Fw: Nike and Jim Keady

----- Original Message -----
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@panix.com>
To: <marxism@lists.panix.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 24, 2000 1:19 PM
Subject: Nike and Jim Keady


> George:
> >a couple of years ago, St. John's was faced with a moral dilemma. Nike
> >offered to give the University 3 million dollars  if all of the coaches
> >would ware the Nike logo. one  objected on moral grounds because of
Nike's
> >use of child labor. the President of the University solved this moral
> >dilemma by getting a new coach.
>
> This must be Jim Keady you are referring to. I heard him interviewed on
> Doug Henwood's radio show (Jim Craven was the first interviewee) last
> thursday and he had quite a tale to tell. Not only was he the soccer coach
> at St. John's, he was a professional soccer player at one time as well.
> Apparently, his campaign against Nike drives them crazy because he has
> credibility where people like the Global Exchange activists are seen as
> being "outside" the sports world.
>
> Keady was just terrific. He said that he offered to work in an Indonesian
> Nike factory, just so he could evaluate the company's claim that workers
> were paid a "decent wage". They turned him down because he did not speak
> Indonesian and would take too long to train. He made a counter-offer.
Since
> he spoke Spanish, he would work in one of their Latin American plants.
> Again they turned him down.
>
> Keady's website is at: www.nikewages.org.
>
> To see how Nike is getting nightmares from Keady, go to:
> http://nikebiz.com/labor/ and enter "Keady" in the search field.
>
> For some good stories on Keady in NYC's Village Voice newspaper, go to:
>
> http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0040/hsiao.shtml
>
> Here's the lead paragraphs of the story:
>
> Jim Keady admits that the moment came when even he had to wonder. It was a
> bit more than a month ago, and he was lying on a reedy mat on the bumpy,
> shelf-papered floor of a tiny, dank cement flat in slummy Tangerang, an
> industrial suburb of Jakarta. His head was throbbing from a headache, and
> he felt so faint from hunger that the 6-4 former soccer pro was having
> trouble "lifting a water bottle to my mouth without it shaking violently."
> The absurdity of it is that Keady's sufferings were self-imposed: the
> result of his having volunteered to live for a month on the typical
> wages-about $1.20 a day-of an Indonesian factory worker sewing shoes for
> Nike.
>
> Keady shook off the doubts, making it through the day and, ultimately, the
> month-though he lost 25 pounds. The experience confirmed, he says, that
> "Nike is paying a starvation wage in Indonesia. I know-I starved on it."
> Still, he says with utter conviction, "It was worth it."
>
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
>
>