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International Project's Maureen Casey featured in Capitaland business quarterly
MAUREEN CASEY
Excerpt from "Dozen who make a difference: United by a desire to make life better" by Tim O'Brien, Capitaland Quarterly, Albany Times Union, Sunday, January 11, 2009. With video interview (3:55 min.) by Will Waldron
Since 1997, Casey has led young people on an eye-opening journey to learn about the maquiladoras of Mexico, the American-owned border factories. There, they have seen firsthand Mexican workers living in shacks made of wooden shipping pallets, paid $5 a day to make parts of sneakers, cellphones and other consumer goods sold to Americans.
Casey is the international project coordinator for the Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State, a Latham-based group focused on workers' rights and economic justice.
"We were trying to counter much of what we were hearing about Mexicans taking jobs from Americans," Casey said. Over the years, the two trips each year have evolved to focus on life on the border and why Mexicans risk their lives to cross illegally into the United States,
More than 30 people a year make the trips, not just high school students. "Their world view gets shaken up," Casey said. "That's my role, to crack open the ways we think, the ways we make our decisions."
Participants are brought to a grocery store, given a day's wages of 50 pesos and told to buy lunch. They struggle to do so and then realize that forces people to choose between food and diapers. They realize why in many families both parents and some of the children work in the factories.
In the last three years, Casey has expanded her role to support fair trade, or the sale of goods by makers that pay a living wage. She said the North American Free Trade Agreement has concentrated wealth in fewer hands, and hurt the middle class and poor in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
"Since 2006, the Labor-Religion Coalition has been really promoting fair trade as a viable economic system," Casey said. "It puts the lives of people at the center rather than how the profits can be made."
Last Updated:01/27/2009
© Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State
