Category Archives: Right living

Ethical shopping, Food, Labor unions, Right living, Sustainable living

New ethical certification for kosher food

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Religious life and ethical consumption are two of my interests. Non-Jews might miss growing story in the Jewish and secular press, so I want to mention Hekhsher Tzedek, a new kosher certification that includes the ethics of production in parallel with religious regulation. (For news about it, it’s easier to follow Rabbi Morris Allen’s blog.)

A scandal concerning Agriprocessors, the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking facility, concerning animal welfare and labor standards (including child labor) made The New York Times (“Inquiry Finds Under-Age Workers at Meat Plant“) and the wires and gave Hekhsher Tzedek a particular timeliness. (PETA and the UFCW have their own exposé sites.)

I welcome the new certification, but it is one of dozens (many local) and is dwarfed by the Circle U hechsher of the Orthodox Union, which apparently doesn’t share the expanded set of concerns. (Also Hekhsher Tzedek is Conservative; I can only imagine the intra-Jewish controversies and politics at play so I’ll comment no further.)

So what’s the import for non-Jews? There are relatively few standards — fair trade certifications, vegetarian certifications and union labels among them — by which one can measure whether something comes to market in a way the buyer thinks is ethical. Plus, some ethical standards may clash: say, local production against opportunity for persons in a developing country, or synthetic fabrics that have recycled content but which itself cannot be further recycled. Lacking standards, it easy to give up the hope of consuming ethically, or worse, be lured into thinking you’re doing your part by something that has the affect of an ethical decision, but is substantially no different than an “unethical” product. Certain brands of bottled water come to mind. I’ve come to the point where I’m more suspicious of a product if it claims to be green than if it doesn’t.

Until more certifications come into being, we can celebrate and support the ones we have. If Hekhsher Tzedek can tell me a lettuce is free of insects (a kosher issue) and came from a farm with fair labor practices, I’ll respect its authority and buy accordingly. And we can take a stronger interest in the activities of those who produce the goods we use, and share the news: the considered opinion of a thoughtful and just person may be the greatest certification of all.

Cooperation, Right living, Social networking

Kiva milestone!

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Last May, I loaned four women $25 each through Kiva, a peer-to-peer (through intermediaries) microlending nonprofit. Though batched loans — in the hundreds of dollars; none huge by Western standards — these entrepreneurs were able to develop their businesses, improving their own lot and their communities.

In the meantime, Oprah and other celebs found out about Kiva and made it huge. Indeed, at points there were more lenders than borrowers. But I cared more about the little messages noting the borrowers were repaying their loans, suggesting at the very least they weren’t faltering. (More forthright status updates weren’t part of the bargain.)

The borrowers repaid their loans at different rates, releasing my capitol for reinvestment, which I did. (Or I could have withdrawn it.)

The milestone, reached over the weekend, is the last of my four original borrowers retired her loan. So the next group are working on their businesses and I don’t see a reason — apart from massive defaults — this cannot continue.

In the future, it is conceivable persons in the developing world could themselves be lenders to others in distant countries. And of course, the current work only touches a tiny sliver of the people who could benefit from peer-to-peer help.

But I think it terribly encouraging what a relatively decentralized group of people can do for one another. A lesson, perhaps above all others, about what is possible today.

Holidays, Right living, Saints

St. Nicholas was good

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Ms. Theologian noted a story about an Oregon Washington man who put up a Santa crucifix in his yard, to protest the commercialization of Christmas. Great idea.

But rather than getting het up about Jesus getting left out, I feel for St. Nicholas, who has become a shill for shopping and saturated fat. The real man, a Christian bishop, is someone to celebrate and emulate. There was an op-ed in the New York Times on Christmas Day, from which comes:

And what of the throwing of the bags of gold down the chimney, where they landed in the stockings and little shoes that had been hung up to dry by the fireplace? Charming though it sounds, it reflected the deplorable custom, still prevalent in late Roman society when the Byzantine church was struggling to establish the supremacy of its values, of selling surplus daughters into bondage. This was a euphemism for sexual slavery — a trade that still blights our world.

Little wonder St. Nicholas is the patron of brides: a cloaked reference to women who escaped sex slavery. And there are other stories like this.

If you missed it, go back and read “St. Nick in the Big City” by John Anthony McGuckin.

I also wrote about St. Nicholas in 2005 and 2006.

Core ideas, Right living

Glossary: subsidiarity

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Back about a year ago when I was without a Day Job, I twice interviewed with a Catholic political lobby; there I learned the concept of subsidiarity.

I’ll recycle the current Wikipedia article‘s content, since it wraps up the idea pretty well.

the principle which states that matters ought to be handled by the smallest (or, the lowest) competent authority.
. . .

The principle of subsidiarity holds that government should undertake only those initiatives which exceed the capacity of individuals or private groups acting independently. The principle is based upon the autonomy and dignity of the human individual, and holds that all other forms of society, from the family to the state and the international order, should be in the service of the human person.
. . .
The principle of subsidiarity was developed in the encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891 by Pope Leo XIII, as an attempt to articulate a middle course between the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism on the one hand and the various forms of communism, which subordinate the individual to the state, on the other.

I think this is a missing piece in current Unitarian Universalist discussions about community, against which a subtle individualist rebuff seems to be brewing, most clearly (I think) in traditional Humanist circles. Echoes, too, in the debate about funding the theological schools. And the last thing we need is a proxy war in place of an open decision-making process about the role of central authority. Recent discussion about covenant and polity has become too smoky to be useful, especially by laypersons who might have contributions from other disciplines.

I bring it up because there’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times about Malawi’s resistance to external neo-liberal policies respecting fertilizer subsidies to the countries small farmers. Read the story to the end for an example of the good that can come when the central Malawian government devolves its own authority to local communities.

“Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts” (by Celia W. Dugger, December 2, 2007)

With this post, I open the category Core ideas.

Art and culture, Right living

Ending blasphemy

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The case of Gillian Gibbons — the “Sudan teddy bear teacher” — makes me sick, but I’m a little disturbed how the law is given a pass in the editorial pages, focusing instead on Gibbons’s misunderstanding, naiveity or somesuch.

I don’t have much hope in the Sudanese legal system, it being a failed state. But perhaps this is the kind of episode that can lead to the repeal of the Britain’s blasphemy law. Unitarian blogger Stephen Lingwood (Reignite) wrote about this last year.

Gay, Right living, Sustainable living

Some links for October 20

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  • Stentor Danielson picks up on two kinds of churchly homophobia and I suspect the quieter one he mentions is the more toxic. (Debitage).
  • Lifehacker reminds us that the five-year window “Do Not Call” registry so many of us used will be re-opening next year. You can reset the clock — and enjoy solicitation-free evenings — by re-registering here. Took me two minutes. Less, perhaps.
  • Jeanne at Social Class & Quakers describes what working-class behaviors she’s found Friends hold in low esteem. She mentions Unitarians as fellow travelers, but doesn’t examine (here anyway) what behaviors are principled and which are class markers. (It makes a difference to me.)
Food, Right living, Sustainable living

Help please: reasonable fair-trade tea

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I am a tea drinker in a nation of coffee drinkers, and I need your help to clean up my act.

I am on the hunt for a decent supplier of loose black tea — fairly traded and preferably organic — but not stupefyingly expensive. While fair-trade coffee can be had from Equal Exchange and other vendors for about the same (or less) as premium “unfair” coffee, tea seems to belong to another economy, in part because it is sold in tiny amounts. 20 bags? (I don’t drink bagged tea anyway.) 100 grams/3.5 ounces? Who are we kidding? I plow through (at least) a 450 gram box each month.

I’m willing to pay, say, three times as much for a high-quality product than the multinational-corporation-supplied leaf I get now. That would be about $9-$12 a pound/450 grams. But I’m seeing prices at ten times my current cost, before shipping. I have my limits, and that’s why I’m appealing to you.

As you can imagine, UK shoppers have better options, but I feel more than a little silly ordering tea from the UK. Plus the pound is very high right now. Canada perhaps? But I would rather purchase something from someone closer to home.

Do you have any suggestions? (Drinking mate is not an option.)

Pastoral care, Political life, Right living

My only Sen. Craig post

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I won’t get into the partisan piece of the Larry Craig furor: enough has been said there for my contribution to be any use.

  1. I am a bit worried that this will be an important frame for discussing LGBT civil rights legislation in the near-term.
  2. I think an opportunity for modeling compassion, understanding, temperance or anything but gotcha politics has been lost.

I’ll refer you to a post today by Mark Simpson — he who coined the word metrosexual –  whose blog I enjoy very much. He writes, in part

Judging by the rush to ‘out’ Craig as a ‘hypocritical closeted gay’ by hordes of callous bloggers and columnists, it seems that liberals are equipped with even better and stricter sex-policing instincts than Minnesota’s Finest. Liberals don’t just finger your collar, they finger your soul – divine your innermost desires, make identifications on your behalf and work out what your own vested interests are for you. Even though they’ve never met you or even shared a bathroom with you.

I think he’s more right about more liberals than not. Read his whole article and judge for yourself.

Right living, Sustainable living, Technology

The ethical laptop

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Ms. Theologian (Surviving the Workday) and I will be team blogging over the next little while about getting an ethical laptop. We each have our own needs — size, operating system — and comfort points, but I think we’re agreed that it should be ethically produced. In particular — correct me if I’m misrepresenting — she wants one with no Chinese manufactured parts, while I want one with few or no parts made in countries with abusive labor laws or environmental controls. I might have concerns about the US retailer — again, fair with a bias towards green or small business — she doesn’t.

Perhaps we can shake out some thinking points and resources, rather than say “buy this perfect model.”

Why laptops? Because they’re

  • becoming very, very common
  • may be a source of toxins in their manufacture and disposal
  • are usually sourced from places that have dubious work conditions
  • expensive

This last point is important. We can talk about fair-trade chocolate (and should) but the economic heft behind choosing an ethically-sourced and green(er) laptop — or desktop computer, cell phone, car or house — makes more of an impact than putting constant effort into questioning smaller purchases.

Or to flip the maxim, take care of the dollars then the pennies later. (I’d like to build a buying guide for lower priced ethical shopping — with rationales and alternatives — perhaps later.)

Lastly, Michelle Murrain and I had a similar conversation about used laptops, which might interest you and which I’ll surely reference. Start here to read that.

Blog administration, Christian Church, Right living, Sustainable living, Unitarian Universalist family matters

Top five articles for May

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Few surprises that these were the most read articles in May for Boy in the Bands.

  1. “Where is Meadville Lombard going?” Like other–perhaps all–Unitarian Universalist ministers, I got an email from the Rev. Lee Barker, the president of Meadville Lombard Theological School . . . .
  2. “Buying US-made clothing, so far“. Ms. Theologian is talking about not buying clothes from China. I’ve written at length about my hunt for US-made, union-made, non-sweatshop-made clothing.
  3. “Why Starr King?”. This may be my Southern and East Coast associations showing, in my twenty-plus years of being a Unitarian Universalist, Starr King School for the Ministry has always been “that school.”
  4. “Banning someone on WordPress” Though I have had pointed disagreements with several persons on this blog, I have only banned one person from commenting and participating . . . .
  5. “Has the Episcopal Church jumped the shark?” Gutter newspaper and television has made some hay about Jim McGreevey . . . .

The top three outstripped the others and all other posts.