Activist college students, the Workers Rights Consortium and Knights Apparel have launched a new shirt for the collegiate (and we hope later general) market called the Alta Gracia shirt. It will be made in the Dominican Republic, one of the poorest countries in the world and a place where sweatshop producers love to have shirts made cheaply by exploiting workers. But the Alta Gracia plant is different. It has a high set of labor standards including full unionization, pay at more than three times the unlivable minimum wage of the Dominican Republic plus additional bonuses, a maximum 44 hour work week, an expansive nondiscrimination clause and regular inspections by the high-standard WRC as often as every other week. The Dominican Republic is close to the United States, minimizing environmental costs of transport. This factory will provide good jobs to the people living there so long as American college kids and alumni buy the shirts the factory produces.

For every factory owner, printer or shirt vendor who excuses their greedy choice of exploitative sweatshop labor by saying “It can’t be done any better; that’s just the way it is,” the new Alta Gracia shirt line answers with a big, fat “Bullshit!”

The very presence of the Alta Gracia factory and the Alta Gracia shirts is a reminder that apparel production does not have to grind workers into dust. If you’d like to find out more about the Alta Gracia shirt, including information about where the Alta Gracia shirt is being sold, sign up for the producer’s newsletter.

If you attend or work for a college or university, head to the school bookstore. Ask the manager of the apparel department whether their store offers an Alta Gracia t-shirt. If they do, and if you’ve got a few spare bucks, go buy one.

Transparency shouldn’t be opaque.

For the life of me, I haven’t been able to find a current list of campaign finance websites covering local political donations in the 50 states of the USA. The best I could find was an old list helpfully compiled by the Campaign Disclosure Project. It’s a good start, but it was assembled some time ago and more than a handful of links on that list have gone dead. For folks interested in tracking political movements and comparing their activity across states, I’ve put together this this list of updated links for all 50 states from Alabama to Wyoming. I’ll do my darndest to update it annually so that it remains current.

Yesterday morning, a team of Washington Post journalists unveiled a major new resource called Top Secret America: A Hidden World, Growing Beyond Control. A series of connected web pages identify and connected various government agencies and private companies that are engaged in erecting a new classified surveillance structure in the United States.

The amount of information contained in these pages is initially overwhelming, and it may be hard at first to figure out how useful the information might be. For instance, below is a static copy of Top Secret America’s “interactive” map — to zoom in and use other features, click on the map to be taken to the original website:

Unfortunately, the “zoom” and search by city features are of limited utility because zoomed-in maps (with the notable exception of the Washington, DC area) don’t provide any more detail. It’s perhaps understandable, but there aren’t any names and addresses of facilities or involved corporations or government agencies on the map, no matter how closely one zooms in. But even in the national aggregate, the map tells us a lot. For instance, while these classified organizations are clustered around Washington DC, they’re also distributed in every state, no matter how small that state is in size or population, making these classified industries part of the constituency for members of Congress from every state. The bar below the map with the distribution of classified installations for various government agencies tells us that the parts of government that are least accountable to democratic processes are most in charge of classified activity.

The aspect of the Top Secret America website I think will be of most use is the search function which allows one to find companies or government agencies by type of work or location. Using this function, I can quickly generate a list of 32 government agencies and 36 companies involved in classified activity related to the “War on Drugs”. For each of those agencies and companies, I’m informed of headquarters location and other contextual information. This kind of data would prove useful in determining, say, whether a correlation exists between campaign contributions from companies involved with the “War on Drugs” and a congresscritter’s policy actions regarding the same.

The Washington Post has written a series of news articles connecting the dots in this data in various fashions as well:

… In June, a stone carver from Manassas chiseled another perfect star into a marble wall at CIA headquarters, one of 22 for agency workers killed in the global war initiated by the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The intent of the memorial is to publicly honor the courage of those who died in the line of duty, but it also conceals a deeper story about government in the post-9/11 era: Eight of the 22 were not CIA officers at all. They were private contractors.

To ensure that the country’s most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation’s interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called “inherently government functions.” But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post.

What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest — and whether the government is still in control…

If you’re interested at all in the expansion of the Homeland Security state, this resource is worth more than a casual look.

Oh, dear.

Some time ago, we had provided a simple hyperlink, without comment, to the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation on a list of progressive resources for the state. This weekend, we’ve received a request from the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, asking that our web page no longer link to his organization. The Director explained to us that perceived association of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation with American liberals would cause his organization harm.

By all means, we will not only remove that simple, comment-less link to the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, but will also help the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation in its quest for greater distance from inconvenient liberals, even those of you who wash. Whatever you do, American liberals, please don’t make any reference to the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation. It would embarrasses them so very deeply. It would cause injury.

If you are an American liberal and are looking for a Wisconsin conservation organization to support, perhaps one that does not find your existence to be an injury, consider the Wisconsin State Green Party or the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. It is our current understanding that both of these groups are actively concerned with environmental issues and that neither of these groups has a current allergy to contact with liberals.

I’ve been writing over the last couple days about the beauty, utility and timeliness of bicycles. As the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico makes clear, Americans need to start using less petroleum. Riding bicycles instead of driving cars is a great way to reduce our oil consumption, making for cleaner air, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, lowered demand of offshore oil, and cutting health care costs with healthier bodies to boot.

The obstacle that needs to be overcome: Riding a bicycle takes work. Many Americans would prefer just to sit down and steer, hardly moving a muscle in their bodies.

One solution for overcoming this obstacle: Bicycle Benefits. Bicycle Benefits is a program that encourages bicycling as a means of transportation and promotes local businesses at the same time. To join, you go to a local shop that participates in the Bicycle Benefits program, and buy a Bicycle Benefits sticker for $5, and put it on your bicycle helmet. To enjoy benefits of your membership, you ride your bike to local participating businesses, and bring your bike helmet up to the counter, showing the sticker. They then give you a discount, as a reward for riding your bicycle safely. Before long, you get that $5 right back.

In my community, there are about 25 businesses that participate in the Bicycle Benefits program. When I bike, I get hungry, and so the participation of a bakery, an ice-cream shop, and a food co-op stand out the most, though a local, independent book store also grabs my attention.

Seach the Bicycle Benefits web site to see if your community is taking part. If there isn’t a Bicycle Benefits network set up yet, maybe you can be the one to get it started… and be responsible for reducing the flow of cash into the bank accounts of big oil companies like BP.

Upset by the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Want to do something to get back at Big Oil for fouling our nation’s coastal borders? You may feel impotent to do anything against the scale of the huge disaster, but in fact, you have a great deal of power to take specific action that will make oil companies feel your anger: Use less oil.

One great way to cut your oil consumption is to find alternative methods of transportation. Walk, for short trips, or ride a bicycle. The exercise will do you good, and you’ll be cutting off a bit of the cash that keeps fossil fuel companies politically powerful.

I’ve got a bicycle trailer that I use to carry my kids around, and it’s good for hauling around some objects too, but there is an alternative to that design. In Portland Oregon, Ahearne Cycles makes cycle trucks – bicycles with a firm platform placed in front, upon which objects can be placed for transport. Their bikes are handsome as well as effective. Give it a thought, next time you’re driving home a bag of groceries from a store in your neighborhood.

For some time, we have featured a link to the Michigan United Conservation Clubs on our Michigan Progressive Resources web page, based on the conservation work of MUCC in the past. But this morning, we received an e-mail from MUCC Executive Director Erin McDonough:

From: Erin McDonough
To: retorts@irregulartimes.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 9:42 AM
Subject: Please remove our name from your site

Dear Mam or Sir,

Please remove the Michigan United Conservation Clubs listing from your “Irregular States” web page. We did not authorize the link and would like to be taken off of your site.

Thank you,

–
Erin McDonough
Executive Director
Michigan United Conservation Clubs
2101 Wood Street
Lansing, MI 48912
517-346-6475
emcdonough@[domain redacted]

Clearly, Ms. McDonough does not subscribe to the notion that all publicity is good publicity. McDonough concluded after being hired last year that MUCC was too “green” in its activities and had focused too much on environmental protection for Michigan. A shift has been made; this year, not one part of MUCC’s policy platform focuses on environmental protection for Michigan habitats. One or two planks in the MUCC platform actually call for the loosening of protections to halt the dangerous trend of too much conservation. With this transformation in priorities complete, Irregular Times (an acknowledged liberal and environmentalist website with some of those unsavory “green” tendencies) has become an inappropriate source of new members for the group. The Michigan United Conservation Clubs don’t want anyone who reads Irregular Times to become familiar with the group; they’d rather not have you as a reader or a member. You’re the wrong sort.

We’d like to assist the Michigan United Conservation Clubs in implementing their new media policy. Remember, everybody, you may only place links to the MUCC website after Erin McDonough authorizes them. Step one in this process, removal of links from Irregular Times to MUCC, is already complete. After all, such links are not authorized by MUCC. We link to our own copy of the MUCC 2010 platform in this post, since MUCC has not authorized us to link to any files hosted on their web site. Also, we’ve redacted the domain name of MUCC in the text of Erin McDonough’s e-mail, since the inclusion of such unauthorized information could used to reconstruct a de facto link, allowing unsavory sorts like you to read and find out more about MUCC. We can’t have that.

Step two in the process is just as important. Have you linked to the Michigan United Conservation Clubs on your own website in the past? Did you do so without prior authorization? Then please, for the sake of all that is good and decent in this world, take down your links! They are clearly not wanted. Wait for a letter of permission, preferably notarized with one of those nice raised seals, before you direct readers to the MUCC ever again. You’ll be doing the group a big, big favor. Thanks so much.

P.S. If you’re part of an activist group in Michigan that doesn’t think being “green” is a problem to overcome, let us know and we’d be happy to feature your group in our Michigan progressive directory. Why, you can even authorize us to talk about your group’s activities if it makes you feel better.

While people around the globe keep their eyes glued to the World Cup, the sweatshop production of soccer balls stays well hidden. The International Labor Rights Forum has issued a new report that lends us a peek. Heading to the countries where soccer balls are made, the ILRF found soccer ball stitchers forced to work 21-hour shifts and not even paid the sub-poverty minimum wage. They also found kids working in those factories.

Read the report and ask yourself why after all these years soccer balls are still being made in sweatshops.

As a family man as much as a matter of nostalgia, I’ve had a hankering for those white tube socks with different colors of stripes at the top. They were perfect for laundry sorting when I was a kid: everybody knew who had which colors, and you could match ‘em up just like that.

Well, now you can satisfy your hankering. Skater Socks sells those socks, in all the classic 1970s combinations. They’re made in the USA, not by some poor underfed kid in a poisonous factory in China.

2007-2008 marked the Fourth International Polar Year, a coordinated international research effort dedicated to a better understanding of the Earth’s poles. Various sorts of data were collected in more than 150 research projects during this year.

Some of this research is still proceeding, and a large amount of data collected during the International Polar Year is still being analyzed. The International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference going on now through June 12 is an opportunity for the scientists involved in Arctic and Antarctic research to come together and share their new findings. It’s also an opportunity for us to watch over the scientists’ shoulders. A limited number of programs at the IPY conference are being webcast live, then archived for future viewing. Click on the IPY icon you see here to watch the proceedings.

Every time someone buys one of our our sweatshop-free t-shirts, we set aside a dollar to donate an organization carrying out liberal-minded activities for the greater good.

This time around, we’re donating to SkyTruth, an non-profit organization that collects, develops and disseminates images that document the impact of human development on the Earth. Based in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, SkyTruth is currently tracking beach incident reports related to the BP Gulf oil spill. Last year, Skytruth provided imagery of the Montara oil spill in the Timor Sea at a Congressional hearing. By providing information to the public uninfluenced and unfiltered by corporate interests, Skytruth makes it easier for the rest of us to know what’s really going on.

On June 26 at noon, people will take to beaches in coastal states around the nation and stand in the surf, hands linked, in a silent protest against the demonstrably unsafe practice of offshore oil drilling. It’s called Hands Across the Sand; click here to see if there’s a protest at a beach near you.

If Republicans really love the wisdom of the free market so much, how come they keep on spending so much money for stuff?

For the people who organize the Really Really Free Market, that’s not a rhetorical question. The market is a place where people bring stuff on the last Saturday of every month, give it away, and find what they need in return. It’s held in Dolores Park near 19th Street and Dolores Street in San Francisco.

“A Really Really Free Market is like a potluck for whatever you want to give or take away. Have you ever brought one dish to a potluck and gone away with a full belly and a balanced meal? Everybody brings something and goes away with more.

We all have skills, ideas, objects, smiles, talents, friendship, excitement, discussions, and many other things to share. If we bring them all together at the Really Really Free Market, we can provide more balanced and full lives for everyone.”

Don’t live near San Francisco? Don’t fret. There are Really Really Free Markets being organized all around the country. There’s one that’s been started up in Ithaca, New York, for example.

One of the frustrations I’ve had in getting information about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill from the Unified Command’s official site is that the Coast Guard and Minerals Management Service seem particularly cozy with BP executives, and appear to be operating a public relations campaign more than an objective information resource, with the aim of promoting the idea that everything is going well with the oil spill response – that “progress” is being made. The photographs provided by the Unified Command show less and less of the oil slick itself, and more and more of people doing things to organize the response.

This morning, a good counterbalance to this Unified Command PR campaign was begun by SkyTruth. That organization has created Oil Spill Tracker, a site through which Gulf Coast residents themselves are able to post descriptions of what’s actually happening on the shoreline. These aren’t stories approved by press officers. They’re on-site observations from ordinary people.

One particularly sad observation comes from the Florida panhandle, where a person claims to have snapped this photograph of a large sea turtle that washed up on shore dead. I’ve checked on Tin Eye for similar images elsewhere, to see if this one might be a ripped off fake. It doesn’t appear to be.

The longer the oil slick is allowed to coat the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, combined with toxic dispersants, the more animals like this we’re going to see on Gulf beaches.

Add your own eyewitness observations of Gulf oil spill manifestations at the Oil Spill Tracker.