Woolman Blog

Did you know that 3 million tons of chocolate are consumed every year? This fact may not come as a shock to you. Chocolate is a common candy that commercials idolize and is sold conventionally at almost every store. Some holidays revolve around candy. In fact, Americans alone purchase around 600 million pounds of candy each Halloween.₁ Chocolate is a cheap, delicious sweet that can be acquired easily. Here is something to think about in the upcoming Halloween season: where is my chocolate coming from?

An article published in 2009 called Islaves by Tim Newman articulated this, "Ivory coast, located on the southern coast of West Africa, is by far the World's largest supplier of cocoa beans, providing 43% of the world's supply. There are 600,000 cocoa farms in Ivory Coast which together account for one-third of the nation's entire economy."₂ Another product commonly harvested in the Ivory Coast is coffee. Most of the workers on the Ivory Coast are 12-14 year old children who have been sold into slave labor. The children are smuggled from a country called Mali in west Africa.₃ They are then put on buses and shipped to the Ivory Coast to work on cocoa plantations. In the video,Slavery in the Chocolate Industry, a bus driver was interviewed with his experience on the issue, he said, "In 2006, I discovered 132 children that were being trafficked. 97 were boys, and 35 were girls. In 2007 there were 140, 99 boys and 41 girls."₃ Children are taken from rural areas, lured by the promise of receiving money to bring back home. Most will never see their family again.

When asked if companies knew where their chocolate originated from, most said they did not know. Some stated that their cocoa was from the Ivory Coast but claimed to be unaware of the working conditions. Also, companies said they buy from sources that claim to have good working conditions and that tracking their product back to its original source is not an issue they address.₃ Although many of the companies we have come to know and love, such as Hershey's, Reese's, Nestle, Godiva, Kraft, Ben and Jerry's and M&M Mars have signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol (an agreement that sets rules of purchasing and growing cocoa beans)₄ many of these companies still buy from the Ivory Coast. Some companies are getting away with purchasing these products while saying they are Fair Trade. But how fair is Fair Trade?

Fair Trade puts guidelines out and sells a pretty convincing product review, they state, "You can enjoy chocolate that makes you feel as good as it tastes! Cocoa farmers are often forced to sell their harvest to middlemen who rig scales or misrepresent prices, and media reports of child slavery show the stark contrast between the delicious treat and the difficult conditions of the people who produce it. Fair Trade certification ensures that farmers receive a fair price, allows farmers to invest in techniques that bring out the flavors of the region, and strictly prohibits slave and child labor."₆ The product review does not address the fact that to be certified "Fair Trade," a product only needs to be 10% fair trade_7. This certification allows companies to purchase cocoa and coffee from people in unfair working conditions. It is easy for companies to get a Fair Trade label and it is easy to fool the public by doing so. So don't be fooled by the labels-look into the products you are buying and trace them back to their original source. It is possible to be aware of where your food is coming from.

Hope for the cocoa and coffee industry is apparent. Companies such as Equal Exchange practice authentic fair trade.₈ Fair trade isn't all bad if you know what you are buying and the work ethics the companies adhere to. There are organizations such as the International Rescue Committee₉ , International Labor Rights Forum_10, and Free the Slaves₁₀ that you can donate to, to help the issue of slavery on the Ivory Coast. Unfair working conditions are an issue that should not go unnoticed. Be mindful of what you buy and who your purchases affect and change will occur over time.

SOURCES

1. http://www.ibtimes.com/halloween-2011-it%E2%80%99s-time-candy-corn-and-chocolates-too-photos-708928

2. Islaves by Tim Newman. Published May 02, 2009 @7:30AM PT

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNpwIzeyjKQ(Slavery in the Chocolate Industry)

4. http://www.cocoainitiative.org/images/stories/pdf/harkin%20engel%20protocol.pdf

5. http://slavefreechocolate.org/tag/harkin-engel-protocol/

6. http://www.fairtradeusa.org/products-partners/cocoa

7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairtrade_certification

8. http://www.equalexchange.coop/fair-trade

9. http://www.rescue.org/where/ivory_coast?ms=gg_nonb_zzz_zzzz_an_zzzzzz&gclid=CJjzmsOq_LICFURxQgod4ycAkQ

10. http://www.laborrights.org/stop-child-labor/cocoa-campaign

11. https://www.freetheslaves.net/SSLPage.aspx?pid=184

 “By what name will future generations know our time?

Will they speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great Unraveling, when profligate consumption exceeded Earth's capacity to sustain and led to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remained of the planet's resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population?

 Or will they look back in joyful celebration on the time of the Great Turning, when their forebears embraced the higher-order potential of their human nature, turned crisis into opportunity, and learned to live in creative partnership with one another and Earth?”

-David Korten

Activist, authors, indigenous elders, and philosophers from many countries and backgrounds describe this point in human and natural history as The Great Turning. Essentially, it is a term that recognizes that we are at a crossroads, and that continuing the path that we have been on for the last 100 years will lead to unmatched devastation of human and natural life. However, there are actions, alternatives, and solutions springing up in areas of human rights, economics, the environment, (and so much more!) that are actively combating these crises. The best news is that the folks participating in these actions are having fun in the meanwhile!

The Great Turning Trip’s goals will be two-fold. Part of the experience will include a tour of some of the fantastic organizations located in the San Francisco Bay, a mecca of terrific visionaries for a more just and sustainable future. But, much of the time will also be spent in interactive workshops with leading activists, using internationally acclaimed methodology for helping us to get in touch with our own individual roles in The Great Turning. Being an activist means something different to each of us and the hope is that through experiencing and being introduced to a range of activism and alternative systems, we will be able to see how we might each use what makes us happy in life to make the world a better place!

If you would like to learn more about The Great Turning, here is an article by David Korten:

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/5000-years-of-empire/the-great-turning-from-empire-to-earth-community-1

Below is the tentative schedule for the week with brief descriptions of both the activities and the organizations that we will be working with:

Before the week begins, we will make each person a Secret Angel to someone. Make sure you don't tell the person.

Each person's Secret Angel will do nice things for her/him during the entire week in secret. These might include having someone else give the angel receiver a hug or shoulder massage, or a present or flower "from your secret angel," or a nice note or picture, or anything else conjured up through creativity and caring.  There is NO expectation of purchased gifts; in fact anything bought should cost no more than $2. Under no circumstances should anyone tell anyone else whose Secret Angel is whose.

At the end of the week, Secret Angels reveal themselves.

What: Global Exchange is an international human rights organization dedicated to promoting social, economic and environmental justice around the world. Representatives of the organization will be there to speak about their work on their Elect Democracy campaign and the Caravan for Peace this summer with victims of the drug war in Mexico/U.S. Chie Abad, a former GAP sweatshop worker will also be able to speak with the students again about her work around sweatshop organizing. Students will also hear about Community & Nature's Rights movements against corporate power.

What: Walk through the alleyways interpreting and experiencing the immense amount of expressive and often political murals in the Mission.

What: Learn SAGE history and services, Human Trafficking 101, case scenarios, and success stories.

The Canticle Farm: 9-1:15

What:  The Canticle Farm is an intentional community based off of the values of The Great Turning and the ideas of nonviolence, service, and sustainability. The community and its urban farm are located in downtown Oakland. Please click link to read an article about the community:

We will be touring, learning about intentional communities, and engaging in activities.

What: The Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project provides in-depth analysis and information about the global ecological crisis and facilitates strategic planning for action among leading organizers from urban Bay Area organizations working for economic and racial justice in communities of color.

Grassroots activism workshop with Levana Saxon: 9-4

What: Learn more about strategic planning for activism and specifically we will plan, execute, and film a Flash Mob!

What: City Slickers was founded by West Oakland residents to increase food self-sufficiency by creating sustainable, high-yield urban farms and backyard gardens. We will be visiting one of their main sites that was formerly a trash covered park where people hung out and dealt drug and is now a farm stand on Saturdays!

What: Located in SF’s Castro District, the GLBT History Museum is the first full-scale, stand-alone museum of its kind in the United States. The museum celebrates 100 years of the city’s vast queer past through dynamic exhibitions and programming.

What: AFSC San Francisco coordinates staff, volunteers, and resources for programs in peace-building, counter-recruitment, Middle East peace, healing justice, and public education about issues of homeless people. We will participate in workshops on these issues.

What: Bay Area Community Exchange (BACE) a collaborative network that supports the development of alternative means of exchange in the San Francisco Bay Area, will host the event. They will introduce us to the Gift Economy concept and the idea of the Time Bank. The Happiness Institute is a space where community members collaborate and work on social projects.

What: Trash Mash-Up is a community art project. Using disposable materials, collected before they enter the waste stream, participants construct “Maskostumes” which are original pageant masks and costumes inspired by traditions from around the world. TMU reduces waste and inspires people to see each other and our environment in a new way.

What: Using actual bird species as inspiration for her sometimes grotesque forms, Djurberg explores physical and psychological transformation as well as pageantry, perversion, and abjection in avian society. In addition to the wild flock of more than eighty freestanding bird sculptures on view, the exhibition also includes five animated films, in which avian psychology is superimposed upon human behavior with extraordinary results. Her clay animations are set to music and sound effects by her partner and collaborator Hans Berg.

Nayland Blake was one of the pioneers of performance art in the Bay Area in the 1980s. His work often explored aspects of the queer urban lifestyle. Though now based in New York, his most recent work is a return to his earlier processes from that period, where materials and spontaneity generate sculptural works that are informal, precarious, nonsensical, and odd or uncanny. For his upcoming solo exhibition at YBCA, Blake will create spontaneous sculptures using his life as the catalyst. Also included in the exhibition are a DJ booth stocked with Blake’s collection of over three thousand LPs, which visitors will be invited to spin; and the recreation of a mural by Chuck Arnett (1962), which decorated the wall of the Tool Box, a leather bar in what is now San Francisco’s SoMa district.

While Woolman has been a great adventure so far, no other activity has come close to the food intensive. Throughout the six days, the amount of experience and perspective I gained about the food system is unprecedented. One stop on our packed trip was to Full Belly Farm in Guinda. In class while reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, we learned about small-scale, mostly organic farms that operate with the assistance of the animals that live on the farm, illustrated by Pollan using the model used by Joel Salatin at Polyface Farms. In the book, Pollan describes how Salatin uses his animals to help fertilize and replenish the fields. At Full Belly Farm, we saw exactly this in action. After a field has been farmed, the farmers at Full Belly plant a cover crop. Once this grows, they set their sheep onto the field, which will eat all the grass and help fertilize the soil and provide their animals with food. In addition, after corn has been harvested they let the cows eat the remaining plants. Both of these are concepts described by Pollan.

Another one of my favorite places that we visited on our trip was the Wolfskill USDA germplasm repository. I was completely enthralled by the concept that they essentially had almost every single variety of grapes and figs. The scale of this place hit me as I was roaming the grape vineyards sampling all the different varieties and pondering the fact that there are so many different types of grapes that I had never tasted before, let alone heard of. While many students were disturbed by the fact that nobody was eating the food, I wasn’t. I don’t feel that it is somehow wrong that that food is going to “waste” because in my opinion, what the scientists at Wolfskill are doing with those plants is more important in the long term and will keep more people from going hungry further down the line, in addition to the fact that they give away clippings of the plants per request. Over all the food intensive was a great experience which really helped me shape my opinion about how I think I should eat and where to get my food. I now feel confident in my decisions pertaining to food and way of life after hearing many conflicting views and ideas throughout this trip.

Agriculture and food have always been something that I've really liked learning about. This past week I have learned so much! I went on a trip that took me through the Bay Area of California, and really exposed me to some amazing places. The first place I landed was the Eco Fair in Marin County. The main attraction at the fair was a man named Van Jones, who is an environmental advocate, and briefly worked for Obama. Although he was an important part, there were also really ground breaking companies, who all attended the fair with hopes of helping Marin. Another thing I really liked while I was in Santa Rosa was the Summerfield Waldorf School. I loved how the school has a farm on their campus where many of the students could get involved. Another stop we made was Swanton Berry Farm, close to Santa Cruz. I really thought our guide, Bear, was honest about his job. He talked about how his farm was one of the only unionized berry farms and gave the workers an opportunity to own part of the company. He described that even though farming is really hard work and doesn't always make the most money, he still liked it. 

Many days were spent driving along the coast. It was my first time seeing the Pacific Ocean, and California! The Golden Gate Bridge was also really big for me. It was really awesome that we stopped at one end and got out to look around. I love seeing new places, so I really enjoyed driving through the cities. 

Full Belly Farm was probably my favorite place that we visited. Fully Belly was founded by two families twenty eight years ago, and has evolved into quite a successful organic farm! Most of their employees are Spanish speaking immigrants who get full health benefits and fair pay. Their jobs are also guaranteed through out the whole year, even during the slower winter season. One of my fellow students, who speaks Spanish, asked a man how long he had been working there and he said fourteen years. The system they had established seemed very solid, and I really liked how they ran the farm. 

Throughout the whole trip, my thoughts about agriculture changed a lot, and now I've been thinking a lot more about studying it in college. There are so many different aspects about it including; sustainable farming, GMO's, and solutions for feeding more people in the future. I'm really looking forward to learning more, and seeing where else it will take me!

I learned a lot on the our food intensive field trip.  There were a lot of things that were complicated, interesting, cool, mind-blowing. I gained a lot of knowledge about food, life and sustainability. There were a lot of things that I agreed with and disagreed with. I especially like how we started with politics and ended it at an organic farm.

I agreed with what Van Jones said about how to make changes in the U.S. I also like how he gave everyone the sad information about the country first and then he ended the speech by giving people hope for change. Moreover I feel that it is a fact when he said “if you want to make a change you have to make a move towards that to make it change”. Another place that we visited that I liked was Veritable Vegetable. I liked it because I learned a lot about labor. It was pretty shocking to me when I learned that the majority of the physical labor in their company is done by women, as I had previously believed that only men do that type of work. From my perspective I think it is unfair that people who do physical labor traditionally get paid less than people who work in an office. I think that this system should change.

My favorite of the trip, though, was James who gave a speech about American lifestyle and simple life. He talked about how we are consuming and wasting a lot of our resources. James believes that we should reclaim some of the ways we used to live back in the day and combine them with some of our best modern technology, which I strongly agree with. While it might not be possible or desirable to go back to how things were 100 years ago. I think we would all be happier living much simpler lives, which although difficult is not impossible. In order to live a simple life, one must surround oneself with people who live simple lives, which will in turn make it easier to live one's own life simply. I can relate to this because when I was in India I lived a very simple life and I was a very happy person. However, when I came to U.S. I always bought/consumed to keep myself happy which only gave me the fake happiness.

Hey everyone---I thought I would share this letter that I sent out to the parents last week, in case you are interested in how things have been going around here!

 

 

It has been an absolute whirlwind of a month, with wilderness and then two weeks in the classroom, and then taking our learning out into the world again with the Food Intensive. Now, we are in our second week of class post-Food Intensive, which means we are getting ready for yet another experiential learning adventure: The Service Week.

 

The Service Week is specifically part of the Peace Studies class. So far in that program, we have examined the multiple meanings of peace and what it means to be working towards a culture of peace. We are just now getting into different perspectives of violence and the root causes of violence. Part of that unit is studying the idea of poverty as a form of structural violence. Our service work is an opportunity to volunteer to help lessen the negative effects of poverty and also to compare and contrast the ideas of volunteerism and activism. We will be working at the local Food Bank warehouse and also a Food Bank Farm that puts fresh produce directly into the bags that they distribute to people in need. They are both wonderful projects and it should be a lot of fun!

 

In Global Issues we are finishing our first unit, which is an overview of the major challenges facing the world today with an emphasis on the idea that we are at a crossroads in human history. The concept is that we can choose to continue on with “business as usual” and allow for these crises to worsen or we can see the work of turning it around as our “calling” and find a way to use what we love to do to create better, stronger, more just and sustainable systems. There have been some heavy global conflicts presented to the class and so part of the curriculum is also about paying careful attention to what we are feeling when we learn about such sad topics. We are talking a lot about using those "negative" feelings such as grief, outrage, and guilt as indicators of interconnectedness, empathy, and power to make a change. It is a tricky line to walk, but we are in it together.

 

Final projects for my two classes are coming along with students in the research phase for both. They have come up with some intriguing and inspiring ideas for their Peace Documentaries, including the following topics:

 

• ·       Sierra Roots: A local initiative with the goal to create an eco-village for homeless vets
• ·       Issues facing homeless youth
• ·       The negative consequences of drug abuse for family relationships
• ·       Obama’s new immigration act offering temporary visas for undocumented youth

In Global Issues project class, the students are researching different types of nonviolent activism that they will be presenting upon in two weeks.

 

Did I mention that we are busy?! And these are just MY classes!

 

As always, there are ups and downs, challenges and successes and everything in between. The group is forming well outside of the classroom, too. It is clear that some life-long friendships are getting a great start!

 

I wanted to remind everyone that on the front page of the Woolman site (http://semester.woolman.org), you can also check out upcoming events! For example, right now you can see that we have some fantastic guest speakers coming in to share their experiences and lead workshops on issues like power and oppression, Palestinian rights, and art activism.

 

Finally, if any of you are on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/woolmansemester , we submit little stories as updates nearly every day and post a lot of pictures there, too.

If you aren’t into the Facebook (I can’t blame you!), I have attached some of my favorite photos from the Peace Rally that our class hosted for the International Day of Peace, the Harvest Work Day, and one of the artistic responses to learning about Modern Day Slavery.

 

Thanks so much for all of your support! 

 

Hope you are enjoying a lovely start to Fall! 

 

En paz,

Emily

 

To begin with, I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that the youth of America have a much greater capacity to bring about change than is generally attributed to them. Speaking as a youth, it took me a very long time to move beyond the idea that there is nothing I can do to bring about change until I “grow up”. For me it was a very liberating experience to realize that, with enough dedication, I can accomplish very nearly anything I like. This was something I realized bit by bit, over a fairly extended series of time, but I’d say my personal empowerment was set in motion by a program at my school in which students would run various environmental monitoring projects, the purpose being to teach students about science and also about how to manage a project. What I like the most about this program is that in an often rigid and uncompromising education system this program allowed me the freedom to do things as I like, and to develop my initiative. I believe that if there were more such programs in public schools you would see much more in the way of activism and initiative from the Youth of America.

Another claim I agree with is that in America we have an unhealthy tendency to glorify and to some degree worship heroes. In fact, just last year I wrote a speech about just that. My main argument was although heroes can be an inspiration to us, by turning men and women into heroes we create a gap between them and us. Many will see such an unbridgeable gap between them and the heroes we look up to that they will not believe that they have it within themselves to be heroic in their own way. The celebration of heroes can also create a sense that the efforts of the average citizen are in some way unnecessary - another dangerously untrue idea.

Lastly, I connected with the assertion that standardized testing is not always the best tool to assess a student’s merits. As I see it, the main shortcoming of standardized testing is not that such tests fail to measure a student’s knowledge of the subject matter - although that argument can also be made - it is that that is not necessarily the most important thing. More important, I believe, than a students encyclopedic knowledge of history is a students ability to relate current events to historical anecdotes and apply their knowledge to the decisions he or she faces in life. While I believe that it may be possible to assess this skill, standardized tests have thus far, in my opinion, entirely failed to do so.

The experience I most value from the food intensive came during our tour of the experimental orchard and germplasm repository. There were many aspects of the orchard that I found inspiring, such as the incredible amount of biodiversity being preserved for the use of future generations. However, there were also parts of the tour which left a bitter taste in my mouth, such as the acres of fruit left to rot on the ground, or the researchers’ complicity with the demands of the food industry to breed for shelf life and processing potential rather than flavor or hardiness. Still, the woman in charge of our tour was an intelligent and kind person, so I asked her, “do you feel that by working with the industry you are able to help more people?”

“yes, exactly”, she replied.

“But what if the interests of the industry are not the same as those of the people?”, I asked.

“That’s a sociological problem, not an agricultural one. While I do think the two are in some ways related, what I do here is feed people”

“But don’t you worry that you’re playing into that by working toward the interests of the industry?”

“Nope”, she said, matter of factly, “I’m just a cog in the machine. In life, you can have your ideals, but you have to keep them separate from your work.”

I thought it was fascinating to hear views so different from my own, and from the Woolman motto: live what you believe.

Someone before my semester stuck a star on the light over my bed. I don’t know what color the star sticker is because the light, along with the walls, is painted an off white. My room has been painted many times over; so many times there is a thick coating over the star, making its presence pretty prominent. In a place like Woolman, sometimes it is hard to find evidence of prior students. No doubt at the end of our semester here, we will have to paint the walls as well, deep clean the buildings, and move out.

The star reminds me that this place is more than just ours; I think about those who came before us, and who will come after, and respect that it is theirs as much as it is ours.  Woolman is a place where 50 years of passionate young people like my semester have slept, worked, and socialized.  They probably felt similarly to our semester, they probably had struggles like ours, and lived like us. After Hiwot, Anna, and I leave Cabin H will continue to host such folk, and the cycle of Woolman will continue. The star will remain, and maybe the next person who will sleep in this bed will think about the preceding students, like I do.

Realizing this is the most beautiful thing I have learned from Woolman.  This place is a building and thriving community of people who come and go, and create and maintain a space where students like us can come and change the atmosphere relative to our wants and needs, then leave and create the space for another group all over again. I feel sad about leaving this great school, but I am relieved to know that there will be more students feeling the same as I do right now next semester and the one after and so on. The legacy of the students lives on the stories that we will create, and maybe the stars we leave on the lights.