I was a child laborer.

My dad has a small organic garden, and when I was growing up he would ask for my help planting, weeding, and harvesting.

I didn't get paid. These were chores. Sometimes it was hot and I was tired, and he needed my help. But, I could stop if I wanted and go read a book or ride bikes with my friends.

Can you remember the first time you heard an argument for child labor?

I can. I had a friend who also grew up working on a farm. He said:

1. Children are supposed to work, otherwise how do they learn useful skills?

2. How can a family get ahead if the kids just consume resources and don't contribute anything? 

3. Culturally, it's normal all around the world for youth to pitch in with work.

4. Just because we force kids in the U.S. to attend school doesn't mean that we should force kids elsewhere to sit around if they don't have access to a school.

The problem is, there's a big difference between learning responsibility and useful skills, and "being a child slave." When we in the anti-sweatshop and anti-trafficking movements speak out against child labor, we're not talking about Jose getting up in the morning, milking his family's cow, and then trotting off to play baseball. We mean forced labor.

See?

"In Uzbekistan, between 1.5 to 2 million children are forced by their own government to harvest cotton each year... If they refuse, they face beatings, expulsion from school, and other government-imposed penalties."

"In Cote d'Ivoire, UNICEF estimates 35,000 children... are trafficked to work on cocoa plantations far from home where they face crippling isolation, beatings, and other forms of coercion to grow cocoa for our chocolate bars."

Do you see? 

When I was a kid, my dad never threated me or physcially coerced me to work. In the documented cases of child labor that stream through my day, this is what is happening.

What We Are Doing: Changing Goverment Purchasing Laws

That's why Ethix Merch is in a coalition with the International Labor Rights Forum and Green America to end American government purchasing that supports forced child labor with taxpayer money.

In comments on the Executive Order 13126, our groups outlined a plan for the U.S. Department of Labor to cut ties with a supplier when chocolate and uniforms come from locations with known child slavery abuses.

As reported in the press release for these comments, "Last year, the U.S. Government spent $43 million on chocolate and $1.9 billion on apparel and uniforms." That's a lot of dough streaming in to places where child exploitation is the status quo.

We must change this, because there is a difference between kids working and child slavery.

Don't you see this Gulnara Karimova? (Gulnara is the current Uzbekistan president's eldest daughter).