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February 2001
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Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - Convergence Ponderings
Rock, went to the USFT Annual Conference last weekend. I'm psyched. I realize that I came in with a bit of a bias from Brownfields, that the problem of doing the right thing can always be fixed by the market, but what I forgot was that a good chunk of the Brownfields work is subsidized by the government, because it's in the interest of the people stop sprawl and revamp industry, but that government subsidies will never, ever apply to the kinds of international situations that need them for fair trade (not that they shouldn't, but that they won't). I talked a little with Andy on the way back about whether even FT would just keep people content enough not to revolt, where it's in the interest of the powered and privledged to share the power just enough, but I prefer not to get too cynical (and not think about that right now). Overall, I had a great time. All three workshops were pretty good, and even though I was exhausted by the time I got there (when we started, after an 18 hour drive) I really got pulled into things so easily that I had no problems. I felt a little bad for being so for the market at the beginning, and across the whole thing; I really think the Thanksgiving Coffee patriarch at the end of whole conference put things in perspective for me. In much more impassioned words, he basically pulled a Kantian bit of ethics: now that FT is a viable option, buying things on the broken, dependency-promoting, abusive free market is not breaking an imperfect requirement. It's not something that we should do, sometimes, but aren't really in the wrong if we don't all the time. It's not like when we pass a Streetwise vendor and only buy the paper half the time. Instead, buying FT is a perfect requirement: it's something we should always do. It's like the requirement not to murder someone. We don't have a choice in the matter. He said that selling FT was not a choice that he made, but that the big-name roasters were the ones making the choice to break the rules. Really the best way to get FT trade is to make it as easy as possible for people to follow the ethical path, but it will never be the easiest. I liked the third workshop; they split people into groups by giving them colored dinosaur stickers and splitting out that way. The workshop was about the different ways that people could enter the FT arena, either from Union support from their family upbringing, necessity, or after thought and political decision-making. All three workshops took their good time to get going, and almost all of the interesting discussion came in the last few minutes. (Our workshop was cut short by some fishiness with Transfair coming in and doing a game of some sort, which we should've been more proactive against) and the different kinds of people in FT could have done with less discussion about the case studies and more into the people. That's kind of the point of these conferences; getting a sense of what people are doing and what you can do and how you can enlist people to help in meaningful ways. It was great to see Cam and Hannah (we crashed at Cam's house, which was super-convenient, and also very comfortable. Her roommate has a friendly chinchilla, with hops). Hannah took the bus down to Denver, and we picked her up in the van downtown. I didn't get as much of a sense of the city as I wanted to, but the weekend wasn't about the city. Anyway, these are just brief notes and thoughts, which are not at all articulated. This week has been spent recovering from the weekend, so hopefully I'll get a more cohesive response after percolating for a little while.
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