Just doing it: Jim Keady vs Nike

I started walking out the door, headed for the corner store where I would get what I could to make me feel somewhat better. Feeling guilty and blatantly looking for validation, I shouted out to my project team, "You think this is OK, don't you? I mean, I'm SICK." The response: "It's your call. (pregnant pause) What would Fitri do?"

What would Fitri do? Fitri my new best friend? My new soul sister? Fitri, who lives in a box in a poor, dirty, overcrowded neighborhood in the Adidas factory ‘prison complex'. What would Fitri do? I don't know, but I think she'd actually go to work.

Though if she could take the day off, I suppose she'd be in that one small, smelly, congested room she shares with two other women … lying on a paper-thin reed mat on an uneven cement floor covered in shelf paper, without the money to buy what she really needed. And she wouldn't have a choice.

This was the greatest test yet — when I absolutely felt like forgetting about the poverty simply because I could. I wanted fresh orange juice, toast, cherry-flavored cough drops and Tylenol. I had a small "juice box" of orange drink, one dose of Tylenol, and lots of water. Three gulps of orange drink was 2500 rupiah, or about 30 per cent of the daily food allowance living on this basic wage. Two Tylenol was the same price. I could afford one meal at the cheapest place we've found yet, and that was it for the day. A small vitamin-less orange drink, 2 Tylenol, and one meal of rice and vegetables.

This is what I came here for. To live in solidarity with the poor and exploited. To experience the injustice here and tell it in my language to my tribe who CAN make changes because of opportunities they've been given. To take the American-born opportunities and privileges that my ancestors struggled for, and

now use them for people still struggling. I can tell you this from the depths of my soul, with more passion than ever before: No one should have to live like this. We need to make serious changes. And everyone is responsible.

"FEAR, INC." by Michael Pierantozzi

8-24-00

Fear is the great motivator. The fear of losing your job. The fear of losing your ability to support your family. The fear of being hung out to dry by your company in an economic situation that’s desperate at best, even for the gainfully employed. Yes, fear is the greatest of all motivators, greater than money, greater than power, greater than entire army of Tony Robbinses.

We sat down with some Nike workers last week. They sang us a lovely song about Nike. It sounded a lot like the song Nike sings to the American people. It went something like this:

Without Nike we’d be in real dire straits. Nike takes care of me. They take care of my family. They adhere to the code of conduct, they pay us a generous wage, and they give us adequate health care. They treat us with dignity and respect. It was a beautiful, bouncy song that sounded oddly like "Whistle While you Work". I had to restrain myself from tapping my feet.

Ok, so this particular group of workers thought we worked for Nike or one of their competitors. They thought we were just another independent monitoring group of Americans who came to hear the happy Nike song. How could you blame them? Why would a group of white people who didn’t speak their language come to their village with a camera and want to talk to them? They didn’t trust us and rightfully so. No monitoring group had ever talked to them as individuals, much less given them reason to trust. They said when the monitoring groups roll into town, they only talk to the managers, and if they do speak with the workers, there is always a manager present at the interview.