In Newsletter 6 I promised a story I have often used to illustrate my thoughts about the reach of collective responsibilities for our common wellbeing:
In a village far, far away people are thriving. Care for the young and old, the sick and infirm is shared. All have homes that are warm in the winter and cool in the summer. All experience care and joy in abundance. Children are loved and sheltered from harm. All but one little girl. This little girl is kept in chains in a cellar at the outskirts of the village. Her physical body is kept barely alive by the regular delivery of food and water and the removal of her excrement…. The tasks of her maintenance are shared by the elders of the village. Her existence is kept secret from the village children. At the cusp of the transition from child to adult, a village elder will take each adolescent to do what is needed to keep the little girl alive. There will be no talking till the tasks are done. It will then be explained that the security and joy of the village is wholly dependent on the maintenance of the status quo: the little girl chained in the cellar, the blissful ignorance of the village children, the transference of responsibility for her upkeep to the adults, and the responsibility of the adults to retain this order – an order in which all villagers thrive. To be an adult means to be responsible for maintaining this order. To be an adult means to take this order for granted. To jeopardize this order would be inconceivable. To challenge the situation may lead to instant banishment from the village to a land much less hospitable than the gracious life experienced in this village.
This story seemed even more pertinent to my train of thought as I listened to Sharon Brettkelly of The Detail[i] talk with Ayo Awokoya about an item published in The Guardian[ii] about diverse people trapped in Italy, picking tomatoes for the cans I might unthinkingly add to my supermarket trolley. Ayo describes the living conditions of these people as slavery. The tomato pickers are not in chains. But, says Ayo, slavery in the 21st century doesn’t need chains.
In a follow up interview, Sharon talks with Nikki Mandow, a journalist who also took note of this story. Nikki responded to Ayo’s reports by initiating her own enquiry into how threads of this story are woven into our own story about ourselves as a country explicitly committed to universal justice and human rights. Nikki got in touch with people at Countdown, Food Stuffs, various importers, food-bag entrepreneurs, wholesalers. She simply asked to talk to somebody about their purchases of tinned tomatoes and their knowledge of the supply chain. The responses astonished her. All spokespeople claim not to buy from suppliers unless their supply chain is clean based on related certification. No-one could assure her of the integrity of the supply chain beyond their reliance on a piece of paper that itself could not be verified as trustworthy. Soon after Nikki’s article was published a contact communicated to her their disappointment that she had cast aspersions on their good name. Anticipated legal changes to issues of human slavery will require corporate reporting and action on any detected slavery in their supply chain.[iii] Attention is warranted.
There are people whose job it is to transport, house, and manage the human beings who pick, process, transport, purchase and consume the tomatoes gathered with the suffering described by Ayo. There are those in the supply chain who might want to deny, dismiss or diminish their part in such slavery identified in this story. Why are we not outraged?
“It is so far away, so far out of sight” suggests Nikki.
As of course, is the little girl in the cellar, whose deprivation assures the stability of village life.
The words of a texter I reported in Newsletter 6 echo in my mind: “I only care about the product – not who made it”.
For the moment, reflects Nikki: “…I don’t know whether NZ people mind that much about Fair Trade… it is not a big thing in NZ…”
Or have we in New Zealand been so indoctrinated that, if we think about it at all, in our minds free trade is fair trade as the neoliberals who have dominated for so long would have us believe.
The supply chain embroils us all in the global village. It is to what passes for acceptable behavior in this village that I will bring my mind in future Newsletters. For the moment it is to another matter aired in the news this week I will turn my mind in Newsletter 8, with the memory of my young brother in mind.
[i] https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018717123
[ii] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/20/tomatoes-italy-mafia-migrant-labour-modern-slavery
[iii] https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/the-detail/116485959/the-detail-is-it-time-to-push-through-antislavery-laws