On fire

The biggest challenge for me lately is what to do about this…this injustice I am reading about in John Perkins’s book!! (The Secret History of the American Empire, and he also wrote Confessions of an Economic Hit Man). I’m having a hard time dealing with the knowledge that there are sweatshops out there, cranking out cheap goods for Americans to consume…and the word “sweatshop” doesn’t begin to convey the deplorable labor conditions in these factories…even people getting killed for trying to organize! Even two Americans who went to Indonesia to investigate and expose these conditions were nearly killed by these so called “jackals” that Perkins talks about. These two Americans are currently completing a film about their experiences talking and living with the workers at a Nike factory there (see sweatthefilm.org and educatingforjustice.org). I have felt that I am on fire with this knowledge, a sort of dangerous, intense fire, whose energy can either destroy me or which, by the grace of God and my fellow Mennonites (hello Rainbow Peace and Justice group!) and other friends, I can somehow learn to channel to creative means for change. We (Americans) are the ones who buy these cheap goods, so we ultimately are the ones with the power to insist that people making them are treated fairly. I think letter writing can go a long way.

The conference minister of our regional Mennonite church organization (Dorothy Friesen) gave the sermon today, in our minister’s absence. She used the word “fire”, too, as a metaphor for how the world received Jesus’s message in his time, and how the Anabaptists insisted on a more direct and pure living of the gospel gone awry in the midst of the Reformation and were persecuted for it, and how the Russian Mennonites of last century fled Stalin’s persecution and came to Kansas. She extended it to the fire burning even in our times, and there is a treasure to be guarded, polished, shared and passed on in the midst of this fire. I can’t help but hope that somehow Mennonites can be a major player in shifting the way the world does things, to a more just and equitable way. Certainly I think this is part of Jesus's "treasure" we can guard and pass on. The Mennonite partnership in Ten Thousand Villages is a wonderful start, but oh, so much more can be done!! Education is key. I don't think most people are aware of how much global injustice and corruption permeates the major companies and brands that we Americans are so familiar with.

— Regina Troyer, rtroyer@kc.rr.com