Last year's box office smash was a movie called The Hunger Games. It was a film version of a book that I enjoyed reading, and it seems that a good number of young people liked reading it as well. The Hunger Games was a story about a young girl who made a sacrifice to save her sister's life. I don't want to give away too much of the story for people who might not have seen it, so I'll stop there.
Here are a few things you might not have thought about if you read the book or saw the movie. The world the characters inhabited is not something we would really like to see come about. There were many people living in an environment that is bleak and coping with a shortage of resources. Some people were working in conditions that resemble slavery, or at the very least, conditions that do not reflect the dignity of humanity. Other people were living in just the opposite kind of world. They seemed to have an abundance of creature comforts, and they seemed to be caught up primarily in passion for the latest fad, fashion, or entertainment personality.
Does this scenario resemble any of part of our own culture? Thinking globally, many people today, in fact, work long hours under harsh conditions in Bangladesh and other places making clothing for the United States market.
Did you know that workers in Bangladesh can be put in prison for trying to organize a union? When demonstrations take place there (Imagine the courage it takes to show up!) police spray people with blue paint or dye, so that they can come around later and arrest them.
In 2011 we celebrated the 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. This tragedy took place in 1911 in New York City within sight of Central Park on a Saturday morning. A garment factory caught fire, and the workers could not escape, because the doors had been locked. The fire escapes collapsed from the weight of the people standing on them. Many young women jumped from the 13th floor to certain death.
A young woman named Frances Perkins was in Central park that day. She saw the tragedy with her own eyes. She later became the first female cabinet member, the Secretary of Labor under president Franklin D. Roosevelt. Sadly a similar fire took place last year in Bangladesh, and women once again jumped from the windows of a burning building to certain death. This time our news media did not cover the event, because it happened in a foreign country, Americans do not seem to see the connection we have with our brothers and sisters in far away places, even when they make the very clothes on our backs.
I will say more on the Hunger Games in a later post.
It has happened again. this time in Pakistan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvGVQ_NI00U&feature=related
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/14/karachi-factory-fire-pakistan-health-safety?newsfeed=true
Here are a few things you might not have thought about if you read the book or saw the movie. The world the characters inhabited is not something we would really like to see come about. There were many people living in an environment that is bleak and coping with a shortage of resources. Some people were working in conditions that resemble slavery, or at the very least, conditions that do not reflect the dignity of humanity. Other people were living in just the opposite kind of world. They seemed to have an abundance of creature comforts, and they seemed to be caught up primarily in passion for the latest fad, fashion, or entertainment personality.
Does this scenario resemble any of part of our own culture? Thinking globally, many people today, in fact, work long hours under harsh conditions in Bangladesh and other places making clothing for the United States market.
Did you know that workers in Bangladesh can be put in prison for trying to organize a union? When demonstrations take place there (Imagine the courage it takes to show up!) police spray people with blue paint or dye, so that they can come around later and arrest them.
In 2011 we celebrated the 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. This tragedy took place in 1911 in New York City within sight of Central Park on a Saturday morning. A garment factory caught fire, and the workers could not escape, because the doors had been locked. The fire escapes collapsed from the weight of the people standing on them. Many young women jumped from the 13th floor to certain death.
A young woman named Frances Perkins was in Central park that day. She saw the tragedy with her own eyes. She later became the first female cabinet member, the Secretary of Labor under president Franklin D. Roosevelt. Sadly a similar fire took place last year in Bangladesh, and women once again jumped from the windows of a burning building to certain death. This time our news media did not cover the event, because it happened in a foreign country, Americans do not seem to see the connection we have with our brothers and sisters in far away places, even when they make the very clothes on our backs.
I will say more on the Hunger Games in a later post.
It has happened again. this time in Pakistan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvGVQ_NI00U&feature=related
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/14/karachi-factory-fire-pakistan-health-safety?newsfeed=true