Currently, communities are unwittingly supporting sweatshop labor when state and local governments use tax dollars to buy things such as firefighter uniforms. Liana Foxvog, National Organizer of the advocacy organization SweatFree Communities, discusses findings of Subsidizing Sweatshops II, the latest research on sweatshops perpetuated by government contracts.Read the show transcript
[amazon-product align=”right”]0307377407[/amazon-product]Wangari Maathai tells Sea Change Radio Co-Hosts Francesca Rheannon and Bill Baue the story of a great fig tree that stood near the village where she grew up in Kenya. At that time, her mother and the other villagers regarded the tree as sacred — as the tree of God. Maathai also told this story in the documentary film about her life and work with the Green Belt Movement, entitled TAKING ROOT: The Vision of Wangari Maathai.
Nell Minow was dubbed the “queen of good corporate governance” by BusinessWeek. With Bob Monks, she co-founded The Corporate Library, a Portland, Maine-based corporate governance research firm. In this week’s Sea Change ViewPoint, she proposes first steps on toxic assets.
Commentator Hazel Henderson of Ethical Markets Media thinks the outline of a new, moral financial system is beginning to rise from the ashes of the old. Its being ushered in by what she calls “the new financiers”…
As the climate heats up, the press treatment of climate change is cooling down. Karl Frisch of Media Matters says it used to be that the press treated climate change as a debate between 2 equal partners — on the one hand, the overwhelming majority of scientists who said climate change was happening–and on the other, the miniscule minority of climate change deniers. That’s gone by now, Frisch says — but the press is still dropping the ball on covering solutions to climate change. Frisch discusses why. He also talks about a column by George Will in the Washington Post that sparked a storm of protest from environmentalists. Andy Revkin of the the DotEarth blog at the New York Times — a reporter who usually gets climate change right — compared Will to Al Gore, embroiling him in controversy.
Corporation 20/20, an organization promoting alternative corporate structures, just announced the Second Summit on the Future of the Corporation, slated for this June in Boston. Discussion amongst those who attended the first Summit in November 2007 was abuzz about the future of boards of directors. In the broader press, fingers are pointing, primarily at the banking industry as the culprit and at outrageous executive pay. As accurate as these points may be, the troubles run deeper and wider, according to Aron Cramer. He’s CEO of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), a global nonprofit network of businesses focused on sustainability, and he’s on the convening committee for the Future of the Corporation Summit. In this week’s Sea Change ViewPoint, Cramer calls for more structural reforms.