Here's an interesting article on child laborers in India who were recently 'freed', but simply do not want to go home. I know that we should be focusing on the greater issues -- that is, the economic/social reasons that children overseas are forced to work at a very young age -- but the fact is that they won't be solved for a very long long time (if ever in our lifetimes).
So in the meantime, there are families who completely rely on their children working for them (yes, 10 hours a day for shitty wages) to survive.
Semi-rhetorical questions:
What do we do about this? Do we stop buying the coffee that these kids are picking, so their employers go out of business and their families starve to death?
Do we stop buying imported fabric/clothing because small hands spent their formative years as sole breadwinner beading it?
I think (and this is me exaggerating a bit) that most Americans view child labor as kids being made to work in mills and sweatshops instead of staying home and playing Playstation and getting an education. Like their lives at home would be so much better if only someone blew up Starbucks.
In reality, it seems that many would stay home and watch their siblings die from lack of medicine and food, see their parent(s) struggle to find work that is not there for them and would have no school to attend because there simply is none to go to.
I was thinking, when reading this newsbit, that a problem I have with obie-noxious outspoken protesting go-against-the-grainers is that they have many, many complaints against... well, sometimes everything... but no solutions.
If you hate Bush and his policies - then who SHOULD we have elected and how SHOULD things be in Iraq and the economy? If you despise the practice of eating meat and using animal products, then how and when are you going to make substantial non-Pamela-Anderson-posing efforts to re-educate the majority of the world on alternate diets and product consumption... not to mention organizing the effort to re-stock the world's pantries? If you are against abortion, then how does our society deal with additional children on welfare and in foster homes?
What is the plan and when will we stop protesting and start doing? I've been so inactive in this world for so long. Time to start finding parts of the answers myself and continue blocking out the whiners. I realize that there are plenty of people already doing that, but why do I always have to hear from the ones that aren't?
