Issue 4: Social Issues

SOCIAL ISSUES

For the sake of society.

A Problem Bigger than Just StrawsBy: Cassidy Bessa

Is there anything better than a day at the beach? Or how about seeing sea creatures in their natural habitat? It’s a beautiful sight, however our vision may be skewed upon seeing how our ocean is littered by plastic waste. The impending ban on plastic straws and single use utensils shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. We have all seen the photographs and heard the lectures about how the things we don’t give a second thought about, are ruining our planet.

The World Economic Forum predicts that if we keep using plastic in the way we are, by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean. The uproar about plastic straws happened when a local researcher filmed a turtle with a straw in its nose. It was estimated that Americans use around 500 million straws a day. People all around the world are changing from plastic straws to metal straws and to biodegradable paper straws in order to help their own conscience. However, this is only the first step in stopping our problem of plastic consumption. According to Business Insider, in 2015, our plastic consumption was at 300 million metric tons. Awareness about the dangers of plastic bags have been drilled into our brains for the last few years, but that doesn’t stop most people for asking for a plastic bag at checkout. What we don’t know is that less than 9% of all plastic gets recycled, regardless of which bin we throw it in. Recycling just seems too expensive, and throwing it into the ocean is free. None of us think twice when we buy a beverage in a plastic bottle, we’re told that it will be recycled when in fact 79% of it will be thrown into landfills and 12% will be incinerated which releases harmful chemicals into our atmosphere.

Plastic was invented 111 years ago, and it takes plastic up to 1000 years to decompose. That means that Coke you just threw away, will far outlive you. The only way forward from this plastic encroachment is to get rid of plastic all together. Before 1907, people were fine without the need for plastic as there were many substitutes. Awareness must also be spread to corporate companies who see it worth their while, monetary wise, to use plastic instead of something biodegradable. Glass would be a much better alternative, albeit more expensive. Glass is much easier to recycle and is not made from fossil fuels the way that plastic is. Tin cans are also moderately more sustainable as they only take 50 years to decompose and are also much easier to recycle. The plastic straws ban is a small way to start but hopefully this movement will take speed and encourage an eco-friendlier approach.

Fast Fashion, Garment Worker Exploitation, and ConsumerismBy: Laura Anaya-Morga

Like many, I had a closet full of clothes for every season, but for some reason I could never find something to wear. I knew I had too much but also felt like I was always missing a new piece of clothing, a new pair of shoes or some more accessories, and now I do not. It was not until I noticed people promoting sustainability when I began to wonder what I could do this year to live a more sustainable life. Then I watched the documentary The True Cost and everything changed. I fell deep into a hole of research regarding capitalism consumerism, and the dark side of the fashion industry; what I found was alarming. It starts with advertisements - advertising is a $250 billion industry in the United States and consumers typically feed into these advertisements subconsciously. People want cheap prices and want to fill their closets with new items every chance they get. Stores like H&M, TJ Maxx, Ross, and Forever 21 are restocking their items and bringing in new ones every single week and prices are constantly being changed to fit the rates of competition. Through marketing and advertising, we are at a point where consumers want more things but for cheaper than all of its competitors. The only way these low prices are achievable is if they are manufactured at a low cost, and the only way for companies to

produce clothes at such a low price is to switch to global outsourcing which translates to garment factories from around the world. This is where garment workers come in and pay for it in the most exploitative ways. Bangladesh is a country with a $28 billion garment industry, second behind China, but with very little to give to its workers. The workers in these factories are constantly forming unions to fight for better, livable wages than they currently have. One tragic day in 2013 an eight-story garment factory collapsed in Rana Plaza, killing over 1,100 people and inj

uring thousands more. This happened after workers had contacted their supervisors time and time again about cracks in the building and feeling unsafe in their work environment. This particular garment factory produced clothing for US and European retail stores such as Joe Fresh and The Children’s Place (The True Cost, 2015). This is not the first time where there has been an accident in garment factories; there has been numerous fires where people are unable to flee to safety due to barred

windows and buildings have also been reported as being structurally unsound. Capitalism already exploits workers living on a basic minimum wage in the United States, but in countries like Bangladesh, it exploits its workers even more, throwing them under the rug as if the public should not even care about what they have to endure. Living on around $2 a day is not enough for all the mothers working in these factories who have to provide for their families. Since that Rana Plaza tragedy, there has been numerous calls of action to help these workers, and in 2017, 4 years after the tragedy, “a report on supply chain transparency released by Human Rights Watch [found] only 17 of 72 apparel and footwear companies contacted by a coalition of labor and human rights groups and global unions [had] agreed to implement a transparency pledge by the end of [the] year” (“4 Years After Rana Plaza Tragedy, What's Changed For Bangladeshi Garment Workers?”, NPR). The exploitation of Garment Workers happens in our own backyards as well. The Garment Worker Center focuses on the mistreatment of workers specifically in Southern California; constantly protesting against Black Friday and large retail stores such as Ross and TJ Maxx. They host events called Sweatshop Saturday’s where they plan and execute marches against these large companies, demanding better wages for workers who are earning around $5 a day in a place where the minimum wage is about to reach $11. Groups like the Garment Worker Center are important because they give voice to those too afraid to speak up, such as immigrant women who fear deportation for voicing their injustices or even those who simply do not have anywhere else to go. However, the companies are not the only ones to blame - it seems that consumers are blind to what is happening around them when buying clothes. They swipe their cards as if it were free, and most of the time they do not think long and

hard about where their clothes come from. The only way for companies to actually help those employees that they are hurting, is for them to rise up and resist along with the protestors. There is so much that needs to change in the fashion industry. Capitalism is essentially killing its workers, and it’s all thanks to consumerism. Working in such dangerous conditions can be harmful to workers’ wellbeing. Although it seems like a hopeless cause because of the growth of the fashion industry, I have noticed a surge in environmental awareness and sustainability not only because of global warming and climate change, but also because people are becoming more aware of what is happening around them. For instance, using less plastic, producing less waste in their everyday lives, and also buying less goods. We are taking steps in the right direction and the most crucial step is to start the conversation about how to help. Fortunately, things are looking up. As time has gone by, sustainability has been on the rise; YouTubers, social media influencers and more have become more aware just as I have about the effects that the fast fashion industry has on the environment and society as a whole, as well as, the injustices garment workers face every day. As a result, I have challenged myself to not buy a single item of clothing for a whole year and also take steps towards buying from sustainable brands in 2020. I encourage everyone reading to take a step back and think about the clothes they own at the moment as well as join me in leading a better example for the future.

Women’s March Organizer Tamika Mallory Accused of Being Anti-SemiticBy: Sarah Harwell

Just days away from the third annual Women’s March, the leaders of the revolution have been accused of anti-Semitism, causing many loyal marchers and sponsorships to be revoked. Two organizers of the event, Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez have claimed that Jewish women have to be held responsible for the privileges that they uphold as being “white”. The whole purpose of the Women’s March is to strive for the equality of all people of all races, religions, and sexualities - this goal is deemed as irrelevant as they have

been continuously ignoring the marginalization of an entire group. A religion can have members from other marginalized groups, and is more than just an ethnicity. A religion is not an ethnicity. We also cannot forget that Jews are seen as marginalized because of the hate that they continuously experience in America; not long ago in Pittsburgh, 11 innocent individuals passed away because of this hate. There is a whole community of neo-Nazis brewing in our very own homeland, a group that hates an entire religion. To claim that Jews hold a privilege is ludicrous, and if they held any privilege, why is there so much hate held against them? Why did 11 individuals go into their place of worship, and die that afternoon? Why is the largest genocide in the world about Jews? The irony of calling Jewish women privileged, in an environment which equality is the main objective.

Tamika Mallory told former organizer of the march, Vanessa Wruble, that Jewish women contain white supremacy because of the white-dominated population within the religion. She further argued that Jews held a large role in the African slave trade, which laments their supremacy in America. Through an easy search and sifting through data, it can be found that they did not play a large role in the African slave trade at all, and a very few percentage of slave owners were Jewish. Furthermore, Tamika Mallory claimed that Louis Farrakhan was “the greatest of all time”. Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, is known for making anti-Semitic remarks, and has written a series of books, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews. The series is full of declarations of the responsibility of Jews in the transatlantic trade, and that there is “irrefutable evidence” of their role in it. Yet, the book series contains no hard evidence or data of this notion, and is deemed as pure anti-Semitism. This same concept is also reiterated by David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard. In videos created by Duke, he makes large accusations that the slave trade was not a Christian-led ordeal, but instead a Jewish one. With data from numerous sources, such as David Brion Davis, who found that there were “120 Jews among the 45,000 slaveholders owning twenty or more slaves and only twenty Jews among the 12,000 slaveholders owning fifty or more slaves,” this idea ceases to be true. Briefly, Mallory believes in the anti-Semitic propaganda that wrongfully blame Jews and their position in racism today. She is single-handedly marginalizing an entire religion with a cruel agenda.

As individuals march nationwide, I truly applaud those who fight for inequality and those who suffer from it. A movement is more than a person, and the person who leads it - it is a group of people who believe in their civil rights, and in this case, it is the equality of everyone from any gender, religion, race/ethnicity, or sexuality. The people make the movement, but it is disappointing to see that the women who are behind such a cause have an offensive background.