask questions, eat some sweet treats. MayaWorks and HOPES Center sales will be hosted, so bring your checkbook and buy a present for the holidays.

Mary Beth Danielson: Meet Your Ancestors - at the Racine Public Library

Mary Beth Danielson with a young girl in Guatemala.

By Mary Beth Danielson

I had only been in Guatemala a few days on my first tour to visit MayaWorks weavers in their homes and communities, when I began to understand a powerful reality.

When you visit what is often referred to as “the Developing World”, “the Third World”, “the Emerging Nations” -- the journey you are on is not distance-covering, but time-travel.

If you want to celebrate those European, Asian, African, or New World slave cultures from which most of our great-grandparents emigrated – go to a poor country today. But don’t go for the great beaches, cheap shopping, bird watching, or digital camera vista-gathering. Instead, seek out ways to respectfully encounter the ordinary people who live in these money-poor countries.

This is why. If you do this, you will meet the people you come from. You will learn something about who your people were, and why earth’s poorest human beings today are, in fact, your next-of-kin.

This is also true. In most instances you will not feel pity nearly as much as you will be astonished at how smart, energetic, uncomplaining, funny, generous, and inventive people are when they have no one to lean on but themselves, their families, friends, and close community.

You will be, I guarantee, jealous of their bright-eyed children who help without whining, giggle constantly, who pour themselves into every opportunity to attend school and advance their lives. You will be stunned at the skinny 14-year old who will work in a field all morning alongside his father and grandfather, come home for a lunch heavy on tortillas and devoid of meat, who will then wash his arms and face in a basin of water, then go to school all afternoon.

Children of MayaWorks artisans at a school event. Without the modest but reliable income their mothers earn working for a Fair Trade organization, many children would would have to stay home to help the family instead of attending school.

You will visit homes so crude you might mistakenly call them shacks. Except you meet the hard-working, big-dreaming people who cook, eat, and sleep in these rudimentary shelters, and you realize that what makes a home beautiful might be something you need to rethink.

The past few weeks we have been nerve-wracked by the rollercoaster of our First World.

What’s not making the front page is this. While we are losing security and spending power -- third world nations are being hit with inflation running at 25-40%.

In other, much poorer nations, right now, people who could feed their families last year -- can’t feed them now.

We are making more economical culinary choices. More meals at home. Chicken instead of pork chops. Hamburger instead of roasts.

If you were already eating rice, tortillas, and broth – where do you cut back?

So here is an invitation to all of us -- You are invited to two evenings at the Racine Public Library.

The library, with input from the MayaWorks organization as well as our Racine’s new Fair Trade HOPES Center, is hosting PBS’s Frontline Social Entrepreneurship series. This is a series of seventeen 11-15 minute programs portraying successful entrepreneurial enterprises in poor nations.

Come and learn how local solutions to local problems are working all over the world. These low-budget, high-impact endeavors are fascinating models showing how people can and do make their lives more secure.

Come and watch the spirit of your ancestors played out in modern times.

Wednesday October 29, 6-8 p.m. Take a video tour of Guatemala, Uganda, Nepal, India and Cambodia. Discussion will follow, moderated by Racine’s newest social justice entrepreneur, Ann Pratt, OP, Director of HOPES Center.

On Wednesday evening, November 12, 6-8 p.m. we will welcome MayaWork’s new executive director, Jeannie Balanda as well as Board Member Phyllis Nickel. Come to hear how Fair Trade impacts the lives of hundreds of Maya weavers and their families in Guatemala today. Guatemalan refreshments will be offered at this celebration.

And in case you are someone who misses Mary Beth Danielson’s column in The Journal Times, she will be at both events. Door prizes will be given both nights featuring new writing, by her, for you.

Marta is a weaver for MayaWorks. She is at a loom in the courtyard of her home, which allows her to monitor her children while she works. Without Fair Trade standards, most women in the developing world must go to low paying work in factories, leaving their children at home, unsupervised.

You are warmly welcomed to these two friendly local evenings in the Racine Public Library – as we consider the global economy from the point of view of people in difficult places who are building justice, stability, and hope.