dignity

2. • Stay completely silent throughout the entire activity.
• Write down as many positive/good qualities about each
person presented.
• Completely describe what you see.

3. Use your imaginations to name a positive or good characteristic about
each person.

12. • The Catholic Church proclaims that human life is sacred and that
the dignity of the human person is the foundation of a moral vision
for society.
• This belief is the foundation of all the principles of our social
teaching. In our society, human life is under direct attack from
abortion and euthanasia.
• The value of human life is being threatened by cloning, embryonic
stem cell research, and the use of the death penalty. Catholic
teaching also calls on us to work to avoid war.
• Nations must protect the right to life by finding increasingly effective
ways to prevent conflicts and resolve them by peaceful means.
• We believe that every person is precious, that people are more
important than things, and that the measure of every institution is
whether it threatens or enhances the life and dignity of the human
person.

13. • D: Dignity...of the Human Person
• C: Call…to family, community, participate
• R: Rights… and responsibilities
• O: Option… for the poor/vulnerable
• W: Work…Dignity and Rights of Workers
• S: Solidarity… being one family (love)
• C: Care… for God’s Creation

15. • The foundation of the house is our
fundamental belief in the dignity of
the human person. This is so
important that we need to dwell on
it. It's not just an idea that emerged
in the 19th or 20th century. We can
trace it all the way back to the
Book of Genesis. We are made in
the image and likeness of God.
Vatican II said that the role of the
Church in the modem world is to
be the sign and safeguard of the
dignity of the human person. So
this is the cornerstone-the reason
why we have a social teaching.
Everything flows from this.

16. • Now I have a friend who has a
priceless collection of Sports
memorabilia. You can't just put these
objects in a closet. He had a custom
cabinet designed to hold and display
them. Then he had the house alarmed
as a protection. The point is, when you
have something precious, you have to
design structures to protect it. The walls
and roof of our house are human rights,
which protect human dignity. Human
rights are civil and political as well as
economic, social, and cultural. They
spell out what we're entitled to just by
being human. In many countries, the
Church is the lone voice speaking out
for human rights. We do so because
they affect human dignity.

17. • In the family room of our house
we are reminded that we are
called to community and to
active participation in society.
We are not isolated individuals
but we are linked to others in
our family, workplace,
neighborhood, and community.
This is how we work out our
salvation, not alone, but with
and through others. We are not
observers on the sidelines; we
contribute to society according
to our talents.

18. • In society, we come in contact with the
poor and recognize that we are called
to have a preference for them. So, in
our dining room, there are places
reserved for the poor. They have a
standing invitation to be there, together
with us. Because they are voiceless
and powerless, we are ready to stand
up for them, to have a special love for
them. Again, this is not something new.
The prophets in the Old Testament told
us that how we treat those on the
margins--the widows, the orphans, and
the aliens could judge the quality of our
faith. Without concern for them, our
faith is shallow, hollow.

19. • There are rooms in our house where
different forms of work go on. There's
the kitchen where meals are prepared,
the study where tax returns are worked
on, the internet where the teens have
learned to surf, etc. Our social teaching
tells us that those workers have a
dignity and certain rights precisely as
workers, that work has a dignity. This
teaching came as a response to the
industrial revolution in the late 19th
century when workers were exploited,
mistreated, and discounted. The
Church was there to say clearly that
workers have the right to organize, the
right to collective bargaining, the right
to a just wage, and the right to a safe
work environment.

20. • But our house is not a self-contained
universe; it has windows on the world.
We are called to be in solidarity with the
rest of the world. Pope John Paul II
describes solidarity as a "firm and
persevering determination to commit
oneself to the common good; that is to
say the good of all and of each individual
because we are all really responsible for
all." Now that statement could overwhelm
us--being told that we are responsible for
all, but it's understood that we can only
do what one human being can do. The
important thing is the orientation, the
attitude, and the lens through which we
look at the rest of the world. We can't pull
down the shades of our windows on the
world because, in fact, the whole world is
our home.

21. • Finally, the lawn in front of
the house reminds us of
our duty to care for God's
creation. This goes far
beyond recycling, but it can
begin there. We have over-
consumed and damaged
much of our environment.
We need to repair and care
for the earth as stewards of
creation.

39. • 1. Which is the most socially just: a Chiquita, a Dole
or a Del Monte banana?

40. • Sometimes a banana is just a banana, but sometimes it's a symbol
of the downside of globalization. A growing proportion of bananas are
produced by workers who lack health care or wages high enough to
feed their families, and who are exposed to pesticides, says Stephen
Coates, executive director of the US/Labor Education in the
Americas Project (www.usleap.org).
In June, Chiquita, the largest producer of bananas in the world,
signed a contract with its unions to respect workers' rights. "Neither
Dole nor Del Monte has discussed these issues with Colsiba," the
Latin American Coordinating Committee of Banana Workers' Unions,
says Coates. The contract was the result of a two-year campaign
and was a "very significant breakthrough," he adds.
According to "Bananas: An American History" by Virginia Scott
Jenkins (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), we eat 75 bananas
per person each year, more than any other fruit. The major U.S.
banana-importing companies were among the first multinational
corporations.

41. • A "slave-free" label has been proposed in
Congress for which of the following?
• The Big Mac
• Chocolate
• Cotton

42. • A two-month investigation by Knight Ridder reporters earlier this year found children
as young as 11, sold or tricked into slavery, laboring on cocoa farms in Africa's Ivory
Coast, which supplies 43 percent of the world's cocoa. The beans harvested by
youngsters are made into chocolate products that appear in groceries everywhere.
"The big chocolate companies -- Archer Daniels Midland, M&M Mars, Hershey, Nestle
-- all use cocoa from the Ivory Coast," says Debora James, fair-trade director for the
human rights group Global Exchange.
The United Nation's International Labor Organization in June reported that tens of
thousands of children are being exploited. In August, the U.S. State Department said
there are as many as 15,000 child slaves in Ivory Coast.
A documentary, in part financed by HBO and based on "Disposable People," a book
by Kevin Bales (University of California Press, 2000) was shown in the United States,
but the part about child slavery on cocoa farms in West Africa was cut out, says
James.
According to Bales' book, the new slavery is linked to several factors: an enormous
population explosion over the past three decades; poor farmers dispossessed by
economic globalization and modernized agriculture, and corruption and violence
associated with rapid economic changes in developing countries.

43. • What is the "race to the bottom?"
• A new Olympic swimming event.
• A new reality-based TV show about competitive socially
incorrect behavior.
• The tendency of corporations to seek out the countries with
the cheapest labor and fewest safety and environmental
regulations to produce their products.

44. • In "The Race to the Bottom: Why a Worldwide Worker
Surplus and Uncontrolled Free Trade are Sinking
American Living Standards" (Westview Press, 2000),
Alan Tonelson explains how countries with the weakest
workplace safety laws, the lowest taxes, and the toughest
unionization laws win investment from American and
European countries. Tonelson, an economist active in
national trade politics, argues that this "race to the
bottom" lowers American living standards and causes
even bigger problems for the world economy.

45. • When Harvard students staged a sit-in at the
university president's office early in 2001, they were
protesting:
• The university's endowment fund's investments in stocks and
bonds towards the school.
• The university's janitor wages.
• The firing of a professor who took students on a field trip to a
crack house.

46. • In 1998, Cambridge City Council instituted a living wage ordinance for all city
employees. Harvard University, the largest employer in Cambridge, continued
to pay 1,000 custodial and dining-hall workers as low as $6.50 per hour
without benefits.
After an unsuccessful two-year campaign to convince the university to pay its
workers a living wage, 30 students in the school's Progressive Student Labor
Movement moved into the president's office building in protest. One month
later, the university agreed to raise the pay of the workers to $10.25 per hour.
The concept behind the living wage is that people who work in a community
should be paid enough for them to live there decently. According to the Living
Wage Resource Center (www.livingwagecampaign.org), many campaigns
have defined it as equivalent to the poverty line for a family of four (currently
$8.20). Standards vary by region, but they are all considerably higher than
the federal minimum wage, which puts a parent with one child below the
federal poverty line.

47. • What's a fair price for a pound of coffee?
• $6.95
• $3.45
• $1.26

48. • A fair price for coffee isn't what you pay in the grocery store, it's what the coffee farmer
is paid. Available in Europe for more than a decade and recently in the United States,
"fair-trade" coffee has been purchased directly from coffee farmers for $1.26 per
pound, instead of less than 50 cents.
According to Transfair USA (www.transfairusa.org), an agency that certifies fair-trade
practices, coffee is the second largest trade commodity in the world, next to oil. An
estimated 80 percent of Americans drink coffee.
Ten years ago, the world coffee economy was worth $30 billion, of which producers
received $12 billion. Today, it is worth $50 billion, with producers receiving just $8
billion, according to the Fair Trade Coffee Campaign of Global Exchange.
Last year, Starbucks became the first U.S. company to agree to a "code of conduct,"
promising it would tell its suppliers that in order to sell to Starbucks, they must pay
workers a decent wage and respect their rights. Many gourmet coffee companies now
offer fair-trade products, too, says Deborah James, fair trade director for Global
Exchange, including the Bucks County Coffee Co. in Langhorne (800-523-6163). More
are listed on the Global Exchange Web site (www.globalexchange.org).
• Fair-trade coffee is more "bird-friendly," too. According to Transfair, fair trade-certified
coffee is more likely to be grown on small, family farms under trees that provide
habitat for songbirds. These farmers also tend to avoid pesticides.

49. • Agree or disagree?
• Congress should make it easier for corporations to relocate
to areas where the average wage is less than $4 per day.
• Governments should be required to pay damages if
environmental laws cut into a corporation's potential profit.
• Governments should be forced to end public subsidies for
public education and health care because they unfairly
compete with for-profit schools and hospitals.

50. • Too late: The North American Free Trade Agreement already allows
the first two conditions. "They allow corporations to do end runs
around labor and environmental laws that we have in this country,"
says Mike Prokosch, global economy coordinator for United for a Fair
Economy (www.ufenet.org), a grassroots campaign that concentrates
on public education about the economy.
As for the third condition, it also will become a reality if NAFTA
becomes the Free Trade Area of the Americas by expanding to all of
the other 31 countries in the Western Hemisphere (excluding Cuba,
of course).
From a social justice position, trade agreements like these start the
"race to the bottom," which makes working people compete against
working people to see who is going to work for the least money, says
Prokosch. "The global economy isn't making countries richer,
because they are giving up taxes for the new plants, they are letting
corporations pollute, and all they are getting is low wages."

51. • Which of the following labels can you buy to avoid
clothing made in a sweatshop?
• Gap
• Banana Republic
• Abercrombie & Fitch.

52. • Trick question. All of the above have been challenged for
controversial production practices. "Unless it has a union label, you
are hard-pressed to find a piece of clothing that is not made under
horrible conditions," says Joan Axthelm of the U.S. Labor Education
in the Americas Project (www.usleap.org). The Department of Labor
recently said that half of all clothing made in the United States is
made under sweatshop conditions, she adds.
The apparel, textile and footwear industries employ the largest work
force of any manufacturing industry in the world, with more than 29
million people in more than 150 countries. Many of these garment
workers get less than $1 an hour, and work 12 or more hours per day,
according to the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile
Employees (www.uniteunion.org).

53. • What did The New York Times call "the
biggest surge in campus activism in nearly
two decades?"
• The student anti-sweatshop movement.
• Campus-based groups lobbying for an Equal
Rights Amendment.
• An electronic forum that promotes freedom of
speech on the Internet.

54. • Students on more than 200 campuses in the United
States and Canada are asking: "Was our college
sweatshirt made in a sweatshop?" They have staged
sweatshop fashion shows, sweat-ins, knit-ins and other
creative protests to demand that their schools take
responsibility for the conditions under which their
licensed apparel is made.
The Web site of the Worker Rights Consortium, the
sweatshop watchdog group, has a database that tells
students where their college clothes come from
(www.workersrights.org).

55. • On October 5, 2007: Notre Dame- Cathedral Latin High
School proudly wore NDCL Day T-Shirts made from Fair
Trade.
• We are the first High School in the United States to invest
the time towards making a change.
• What are you willing to change?