Humanity

The human race is walking
toward the
next big thing,
designer wares,
being techno savvy,
filling our wastebaskets
with waste,
wasted time,
wasted means,
wasted energy,
focusing on the self
rather than
the whole.
Taking no thought of who
we might be
killing (murderer!),
homicidal tendency
through consumption,
killing humanity.
Humanity, compassion,
the human family...
what a joke.

I grieve for
the race
called human.


I have been thinking so much lately of the state the world is in right now, specifically how we behave as the human family. I am taking a sociology class that focuses on social problems. I have become aware of so many devastating situations throughout the world, and I've been struggling because I feel helpless. I feel that no matter what, I cannot make a difference on my own. For example, I have a t-shirt from Old Navy that was made in El Salvador. I looked up the working conditions of women sewing jackets and shirts for The North Face and Eddie Bauer (I couldn't find Old Navy at the time). These women make about 58 cents an hour, or, for each coat they finish that retails for $165 they make about 94 cents (per jacket, not per hour). This is less than one-half of one percent of the retail price! After taxes are taken out they take home about 78 cents. These women work in terrible, horrific conditions... they are sexually harrased by supervisors, screamed at and told how worthless they are, threatened to lose their jobs if they are not productive (the work could be shipped to Bangladesh for even less... about 33 cents an hour). They work in a 100 degree room without air conditioning and work mandatory overtime they are not always compensated for. How difficult would it be to pay them at least enough to put them in poverty, not abject poverty, and to treat them like human beings? I have been so sickened by this. If companies insist on taking work from the U.S., they should at least treat the people better.
I don't want to be helpless. I don't want to be ignorant any longer. I want to stand for human rights. Doesn't most change start because one person felt it should happen? Maybe I can make a difference...