Hi, my name is Heather, and I'm a recovering modern-day slave owner

"If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong."

-- Abraham Lincoln

Every year, our family sits down together and watches Dr. King's famous speech on Martin Luther King Day.  Every year, I hold my kids close and cry.

My children will forever have memories of their mother tearfully teaching them about the horrors of slavery, and about the heroic people who fought to end it in our country.

Imagine my shock when I found out that the mountains of chocolate we consume in our home every year was made by modern-day child slaves?

God was breaking our hearts for the poor, and one of the very first things He brought to our attention was the plight of the workers around the world whose products end up on the shelves and racks of our favorite stores.  We began asking some simple questions. "Where do the products we buy come from, who is making them, are they paid a fair wage, and how old are these people who sewed the collar on my favorite shirt?"   

In an age where the internet has made the world a much smaller place to live, how hard should it be to find answers to those basic questions?

Very hard.

This was a sobering few months for us.  Not only were we having to confess that we had ignored a lot of things God said in the Bible about caring for the poor, we were having to admit that we may be playing an active role in oppressing the poor.  Fun things for a self-proclaimed, freedom-loving family to admit, right?  What if we were not merely innocent bystanders unwilling to give to the poor?  I wanted omission to be the worst of our sins.  Instead, we found out we were the ones doing the actual oppressing, oftentimes cheating the poor ourselves. Our shopping habits and our need for a steady supply of cheap products that we bought from giant corporations whose products are made on the other side of the ocean may mean that we were unknowingly contributing to robbing laborers of their wages.

For listen! Hear the cries of the field workers whom you have cheated of their pay. The wages you held back cry out against you. The cries of those who harvest your fields have reached the ears of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.  James 5:4


You must pay them their wages each day before sunset because they are poor and are counting on it. If you don’t, they might cry out to the Lord against you, and it would be counted against you as sin. Deuteronomy 24:15


There are several other passages like these in the books of Amos and Isaiah.  God has strong words for people who do not treat their employees with fairness.

I have several vivid memories of sitting around with my girlfriends talking and laughing.  I remember the topic of sewing coming up a few times.  I can sew basic items.  I'm not a pro, and if no one is too critical or picky, I can sew simple projects.  I remember talking about sewing and saying, "I would never spend the time sewing a skirt anymore because it's cheaper for me to buy one at the store than it is to buy the products and sew them myself."  I would laugh and blindly say, "Who would go to all the trouble of sewing their own skirt when you can buy one for so cheap at the store?  Once you factor in time, labor, and materials, it's hands-down cheaper to buy a new skirt than to make one."

Once I stopped thinking about myself for one second (my favorite hobby) I let my mind sit and dwell on what I was really saying.  Someone somewhere is making those skirts the store is selling.  How are they sewing a skirt in Cambodia, getting the material, spending hours making a garment, shipping it across the ocean, putting it on a truck and driving it all the way to Texas, and the price tag on the skirt only says $7.99?  If the skirt costs eight bucks, how much money did the laborer take home so that I can look sassy in my new jersey knit skirt?

Am I a modern day slave owner?  Sure there are a few degrees of separation between me and my slaves.  They don't live in my backyard and work in my fields.  They don't mow my lawn.  I don't beat them when they misbehave or don't do enough work for the day.  That's barbaric, but do I contribute money and "pay" someone else to do the dirty work, so that in the end, I get what I want?  A house full of affordable products?  Has globalization created a comfortable little buffer between me as the slave owner, and the people (many of them children) on the other side of the ocean sitting in sweat shops 15 hours a day, not being paid a fair wage, oftentimes deprived of their wages?  Out of sight, out of mind?

These questions we were asking ourselves made us feel sick.

How do we make sure the products we're buying aren't being made by companies who are oppressing the poor?  How do we know that the companies we love...where we shop, are not a part of the maddening statistics that involves women and children being sold into slavery to sweatshops by well-meaning family members?  Or worse...being kidnapped to work in factories?  The answer we found, after spending a lot of time trying to find answers is a sad one.  It's very, very difficult to know the truth about the conditions in which laborers are working as they create all of our favorite things.

"The International Labor Organization, a UN agency, estimates that at any one time there are 12.3 million people engaged in forced labor of all kinds, not just sexual servitude." (from Kristof's book, Half the Sky)

I would find myself standing in my massive walk-in closet staring at my clothes.  How many people's lives....people created in the image of God...how many of their stories are represented in this one closet?  How many horrors had to happen so that I can have a constant supply of all things hip and trendy?

I would like to say this post will wrap up with something nice and tidy to say.  The truth is, nothing has felt nice and tidy in our souls ever again when it comes to the topic of buying products from the store.  For many months, as we continued to read about the conditions in which a lot of laborers work, and the way they are treated, we were kind of in a daze.  We knew there were lots of things we did not "need" to be buying. How do we wean ourselves off of this world, and our constant desire for more, more, more?  How do we shop in a way that considers and honors the people behind our products?  Where should we shop when we do actually need something?  How often do we choose "cheap" and "convenient" even when we are pretty sure our need for "cheap" and "convenient" means someone...somewhere suffers for our decisions we are making?
We did not know where to start, but we did know...we don't want to be involved with oppressing the laborer.  We want to use the money God has given us to give to the poor like God commands, not cheat them of their hard-earned wages (something that God gives stern warnings about in the Bible).

There was a time when I thought the Bible was a giant book of things a person should not do.  What I found is that it's a book filled with some warnings, but the main theme of the Bible is this beautiful story of God extending life and goodness to His creation.  It's a struggle to remember that at times, because I think I'm a pharisaic legalist at heart.  With my natural tendency to look at scriptures like the ones about not oppressing the poor or stealing from the laborer, my first reaction was to make a giant list of things "not" to do anymore.  To some degree, I needed to do that, but it took some time for me to remember to look for all the good God was wanting me to do...life giving things I could do with our money to honor the poor and the companies that take their responsibility to care for their employees seriously.

If this is new to you, I think "The Story of Stuff" video below is a great place to start.  It gives a big picture idea of some of the things I hope we'll be talking about as we continue this series about caring for the poor while living in the United States.




Other posts in this series:

Caring for the Poor While Living in the Good ol' U-S of A?

Who Are the Poor?

Looking for the Poor