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Books By Dave
Zirin
Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and
Promise of Sports (2007)
What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the
United States (2005) /
Muhammad-Ali-Handbook
(2007)
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Super Bowl Slavery
By Dave Zirin
The Super Bowl is
perhaps the last cultural event that unites a majority
of Americans. Whether the game is a thriller or a
snooze, Super Bowl Sunday is a day to gather with
friends, rate the commercials, assess the halftime show
and wear pants with elastic waistlines.
On Feb. 3, though,
pay close attention to the halftime show. Tom Petty is
performing, which means that any wardrobe malfunction
could lead to the fall of Western civilization.
The show also stands to be a commercial bonanza for its
sponsor, Bridgestone/Firestone. The Fortune 500 company
has been crowned the "Official Tire Sponsor" of Super
Bowl XLII and Super Bowl XLIII. As John Gamauf, an
executive with the company, said, the sponsorship "is an
unprecedented opportunity to showcase the Bridgestone
brand to the world."
Peter Murray, the National Football League's senior vice
president of partnership marketing and sales, chimed in:
"By teaming with a global leader like Bridgestone, we
can make America's favorite event even more powerful."
But NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell might want to be more
careful about who the league cozies up to, especially
when the partner is known in some parts of the globe not
for high-velocity tires but for highly exploitative
labor practices.
The rubber business has historically been horrific for
African workers, known as tappers, who collect sap from
rubber trees on plantations south of the Sahara. The
labor practices of the Firestone Natural Rubber Co., a
subsidiary of Bridgestone/Firestone, in Liberia seem in
keeping with this history.
For 81 years, the
company has operated a plantation in Harbel, a company
town in the truest sense. Its very name comes from
founder Harvey Firestone and his wife, Idabelle. The
town received its name after Firestone signed a 99-year
lease with the Liberian government in 1926 that gave his
company access to 1 million acres of land on which
rubber trees grow. The sap—known as latex—collected on
the plantation is shipped to the Bridgestone/Firestone
plant in Nashville, where it is used to make tires,
among other goods.
According to a 2005
lawsuit filed by the International Labor Rights Fund, a
Washington-based advocacy organization,
Bridgestone/Firestone allegedly overworks, underpays and
exposes its 4,000 Liberian employees to hazardous
chemicals and pesticides. Its subsidiary also oversees
what has been called de facto slavery.
Dan Adomitis, president of Firestone Natural Rubber Co.,
said that "each tapper will [draw sap from] about 650
trees a day, where they spend perhaps a couple of
minutes at each tree."
That translates into a 21-hour day. If employees don't
make that quota, their daily wage of $3.19 is cut in
half. To avoid this, workers call on their wives and
children to help them hit the number—and they go unpaid.
In addition to the
lawsuit, which is pending in Indiana,
Bridgestone/Firestone has drawn fire from other
quarters. The Liberian Environmental Protection Agency
has cited the company's subsidiary for dumping toxic
waste in Harbel's Farmington River, and in early 2007,
the corporate parent won the "Public Eye Global Award"
for irresponsible corporate behavior because of its
record on child labor and the environment. The "award"
ceremony is held concurrently with the World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Bridgestone/Firestone says that the plantation jobs pay
well by Liberian standards and that they come with an
array of essential social services.
Liberian workers may disagree, but in a country with 80%
unemployment, they can't just walk off the plantation
and find another job. "In our country, you are young,
then you get married, then you have children and then
you die," Junior Tokpah, a tapper, was quoted as saying
in a McClatchy News Service story published at the end
of 2006. "There are no other prospects. That's why I
can't complain about this work too much."
In July, the Firestone workers on the plantation took a
different tack to protest their working conditions: They
held an election and voted out the leaders of the
longtime company-controlled union.
But the ousted company-appointed officials challenged
the results in court, and Firestone refused to bargain
with the new elected union leadership. In December,
workers walked off their jobs, demanding that the
company recognize their union.
Then later that
month, the Liberian Supreme Court ruled that the July
elections were legitimate and that Firestone would have
to negotiate with the union. Austin Nantee, the newly
elected president of the Firestone Agriculture Workers'
Union of Liberia, said workers "are looking forward to
carving out a new collective bargaining agreement with
the company."
But Firestone has
not definitively accepted the election outcome and still
has not negotiated in good faith with the newly elected
union leadership.
So the question remains: Should the NFL be offering an
international platform to a company accused of using
child labor and refusing to bargain with a union whose
leadership was democratically elected?
Goodell has been quick to levy tough suspensions and
stiff fines on players who run up against the law off
the playing field. He should be as vigilant in picking
sponsors for his league's marquee game.
Dave Zirin is the author of the new book "Welcome to the
Terrordome" with an intro by Chuck D (Haymarket). You
can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by
emailing
dave@edgeofsports.com This e-mail address is being
protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to
view it Contact him at
edgeofsports@gmail.com
Source:
Black Agenda Report / This article originally appeared in
the
Los Angeles Times.
posted 23 January 2008
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The Persistence of the Color Line
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
By Randall Kennedy
Among the best things about
The Persistence of the Color Line
is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the
positions about Mr. Obama staked out by
black commentators on the left and
right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel
West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley.
He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr.
Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism
regarding whether blacks should back
Obama” . . .
The
finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it
could nearly be the basis for a book of
its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father:
Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”
Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s
former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with
feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children
through Princeton but who “never forgave
American society for its racist
mistreatment of him and those whom he
most loved.” His father distrusted
the police, who had frequently called
him “boy,” and rejected patriotism. Mr.
Kennedy’s father “relished Muhammad
Ali’s quip that the Vietcong had never
called him ‘nigger.’ ” The author places
his father, and Mr. Wright, in
sympathetic historical light. |
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The Last Holiday: A Memoir
By Gil Scott Heron
Shortly after we republished The Vulture and The Nigger Factory, Gil started to tell me about The Last Holiday, an account he was writing of a multi-city tour that he ended up doing with Stevie Wonder in late 1980 and early 1981. Originally Bob Marley was meant to be playing the tour that Stevie Wonder had conceived as a way of trying to force legislation to make Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. At the time, Marley was dying of cancer, so Gil was asked to do the first six dates. He ended up doing all 41. And Dr King's birthday ended up becoming a national holiday ("The Last Holiday because America can't afford to have another national holiday"), but Gil always felt that Stevie never got the recognition he deserved and that his story needed to be told. The first chapters of this book were given to me in New York when Gil was living in the Chelsea Hotel. Among the pages was a chapter called Deadline that recounts the night they played Oakland, California, 8 December; it was also the night that John Lennon was murdered. Gil uses Lennon's violent end as a brilliant parallel to Dr King's assassination and as a biting commentary on the constraints that sometimes lead to newspapers getting things wrong. —Jamie Byng, Guardian / Gil_reads_"Deadline" (audio) / Gil Scott-Heron
& His Music Gil Scott
Heron Blue Collar
Remember Gil Scott- Heron |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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