Origin

I've been thinking and writing lately about our relationship to the clothing we wear and where the pieces come from. It might have been the media attention on the fires and deaths in Bangladesh clothing factories last year, or it might be something else.

I've begun to wonder how the western world has continually exported jobs that can be done faster, cheaper and far less safe beyond our borders. Slavery seems a harsh term to use, but as modern-day human trafficking and workers rights projects have used it, including this startling and upsetting quiz on how many modern-day slaves one owns, slaves might be the best term to use for those who make our food, clothing, and allow us to live the way we do, wherever we do.

A few months ago, I read the 2000 year-old work 'Slaves' by Seneca. Two passages remained with me, "Whenever the thought of your wide power over your slave strikes you, be struck too, by the thought of your master's equally wide power over you," and "Remember, if you please, that the man you call slave sprang from the same seed, enjoys the same daylight, breathes like you, lives like you, dies like you. You can just as easily conceive him a free man as he can conceive you a slave."

Lastly, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, one of my favorite quotes from Robert F. Kennedy's 1966 speech in South Africa,

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle, or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation, those who seek to enter the moral conflict, will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe. For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success, so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us."