Bad ass Women Project - Adelia SPR'23

In this podcast episode, the host, Adalia Da Silva, discusses various instances of workers' rights violations in different industries. She talks about the exploitation of women workers in the garment industry in Bangladesh, the dangerous working conditions at Tyson chicken plants in the US, and the exploitative treatment of contestants on the reality TV show Love is Blind. Adalia also highlights the historical work of labor organizer Mother Jones and emphasizes the need for resistance and solidarity in fighting against capitalist exploitation. The episode explores the connection between time, progress, and capitalism, and suggests that being critical of our consumption is a way to challenge this system. Hello everyone! Welcome to my first episode of my podcast, Aggie Black Person, where I will be the most annoying black person in the room and tell you why everything is racist. Thank you for coming. This is hosted by Adalia Da Silva, yours truly, and this serves kind of a double purpose as it is for a final project for my Women Gender Studies class, Radical Voices of Resistance, Looking at Feminists Through U.S. Movements. Yeah, thank you for joining me and I hope you enjoy my stories and the profound stories that I have to tell about workers across time and around the world. I thought my parents had brought me to the greatest country in the modern world, and then I realized I was in America. At one point, I loved being American and truly, to my core, believed that I would not have been the person I am today if I had never left Cabo Verde. America felt glamorous. I mean, it's nicknamed the land of opportunities and it felt like the place where my dreams were going to come true. Actually, it felt like the only place where my dreams were going to come true. My dreams of being an international pop star. On a real note, I believed that America would be the only place to accept me for being gay, the only place that would give me a good education or a good job with a good income. So what changed? I stopped believing in white supremacy ideologies. America, along with all its other colonized besties, lol editors note, colonizer besties, not colonized. Now back to the program, had been flawed in its advertisement of itself, making itself the image of progress and modernity. America only became the most powerful nation because it profited off, and still does, more on that later, off of colonialism, using notions of progress and modernity as an excuse to conquer, while ignoring the ongoing exploitation and bloodshed that was needed to build this capitalistic society. First, we'll look at the garment industry. Let's imagine it's your nephew's 14th birthday, and he's been asking you to get him the new Nike Air Maxes. And you tell him, let me think about that. No, because it's made from exploited labor of the women in Bangladesh. Bangladesh, the capital of the garment district, makes up to 34 billion in profits from the garment, from the garments produced in 2017. That's 76% of the country's economy. And they do it with around 4 million workers, the majority of which the majority of whom are women. Although these women contribute the majority of the country's profit, they remain the lowest paid workers in the world. So you might ask, now, why would you bring up this old white woman? Well, in Mother's Time, as a labor organizer, she saw minors, that's minors, M-I-N-E-R-S, but also minors as in youth too, that were physically attacked, sometimes through gun violence for resisting and trying to organize. She said, get out and fight, fight like hell till you go to heaven. She said and believed that it was either fight or die. These minors demanded eight hour workdays, wage increases, safety regulations, control over their health care and the ability to bargain as a union. You think you have a bad now, but these 12 year olds were working 10 hours of physical labor. Except wait, people still live in these conditions. Mother Jones made $4 a day as a field organizer for the young mine workers. That's more than the Bangladeshi women make today at $2.14. When these women do resist and try to organize, their bosses, who are also large stakeholders in the government, refuse to comply with their demands. These Bangladeshi women often don't receive the support from their families, and their supervisors physically assault them as a response to their resistance. What would Mother Jones do? Okay, next scenario. Let me ruin something else for everyone. Close your eyes. And imagine being seven again. You're in the grocery store, and you see the iconic Dino Nuggets made by Tyson. You beg your mom for them and she says, let me think about that. Absolutely not. Why not mom? Because that company does not care about its workers. Tyson factory is one of the leading providers of chicken in the United States, supplying the US with 2.3 billion chickens in 2020. The company has created an image as a family brand, the perfect option for dinner, and a brand of honorable people. Or at least that's what their mission statement says. Despite their all American look, Tyson has been known to be one of the most dangerous places to work. That's Tyson here in America in the 21st century. And there are plenty of investigations and employee testimony to prove it. The nature of working at a chicken plant is dangerous. And like the mine working conditions of the 1800s, an already dangerous job becomes even more dangerous with a lot of safety violations. An OSHA investigation revealed that there was a high risk of amputation. In the incident that originally launched the investigation, an employee's finger was caught in a conveyor belt. This investigation went on to expose the company's mistreatment of its workers. In one case, employees were not properly trained on handling hazardous disinfecting chemicals, leading workers to being burned and contracting respiratory diseases. In another case, employees described peeing in their pants or at times wearing diapers to keep up with the pressure of the workload. The conclusion of this investigation left Tyson with a slap on the wrist, aka a $250,000 fine, which is pocket change to a multi-billion dollar company. The workers of Tyson recently went on strike to resist the dangerous working conditions of the plants. These exact grievances can be heard from the children of the textile and mill industries in Mother Jones's time. Along with her work organizing mine workers, Mother Jones also worked to enforce restrictions on child labor and increase safety regulation for workers. Mother Jones was shocked to learn of the daily dangers that children faced, most of whom were under 10. She described seeing children with missing hands and fingers, since oftentimes these children's were the only ones small enough to oil or thread machinery. She watched as children's fingers snapped off and recounted an image of an 11-year-old girl who had been scalped because her hair was caught in machinery. It would be out of character to end a critique of capitalism and modernity without the inclusion of pop culture, especially pop culture that I consume myself. I invite you to imagine with me one more time. You are casually scrolling through Instagram and see that Love is Blind has posted about a brand new season airing. You are so excited and jump for joy. You then remember that Love is Blind producers have exploited their contestants in order to make content. The hit Netflix original series, Love is Blind, is the epitome of reality dating shows. From its cast of characters to high-stakes finales, the creation of an overnight success was felt by the contestants who were used as a means to an end. In June of 2022, season 2 cast member Jeremy Hartwell filed a lawsuit against Netflix and the Love is Blind production company, Kinetic Content, for labor law violations. This lawsuit exposes the exploitative nature of the Love is Blind production. Contestants came forward to speak on their treatment while filming Love is Blind. The pressure of finding a partner to propose to meant that contestants spent up to 20 hours a day dating in the pods, typically sleeping for only four hours a night. This intense time demand restricted the cast members from seeing the sun most days during the pod period. Hartwell and other contestants alleged that along with the confiscation of their electronic devices, producers also took their identification documents, meaning IDs, driver's license, and passports, and went as far as to not let contestants listen to music on the radio during rides to and from set. Contestants' access to food and water was also restricted, sometimes consuming nothing but alcohol, the only unrestricted food or beverage. Whether or not they wanted to continue being a contestant on Love is Blind, if contestants decided to prematurely exit production, they were subject to paying $50,000 in damages to Kinetic Content. Once again, thinking back to Mother Jones, the experience of reality contestants demonstrates, on a smaller scale, the control over mine workers. The mine workers had their whole lives controlled by the elites. They lived in company towns, went to company-owned grocery stores and doctors, while paying for everything with scripts, a company created currency. Although contestants are privileged, oftentimes white and middle-class, Americans, who you would probably not expect to be working under exploitative conditions, they are all a great example of how capitalism exploits all people for profit. As a New England mine owner greatly put it, when my machinery gets old and useless, I reject them. These people are part of my machinery. He kinda ate though. But to end a somewhat depressing analysis, I want to return to my thesis, specifically to address the title of this episode, Time as a Weapon of Capitalism. Since the dawn of colonialism, the march of time has always been linked to progress in the West. I hope that displaying these three current-day examples of workers' rights violations can help debunk this myth. Whether you're a Bangladeshi woman in what the West likes to call a developing country, or you're in the land of the free, your value is as a worker and a consumer. Time signaling progress is a weapon of capitalism to keep consumers from being critical of their consumption. As I mentioned, I, as much as anyone else, fall into this as well. So, what can we do about it? Well, maybe the answer is in the holistic care that Mother Jones provided. Resistance isn't always loud. At times, Mother Jones's resistance came in the form of showing up for her community. She helped the women of the mining towns with their childcare, housekeeping, and cooking. She also empowered these women by teaching them how to sew bonnets so that their dress resembled that of the elite. We're all a part of this capitalistic machine that keeps us happy under the guise of modernity. I urge my listeners to be involved in their communities, and to provide for their communities and neighbors the care that capitalism will never give them, so that you may eat too. Thank you for listening.