The
eorgetonian G
December 3, 2014 Volume CXXXIV Issue 11
Orange Friday connects consumerism and slavery
Faculty and students give stump speeches endorsing fair trade, conscientious spending By TYLER PHILLIPS BackPage Editor On Friday, Nov. 21, students and faculty participated in an annual series of stump speeches known as Orange Friday. Since 2011, this event has been traditionally put on by Georgetown’s Student Abolitionist Movement (SAM), an organization dedicated to combating modern day slavery. SAM faculty adviser Dr. Jonathan Sands Wise played the lead role in organizing the day and recruiting speakers. This year, the speeches drew strong crowds throughout the day as students gathered to learn about the current trend of consumerism during the holiday season and its role in financing global injustice. Orange Friday originated as a day set aside to speak against the increasing commercialization of the Christmas season. This is accomplished through a series of 10–minute speeches given every hour on the steps in front of Giddings Hall. Exactly one week before the sales begin for “Black Friday,” Orange Friday rests on the basic premise that orange is known as the international color of freedom. Inci-
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dently, orange is also the color of Georgetown College. Here, the goal of Orange Friday is to educate Georgetown’s campus about the connections between consumerism and global slavery, as well as to argue in favor of more ethical shopping alternatives such as “fair trade.” This year’s lineup of speakers included Dr. Shelia Klopfer, Dr. Bryan Langlands, Dr. Roger Ward, Dr. Brad Hadaway, Tyler Phillips and Dr. Jonathan Sands Wise. Religion professor Dr. Klopfer delivered the first speech. Her speech was written and performed as a satirical take on O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi” and placed the protagonists of the story in the midst of the Black Friday rush. In her speech, she told the humorous yet poignant tale of a family who spends Black Friday fighting other shoppers over various gifts only to discover the receivers weren’t satisfied with the gifts after all. Following at 10:50, Dr. Langlands argued against the influence of consumerism in higher education and the high amounts of debt students often face upon graduation. An hour later, Dr. Ward took to the podium with an added
Ferguson reacts to the jury’s verdict page 2
surprise. For his speech, he turned the gathered spectators into a “human microphone” of echoed chanting, as the crowd would go on to quote Thoreau in his claim that “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” The fourth speaker of the day, Dr. Hadaway, suggested that the greatest tragedy of modern consumerism is our inability to see how pervasive it has actually become. Instead, he encouraged the audience to recognize and respond to the reality that one cannot turn on the T.V. or drive down the street without being petitioned by advertisers. Next, student speaker Tyler Phillips made an appeal to the
Lord’s Prayer to argue that the presence of materialism during the holidays reveals an abuse of “daily bread” and what it means to be content with having enough. Lastly, Dr. Sands Wise delivered a speech which utilized an agricultural parable to reveal the great discrepancy between the richest and poorest of the world. While the current system of hoarding wealth is broken, Sands Wise went on to argue that the best takeaway from Orange Friday is to “buy everything deliberately” and consider “Do you really need that item? Who was involved in making it?” While each of these speeches discussed deeply embedded issues in modern consumerism, Orange Friday is also concerned with educating students about alternatives to harmful holiday spending. One such alternative is “fair trade.” The fair trade label is based on an effort to better compensate low–income producers around the world in order to discourage the need to resort to human exploitation. As Dr. Sands Wise explained in his speech, “If you buy Fair Trade, you know that you are buying into an eco-
nomic model that is attempting to care for each person in the chain. You know that you have a much, much better chance of getting products that were made without slavery or severe exploitation.” While purchasing fair trade does limit shopping options, certified products range from certain lines of coffee and chocolates to clothing and sports ball manufacturers. On his personal takeaways from the event, junior Braden Bocard recalled that “The speeches were very eye–opening, and have helped me to see and discern what I really need during holiday shopping.” Against the convenience and cheapness of Black Friday deals, SAM argues that our lives and holiday season are most fully celebrated through resisting extravagance and paying attention to the connections between our spending and unjust practices worldwide. Orange Friday is a declaration that, through attentive discernment into one’s needs and the needs of others, we have the capacity to shift the market away from its dependency on exploitation in favor of a greater care for the world’s poorest individuals.
Hanging of the Green on Thursday page 3
The obscure sport of cycleball page 5
Christmas lights glow across campus pages 6 and 7
The Georgetonian/NOAH KRIEGER
Orange is the international color for freedom.