Concrete Umbrella Records Blog

A battle is raging over the future of books in the digital age and the role that libraries will play. One case now before a U.S. federal court may, some say, grant a practical monopoly on recorded human knowledge to global Internet search giant Google. The complex case has attracted opposition from hundreds of individuals and groups from around the planet. Read More Listen to this Column [...]

World leaders are gathering in Pittsburgh for the G20 summit under the shadow of a police crackdown on protesters in the streets. Heavily-armed riot police are out in force all over the city, using tear gas, stun grenades, smoke canisters, and sound cannons, which direct extremely loud shrill sounds. This is believed to be the first time sound cannons have been publicly used in the United States. Democracy Now! producer Steve Martinez reports from the streets of Pittsburgh. Tune in on Monday for Steve’s full report [...]

It has now been eight years since 9/11. The United States is still engaged in Iraq and is escalating its wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan with no end in site. Speaking at the Bluestockings Bookstore on the Lower East Side in New York, Arun Gupta, a founding Editor of The Indypendent , takes a critical look at the failures and future of the once massive anti-war movement. [...]

Manuel Zelaya, the democratically elected president of Honduras, is back in his country after being deposed in a military coup June 28. Zelaya appeared there unexpectedly Monday morning, announcing his presence in Tegucigalpa, the capital, from within the Brazilian Embassy, where he has taken refuge. Hondurans immediately began flocking to the embassy to show their support. Zelaya’s bold move occurs during a critical week, with world leaders gathering for the annual United Nations General Assembly, followed by the G-20 meeting of leaders and finance ministers in Pittsburgh. The Obama administration may be forced, finally, to join world opinion in decisively opposing the coup. Read More [...]

On Sept. 14, 2001, the U.S. House of Representatives considered House Joint Resolution 64, “To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.” The wounds of 9/11 were raw, and the lust for vengeance seemed universal. The House vote was remarkable, relative to the extreme partisanship now in evidence in Congress, since 420 House members voted in favor of the resolution. More remarkable, though, was the one lone vote in opposition, cast by Barbara Lee of San Francisco. Lee opened her statement on the resolution, “I rise today with a heavy heart, one that is filled with sorrow for the families and loved ones who were killed and injured in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania.” Her emotions were palpable as she spoke from the House floor. Read More: Listen to this Column [...]

Democracy Now! recently interviewed Kevin Bales, founder of Free the Slaves. Journalist Christian Parenti wrote a response to that interview which we have posted below. Parenti is an investigative journalist who has covered issues of child labor in the chocolate industry in Côte d’Ivoire for Fortune magazine. See Democracy Now! interview Free The Truth: A response to Kevin Bales

by Christian Parenti On September 9, Kevin Bales, founder of Free The Slaves, was on Democracy Now making comments about his organization and the chocolate industry that were either willfully naïve or simply dishonest. Bales goes around fund raising, flogging his book and promoting himself on the basis that he has successfully reformed the chocolate industry and largely halted its use of child labor in West Africa. But no such thing has happened. In his DN interview Bales’ said that “instead of, say, attacking corporations and boycotting corporations,” his group was “bringing them into the mix and getting them to pay for the work on the ground.” He went on to claim: “[W]e have done this with the chocolate industry to what I think is enormous success. And about $50 million has been transferred out of chocolate company profits over the last seven years into work on the ground in West Africa to remove slavery and child labor from cocoa production. Now, that’s money that never would have come to human rights, never would have come to anti-slavery work, if we hadn’t brought [corporations] in at the beginning.” Bales was here referring to the “Harkin-Engel Protocol,” a toothless, voluntary, self-policing agreement created by the chocolate industry and signed on September 19, 2001. The Protocol named, after two America politicians, was the industry’s way of avoiding binding legislation that would’ve required labeling of chocolate as “child labor free.” Through the protocol Big Chocolate promised to eliminate the worst forms of child labor by 2005.  But the chocolate companies missed that deadline and the Protocol was extended to 2008.   The Protocol led to the creation of an NGO called the International Cocoa Initiative. Along with all the big chocolate and confectionery corporations, the ICI board includes Kevin Bales’ group Free The Slaves. The ICI claims to be working hard to prevent the use of child labor in West African cocoa production – but it is not. In 2007 as this Protocol was coming to fruition Fortune magazine sent photojournalist Jessica Dimmock and me to Côte d’Ivoire (where half the world’s Chocolate comes from) to investigate the situation. We found nothing like the happy situation described by Kevin Bales. We saw absolutely no evidence that any of the  $50 million that Kevin Bales brags about has hit the ground or is helping children in any way. We visited the ICI Representative in Côte d’Ivoire, Robale Kagohi. He was at that time the only ICI staff member in Ivory Coast. He offered me a beer at noon but could not point me in the direction of any real initiatives on the ground to help children who work in the cocoa industry – except one: a nongovernmental organization called the Movement for Education, Health, and Development, or Mesad, that provides accommodation and education to homeless street children in Abidjan. But when Jessica Dimmock and I visited, she for the second time, no children from the cocoa sector were staying at the shelter. The group’s director, Kouakou Kouadio Watson, told us the ICI had supported only eight underage former cocoa workers, who lived at the shelter for periods of between one and four months. The shelter was a squalid mess, smelling of urine, and contained only a few filthy children sleeping on the concrete floors.  You can see Jessica Dimmock’s photographs of the conditions at: http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/24/news/international/chocolate_bittersweet.fortune Far more damning than my reporting and Dimmock’s photographs are the findings of Tulane University’s Payson Center. As part of the Harkin-Engle Protocol the U.S. Department of Labor contracted with Tulane’s Payson Center to monitor the progress of the ICI’s efforts. Payson’s first report criticized the governments of Ivory Coast and Ghana for lack of transparency and said the industry’s slave /child labor free certification process “contains no standards.” The Tulane report criticizes the industry for not providing specifics to back up its assertions that it is helping. Last year Tulane released their latest, 400 page long, report on the impact of the protocol. It found that “the vast majority of children in the cocoa growing areas… do not report exposure to any intervention projects in support of children in the rural areas.”  This is what Kevin Bales calls, “enormous success.” Worse yet, Kevin Bales’ organization FTS defended the chocolate industry when the Department of Labor sought to list cocoa as a product tainted by slave and child labor. Free The Slaves urged the Department of Labor not to put cocoa on a list of tainted products but to instead support the model of the Protocol. Here is what Bales’ colleague Margaret Ellen Roggensack, policy director for Free The Slaves said about Big Chocolate and the Harkin Engel protocol: “there is only one industry that – as a whole industry – has taken the unprecedented step of taking responsibility for its supply chain. In 2001, the chocolate industry committed itself to the eradication of the worst forms of child labor from its production chain. As part of this path breaking commitment, the industry agreed to allocate significant resources to make cocoa growing communities thriving and viable… The process is working and progress has been made… No list can comprehend the scope of this challenge. Moreover, we know from our work that lasting change comes from community-based solutions, and that suggests a policy of engagement with all stakeholders, including business, whose in country roots are often deep and broad.” If Bales was serious about removing child labor from West African cocoa production he would have pressured the corporations – who are his buddies on the ICI board– to pay higher prices for cocoa. This would allow the parents of child laborers to send their kids to school. Only paying cocoa farmers a living wage, a decent wage, will keep their children out of the cocoa groves.  Only when corporations pay producers will there be change.  This goes for not only cocoa but also cotton rubber and tobacco. Conditions in Cote d’Ivoire are appalling and there is no evidence that the money Bales talks about exist, was spent or is helping children in any way. His behavior is utterly unconscionable.  And his beloved Protocol works with “enormous success” in only one regard – sometimes it serves as a fig leaf that shields from sight the unseemly ways in which the great chocolate companies exploit the children of cocoa farmers in West Africa. [...]

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the revolutionary community organizing group the Young Lords. The group called for self-determination for all Puerto Ricans, community control of institutions and land, freedom for all political prisoners and the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, Puerto Rico and other areas. The Young Lords would also play a pivotal role in spreading awareness of Puerto Rican culture and history, leaving a legacy still felt today. Sandra Maria Esteves is a “Puerto Rican-Dominican-Boriqueña- Quisqueyana-Taino-African-American,” born and raised in the Bronx. She is also one of the founders of the Nuyorican poetry movement. She performed her poem “Aguacero” at the 40th Anniversary celebration of the Young Lords. The event took place at the First Spanish Methodist Church in East Harlem, the same church on East 111th Street that the group took over in late 1969 to house free breakfast and clothing programs, health services, a daycare center, a liberation school and community dinners. Click here to download the PDF of “Aguacero” by Sandra Maria Esteves [...]

Glenn Beck was mad. He’s the right-wing talk radio host who has a television program on the Fox News Channel. Advertisers were fleeing his Fox program en masse after the civil rights group Color of Change mounted a campaign urging advertisers to boycott Beck, who labeled President Barack Obama a “racist.” As the campaign progressed, Beck began his attacks against Van Jones. Jones was appointed by Obama in March to be special adviser for green jobs. He co-founded Color of Change four years ago. After weeks of attacks from Beck, Jones resigned his position at the White House last Sunday. Read More Listen to this Column [...]