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While
we are on the subject of evil... HISTORICAL
EVIL:
"The Triangle Fire," by Leon Stein with a new introduction
by William Greider. (Cornell University Press, 2001.)
EVIL
IN THE RAG TRADE:
"NO SWEAT: Fashion, Free Trade, and the Rights of Garment
Workers," edited by Andrew Ross. (Verso Press 1997.)
BORDERLINE
EVIL:
"Border Witness," by Maureen Casey and Brian Casey. (The New
York State Labor-Religion Coalition, 2002).
COSMIC
EVIL:
"Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy,"
by Susan Neiman. (Princeton U. Press, 2002.)
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A
reprimand for Reebok
By Leslie Dwyer
March 25, 2002 | JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Dita Sari doesn't fit the
corporate stereotype of the anti-globalization activist running
naked through the barricades at the WTO, raving about anarchy and
calling for death to capitalists. This 29-year-old Indonesian labor
activist's demeanor is gentle, almost schoolmarmish. When she speaks,
she slathers the conversation with expressions like "the proletariat"
and "the class struggle," but in a tone of voice so demure
it's like listening to a nun read from "Das Kapital."
Her room, attached to the offices of the labor union she heads,
the 22,000-strong National Front for the Indonesian Workers' Struggle
(FNPBI), is furnished with a woven rattan sleeping mat, a CD player
(she likes Enya), a worn-out Snoopy doll and piles of books -- everything
from Kahlil Gibran to Danielle Steel to Fidel Castro's "Capitalism
in Crisis." It's this combination of the sweet and the strident,
the simple and the dead serious, that has helped make Dita a brand-builder's
nightmare.
In January 2002, Dita was named a winner of the annual Reebok Human
Rights Award for organizing Indonesian workers into the country's
first independent union. She and three other women activists were
invited to Salt Lake City to accept $50,000 prizes at the hands
of Robert Redford, Desmond Tutu, Kerry Kennedy Cuomo and Katie Holmes
of "Dawson's Creek" as part of the cultural festivities
accompanying the Winter Olympics. To Dita, this was big money. The
average Indonesian factory laborer would have to work for 69 years
to earn $50,000 -- although the average life expectancy is only
67. But a week before she was scheduled to appear -- the plane ticket
had already been booked -- Dita publicly declined the award.
How did this diminutive, soft-spoken woman end up sucker-punching
a corporate giant and its human rights campaign? And why did she
refuse the award of a lifetime -- at the very least, an award that
could have provided years of funding for her activism? It seems
that Reebok failed to calculate just what Dita Sari stands for.
Reebok's official response to Dita's decision was terse. In a press
release issued on Feb. 4, Reebok wrote: "Dita Sari, the Indonesian
labor rights activist who was one of the four women scheduled to
receive the 2002 Reebok Human Rights Award, informed Reebok suddenly
last week that she has withdrawn her acceptance of this year's Award.
Dita Sari has decided that it would be inappropriate to accept an
award from a corporation which is producing products globally."
The in-between-the-lines jabs were not hard to spot. A fickle woman
subject to sudden changes of heart, one who probably believes McNuggets
are responsible for Third World infant malnutrition and that Bill
Gates III in ASCII code adds up to 666. You get it: She's one of
them.
But Dita's story is not that simple. Born into a middle-class family
where, she says, "nothing interesting ever happened,"
Dita went to the University of Indonesia in Jakarta with the intention
of becoming a lawyer. She soon found herself on the other side of
the law. In 1994, at the age of 21, she founded a union and began
organizing workers' demonstrations -- despite a ban by then-President
Suharto's authoritarian government on independent labor unions,
political parties and strikes. At the time, foreign investment was
all the rage, drawn by Indonesia's cheap labor pool and the willingness
of state security forces to take uncompromising action against workers
who protested wage or safety violations. Reebok was one of many
multinationals eager to seize the opportunity.
On July 8, 1996, Dita and some friends from the People's Democratic
Party (PRD), an unofficial left-wing organization highly critical
of Suharto's government, organized their biggest demonstration ever
in Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest industrial center. Twenty
thousand factory workers called for wage raises, the right to organize
freely and a halt to military intervention in labor disputes. The
event was broken up by army and marine personnel, and the leaders
were arrested. "They whacked people until they bled, then threw
them in the back of trucks and took them to the police station,"
Dita said. She was charged with "provocation" and "discrediting
the legitimate government" under an archaic statute dating
back to Dutch colonial days.
Dita -- laughing bitterly in hindsight -- recalled how she was certain
she would soon be released. The year before she had led a strike
on PT Reebok, a Reebok producer whose mostly female workers were
being paid less than $1.50 a day. The strike had been put down by
the police, who beat and arrested Dita but quickly let her go. This
time, however, something even hotter was brewing. On July 27, mobs
attacked the Jakarta headquarters of the Indonesian Democratic Party
(PDI). At the time, the PDI was one of two officially permitted
opposition parties, its leader the popular Megawati Sukarnoputri,
now Indonesia's president. In a classic divide-and-conquer move,
the government accused the PRD of masterminding the attack, which
left more than 50 of Megawati's followers dead, despite evidence
that the military had in fact encouraged the rioters. The PRD was
demonized by officials as a "communist" organization intent
on overthrowing the government, and Dita's charge was upgraded to
"subversion" -- carrying a maximum penalty of death.
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