What's That Voice in the Mickey T-Shirts?

Pre-record messages from sweatshop testimonies onto a dozen cheap little tape-recorders ("my salary comes to fourteen cents an hour"). These remarkable and painful statements from those young people trapped in the globalized economy are available from http://www.nlcnet.org/, website of the National Labor Committee.

Now go into a sweatshop company's outlet - a Disney store or Wal Mart will do fine. Place the tape-recorders down in the products; such as under sweatshirts, or behind boxes. Press Play. (You should have left a little leader of blank tape so that you have time to walk away before the sound starts up.) A few steps from where you planted your Seed of Truth, you can watch the comedy heat up.

Soon sweatshop workers' words are popping out all over the store from beneath the products they manufactured. Security officers confer and start digging for the truth. Sometimes we the Humble Servants pile on the mischief. We have actually seen a Stop Shopping parishioner become incensed, scolding a Disney guy, "How could you allow these sweatshop workers to enter my delicate Disney experience! This is the High Church of Retail! This is my Holy Moment!"
We should admit that that one obvious flaw of this Action is that it pressures the workers present on the retail who are also often underpaid, may have been denied union rights, and probably agree with the feelings we have about sweatshops. If it's any comfort - the store managers usually resemble Keystone Kops as they toss sweatshirts over their heads, desperate to hit the OFF button of the suffering.

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