Black Gold
While I prefer more hard-hitting film (and less pretty than Food Inc), I did especially like the segment that touched (far too briefly) on WTO, World Bank, and IMF involvement in keeping the impoverished people of the world working at just above starvation for the comfort of the West. Perhaps films like this are the Stony Brooks Farms of documentaries – they’ll go places that work by PETA won’t. Dunno. I still prefer my whiskey straight.
I’d have liked to have seen more interviews w. bohemian barristas with dreadlock bags instead of the high-end types who dress like table waiters. They should visit Portland, not Seattle – that’s so yesterday. The part with the two Starbucks girls (at #1 in Seattle) was like watching Miss Teen South Carolina (“because, uh, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps”) all over again, but in stereo. Like, toe-duh-lee. “Wow, like, how much bigger can we get? I think it’s about bringing people together…” I was hurling my version of insults at the screen (“You’re Blockbusters! You’re McDonalds! You’re Walmart!”
By the way, a maxim I put into play some years before that beauty pageant: “If you have to say the words ’she’s actually quite intelligent’, then she actually isn’t. Even if she was on the honor roll. Even if she got straight A’s. Even if she took AP English. Intelligence is self evident.”
The statistics in this film didn’t drown you, but were artfully reduced to a helpful and thoughtful stream instead of a barrage. The Black Gold web site (google it) likewise has a coffee calculator. Too bad they weren’t able to draw the connection though, with the Bear Stearns types. The same farks who put so many people out of their homes during this larceny we’re calling a “recession”, ensure that coffee growers in South America actually pay *us* 30cents/kilo, while they starve as we drink their coffee. Suck that down in your “frappuccino”.
OK, so now for the politics: I prefer fair trade coffee to direct trade coffee, where direct trade means the US coffee house runs its own farm. Quite simply, I don’t think the answer to having starved Ethiopians to death for so long is to just buy my coffee elsewhere. I think it’s to give them an honest price. Not a “fair” price, either. Ask 50% of the US what’s fair, and they say it’s whatever the market bears – in other words, whatever slightly more clever people can get it down to on Wall Street, and we’re back to slavery again. Yes, slavery. Just because the chains are invisible, doesn’t mean they aren’t twice as effective. What do you call people who generate luxury items for us while their own children go malnourished, uneducated, and sick? I call it slavery. I don’t like prettying thing up so I can feel good about my hair and my clothes, like Miss South Carolina.
I also am not very fond of this crap being pulled by coffee houses like one near me that says “Ours is 60% fair trade.” What the heck is that? That’s like saying ‘I’m 60% honest. 60% ethical. I don’t rob, starve, and bankrupt people 60% of the time.’ If AIG sold coffee, that’s what they’d say. Imagine, ‘Our securities are 60% secure.’ Thank God they’re not making condoms.
I’m not saying everything has to be “certified”. We’ve seen how well that works with the fake organics out there, like Horizon products. Enjoying your high priced lie, you Nordstroms-wearing yuppies? Buy Stremicks Heritage dairy. But I also think “fairly traded” can be a similar cover for inside deals. So you get these ethical nihilists who say we can’t know anything and nothing is pure, so do what you will. They’re like ethical mules (think about it). I think a smarter answer is that you can’t rely on labels and catch phrases by themselves. There’s absolutely no substitute for paying attention, knowing exactly where your food comes from, and caring about what it means. That’s the whole thing – yuppies are about labels and tags. Why do you think they buy shirts with other people’s names on them, and call that quality? If you’re no smarter than a billboard, or not willing to be, you’ve got nothing to say that isn’t a tautology. This is Old Navy. That’s Banana Republic. There’s nothing that replaces actually paying attention, thinking, and being mentally involved in the logical process that generates what you touch, take, and tell.
Oh, and one more designation “single origin”. Sure that’s important but, by itself, it’s like Starbucks’ “Fair Trade Blend” (as if a sprinkle of goodness turns a mountain of shite into pretty, lovely, fairy dust with smile sprinkles and rainbows). It’s like saying something was produced with ‘voluntary labor’. That’s very sweet, but it doesn’t mean they weren’t starving to death while they were laboring. We’ve all seen this nonsense with 3/4 of the “green energy” advertising. Think “happy cows”.
Anyway, the Black Gold forums have some interesting discussions (in terms of topics). A lot of the actual talk is bluster, obfuscation, and disinformation, but you get that in most forums.
We were talking last night about this, and I reaffirmed that we can’t fight everything, solve everything, but we’re not absolutists who then insist on that or nothing, and so crash and burn into a nihilistic, valueless, no fight at all attitude. The absolutists and nihilists are essentially the same in their initial assumption of all or nothing. I care about my coffee being organic, shade-grown, fairly traded, sustainable, high-quality (why buy swill just because it’s technically certified in one of these areas?). But the fact that we will never achieve all we want, does not excuse us from seeking it, or from doing anything. I look around my house and guess its contents and materials contain several thousand devastating and harmful substances that have wreaked untold suffering on the poor. And havoc upon the world, which is havoc upon the poor, because the poor are more symbiotically affected by the world than the rich who spend their wealth on insulating themselves from it. You and I don’t drink directly from a river, or bathe in it. We can afford to ship water, filter it, treat it, or drink something else. I will do something. It won’t be enough. But I will do something, and seek to do more, and constantly work on growing my response. I was born rich, among a people that consume most of the world’s resources, luxuriating in excess provided by the slavery of others. As our diplomats say, “We *will* open markets, by whatever means necessary.” We’ve observed those means, regardless of the party in power, and still observe them, whether its napalm on someone’s village or trade sanctions against their farm. I can’t go back and undo the context into which I was born. But I will refuse to let up pressure to change that context and, at a minimum, reduce my contribution to harming others and the world. As Our Lord said, “Whatever and whenever you have done to the poor, it was me as much as them.” Lord have mercy.
[Best article] I’ve read on this is from the owner of Intelligentsia coffee in Chicago.
