Black Looks

A second article in the Guardian [2009] by Paul Collier [Clinton's economic policy bag man] is even worse as he advocates Haiti seize the ‘window of opportunity’ by mirroring Bangladesh’s garment industry. Haiti should be running as far away as possible from the Bangladesh model which has resulted in the deaths of over 1000 garment workers over the past few years including the so far 640 people killed when a building collapsed last week – imagine the uproar if 640 US workers had died as a result of negligence. The whole point of factories in Bangladesh and Haiti is to robotize people and bleed the workers to death. That is the cost of cheap food, cheap clothes, and expensive iPhones, workers are bled. In Caracol, farmers sold their land for $1200 and this is one of the problems in the new ‘open for business’ Haiti. Poor farmers and displaced people are being offered meagre sums of money to sell land or to move from camps. Its hard to resist and consider the long terms when you have nothing. I attended a May day protest by some of the women workers who make t-shirts for yes, you guessed it, Walmart.