The zoot suit riots are a well known event, but not a lot of people actually know what they were about. They just know the phrase Zoot Suit riot. For many people, they know the song Zoot Suit Riot by Cherry Poppin Daddies and think they understand the event. The song is a reaction to the event, but it doesn't necessarily tell the whole story. The zoot suit riots was a discrepancy between white American sailors and marines and the Latino population in Southern California. The Latino youth of Southern California had taken a liking to the the flashy suits, similar to those of the Harlem populations.
These suits were made illegal because it was a time of war and there was a shortage of fabrics, and these suits took a lot of fabric to make, deeming them a waste of resources. The Latinos still wore them as a sign of rebellion, thinking it unfair to demand such a law. In response to that, the sailors and Marines took it upon themselves to go and beat up the Latinos deciding to wear them. Over the following days after the first attack, thousands of servicemen got involved. After the smoke had cleared, the government decreed that the acts were a response to racism and decided to investigate the beatings thoroughly.
The Latino used these events to their advantage by defending themselves from the attacks, rather than starting them. This made them the victim and resulted in the attacks be hate crimes. The Latinos got arrested when defending themselves, and the sailors did not. The newspapers reported that the Latinos were at fault and the truth didn't get out until much, much later. Media exposure became a large component to making the problem visible. A play called Zoot Suit was written which then inspired a movie by the same name. The play The Black Dhalia had main character that was a policeman involved in the riots as well. These methods were used to get the real story out there about what happened.
These riots were an act of racism against the Latinos. In 1943, there was still a large digression between whites and minorities. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt was quoted as saying
"The question goes deeper than just suits. It is a racial protest. I have been worried for a long time about the Mexican racial situation. It is a problem with roots going a long way back, and we do not always face these problems as we should."
An event like this reaching the President and his family meant that the issue had become a real problem. The attacks were an attack on Mexican people, not the zoot suits.
In the aftermath of Katrina, New Orleans was still torn apart, even 3 months later. While locals came back to salvage what they could from the disaster and try to start up living there again, there has been hesitance to rebuild the city. Some people question if New Orleans is worth saving and because of that they didn't start rebuilding it to it's former glory very hastily. It took over a year for the city to start promoting tourism and events in it. It's port was resurrected shortly after the storm, having been the US's largest port and most of the damage being water and flood damage, the port was easy to fix.
After locals started coming back and living in New Orleans, the jail system started to become a bit of a joke. Arresting and arraignment rates went through the roof and the local jail became the one of the largest jails in the country in terms of inmates passing through it to court dates or other prisons. It has been called the jail capital of the country. Over 60,000 people pass through these jails a year with an average stay of 20days. Many of these people were thrown into jail because of small charges, traffic violations and municipal crimes, or awaiting trial.
The injustice of this is apparent I believe. To get arrested for a parking ticket seems ridiculous. Jailers get paid by the prisoner and as such, they set out to bring as many people through the jail as possible. Due to the state the New Orleans was left in, locals do not have the resources to fight such a corrupt way of sentencing. The police take advantage of this and jail all those that they can.
This thought process really marginalizes the people it is affecting. People are treated like items and money rather than the humans that they are. They surrender to the idea that they are worthless and start an endless cycle of jail or arrests, but that's an entirely different blog topic. With the destruction that Katrina caused the jails, they have become incredibly inhospitable and dehumanize the prisoners being housed in them. Conditions like this turn law abiding citizens into criminals by convincing them they are an incapable of change.
The struggle for justice from this situation is hard fought. the guards that treat these prisoners this way are invisible because no one really can identify them as more than "A guard." Guards get away with these acts because there is no accountability for their actions. Through miscommunication the guards aren't "responsible" and not bothered by some protocols. With the history of how the prisoners were treated in New Orleans and how the government and police force treated people during the "evacuation" it's not surprising that these guards don't see repercussions.
When most people hear Woodstock, they think of three things, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Many people claim that the festival, deemed one of the greatest music festivals in the world, was simply that, just a music festival. However, there are many who argue that it was a stand for the counterculture of the late 60's that claimed they weren't just a bunch of "hippies" but rather a group that voiced the virtues of peace and love in our society. I classify this as a social movement, because the "hippies" were finally trying to express their morals and values to a society that was telling them to "cut your hair and get a real job."
In the mid 1960's, the hippie movement had really taken hold. This was a time coming out of the straight laced, American dream era where nuclear families, families that center around the mother and father of the family and any number of children, were encouraged and thought be the norm in society. Hippies were seen as a threat to this way of life, and prejudiced against. Their view that life is about peace and love was often chalked up to their recreational drug use, and belittled or ignored. The hippies were a group of people and a way of life, not just a habit.
Tired of being looked down on and treated poorly, they decided to take a stand. They decided to create an event that symbolized their beliefs, including: universal human rights, ethical business practices, free expression, and a loving care for the planet. They decided to make a music festival in the town of Bethel, New York. In order to ensure the success of this gathering, they gathered some of the biggest stars at the time including Jimi Hendrix, the Who, and Bob Dylan. They used this event as a tactic to serve as a rallying cry for hippies everywhere. Joni Mitchell, a woman that worked with various musical groups including, Bob Dylan, Herbie Hancock, and Neil Young was quoted as saying
"Woodstock was a spark of beauty" where half-a-million kids "saw that they were part of a greater organism."
This mentality united the hippies around the country and gave them a way to promote their way of life and express themselves freely in a world that was rapidly becoming more and more censored. They were challenging authority by embracing their values and living the way they felt they were meant to. For four days, they exuded the idea of free love and expression by doing what they felt with whoever they chose. This generally was not allowed in normal society and would end up getting them punished. In regards to racism, there really wasn't any at Woodstock. The morals that founded the hippie movement advocated equality for all, including race and sexual preference. This challenged the idea that society had set by saying that being homosexual or bisexual was taboo, and shunning those that were. Regardless of their association with drug use, the hippies were accepting of all types of people and thought that we are all in this together, so we might as well get along.
I knew about this movement because, since it's beginning in 1969, it has been an annul event. I was however unaware of it's origins and how it came to be. I didn't know that it was a reaction to society and their way of expressing themselves for at least a few days a year.
This movement was significant because it made being a hippie not as frowned upon. In addition, it gave the hippies a chance to get together and express their life views with others like them. It's legacy lives on in the annual festivals and still stands for the universal human rights, ethical business practices, and free expression it once started as. Now to end this blog like the first Woodstock ended, with Jimi playing the National Anthem.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is a group striving to create equality for workers in the production and processing of foods. They work closely with anti-slavery and poor working conditions. Most notably, they have recently negotiated deals with major corporations like Taco Bell and McDonalds to improve working conditions and wages for the farmers and pickers involved in the tomato chains in Florida. In addition, the CIW have been involved in uncovering slavery rings in Florida.
La Via Campesina, loosely translated to The Peasant Route, is a group of small farm producers banded together that advocates the right to "food sovereignty". Food sovereignty is the ability and right to grow food for yourself on your own land without letting the marketplace interfere with it.
Both groups are working for equality of farmers and the workers of them. They both disrupt the normal chain of command, but in their own separate ways.
The CIW wants to increase wages on the tomato farms in Florida by as little as 1 cent more a lb of tomatoes picked. They have gone about this by putting strains on the major fast food chains, claiming that because of their bulk buying power, they can control what prices the tomatoes are sold at. By pressuring these companies to pay just a little bit more, they are increasing the workers' work conditions on the farms and their wages. The wage increase of 1 cent being ask was for of a symbolic request. A penny doesn't seem like much, but to the workers, a 1cent per pound increase could almost double the worker's wages for a day. This increase in wage doubled as a way to appeal to the public. The public sees one penny as insignificant and questions why companies would not agree to such a small request. This puts the public on farmer's side and helped their boycott even more. They have done so by boycotting these fast food chains. In doing so, they have not only made the problem more visible to the country, but have also put the companies in a choke hold. This bad publicity resulted in poor business for the chains. They recently decided to work with the CIW and increase wages for the farm workers in Florida. Consumers helped this cause because by deciding to boycott with the CIW they created a large divide in the business the companies were receiving before, and therefore more incentive to work with the CIW rather than against them.
Via Campesina goes about their disruptions a bit differently. They have created strikes to get their points across to society. The most recent was about a week ago in Cancun. Farmers and protesters alike gathered to strike the debates going around about climate change and how to resolve it. This sounds like a good thing, but the resolve is to help the big companies sustain, thus edging out the smaller, home farms. The protests are non violent, and definitely disrupt the dealings happening. Consumers play a part in the industrialized farming that has occurred and pushed local farms aside, because by buying the large scale farms food for a slightly cheaper price they are damning the small farms that sell locally. This eventually leads to shutting down that farm, and causing the farmer to find new jobs, thus creating more competition for non-
farming jobs, creating a lot of jobless individuals. Consumers can help curb this by buying locally and continuing to support local farms.
When you're walking down the grocery store, you don't generally think of the journey that the product right in front of you has taken to get there. Consumers tend to think that the store generates the items that it sells. Take bananas for example, they aren't grown in the US much, only in Hawaii and in very small amounts. For the majority, bananas are grown in humid, tropic areas, mainly in South and Southeast Asia on plantations. Some plantations pick, package, and ship the bananas to markets firsthand, but for the majority the bananas are bought from third parties extremely cheap and distributed to other companies and markets for a huge profit. About half of the countries in the world even have the capability of growing bananas, while very few can grow them in large quantities, due to the necessary growing conditions. This forces globalization between Southern Asia and the countries that want bananas on the menu. Countries like Nicaragua and Ecuador rely on their banana exports to feed their economy. They need countries like North America and Canada to import bananas from them to turn profits. Bananas are a specialization crop, and can produce a large profit. So companies buy them from the countries that grow them at cheap prices, then sell them back to markets at an inflated price.
This is explained in Patel's hourglass model. It is explained that the smallest amount of people (the big companies) control the majority of the prices and fate of products. They go through a series of separate buyers, each turning a small profit until the large company that has the brand name, sells the banana for the largest profit.
Conditions in the banana plantations are very labor intensive with workers usually working around 10-12 hours a day in grueling heat for less than 1% of the final selling price of bananas for a days work. Adding to the list of poor work conditions, workers have no job security, often being hired on a 3-6 month only basis. In markets right now bananas cost on average 99 cents a pound. That doesn't seem a lot does it? Let's put it into perspective for you. Workers each get paid 75 cordoba (Nicaragua) in Nicaragua, which equates to to $3.27. That's for one day of work. The average wages for a worker are $5.50 a day, but only for 3-6 months of the year. Many companies don't own the plantations directly, but still run them. They do this so they aren't held accountable for the treatment of their workers and therefore can feign ignorance when questioned about it.
Understanding the origins of the banana is important when considering food justice. The majority of a country decided that a particular fruit is so important, that they would subject their fellow human beings to such haggard conditions to produce it for them. That really says a lot about people I think. Sure it's easy to say "Don't eat bananas, buy fair trade". But I'm not giving a blanket statement quite like that. Knowing of the conditions is important because as a consumer you are at least aware of the problems associated with it, that you can become a part of something to change the conditions.
Food security plays into this situation as well. Banana exporting countries rely on the security of being able to sell their bananas to keep their economy floating. Without the security of these exports, their economy would be in trouble and have a hard time keeping it together.
Marketing ploys have always seemed pretty transparent to me. When growing up, I would see a commercial for a product that portrayed it to be extremely fun and make everybody happy, when in reality, I knew it was still just another soda product. However, I was totally wrong. Supermarkets market towards very specific, very different consumer groups on an everyday occurrence. The sheer layout of the store is one big subliminal message that says "Buy me!"
As I walked into my local grocery store Dissmores the first thing I noticed was a display of snack type foods (easy to eat whenever you feel like it). I never stopped to think about that. The first thing I will see when walking into my college town store is a display of chips and dip. I believe this is a tactic used because stores know students are usually in a hurry and don't want to take the time to actually cook food, or that an easy snack like chips is great to munch on while they do their homework or play video games or just watch tv. However, this type of product location is just the start of my supermarket trip. As I continue on my trip, my girlfriend notices something. "Have you ever noticed that all of our aisles and display casings are decked out in Coug stuff?" she asks. Thinking about it, she was right, regular products were dressed up in a cougar display. Then I notice that I usually bought those kinds of products thinking I had some sense of comradery with my fellow Cougs. Literally, buying that product did not display my school spirit in any way. However, the crafty marketers even went as far as to make tortilla chips in the colors of crimson and grey. Continuing on, I see the energy drink display, promising hours of alertness for all nighters and whatnot. Sorry Monster, you're not selling me on that one this time. Finally, the granddaddy of them all. the beer section. Easily one of the largest sections of the store, even more than cereal and bread combined. So many different brands to choose from, all enticing by their "cheap" college prices. As I walk through this section, I find an assortment of ping pong balls and dixie cups. You all know what that means...
As well as having these drinking game supplies by the beer, the snacks are also right across the aisle, making for a one stop shopping experience to throw a party. At this point, college students are so easy to market to. One of the last things I notice through my trip to the store was the Red Bull display cases and magazines at each checkout. Spontaneous buys right as you're almost out of the store! Marketers are good at what they do.
That was just the marketing to college students too. Marketing to children is a little different. The first aisle in the store is candy and toys. A child's dreamland. Display cases are used for children too, the oreo cookies were displayed in a cardboard train, enticing the kids into wanting those particular cookies. Soda is at eye level, where kids are bound to see it and ask their parents to buy it for them. In the bread aisle is also a toy section. This is clever because everyone needs to buy bread, and there is a decent chance they bring their children along to shop with them, meaning those kids see the toys in the bread aisle, and hassle their parents for it. Across the aisle from the bread/toys is the cereal section. The colorful, fun cereals are found on the bottom, like Crunch Berries, Trix, and Cookie Crisp. The bland cereals like Kix, Cheerios, and Total are found at the top of the shelf because those don't appeal to children as much.
As I've said in previous blogs, choice is an illusion. We are given the products that the companies want us to buy as we walk in the door. These products are usually the first thing we see when choosing a brand to buy (That's a completely different story, see my Branding post if you want more on that). It plays into this supply and demand myth about consumers, because they only supply a certain percentage of the products out there, so our demand doesn't affect them when that is the only thing to buy around. When only a couple products are offered, we choose the best from those and go along our merry way.
This relationship between consumer and food chains gives all the power to the food chains. They regulate and control the price and variety of every food group we have in our society. They can raise prices as they see fit, and people will continue buying whatever they see because food is a necessity and we need it to survive. This means that a small portion of people (Those that own food products and sell them to supermarkets) control how we really eat, and can change those habits at any time they feel like it.
This video discusses the organization The Center for Consumer Freedom. It talks about how choice in food is becoming a luxury rather than the privilege it should be. Companies are starting to exercise their power in the placement of their product and who it would appeal to. After watching this video, I noticed that it corresponds with what we have talked about in class, how choice is decided by the bottleneck companies in Patel's hourglass model. These companies, who control the price by using their name brand as leverage, are able to buy cheap and sell it to consumers for a large profit. Due to this, they try to place their products in the supermarket in a way that appeals to targeted audience. Candy, cookies and sugary cereals are placed low on the shelves so that children shopping with their parents see them at eye level. Milk is placed at the back of the store so consumers must walk through the aisles to get to it, where they might find something to buy that wasn't on their shopping list.
Consumers don't really have a choice in what they buy anymore. It is an illusion that many don't see through until they are shown something like Patel's hourglass model. I, myself, wouldn't have believed such a concept without seeing what researchers on the subject had to say. For example, we talked about apples in class. There are many types of apples in the world, right? How many of those types do you ever see at the supermarket? Maybe 4 or 5. This is because the companies that buy and sell apples are only going to sell the apples that look enticing to the consumer. Apples that are shiny, well shaped, and big. As such, you are getting the choice between the apples that the company is allowing you to choose from. To reiterate, the company picks the small sample of apples they think will sell well, and then places them in the market under the illusion that you get to pick what apple you still eat, which in turn is really what the company decided you could eat.
Consumer freedom neglects internationalism because it is cheaper for a consumer to buy from a supermarket than to buy locally from a farmer's market. This affects the "choice" that consumers can make, because when they buy from a supermarket, they eliminate the variety they can get from a farmer's market and begin only picking from what the supermarket lets them. What consumers don't realize, is that by eliminating said choices, they are actually making it harder on themselves in the long run. Buying cheaper from corporations and not locally results in those local farmers losing their jobs and competing with others for the same amount of jobs offered in the city or town they live in. In doing so, they also make it so that there is no where else to turn when the corporate prices go up.
The issue of race, class and location play into this subject at the same time I think. In places that are deemed "food deserts" there are no supermarkets around, just fast food restaurants. These areas are generally found in lower income, urban, and dominantly African American communities. Because of this, the choice of food simply doesn't exist in these areas. Residents of a food desert are subject to poor eating habits and over chemically ridden food, because they aren't given any other option.
In 2005, the world saw the harsh, ugly truth about the social standing of individuals in America. Hurricane Katrina hit the eastern coast of North America, especially hard in Louisiana (most greatly New Orleans), Alabama, and Mississippi. In New Orleans, the city became flooded, destroying thousands and thousands of peoples' homes. The rescue and evacuation of the city took far longer than it should have and as a result, conditions went from terrible to post apocalyptic. Resources weren't assigned effectively and politicians seemed to take a "wait and see" approach because they held back on sending in help.
Residents of area (mostly African American) were outraged at the "attempts" to save them. Their tactics to change their situation were appealing to the local politicians. They asked why their city and country had forsaken them, and pleaded for the help that they needed. Many people were unable to fight back because the National Guard and local police were ordered to "maintain order" in the aftermath of the hurricane. When the people tried to help themselves and leave the city via bridge, they were herded back to the side they came from by police and guns. They weren't even allowed to walk out of their city! Without the proper evacuation and bus transport they should have received, they couldn't leave, even if they weren't asking for the help. After days of poor news coverage and inaccurate information, the Mayor Ray Nagin, had had enough. He had heard the pleas of his people, but didn't have the authority to call in the proper resources. His tactic was to appeal to the media with the passion of seeing his city torn and ripped to pieces. He challenged authority and changed his problem by stating his unsettling attitude about the government. He claimed that just because the National Guard and money going to the war weren't being utilized is why the situation was so dire. Immediately after, the President stopped in and they all figured out an evacuation plan, though not a great one, it was a plan more than they had.
Racial discrimination really came into play in this natural disaster. Stories of Caucasian people being picked up and rescued over African American residents.Though the government claimed their was no segregation in the rescuing, the fact that white residents were taken by bus to a hotel for shelter, and that black residents were taken (though less frequently) to the Superdome, an arena stadium filled with cots and sleeping bags. Though mostly African American, their were some white residents there, and the media focused on them because it "showed" how there was no segregation.
On top of that, race played into this issue in how people were perceived in this time of crisis. White people wading through the water were heroes, looking to rescue others, while black people were "looters" and shot at on sight. Katrina has shown the true colors of our society and how they see social justice and what that is. This movement (that I argue is a movement, because of the aftermath of the relief and how class standing and race played into how "urgent" it made these rescues) was a giant leap forward when discussing the topic of segregation around today. Though it proved that there still is, it also brought out into the open. It changed the problem from being invisible to very visible, and a hot topic of racial inequality.
I knew of this movement, but only vaguely. In fact, I only knew of the event. The media coverage was inaccurate and unreliable, and i did not know about the real problems that were underlying in the situation.
Like I said earlier, this situation was a big step for the topic of segregation and it's implications in our society today. Race IS a problem, and it DOES affect how people are treated. Katrina proved that.
In the article "8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance" the author talks about how the youth of America used to be the main driving factor behind many of the revolutions our history has experienced, and how the youth now is suppressed and won't fight back against anything. I somewhat agree with this ideology. The author makes many great points including the point about Student Loan Debt. Being in a somewhat large amount of debt myself, it is easy to see how the youth feels this can hold them back. I agree that it is ridiculous for me to be paying Social Security taxes from every paycheck from my job, but should I speak out about it, or try to resist that payment, I would lose my job and ultimately be unable to pay my debt off. With that thought looming over my head, I find myself just keeping quiet, and secretly resenting the whole situation. How can we fight for what is right when our livelihood is on the line?
Now here is where I veer a little bit off from agreeing with the author. Being an Elementary Education major, and planning to teach children in a school setting for the rest of my career, I have a hard time seeing how schooling pays homage to this subduing of resistance. The author, Bruce Levine, makes a solid point, were it not in a school context. He says that:
"The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions."
Out of context, out in this crazy work-a-day world we live in, that would sound like a terrible way to live , obeying orders, and not really learning anything but to follow rules. However, in a classroom setting, this is essential to learning. Imagine this: You are a teacher in a classroom full of 24 eight-year-olds, and you tell them "Hey kids, learn however you want to, I won't tell you what or how to learn and I certainly won't make you follow my rules in this classroom." Do you think the students will sit down and learn how to add and subtract fractions by themselves? Or learn how to read and know what contractions are without them being first taught about it? I have spent enough time with students to confidently say, no, they will not. In order to catch and gain their attention, they must be taught to listen to your rules, and behave in a fashion conducive to learning. This is not to say that some teachers abuse this power and make rules just to make the children comply to them, but I would have to disagree overall that school is actually suppressing America's youth.
Enough of the teacher rant, but that one hit a little close to home. Going on, Levine remarks that their is an increasing amount of children being prescribed drugs to settle them down from their so called "rambunctious actions." I agree with Levine here. I think many teachers/parents make snap decisions about young children when talking about ADD or ODD symptoms. By giving a student Ritalin who doesn't really need it, you are messing with their natural ability to focus on what's important and how they would normally react to information.
Levine goes on to talk about how technology is holding back today's youth. Television is one the main reasons America is suppressing it's youth Levine writes. American children "average 8 hours a day watching tv, playing video games, listening to iPods, and other various technologies. If you're stuck at home, glued to your tv, how can you possibly be out in the real world tackling real life problems? America is being shut down by our advancing technological world.
While reading this article, I thought of a few other things that suppress an American's ability to come together and fight against what they feel is unjust.
Parents holding their kids back. This sounds a little cheesy, but children don't generally want to do anything to anger their parents, or worse (and everyone knows what I'm talking about here) "disappoint" them. As such, if a person was inclined to go publicly protest against something they felt needed to be fought against, and their parents disproved of it, that person is less likely now to go out and do so, for fear of "dishonoring" their family and going against their wishes.
Another reason American Youths are being suppressed is this idea of waiting for someone to follow to fight the cause. There may be many who wish to change what they're seeing in today's world, but until they have their Rosa Parks to spark the fire, these potential revolutionists will sit back and wait. A movement needs an inspirational, charismatic leader to follow, but until it gets that, the movement will lie stagnant. As John Mayer says, "It's that we don't care, we just know that the fight ain't fair, so we keep on [waiting] on the world to change." I share this mentality, this sense of helplessness. I wish their was a way to fight back, especially against the SS problem, because I think it's completely unfair to take money out of our checks for it, even though we won't be able to use it ourselves, but there isn't anything just one person can do to change things the way they are.
People get so caught in their day-to-day that they are often not thinking about anything but getting through their day. Getting so comfortable and complacent with your life leads to a dangerous thing. "It is our routines and our comforts that allow us to ignore social issues. For some of us, it is our privilege to be ignorant," states musician Brett Dennen of his song "Ain't No Reason." In this song, he says "You could spend your whole life working for something, just to have it taken away." It's this mentality that scares people from responding to this world's injustices that we hear about everyday. Furthermore, he says "You don't need a 3 piece suit to argue the truth," which to me epitomizes Fox-Piven's claim that some of the biggest changes in our history were executed by regular people that came together to fight something they knew was wrong.
4. Alongside the debt that many young Americans are accruing during their schooling time, most people don't have the resources to fight against an injustice. Whether it's money, supplies, or even followers, you can't fight for anything without the appropriate resources. Again going back to Fox-Piven, in order to change something, people to come together and fight. There needs to something to unite behind, something to form the group of individuals into a cohesive, singular entity.
These all make me want to believe that by ignoring these factors that I know suppress myself as a youth in America, I can make a difference. However, the reality is that change in this world is unlikely with the way things are. To change, we need plenty of individuals willing to give up everything they know and love for their cause. Until then, I will keep on waiting on the world to change too.
Brands are everywhere we look these days. You wake up in the morning and head to the bathroom. The first thing you see looking at the counter is probably some hand soap, maybe shaving cream, maybe a razor, or maybe just a towel to dry your hands. Looking a little closer, you realize that everyone of these items has a brand name on it. Dial, Gilette, Wimasutta are to name just a few I noticed in my bathroom. I walk into the living room and open my fridge for some milk and cereal. General Mills bids me a good morning while Pepsi, Darigold, and PBR stare right at me. Starting off the day noticing all these brands in my apartment alone, I can't help but realize that brands exist everywhere in the real world. On the bus I see a Northface jacket, while we pass a McDonald's franchise. I take my backpack off to make room for more people on the crowded ride, and notice it is a SwissGear bag. After class, I have lunch at the CUB and eat Subway, while others around me have Panda Express and Villanova pizza. Getting home I sit down and play some video games, noticing the huge Xbox 360 logo that turns on after every game starts. Even while I write this blog, I can't help but notice the Gateway sprawled across the top of the computer.
After walking through a day when I am tasked to notice the brands all around (and even at that, I left a few out for the sake of saving a bit of reading for others), I realize how bombarded we are with brands, everyday of our lives. It comes to mind how completely unrealistic it would be to remove brands from our world. Not that they serve any kind of real purpose, but companies want people to be aware of them which results in putting their name on everything we use.
Brands are a great example of social justice because they "show" others what their perceived status is. If an individual has a brand name product, like iPod or Northface, then it may serve to show that person is part of a higher SES family. It shows the balance, or imbalance, of people and how they are born into their financial status. One student may work two jobs just to pay for rent and school while another is given a trust fund to pay for those things. Naturally, the student working hard to pay for college probably doesn't buy too many things that aren't needed to get by, whereas the student given the money to pay for school could squander their money on brand name products.
An important thing to note here, is that companies are not only selling their name, but also a way of life. For instance, Coca-Cola sells the idea of peace, love, and happiness in today's people, rather than being just a black fizzy drink. Walmart sells the prospect of being a family store, where everyone in the family can get what they are looking for in one stop. It impacts our views of self worth and identity by the products we wear. If someone is using an iPod, it shows they are "on the cutting edge of technology and hip to the new evolving world around them." People judge themselves, and others, based on the name brand products they keep around.
This notion of branding really affects the globalization of production because many companies outsource their work to other countries to save money, due to cheaper labor costs. This creates a whole new set of social justice issues. For the laborers in other countries, they are treated poorly and paid unfairly, and don't gain any of the profits they are making from the products they create. Without the workers cooperating and standing against the injustice together however, there will not be any change to come in this outsourcing market. Other laborers can even undercut their opponents, thus getting even more grossly used than their predecessors.
In conclusion, brands run our lives, whether we like to admit it or not. They determine our biases and our views of others, as well as ourselves. Wherever we look, we see brands advertising themselves, and enticing us to purchase their name (or way of life). We can't avoid the brands, so the best we can do is at least educate ourselves about their choke hold they have on us as consumers.
