Make Social Change A Reality

As we celebrate an immensely historic election and inauguration this week, with President Barack Obama’s transition to the White House and Presidency complete, a sense of duty and great undertaking must motivate us all to work towards ending poverty and suffering in the U.S. Until now, this goal has been long-absent from a serious national conversation surrounding our priorities and direction in the 21st Century, with the exception of Hurricane Katrina’s dramatic, albeit short-lived, media spotlight on the poverty that persists in our country. With a jagged economic road looming ahead and predictions for a slow recovery reaching possibly into 2011, the great needs of impoverished communities , individuals, and families has never been more apparent . We must work on all fronts, including education, employment, and programs that will strengthen families, to generate solutions that will address the stagnant situations that many Americans continue to find themselves in, despite their eff...

The article I read in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Desperate Burmese Labor in Thailand ” made me think a little more about consumer responsibility and the role of civil society in assisting citizens of countries under political turmoil. It is about Burmese workers who cross the Burma-Thailand border to get a job at a factory that will pay them enough to feed their families back home. The conflict situation in Burma primarily because of the junta, and the challenging economic state the Burmese find themselves has caused hordes of people in need, mainly women, to immigrate to neighboring Thailand for work under unwanted circumstances. There are cases where child labor has been documented in factories that work for big multinational corporations. To top of the already strained financial situation of the country, the US has announced new, harder sanctions against the Burmese state. If such sanctions are ordered the Burmese are the first who will be affected by the measures (and not th...