Tag: Show the violence

GROWN IN PALESTINE / ISRAEL

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

“Following the white phosphorus trail”
A series of four TV news stories broadcast on Al Jazeera English.
Embedded in the YouTube playlist above.

‘Follow the things’ trade justice activism tends to connect unknowing consumers to the exploited supply chain workers who make the things they buy. But not when it comes to the arms trade. Here, the direction of travel is reversed: it’s this industry’s ultimate ‘consumers’ – the people who are killed and maimed by these commodities – that activists are worried about, especially when their use can be considered a war crime. Since Hamas’ October 7th 2023 attack on Israel and the Israeli government’s military response (described by many, and denied by Israel, as a genocide), arms trade activists around the world have set out to make public the geographies of the arms trade supplying the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and to disrupt this via non-violent direct action. They have also sought to hold arms manufacturers, shipping companies, Israeli and other goverments, and the IDF accountable for their actions under international law. But who are the people who make these weapons, where in the world? What do they know about the devastating impacts of their work? How do they feel about this? How do they rationalise it? Who’s responsible for this death and destruction? Soon after Hamas’ October 7th attack, news reports emerged that accused the IDF of using white phosphorus shells to bomb civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. These shells are designed to light up the sky, and/or to provide a smokecreen, for ground troops to more safely move into an area. That’s their permitted use. But if they’re used to bomb people, that’s a war crime. White phosphorus burns when it comes into contact with oxygen, and it keeps burning for weeks. It’s fat soluble so, if it lands on people’s skin, it burns and burns. Journalists and arms trade activists could identify where these white phosphorus shells were made from production codes they found on fragments of the shells found in burning ruins. An arsenal in the small town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, USA, was the source. And not for the first time. In 2008-9, white phosphorus shells from the Pine Bluff Arsenal had been dropped on Palestinian civilians during the IDF’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’. The Quatari news station Al Jazeera sent a reporter there and broadcast at least four news stories that followed the trail of white phosphorus munitions there from Gaza. Reporter Mike Kirsch talked to locals, showed them images of Palestinian people burned by munitions made in their town, asked them what they felt about this, asked their mayor what he felt about this. There was a detailed Amnesty International report that he could show them. Were people in this town at least partially responsible for this death and destruction? Was the Arsenal responsible? Was the US government responsible? The IDF? Hamas? Here’s what we have been able to find.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Following the white phosphorus trail. followthethings.com/following-the-white-phosphorus-trail.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 53 minutes.

Posted on July 10, 2025July 14, 2025 by Ian Cook

Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork

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Grocery

2009

JAFFA

ORANGES

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION

SHOW WHAT’S POSSIBLE

MAKE THE FAMILIAR STRANGE

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

BRING ACADEMICS INTO VIEW

TELL A STORY

MAKE IT INDEPENDENT

STAGE A Q&A

“Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork“
A documentary film dirercted by Eyal Sivan for Trabelsi Productions.
Trailer embedded above, search online for streaming options here.

Imagine visiting your local supermarket and popping a bag of Jaffa branded oranges in your basket. Then imagine browsing your favourite news site on your phone in the checkout queue and reading the latest story about deaths in Gaza, war in the Middle East. Maybe you’ve read a lot about this conflict, or have some first hand experience. But news stories don’t tend to explain its background, how and why it began. That bag of oranges – and this documentary film – can help to do this. Jaffa is an ancient Palestinian city. It’s also where Jaffa-branded oranges have been grown by Arab and Jewish people since the 1800s. Once picked, they would wrap each individual fruit in tissue paper, pack them into wooden boxes, load them onto boats and ship them wordwide. A year after the birth of ‘practical photography’ in 1839, Palestinian photographer Khalil Khaed visited Jaffa to document everyday life and work, including in its orange groves. Photographers, filmmakers, artists and advertisiers have documented the connection between Jaffa and oranges ever since. But, as the Israeli state began to take shape in the 20th Century, this film argues that there was a concerted attempt to remove Palestine from Jaffa oranges and to rebrand them as emblems of Israeli civilisation. It’s settler Colonialism 101. To piece this history together, Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan spent five years sifting through numerous archives for Jaffa-orange photos, films, advertising and resistance. He showed what he found to Israeli and Palestinian people- academics, poets, retired orange workers, advertising executives, others – and filmed their reactions. What he created from this footage is – many have said – a profoundly insightful and moving documentary. It has generated considerable critical and public acclaim from audiences around the world. First screened in 2009, it is still a go-to documentary to spark debate about the Palestine-Israel conflict today. And Sivan continues to attend screenings to answer questions about the film and the futures that might be possible in the region. Sivan’s politics, and films, are anti-Zionist. He has struggled to raise funding and to gain screening opportunities in Israel. He and his films have generated criticisms of anti-semitism. But the main argument in ‘Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork’ is that, if Arab and Jewish people were able to work together harmoniously in the past – like they did in Jaffa’s orange groves – they can do so in the future. You have to see this to believe this. Why not watch the film? Read the comments below. See what you think. We’ve tried to captire all of the discusion we’ve found online.

Page reference: Lucian Harford (2025) Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork. followthethings.com/jaffa-the-oranges-clockwork.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 67 minutes.

Posted on June 28, 2025July 2, 2025 by Ian Cook

Barbie’s Dirty Secrets

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Gifts & Seasonal

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

IMPROVE PAY & CONDITIONS

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

HOLD ‘EM ACCOUNTABLE

START WITH A PARADOX

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

BLAME, SHAME AND GUILT

JOIN WITH OTHERS?

MAKE IT AVAILABLE

“Barbie’s Dirty Secrets“
A documentary film presented by Isobel Yeung, and produced by Alasdair Glennie for Zandland, first broadcast on Channel 4, UK.
Available on YouTube, embedded above.

Journalist Isobel Yeung latches onto worldwide success of the 2023 Barbie movie and its feminist critique of the toy industry to ask about the lives of the women who make these dolls in factories in China. She drives around Los Angeles in a Barbie pink Jeep, picking up expert passengers who know about Mattel – the LA-headquartered company that makes and markets this doll – and about the wealth enjoyed by its CEO Ynon Kreiz. These scenes are intercut with Yeung’s phone calls to a fixer in China who is tasked to get an undercover reporter into a Barbie factory wearing a hidden camera. This reporter lasts just one day handling scolding hot plastic Barbie limbs with her bare hands, and is withdrawn for her own health and wellbeing. A second undercover reporter then gets a job assembling plastic figures from a forthcoming Disney Moana movie. He seems to last a day or two, unable to meet rising quotas for new employees, but he captures conversations with his co-workers about life and work in the factory. This undercover footage is shown to a representative of a labour rights NGO who is horrified by the violations that she sees. The film then shifts its attention to another Mattel brand – Fisher Price – and a dangerous cot which has been linked to the deaths of babies, and legal cases against the company. [We don’t detail this below, because we are interested in the way that this film connect the labour, marketing and consumption of Barbie dolls]. Our website has documented many landmark examples of trade justice activism when it was new – from the late 1990s in particular – and when it could have shock value and noticeable impact. Audiences in the 2020s, however, seem no longer to be shocked to find labour exploitation at the end of a supply chain. Corporations are better set up to handle the damage that such revelations may or may not do to their reputations and sales. And ‘trade justice activism’ like this is now pitched by production companies to broadcasters as a form of ‘buzzy’ media content. But, for us, there are glimmers of a more complex theory of change at work here. Less than a week after Barbie’s dirty secrets was broadcast, a China Labor Watch report was published that detailed exploitative and dangerous factory conditions in Barbie factories in China. Isobel Yeung refers to such a report in the film. The role that Barbie’s dirty secrets therefore had, we speculate, was to work alongside this NGO research, to make the report’s findings public, and to connect accusations of Mattel’s feminist corporate hypocrisy through the same media as the Barbie movie: film. Should anyone studying trade justice activism expect to final any single example having an impact in and of itself? No. And is possible to follow just one thing? It doesn’t look like it here. Check the comments below.

Page reference: Lucian Harford (2025) Barbie’s Dirty Secrets. followthethings.com/barbies-dirty-secrets.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 44 minutes.

Posted on March 20, 2025April 3, 2025 by Ian Cook

Chocolate: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

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Grocery | Gifts & Seasonal

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

SHOW WHAT’S POSSIBLE

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

BRING A MANAGER INTO VIEW

INVOLVE A CELEBRITY

TARGET THE RIGHT BRANDS

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

ENCOURAGE A BUYCOTT

MAKE IT AVAILABLE

“Chocolate: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)“
A monologue by John Oliver on his Last Week Tonight show broadcast in the USA on HBO.
Full monologue posten on YouTube embedded above.

Satirist John Oliver is delivering his weekly monologue on late night American TV. It’s the day before halloween, where millions of chocolate sweets will be given to children knocking on doors in scary costumes [see our ‘Gifts & seasonal’ department for other Halloween examples]. But what’s scarier is the fact that the cocoa in that chocolate was probably picked by children in the Ivory Coast and Ghana in West Africa. Despite longstanding critiques of child labour in chocolate’s supply chains; despite legislation being passed to remove it; despite the major brands’ own schemes to eliminate it, child labour – and the modern slavery that often supplies it – persists in an industry that continues to make multi-$£billion profits. Oliver’s monologue is about consumers’ love of chocolate and the corporate evils that feed it. He combines acerbic takes on the chocolate corporations’ social responsibility rhetoric and advertising practices (including the distractions of a ‘f*@kable’ green M&M) with footage of filmmakers meeting children who pick cocoa, their families and communities. One clip of a Dutch journalist’s ‘gotcha’ moment with a Nestlé executive is particularly powerful. Admitting that coca farming communities suffered poverty and that’s why children had to work, the man from Nestlé abruptly ends the call when asked why he doesn’t just pay them more. That journalist went on to start his own ‘slave free’ chocolate company – Tony’s Chocolonely – which Oliver holds up as an exemplar. The chocolate business can work differently, because it is working differently. What’s needed to help this along – Oliver says – is regulatory change. With each episode of his show published on YouTube; with his use of humour to make depressing topics palatable to viewers; and with his championing of Tony’s – this was a provocative show. Commenters shared how much they loved Tony’s Chocolonely too, or that they were going to try some as a result of watching the show. Others criticised the writers for parroting Tony’s marketing materials, and pointed out that its journalist founder had left because Tony’s couldn’t make slave-free chocolate. Others said that other, more ethical, chocolate brands were available if you knew where to look. But, people chipped in, shopping differently isn’t the only way to tackle trade injustice. Trade justice can be achieved only via multiple forms of pressure, from multiple angles, constantly. And Oliver’s monologue didn’t help. Chocolate researchers criticised it for being full of the usual stereotypes. Cocoa farmers have never eaten chocolate? Nope. They may just pretend not to have eaten it for gullible Western filmmakers. And the writers bypassed – like most coverage does – those in producer countries who are trying to make a positive difference. For Oliver, it’s the Western brands and consumers who can save the day by acting more ethically. Yes, that’s very important. But it’s not enough. Can there be ethical consumption under capitalism? That’s the bigger question. It’s what everyone’s talking about here.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Chocolate: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO). followthethings.com/chocolate-last-week-tonight-with-john-oliver-hbo.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 78 minutes.

Posted on December 20, 2024February 11, 2025 by Ian Cook

A Gadget To Die For

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Electronics

“A Gadget To Die For“
Front page headline and feature story in by Martin Hickman in the Independent Newspaper, plus a timeline of corporate and activist activity into which this story fits.
Front page featured above. The full text of the article is available below, and on the newspaper website here.

On May 27th 2010, the UK’s Independent newspaper published one of its most memorable front pages. This was the day that Apple’s new iPad device was being launched in the UK. The hype for this product had been extreme. At its launch, Apple CEO Steve Jobs had said it could help consumers to do things ‘in a much more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before’. Classic commodity fetishism! Apple Stores had so many orders that they had to meet. The factory where they were being made in China – owned by the Foxconn corporation – had to keep up with demand. Those customers couldn’t be kept waiting. But the hours and working conditions that the people making these iPads in Foxconn’s factory had to endure were too much for some. Reports started to emerge of extreme levels of stress driving some workers to make their way to the roof of the factory to jump to their deaths. One of these workers was Ma Xiangqian, whose family carried a photo portrait of their son to a protest outside the factory that was broadcast on international news. Juxtaposing a photo of this new device and photo of a worker who committed suicide with the perfect double-meaning title ‘A gadget to die for’ contributed to the sullying of Apple’s marketing plans. More importantly, it was just one example of the sustained attention to the working conditions in the company’s Foxconn factories in China that was building at this time (e.g. see the factory worker suicide prevention level on the Phone Story game here). On followthethings.com, we tend to choose individual examples of trade justice activism and find out where they came from, and what impacts they have had on, for example, the pay and conditions of supply chain workers. But in this case, it’s not just this one story that made a difference. This page outlines a different story. The Independent story is copied in full, and is followed – like a standard followthethings.com page – by everything we could find about how it was discussed and what impact it had (not much). Then, below this, we try to place this news story in context, starting with the launch of the iPad by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, then following iPad news stories as they were published over the following months, then finding when and how the ‘iPad suicide’ story came to public attention (in the Independent and elsewhere), and then tracking this scandal and Apple’s reactions to it. This larger context had an important impact, forcing corporate change and – arguably – improving pay and conditions in Foxconn factories. More than anything, this page tries to show how trade justice activism works when its bubbles up in multiple places and formats, not necessarily in a wholly coordinated way. For this example, it shows the importance of on-the-ground student activists – in this case the Hong Kong based Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) – investigating, protesting, creating and promoting media content that others – like Independent journalists Martin Hickman – can pick up and run with.

Article reference: Martin Hickman (2010) A gadget to die for? Concern over human cost overshadows iPad launch. The Independent 27 May (www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/concern-over-human-cost-overshadows-ipad-launch-1983888.html last accessed 4 August 2010)

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) A gadget to die for? followthethings.com/a-gadget-to-die-for.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 42 minutes.

Posted on December 11, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Maquilapolis (City Of Factories)

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Home & Auto | Health & Beauty

MULTIPLE OTHER BRANDS

MANY OTHER COMMODITIES

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

EDUCATE WORKERS

WORKERS TAKE THE MIC!

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

BRING POLITICIANS INTO VIEW

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

SHOW HOW TO WIN

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

ENCOURAGE FEMINIST SOLIDARITIES

“Maquilapolis (City Of Factories)“
A participatory documentary film in Spanish with Spanish or English subtitles directed by Vicky Funari & Sergio de la Torre, with music by Pauline Oliveros with the Nortec Collective & John Blue for the Independent Television Service & CineMamás Film.
Trailer and pay-per-view stream embedded above. Search online for other streaming options here. Read the film transcript in English & Spanish here.

Carmen Duràn and Lourdes Lujàn work in Tijuana, the ‘city of factories’, on the Mexico-US border. They work in factories on the hill making televisions and other COMMODITIES for brands like Panasonic and Sony. These multinationals treat this city as a garbage can that their workers have to live in. How can they fight back, claim their rights, their humanity? They take part in a participatory filmmaking project with directors Vicky Funari and Sergio de la Torre. The directors have been working with a local collective of ‘promontoras’ including Carmen and Lourdes for years. They have planned this project together for years. There’s been some filmmaking training and the promontoras take camcorders into the places where they live and work. The films they make are full of personality and a close attachment to place. They document life from these factory workers’ perspective. They document the ways in which these multinationals treat them as workers – especially when they leave – and how they treat the place where they live – as a dump for industrial waste that ruins their environment and threatens their health. They document their campaigns to clean up toxic industrial waste. In the process audiences get to know Carmen and Lourdes, to empathise with them. But the film also contains some surprising and beautiful creative scenes – often made in place of the footage that’s impossible to take inside the factory – that look like performance art. They want to show the intimate, bodily connection between the labour they perform, the commodities you buy (or are treated with in hospital) and the brands that you may be familiar with. And there’s some specially commissioned film music, made with a local music collective and featuring sounds from the factories. This is a gem of a film for anyone interested in trade justice activism. This is the film – with caveats – that these Mexican factory workers wanted to make and to show to the world. It’s one of the most intimate place-based examples featured on our site. And it was shown, deliberately, to audiences of workers either side of the US-Mexico border. Seeing empowered women like themselves struggling, resisting was an inspiration to many other women. And when the film hit the film festival circle, and there were panel screenings, the promontoras were there, answering questions alongside the directors.

Page reference: Rosie Buller, Melanie Bonner, Rebecca Lyons, Georgie Little, Tilman Schulzklinger & Jennifer Hart (2020) Maquilapolis (City Of Factories). followthethings.com/maquilapolis-city-of-factories.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 86 minutes.

Posted on December 4, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Those With Justice: A Disney Factory In China (+ Looking For Mickey Mouse’s Conscience – A Survey Of The Working Conditions Of Disney’s Supplier Factories in China)

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Gifts & Seasonal

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION

IMPROVE PAY & CONDITIONS

FLIP THE SCRIPT!

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

HUMANISE THINGS

INCLUDE HAUNTING & HORROR

PUT YOUR BODIES IN THE WAY

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

PROMPT GOOD CITIZENSHOP

BARGAIN & NEGOTIATE

“Those With Justice: A Disney Factory In China (+ Looking For Mickey Mouse’s Conscience – A Survey Of The Working Conditions Of Disney’s Supplier Factories in China)“
A short film directed by Karin Mak and translated by Jessie Wang for, and an NGO Report published by, Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) & Sweatshop Watch.
Watch the film in full above. Read the report – here.

Inspired by student anti-sweatshop activism in the USA, students in Hong Kong come together to protest the opening of Hong Kong’s Disneyland. They visit the factories where the Disney merch that is going to be sold there is made. They talk to the factory workers, and are horrified by what they learn. There are dangerous and exploitative labour practices behind the happy smiling image of Mickey Mouse and Friends. One group of students – who call themselves Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (or SACOM) – write a report about the working conditions in four of Disney’s hundreds of Chinese supplier factories. It’s called Looking for Mickey Mouse’s Conscience – A Survey of the Working Conditions of Disney’s Supplier Factories in China. They do this with the help of a California-based NGO called Sweatshop Watch, who send a delegation to China which includes University of California Santa Cruz film studies student Karin Mak. Mak films the factory workers talking about these working conditions, and produces an 11 minute documentary called Those With Justice: A Disney Factory In China. This focuses on one of the four factories – Hung Hing Printing & Packaging – which makes children’s books for Disney. Here, she finds, the workers are constantly reminded about the delicate fingers of Western children. They mustn’t be harmed by paper cuts. That’s why they have to use dangerous hot glue presses to stick the paper covers to hardback copies of a Mickey Mouse’s Haunted Halloween book, for example. The film and the report show images of their burned, crushed and mangled fingers. These injuries are caused by equipment and the speed at which they have to work to meet their targets. Mak’s film is used by SACOM and Sweatshop Watch (and other labour rights NGOs) to launch the report. It helps this Disney sweatshop story to get traction in the international new media. Now Disney is under pressure to respond. What follows is a fascinating to-and-fro between a huge multinational corporation and a small, determined, skilful and well-connected group of Hong Kong students. This is a fascinating and important example of successful trade justice activism. Piecing the story together below, we have found a variety of factors that have contributed to this success – some planned, some not – and a fascinating discussion about what counts as ‘success’.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2011) Those With Justice: A Disney Factory In China (+ Looking For Mickey Mouse’s Conscience – A Survey Of The Working Conditions Of Disney’s Supplier Factories in China). followthethings.com/those-with-justice.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 56 minutes.

Posted on December 4, 2024October 31, 2025 by Ian Cook

‘I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations’

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Gifts & Seasonal

2013

KMART

HALLOWEEN DECORATIONS

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE CITIZEN BEHAVIOUR

FLIP THE SCRIPT!

WORKERS TAKE THE MIC!

INCLUDE HAUNTING & HORROR

CHOOSE AN AUDIENCE

HUMANISE THINGS

PUT A MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

ASK FOR HELP

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

MAKE IT SNAPPY

MAKE IT AVAILABLE

“I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations”
A letter written by ‘Mr Zhang’ (Sun Yi) in a Chinese prison factory and found in a box of Kmart Halloween decorations bought in Oregon, USA by Julie Keith.
Original letter recieved by Julie Keith and posted online shown above.

In 2013, shopper Julie Keith is unpacking a box of styrofoam Halloween decorations she bought from her local K-Mart. In between the ghoulish plastic gravestones, she finds a folded-up letter. It’s written in English by someone who says that they’re a prison factory worker in China who has helped to make this product. They give the address of the prison (called Masanjia) and say that its inmates work long hours and have been tortured, beaten and insulted. It asks its recipient to forward the letter to the ‘World Human Rights Organisation’. Julie thinks it’s genuine and posts o photo of the letter on her facebook with the caption ‘I found this in a box of Halloween decorations’. It gets a flurry of responses. Is it genuine? What should she do with it? There isn’t a ‘World Human Right Organisation’. The discussions spread. The post is shared many times. Soon it’s being reported on the local TV news. Next it’s a global news story. Who is this person? How did they write this note? How did they smuggle it into a box of Halloween decorations? How many letters did they write? What did they hope would happen? What danger were they in for doing this? Can journalists find the author and verify the story? And, most importantly, why are ‘made in China’ goods coming from factory labour? Isn’t that illegal?

NB a documentary film about this letter was released in 2018. We will add a page on its making, reception and impacts soon.

Page reference: Harry Marriot, Alex Partington, William Finley, Milly Bowen, Sarah Murray & Jenny Sharp (2014) ‘I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations’. followthethings.com/i-found-this-in-a-box-of-halloween-decorations.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 34 minutes.

Posted on December 2, 2024July 12, 2025 by Ian Cook

Step Away From The Weapon

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Security