Last night I went to see Black Gold: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee at the Revolving Museum. I really enjoyed it. One of the interesting things was how much of the movie was about buying your coffee everyday at a shop. It struck me because I just don’t do that very often. I used to, especially when I worked in Boston and passed tons of places to buy coffee everyday but now I make my coffee at home and have a third cup at the office (not fair trade, by the way.)
I buy fair trade coffee for home and when I do go out for coffee, it is to Brew’d Awakenings where they sell fair trade so it isn’t really a huge issue for me. That’s one of the things that I appreciated most about the movie: it made me think about something I never think about because it is just a part of my life.
Art is the Handmaid of Human Good 
Thursday, May 17, 2007 at 10:21 am
Appreciate the mention of Black Gold here. I’ve been using the movie – in a wide variety of settings – to bring up the topic of fair trade. Not a perfect movie in any way, but gets the conversation going in the right direction.
I run an organic, sweatshop free, fair trade apparel website (mostly t-shirts). It’s at http://offyourbackshirts.com. My blog is: http://offyourbackshirts.blogspot.com/. Check them out and let me know what you think.
Monday, May 21, 2007 at 12:11 pm
For those of you who are interested in the issue of Fair trade, there is a powerful documentary out called “Black Gold,” that documents the lives of Ethiopian coffee farmers and clearly demonstrates why all of us should be asking for Fair Trade coffee. The film was recently released in the theater but is now available to the public on DVD via California Newsreel. You can read more about the documentary or pick up a copy of it here at http://newsreel.org/