This was one thing that Francisco VanderHoff said last night that got my attention. This worker-priest who is one of the founders of the Fair Trade movement was speaking yesterday evening at Planet Bean — a local café and fair trade coffee cooperative here in Guelph. (http://www.planetbeancoffee.com/) He told the story, to the 20-30 who gathered, about the humble and unlikely beginnings of the fair trade movement. In the mid-1970’s he was sent by his bishop to live with the poor upland indigenous villagers in southern Mexico. He listened and watched these poor people working from sun up to sunset and still not making enough to feed themselves and their family. They sold their coffee beans to middlemen who tripled the price of the beans as they in turn sold it to others who sold it to the consumer. Out of that injustice a different way of doing business was born — Fair Trade. He insists that this is not working for a “better world” but for a “good world”. It comes out of a desire to build relationships between the people who produce and the people who consume — a relationship built on justice rather than the “invisible hand” of a faceless market.
I was moved as he spoke. He spoke with power and grace and love. I felt both invited into new ways of doing business while at the same time convicted about how I often shop and do business.
That afternoon he had visited Wal-Mart and a couple of other major supermarkets in town to see how Fair Trade was being marketed and going mainstream. He remarked that as he watched shoppers with their buggies full that they reminded him of cows grazing in a field. He said that we in the West had bought into a culture of superficiality, mediocrity and pragmatic ideology. But when would we wake up to what was right and important — to “be serious” about the real issues facing humans and our planet? That’s when he said, “I’m fed up with churches praying for the poor”. I’ve done that as a minister many times. What about “being serious” in fundamentally changing my daily behavior that is affecting the daily existence of so many? I was moved. I felt convicted.
I wondered what a church might look like that was not content to just “pray for the poor”?
Although I was sad that I was unable to hear VanderHoff in Guelph, John, I did hear him on Dispatches on the CBC and was also struck by his comments about ‘the poor’. We can never stop learning, can we? It’s the acting part that is a constant challenge for me.
This is my first visit to your blog and I’m about to explore the rest of it. What a wonderful beginning for someone who once admitted that he struggled with email!
Still miss you but hope to see you soon,
Barb
By: Barb Anderson on October 6, 2009
at 9:26 pm
Thanks Barb for your support. I know that you and I will keep learning about poverty in us and the world and engage it in a way that is faithful. Blessings on the journey.
By: risingspirit on October 7, 2009
at 9:04 pm
Have just printed your sermon for my mum – she will be touched that it was the anniversary of your father’s death. Anyway, to the poor – brought to mind one of my favourtite essays, ever, called Poverty by Majid Rahnema (in The Development Dictionary, ed. Wolfgang Sachs) which challenges our whole preception of poverty and definition thereof – it argues that poverty (as we understand it today) is a western construct that demeans many who lead noble lives but in different circusmtances to ours – and draws a disntinctioin between poverty and destitution, and the poverty of materialism versus the poverty of choosing less. I love it. I recommend it to all the silly development experts I meet here (more and more of them teaming here everyday, sickening, saddening) – never get any feedback, which says a lot…..The Development Dictionary is a great book by the way, think you’d enjoy it, if you haven’t found it already, challenges so many western constructs that affect us all everywhere. Sue
By: Sue on October 13, 2009
at 5:12 am
Thanks Sue. Sound like a very interesting book . . . and challenging too for us in the materially affluent west. I will check it out. If we are really interested in the wisdom of those on the margins, we need to hear those voices. John
By: risingspirit on October 13, 2009
at 10:48 am
Fed up with …..
My, this very deep and important message is making me think of bananas AGAIN.
I am currently enrolled in a Marketing course and the topic of free trade and organic markets came up. My class demographics span from those in the auto industry to those in the film industry; and so there are many conversations at many different levels. This particular day, one of the auto workers who had been in a developing country setting up some kind of plant, said he saw children working in the banana plantations. There were small airplanes flying above and dumping chemicals onto the banana’s; thusly onto the children. The chemicals are pesticides. I was horrified, and thought, “That’s it; I am not buying another banana!” The argument my fellow student had is that, what source of income will these people have if we all stop buying bananas? It’s a dilemma for me… is there a right answer here?
Cindy
By: Cindy on October 17, 2009
at 2:19 am
Thanks John
Yes, you know I did mean to type Fair Trade rather than free trade. I had been doing homework on Free trade marketing and so had that word stuck on my keyboard; Sorry about that.
By the way, you are right; I can not find FAIR trade bananas, only organic. I am thinking the same as you; at least we can feel some better knowing chemical is not being dumped on children and workers in those plantations…
Take Care
Cindy
By: Cindy on October 17, 2009
at 11:49 pm
Thanks Cindy so much for your comment. This area is so complex in one way and so simple in another. What we do in response to toxic bananas and the people who survive by producing them is the complex part. What the simple truth is you say so clearly. You were horrified! Your heart spoke the truth! Somehow building relationships with people who love their kids but face the immediate challenge of feeding them is key. Maybe we need to talk to Francisco about “Fair Trade” bananas. But as an interim step your comment challenges me to seek organic bananas in the supermarket. At least I would have a reasonable certainty that I was not involved in the poisoning of children and workers in fruit I was eating and feeding my child.
John
By: risingspirit on October 17, 2009
at 10:58 am