Fair Trade from the Ground Up: New Markets for Social Justice

5. Fair Trade Activists in the United States

101 S ome people’s commitment to and involvement with Fair Trade extends well beyond their own shopping habits. What motivates them to become activists? How do they understand the producer-consumer relationship? The individuals profiled here have a vested interest in ethical trade, although not all of their activism focuses on promoting Fair Trade Certified products. Many are affiliated with Fair Trade Towns, a networked initiative that unites community activists, businesses , faith-based organizations, and educational institutions with the goals of growing Fair Trade and supporting local businesses and farmers. They represent varied organizations, with diverse connections to the Fair Trade movement. This chapter highlights eight in-depth interviews conducted in October 2008 in New York, Massachusetts, Washington, and Vermont.1 The initial interviewees were Fair Trade Towns committee chairs; these in turn provided other contacts. This allowed us to interview people from varied organizations with diverse connections to the Fair Trade movement. We employed a schedule of questions to guide the semistructured interviews but allowed the conversations to follow a natural direction, partially led by the interviewee. The general themes of each interview were defining Fair Trade and its place in the larger ethical trade and conscious-consumption Chapter 5 FairTrade Activists in the United States Rebecca Kahn and April Linton Chapter 5 102 philosophies and the interviewee’s relationship with these broad topics. To add a visual dimension to the research, we asked participants to make a drawing of how they envision producer-consumer relationships within Fair Trade, and then to describe their drawing. The drawings offered a useful avenue for interviewees to express their identities and describe their relationships with others, including farmers, within the Fair Trade movement. Name Connection to Fair Trade Taylor Mork Farmer Representative, Crop to Cup Coffee. Imports coffee from small holder farms with high ethical standards, but does not have certification. Ron Zisa Buys ethically traded (certified and noncertified) coffee for 12,000+ member urban food co-operative market. Yuri Friman Fair Trade activist, member of Fair Trade Towns USA. Barth Anderson Specialty coffee roaster (Barrington Roasters), has both certified and noncertified fair trade coffee. Alexandra Mello Fair Trade activist, member of Fair Trade Towns USA. Judith Belasco Works in the area of ethical food outreach and education, incorporates fair trade products into her work and home environments. Pattie Cippi Harte Brings Fair Trade products to her office, Jewish Community Centers of America. Stephanie Celt Director of a Washington State Fair Trade coalition, primarily works toward changing governmental trade policies. Table 5.1 Interview Subjects Fair Trade Activists in the United States 103 Local and Global: Restructuring Interpersonal Relationships More than abstinence from harming others . . . a society is viewed as just insofar as it provides a structure of interpersonal relationships, incentives, and reinforcements to virtue. (Lacy 2000, 9) Our interviewees’ different points of entry into the world of ethical trade illustrate the reasons for various understandings of and current relationships with the movement. One person attributed his connection to his activist days in the 1960s; another told a story of labor atrocities she witnessed on US banana plantations; yet another gave examples from his background in agronomy to justify his personal beliefs and connections surrounding ethical trade in the specialty coffee industry. One woman who had spent over a year living in a community that grows some Fair Trade Certified coffee and tea cited her particular connection with people in India: “I feel I know them, I know [their] culture, because I lived there.”2 How and why are interpersonal relationships structured on the basis of economic processes and consumption practices? Fair Traders are globalizing their interpersonal relationships—actually and ideologically. In the process of trying to change economic and consumer relationships, they mark their place in their own communities, both local and global, by “calling for a realignment of human social interaction in the context of place and food” (Feagan 2007, 33). They are doing so via communities and interpersonal relationships structured around changing the way trade is carried out. Communities Communities do not have to be geographically bounded; they can represent ideologies that connect geographically and socially distinct individuals or groups (DeChaine 2005, Feagan 2007; see Lacy 2000 for comparison). The communication of people who have mutual concerns about ethical trade creates ideological communities. Through “buy local” campaigns, community supported agriculture programs, and Fair Trade, people are attempting to deepen bonds with the farmers who produce their...