I am searching for my place in all this. I know now that militancy is not my thing. Also, its too dreary to dwell on how bad someone or a group of people are (for me, anyway). Plus there is always room for error, so I rather judge favorably. But at the same time I don't want to be complacent and let the world go nuts with rampant greed messing people's lives.
Where is the middle ground? How can I live positively and strongly in the positive?
Are the choices only the "field Negro" or the "house Negro"? I don't think so. I think these ideas are nice, but I must -even without an already invented word for it- force my mind to find a different route. What about just being firm, knowledgeable, and assertive?? Firm =knowing what I want; what is good for me. Knowledgeable =understanding where my money is going, what I am ingesting, what could potentially happen. Assertive =insistance on the previous two. Is there a word for that?
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I like the idea of hekhshers. In Judaism, we eat kosher food. To insure that a certain food is kosher, we check the little label for a sign that a rabbi (mashgiakh) had supervised, inspected or did whatever was necessary to make it kosher.
Its those teeny tiny labels you'll find on products such as a "K" in a circle, a "U" in a circle (sometimes with a capital D on the side). With a hekhsher, I know if a product has dairy in it, if it has meat in it, if it has leavening in it, (in Israel, if it was tithed), what company is doing the inspection.
Well, I'm musing and wondering. With all these boycotts BW are wont to do against all the products that are problematic, I wonder if a more pro-active approach would be easier. A hekhsher! A label! Something stating that product x was made w/o the exploitation of [insert your current cause]. It could even be just listed on a webpage not necessarily on the product. Maybe such a thing already exist.
I'm assuming here that there are products that are still made w/o exploitation. Am I wrong? lol. See?! That's the problem with activism for me. Then I begin to see everything with slanted eyes. Everything becomes distrustful. *sigh*
Just musing for fun.
5 comments:
Miriam,
Labelling that is a great idea.
I haven't yet invited peole to the site but will start this weeken. We need a black list for BW. You are not complacent at all. You have great ideas and can do so much from your own home.
Ooh, labeling! that would be awesome! I just try to buy from our co-ops and farmers markets, where I know that the stuff is produced by small local farms that don't use gmo's or pesticides. We live in an area where people are pretty aware and we don't use our money to support those "evil" companies if we can help it.
We're starting our own garden too! we're going to have lots and lots of veggies this summer, I can't wait!
Grata -I wont be around for the weekend since its gonna be Passover weekend. But I look forward to see everybody later!
Tania- I am totally phyched! We also want to have a small garden. But it will be a while.
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It's not a bad idea to have something like that. I still like to buy "Proud Lady" labeled products because then I know it's a hair product produced by a black owned business. Sadly though, those are few and far between these days.
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