Dr. Sandra Morgan and Dave Stachowiak discuss the Transparency in Supply Chains Act that will become law in the State of California on January 1st, 2012. This new legislation helps to ensure ethical labor practices for companies based in California, which can also create a trickle effect and create greater ethical supply chain standards around the world.

Key Points

Resources

[Note from the Ending Human Trafficking podcast team: This episode was recorded in 2011 so the contact information provided is no longer accurate. Please refer endinghumantrafficking.org/contact for the correct contact information to get in touch with the EHT podcast.]

Transcript

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 17, recorded in November 2011. Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:28] And I’m Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:30] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. And Sandie, on our previous episode we had talked about the Solidarity Sleepout that the Live2Free organization at Vanguard University had sponsored, and I know that you have an update for us before we jump into today’s topic.

Sandie [00:00:55] Oh, my goodness, Dave, it was an amazing event because it was so high impact. And personally, I wanted to see lots of students experience what it’s like to sleep outside because you don’t have a place to go. And the weather was very reasonable because we’re here in Southern California. So we didn’t expect major hardships, but it was damp. And we had Rhonda Sortino come and tell her story when she was a child and homeless. And we had musicians come and we made PB and J sandwiches. PB and J, peanut butter and jelly. And we were kind of extra blessed because somebody brought in hot chocolate for us and we wrote some notes and put together some toiletry bags to distribute to homeless youth. And then we settled down for the night. As I crawled into my sleeping bag, I realized that wearing my sweats out on the damp lawn was not a good idea. The water on the lawn had whipped up the bottom of my pants, and so the bottom three inches were wet. And now I have the whole night to sleep in wet clothes because I don’t have anything else. I have no other clothes there. And I realized, you know, this is the reality way beyond I just have no other clothes for tonight, but maybe I don’t have any more clothes for tomorrow or the next day or so many other things. I just don’t have an option and I have to deal with it. During the night, many of the students who were getting cold because the dampness was literally landing on them found themselves getting up and trying to find a drier place. So when I got up in the morning, I found lots of the students against the walls, in the hallways, over on the cement, looking for a dry place. And all of a sudden, the pictures that you see of homeless people in shopping malls, in alleys and how they’re pushed up against a wall. You begin to understand why they ended up there. And beyond that, the bigger question of why are 200,000 California 11 to 17 year olds homeless right here in the United States?

Dave [00:03:24] And of course, the reason we’re talking about that on this podcast is, of course, we had talked about it a few episodes ago. But the bigger reason is because this is one of the contributing factors that unfortunately does lead to young people being part of that supply chain. So you need to, forgive the term, but to move into human trafficking and to be targets for people who would perpetrate this crime against them. And so it’s a really important thing for us to be aware of and to be able to put ourselves in the shoes of a person that may be in that situation so that we can better understand and then hopefully do something that will help advocate and be lights to people who are in that situation.

Sandie [00:04:14] Exactly. Because we sometimes judge those people. We judge those kid...