Fair Trade Movie

On Tuesday October 16, I attended a movie the Justice Club was showing on Fair Trade. Fair Trade is an initiative to make sure that farmers, factory workers, etc. receive living wages for their products. In a Free Trade society, the producers get very little profit from what they sell to big business. To put it plainly Fair Trade is in essence a global Farmers Market, where the producers of raw materials get living wages for everything they sell. The movie highlighted the many aspects of Fair Trade, from the farmers to the consumers. It stresses that American consumers have power and if they chose to support Fair Trade, it would greatly help the infrastructure of developing nations. This idea of Fair Trade is inline with Jesuit ideals, in that it emphasizes people helping people and "solidarity." This Fair Trade initiative is a wonderful opportunity for Loyola to help improve society by simply asking for Fair Trade products. Loyola does use Fair Trade coffee, however, there are a lot more ways we can contribute to this worthy cause. The Justice Club is pushing for the Bookstore to sell Fair Trade products and currently has a petition which it will present to the administration. This initiative is very interesting and extremely worthwhile.