by Jerry "Clapso" Avissato
EN-101 fall 1999
Professor Cynthia Vallenti
Essay 3 FD
Evaluation
It is with tears in my eyes that I must inform you all that my Chia Pet has passed away. Yes, he has gone to the great knik-knak shelf in the sky. He was only three in human years, but of course that's 75 in Chia Pet years. I could go on about how he suffered bravely till the end, but instead I choose to describe him as he was in life.
It's difficult to describe a friend I shared so much with these last three years. He was the best friend I ever had because, although he came from "the wrong side of the tracks" he never complained about his lot in life, he came with documentation that explained his care and feeding, and he cost very little to buy. Since his next of kin have yet to be informed of his death, I will use the pseudonym "Bob" as his name from here on.
Bob was born in a "sweat shop" factory on an island nation that is an American territory. The Capitalist Pigs who own the factory built it there so they could stamp "Made in USA" on it and still avoid paying the minimum wage, not to mention avoiding those pesky worker safety and child labor regulations. It isn't Bobs fault he was born in such a bad neighborhood and he did everything he could in his life to overcome his humble beginnings.
Bob arrived as a little bundle of joy via snail mail. I couldn't wait to open his box and set him free. He came with everything I needed to have hours of pleasure from the "Chia Experience" he would provide. His instructions were of course very, ahem, instructive. You see, they where written in English, Spanish and French. The reason for this is that the Corporate Lap Dogs in Washington passed a little thing called NAFTA a few years ago. Before NAFTA the ceramic bases of Chia Pets were made in sweat shops in Mexico. These bases where then shipped to sweat shops in the southern US to be "assembled." The US workers would put the bases in boxes with seeds and instructions. This allowed the company to stamp the boxes "Assembled in USA" and avoid paying any import tariffs.
NAFTA changed all that. There are now no import tariffs between the US, Mexico, and Canada. Now our Canadian and Mexican friends can enjoy the same exciting products we have enjoyed for years, and at extremely low prices, since the owners don't have to pay the workers much. Of course free trade is "good for business."
Some may say "If you know the workers who produce these products are exploited, why do you buy them?" The answer is you can never be sure when you buy any product how well the people who made them are treated. For all I know Chia Pets could be made in a state of the art factory, by well-paid workers. The above examples are meant to shed some light on the "Made in USA" game. The Chevy you drive may be made with 80% Chinese parts produced in prisons by slave labor, or be made with parts from UAW organized factories. The Mickey Mouse PJ's your child wears to bed tonight may have been made by children, the same age as your son or daughter, working 15 hour days in hot, poorly lit factories, or they may be made by Elves somewhere in the "Magic Kingdom." The tomatoes you serve in your dinner salad may have been grown by Mexican laborers that get paid two cents a bushel and can barely feed their families, or they may be grown by a family farmer who lives just a few miles from your home. I just used Bob as an example to show how hard it is to know where any of the products we use were made and by whom. I hope the next time you're in K-mart or at the mall you'll at least consider where your next purchase was produced and under what kind of working conditions.
Read, Think, Speak, Write, Be!