DAR ES SALAAM — Tanzania has banned all Chinese milk products to safeguard against poisoning by the toxic industrial chemical melamine, a statement said Saturday.
The Tanzania Food and Drug Authority (TFDA) ordered “government officials at all border points to be extra vigilant with all dairy products from China including yoghurt, ice-cream powder and chocolate.”
TDFA said it had dispatched experts “to check retail and wholesale outlets for any possible traces of tainted milk that had made its way” into the east African country.
China said this week that milk powder contaminated with melamine, which is used in plastics, had made at least 6,200 babies ill nationwide and killed four over a period of many months.
Yili, Mengniu and Guangming — big brands consumed and trusted by hundreds of millions of Chinese — were affected by the recall after authorities checked their products and found traces of melamine.
Melamine added to milk and other food products gives the appearance of higher protein levels.
American parents with adopted Ethiopian children who attended last Saturday’s Ethiopian New Year celebration in Cambridge’s Central Square forgot to adjust to “African time.”
Though the printed program slated the welcome ceremony to begin at 6 p.m., the Ethiopians knew it wouldn’t get underway until “at least 8,” said Binyam Tamene, the event organizer and director of the Ethiopian Community Mutual Assistance Alliance.
“You could clearly see the huge change in our community because half the crowd showed up according to the schedule, which Africans never do,” Tamene joked in his office last week.
The “Enkutatash” celebration – which drew more than 500 people for traditional food, dance, music, and ceremonies in celebration of the Julian calendar year 2001, which is used in Ethiopia – showcased a mixed crowd, signaling that the Ethiopian community in New England is expanding from a tight-knit core of refugees who fled war and political persecution in the 1980s to a more diverse and younger demographic, including adopted children.
“Adoption today is different,” said Tamene, explaining the growth. “Parents think it’s important to involve the kids in their homeland culture, and the parents want to learn, too. On the other side, Ethiopians want to feel like they fit in this new society. Hopefully, we can give each other a mutual sense of belonging.”
At the St. Paul AME Christian Life Center on Bishop Allen Drive, the crowd seemed to interact effortlessly amid the red, yellow, and green streamers – the colors of the Ethiopian flag – and the festive theme of renewal and revival.
Many of the American families found out about the event through Wide Horizons for Children, a Watertown-based adoption agency. Beth Gallagher and her husband, Brian, drove down from New Hampshire with their Ethiopian daughters – who are biological sisters – to attend the event.
Gallagher said she was trying to form closer ties with the Ethiopian community here since “there isn’t much in the way of diversity where we live.”
“We say that our family is half-American, half-Ethiopian,” she said, dressed in a traditional outfit that was given to her by the girls’ biological grandmother.
Years ago, the Gallaghers traveled to Ethiopia and fell in love with the country. For a people that have so little materially, she said, Ethiopians are overwhelmingly hospitable. At first, the Gallaghers adopted one child, in 2005. But when the grandmother could no longer care for the younger sibling, they adopted her, as well.
“We’re not religious,” said Gallagher, “but we knew our children were already out there in the world.”
Amy Zipf, a 30-year-old mother of three from Hartford, held her infant daughter, Tariku, while mingling. Her older girls are biological children.
“Since I was 18, I knew I wanted to adopt and retain the culture,” she said. “But I had no clue there were so many people who were in the same situation.”
Tamene explained that Cambridge is a hub for Ethiopians because of its diversity, intellectual climate, affordable housing, and school system, which makes it both large enough for opportunity but small enough to be manageable. As a result, it is home to the highest concentration of Ethiopians in Massachusetts – 4,000 out of an estimated 15,000 statewide, Tamene said.
“People tend to go where the settlers before them went,” he said. “We feel comfortable here.”
Tamene himself spent three years as a political prisoner before studying in Romania and moving to the United States in the early 1980s. He started the Ethiopian Community Mutual Assistance Alliance in 1991 to provide services to Ethiopians now living in the Boston area.
“There is a large adjustment for these families,” he said. “They sacrifice so much for the children; they give up professions and take on new roles. Sometimes I wonder how they came to understand the importance of education if they didn’t go through it themselves.”
Samuel Gebru, a 16-year-old student at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School and an advocate for the Ethiopian community, echoed the importance of education and youth empowerment.
Born in Sudan to Ethiopian parents, Gebru stressed the dominance of politics in Ethiopia, where democracy is still “in its infantile stages.”
“That youth are playing a bigger role and having a voice is somewhat revolutionary,” he said during the New Year event. “Ethiopians are very elder-centered, and they often see issues as ‘you’re either with me or against me.’ Youth see shades of gray, and tend to listen better and be open-minded.”
Tamene agreed.
“I see some kind of shift just beginning,” he said. “The older Ethiopians here can sometimes be too attached to traumatic events in the past. The youth care no less about their culture, but their discussions seem to be based on more democratic principles – and that’s the influence of American values.”
The New Year celebration sparked an “interesting idea” in the minds of some Ethiopian adults who are without children, said Tamene.
“They saw all these American parents with adopted children and thought, ‘Maybe we should be adopting, too.’ They are realizing that this culture of individualism allows people to do that. They don’t need to wait for the government to step in. And that sort of thing gives us hope.”
A leader of Sudan’s southern rebels has returned from a sojourn in Denver resolved to force a regime change in Africa’s largest country.
When Sudan People’s Liberation Movement Secretary General Pa’gan Amum landed last week in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, he quit his seat in a shaky coalition government set up under a cease-fire deal.
Instead of working with Sudan’s northern Arab rulers, Amum said Tuesday he’ll focus on leading southern Sudan people into elections next year and a 2011 referendum on whether war-ravaged Sudan (population 40 million) should stay together as one country.
Peaceful progress “requires a change in the government,” Amum, 50, said during an interview in Denver, where members of his family live.
“Sudan’s at a crossroads between a road to imminent collapse and disintegration, and a possible road to be a free, peaceful and prosperous society,” he said.
The northern regime “wants to keep the status quo, so it’s a matter of political struggle” and, if necessary, force, Amum said. “If they start fighting, we will fight them back. We aim at building a free society which is at peace with itself.”
Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir — targeted by the International Criminal Court for possible war crimes and genocide — cast Amum’s departure as a dismissal. Amum now will work from southern Sudan while another SPLM official sits in coalition meetings.
Amum led an SPLM delegation to U.S. political conventions in Denver and St. Paul seeking support. Sudan’s rulers since independence from Britain in 1956 have sanctioned slaughters of ethnic African Sudanese in the south and western Darfur provinces.
The next U.S. president must “support the democratic forces in Sudan,” Amum said following meetings with Obama and McCain advisers. His spouse, Dr. Suzana Deng, who fled Sudan to Denver a decade ago as a refugee, met with Michelle Obama.
Now SPLM leaders are turning to China, which wields the real clout in Sudan. A delegation next month will visit China and try to build relations with officials allied with Sudan’s rulers, Amum said.
China produces oil in Sudan — at least 500,000 barrels a day. Sudan’s vast reserves are located largely in southern Sudan, giving resource-hungry China an interest in better relations with the SPLM.
“We hope we can win over China and for China to become at least a neutral force,” Amum said.
SPLM leaders also are forging relations with Americans in Denver and elsewhere. A growing number of private aid projects deliver water and school help to southern villagers.
This work is useful “treating the symptoms,” Amum said. “The solution to the Sudan problem is not sending in peacekeepers to protect the civilians. It is not peace by force. It is not sending in humanitarian agencies, though that does save lives. The solution is having a democratic system that puts power in the hands of the people. We aim to release the energy of the Sudanese people.”
PRINCETON, NJ — Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Wednesday through Friday finds Barack Obama maintaining his lead over John McCain among registered voters, by a 50% to 44% margin.
Obama has held at least a small margin over McCain in each of the last four daily reports, generally coincident with the start of the Wall Street financial meltdown that began to dominate the news on Monday this past week. Separate Gallup consumer confidence tracking has shown that Americans’ views of the economy deteriorated as the week progressed, and that Americans also began to express increased personal worry about their own finances. There is thus a reasonable inference that Obama’s gains may, in part, be related to the way in which the public viewed his and McCain’s response to the financial crisis. Friday’s economic news was a bit more positive, with the announcement of a pending major U.S. government bailout for the country’s economy, and the second day of significant increases in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and other stock market indices. It remains to be seen if this will affect Obama’s lead in the days ahead.
Obama’s current 50% rating matches his 50% record high reached just after the Democratic National Convention. (That came in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Aug. 30-Sept. 1.) However, his current six percentage point advantage is not as large as the nine-point lead he held in late July and an eight-point lead after the Democratic National Convention in late August. It is important to note that McCain recovered and moved ahead after each of these Obama high points, suggesting that it is certainly possible that McCain could recover in this situation as well.
Both candidates will be on stage at the University of Mississippi this coming Friday for the first of three presidential debates, and the public’s reactions to the candidates’ performances there could certainly have an impact on their election standing. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.) — Frank Newport
(Click here to see how the race currently breaks down by demographic subgroup.)
The AIDS epidemic in Ethiopia has left more than one million children without parents. Compassionate groups and individuals have taken on the responsibility of raising them, including traditional orphanages, family members, and neighbors. This film explores the stories of these caregivers, and the young people for whom they are caring.
When I first wrote about Starbucks for ColorLines in 2004, the company was riding high. Its stock was dancing near $40 and its expansion goals were projected at 40,000 stores worldwide. Today, Starbucks is clawing to keep its hold on $15 a share and has posted its first quarterly earnings loss since it went public in 1992. What continues to draw the most chatter, though, is its recent decision to close 616 “underperforming” stores, representing nearly 9 percent of its 7,200 U.S. company-operated venues.
Wall Street offers kudos, viewing the closures as necessary belt-tightening to bolster the company’s sagging stock. Indie coffee shop owners gloat, feeling sweet vindication as the Goliath stumbles. And chic small-is-beautiful types and cool anarchists celebrate the triumph of individualism and greater virtue against the evils of cultural hegemony and capitalism.
Not so fast! The analysis of Wall Street may be in keeping with free market mythology, and that of the Left gleefully snarky, but coffee farmers, service sector workers and striving Main Streets, aren’t necessarily winners when Starbucks loses.
The irony is that Wall Street and the company’s detractors are equally dismissive of Starbucks’ real value. Practically from the moment Howard Schultz took over in 1987, Starbucks cultivated an effort to blend cappuccino, profitability and a higher standard of social conscience than is common in corporate America. Starbucks was an early pioneer of healthcare benefits for part-timers and domestic partners. When the coffee market tanked in the early part of the decade, it innovated above-market pricing that saved thousands of coffee farmers from penury; and it’s the largest Fair Trade coffee purchaser in North America.
Wall Street was more or less willing to indulge Starbucks’ do-gooder tendencies so long as the company grew and profited. But it may grow less tolerant now that the company’s fortunes are faltering. Meanwhile, the Left has always disparaged Starbucks’ better practices as nowhere near good enough and extolled the higher virtues of independent coffee stores. But my research revealed that the narrative about indie cafés obscures some complicated truths.
Most of the wannabe café entrepreneurs I met were motivated not by counterculture but by the capitalist dream, frequently inspired by the very success of the Green Mermaid. My non-scientific sample confirmed that fair trade was often low on their list of concerns. Alas, many didn’t even serve better coffee—or charge lower prices. And compared to Starbucks, independent coffeehouses almost always provide lower employee pay, fewer benefits and virtually no opportunities for advancement.
The owner of my favorite Pittsburgh indie café sees her business as “in between a labor of love and an income-making venture.” One young woman, who worked there on and off for more than eight years, said her respect for the owners trumped her need for healthcare; not everyone though has that luxury. The young worker at my local Starbucks giggled when I asked about the company’s mission statement, confessing that she couldn’t remember the details, but she knew that she became eligible for the health plan in a few days and was grateful for it.
Moreover, the employees at independent coffeehouses are almost always white and often economically and educationally privileged. Many Starbucks employees also fit that profile, but the chain’s workforce is far more multiracial. According to the company’s 2007 corporate responsibility report, which is distinguished by its use of actual numbers and an assessment of whether the company reached its goals—people of color comprised 31 percent of the company’s U.S. workforce, 14 percent of its executives (vice presidents and higher) and 18 percent of its senior executives.
Even the cultural narrative about Starbucks vs. the indies is open to examination. While there are still funky independents eking out a living on the retail margins, most coffeehouses and designer roasters are niche markets, like purveyors of artisan cheeses, hand-painted T-shirts and limited-edition sneakers. They appeal to those on the trendy, cutting edge and survive by exclusivity—by pleasing a small, loyal and financially privileged. Starbucks, on the other hand, has been able to risk expansion from urban business cores and upscale suburbs into more modest settings, where it often provides the only meeting place that is neither a noisy fast-food restaurant nor a bar and that is often surprisingly multiracial.
The Starbucks in the shopping Center at Baileys Crossroads in a Virginia suburb of DC is always packed with Ethiopian and Somali men sharing coffee, political conversations, and chess games. “When I first took over, most of the guys who worked here had no idea about the background or the culture, so there were language barriers and cultural issues,” former manager Kokeb Teferi told me. “And then there were sometimes conflicts between different ethnic groups.” But in short order, Teferi organized and cajoled the staff and the regular customers into a different way of being, set up ground rules, and created a haven that blends the American host culture with the familiarity of home. “Now when someone from Somalia or Ethiopia is new in town, chances are they’ll end up here to make contacts and catch up on the news,” she said. And she also urged her multiracial staff to sign up for the company health care program and mentored a crew of younger workers. No wonder that places like downtown Newark and North Miami are fighting to save their local Starbucks stores, although the downturn in the company’s fortunes suggests that employees may face a less promising future and fewer benefits, at least in the short term.
Believe me, I’m no fan of market capitalism, and I haven’t been drinking caffeinated Kool-Aid. I recognize Starbucks is a corporation with serious flaws, whose current woes are an icy blend of self-inflicted arrogance, some bad decisions and a worse economy. But, on balance, Starbucks remains a pretty good deal. Unlike our serious corporate malefactors, it produces neither arms nor excessive pollution; people aren’t dying because of what it makes or sells; it doesn’t lobby against minimum wage increases or bully its employees to vote Republican; and given that no one is going to expire for lack of a Frappuccino, it doesn’t price people out of necessities. In a world of rapacious global conglomerates and McJobs, it remains a cut above.
And if that’s not enough, just try to remember what airport and turnpike coffee was like before Starbucks opened the Arabica floodgates.
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Kim Fellner is the author of Wrestling With Starbucks: Conscience, Capital, Cappuccino (Rutgers University Press). She works in the labor movement.
