This is a shameless advertisement. I want you to order some coffee from my family's shop. It's a small coffee shop and roastery that sells only fairly traded beans (Fair Trade and other certifications). You can read something my Dad wrote below the fold on their commitment to fairly traded beans, along with more about why my family are my heros. Here's a link where you can find small batch, artisan roasted, fairly traded coffee that you can order online and have delivered anywhere (if you're near Crystal Lake IL, stop in the shop too!):
(Click "sign in" then register and get occasional emails with updates, like when my brothers roast Nepal Himalayan: one of the world's rarest coffees that comes packed out of Nepal and delivers a smooth, round taste with balanced body and acidity.)
My Dad was a hippy. He worked at the student paper at the University of Minnesota in the early 70s, and has told me stories about the cops smashing his camera when he took pics of them beating students at police riots.
My Dad is a conservative. I still can't quite get him to agree on single payer health care. We go round and round on politics. I think that maybe when a man gets a family, he spends more time worrying about his family than about social justice in general: tax me less and I'll take care of my own. Don't get me wrong. My Dad's not easily fooled. He's a smart man who understands science and economics. I was grinning ear to ear when he told me that he had told the Republicans he would not give them money until they had a sane environmental policy.
My Mom is a Catholic. She's a deeply devoted person. We'll never see eye to eye on religion. She just hopes that when I have kids I'll take them to Unitarian services, at least. I think it's important too, and the lessons I learned in religion classes as a kid, like the beattitudes, inform my values even while I have a real hard time with religious dogma.
My Mom believes in people. She believes that if they do the right thing with their business that they will win loyal customers and those customers will spread the word. That is how God works, she tells me.
Here is what my Dad wrote about why our family's shop is completely committed to fairly traded beans, not just partially committed like some of the popular national chains.
Have you read about the "death train?" Its a freight that runs from Central America through Mexico toward the U.S. border. That's where the Minutemen stand guard in the dessert night in their lawn chairs.
Gaining some insight to this migration and the horrors we do not see because they occur beyond our border is reason for a shift in mind and a question about when a commitment is firmly held or mere PR cover.
It's called the death train for one simple reason. That's what it sows along its lines as people from broken communities grasp tenuously to ladders, vents ... anything they can. In Nicaragua, volunteers staff a medical clinic. Amputees, people who have fallen from the train, make up a large number of the patients. Others are victims of gang violence. Some get close to our borders and then hike north.
Many of these people are leaving the still stressed coffee communities for our land of milk and honey. (Antony Wild describes this more deeply in his recent book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393060713/sr=8-15/qid=1150667801/ref=sr_1_15/002-8746012-3220049?%5Fencoding=UTF8">Coffee: A Dark History</a>.)
You may know that the favorite drink of many people is coffee. You may not know much about the tightly twisted link between the global slave trade and coffee.
Paul Katzseff, who knows me only be an e-mail he once responded to, has pointed out that slave conditions still exist in some coffee plantations. In many others the labor conditions are abysmal.
This isn't meant to disturb you or convince you to boycott coffee. My wife and I own a coffee shop. We only hope to make a small contribution to changing this business. The Katzseff's are true change agents on a global scale. Others, like us, follow.
So, here's the point. Recently the media reported that Wal-Mart will be offering Fair Trade coffee. That's fine, particularly if this reflects a sea change in Wal-Mart's corporate philosophy. Perhaps, they will start paying people better ... treating women equally ... not selling sweatshop clothing.
You see, to us, values are firm and not selective. You make a commitment. You keep a commitment. Or, not. Selling some Fair Trade coffee isn't a commitment weighed against all the billions of dollars in other goods Wal-Mart sells under its Happy Face.
Many coffee shops have made the commitment to only sustainable, socially caring and environmentally aware coffee. Not less than 5%. Not 20%. Not 50%. All of it.
You have choices to examine what you buy and where it came from and how it was made and who it was made by and under what conditions they worked.
So, don't give up coffee. Much of the Fair Trade coffee goes unsold because the big sellers don't sense "demand" from consumers. Can you take a small step tomorrow and ask the barista at your favorite coffee shop to use coffee that is somehow certified so that the small farmers who hand pick the coffee cherries can earn a dignified living and keep their children off of the death train?
My brothers manage the shop. If you're ever in Chicago's Northwest suburbs you can come in and taste the difference between a latte made by a skilled barista vs one out of the kind of vending machine the national chains are using. If you're a coffee drinker, you can order here (remember to register) and help us get over the hump to build a profitable business based on our family's values (and drink some of the best tasting coffee available).
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