<![CDATA[Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy]]>

false <![CDATA[Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy]]>

1908367

Most Americans would be shocked to discover that slavery still exists in the United States. Yet most of us buy goods made by people who aren’t paid for their labor–people who are trapped financially, and often physically. In Nobodies, award-winning journalist John Bowe exposes the outsourcing, corporate chicanery, immigration fraud, and sleights of hand that allow forced labor to continue in the United States while the rest of us notice nothing but the everyday low price at the checkout counter. Based on thorough and often dangerous research, exclusive interviews, and eyewitness accounts, Nobodies takes you inside three illegal workplaces where employees are virtually or literally enslaved. In the fields of Immokalee, Florida, underpaid (and often unpaid) illegal immigrants pick the produce all of us consume, connected by a chain of subcontractors and divisions to such companies as PepsiCo and Tropicana. At the top of the chain are stockholders and politicians; at the bottom is a father of six, one of whose children suffers from leukemia, who entered America only to become the unpaid employee of a labor contractor nicknamed “El Diablo” for his cruelty. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the John Pickle Company reaped profits for years making pressure tanks used by oil refineries and power plants. Feeling squeezed by foreign competition and government regulations, JPC partnered with an Indian and Kuwaiti firm to import workers from India. Under the guise of a “training program,” fifty-three workers, including college-educated Uday Ludbe, came to the United States, only to have their documents confiscated and to find themselves confined to a factory building. Pickle laid off Americans and paid the Indians three dollars an hour. Saipan, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific where the author lived for three years, has long been exempted from American immigration controls, tariffs, and federal income tax–a status quo assiduously protected by lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Congressman Tom DeLay. There, garment magnates–selling to clothing giants like the Gap and Target–live in luxury while thousands of foreign factory workers, 90 percent of them female, work sixty-hour weeks for $3.05 an hour and spend weekends trying to trade sex for green cards. The garments they make are allowed to be labeled MADE IN AMERICA. Nobodies is a vivid and powerful work of investigative reporting, but it is also a lively examination of the eternal struggle for power between free people and unfree people. Against the American landscape of shopping mall, outlet stores, and Happy Meals, Bowe reveals how humankind’s darker urges remain alive and well, lingering in the background of every transaction and how understanding them may lead to overcoming them.

1910251

2007

Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy

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4 2 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 03 18:01:16 -0800 2007 Thu Jan 03 18:14:05 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue Dec 11 09:31:30 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 16 10:12:00 -0800 2007 more...]]> 3 1 false false Mon Apr 14 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Oct 12 13:53:29 -0700 2007 Mon Apr 14 08:50:48 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Tue Oct 16 16:28:41 -0700 2007 Fri Oct 12 10:57:48 -0700 2007 Fri Oct 12 11:08:00 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 1 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Jan 02 09:39:56 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 02 09:44:15 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Apr 06 21:43:08 -0700 2008 Sun Apr 06 21:50:40 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Feb 18 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 18 18:23:31 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 18 18:36:20 -0800 2009
How convenient that the general public is so outraged over 'illegal aliens.' ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Jan 31 23:01:24 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 31 23:08:16 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Sep 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 27 06:49:03 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 10 12:23:13 -0700 2009
So yes, the book does just what the title says - it's ex...more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Dec 12 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Nov 14 18:28:34 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 12 11:42:32 -0800 2008
DEPRESSING. NO real solutions offered. Best summed by a quote in the last chapter:
"We all seek control. Control equals power. Power corrupts. Corruptio...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 05 11:35:44 -0800 2007 Fri Jan 04 08:51:19 -0800 2008 more...]]> 2 0 false false Wed Sep 19 11:25:11 -0700 2007 Wed Jan 30 08:48:32 -0800 2008 more...]]> 0 0 false false Sat Apr 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 01 18:52:33 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 06 15:38:35 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Feb 05 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Feb 05 15:21:45 -0800 2008 Tue Feb 05 19:07:28 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Jul 31 12:47:40 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 31 13:31:06 -0700 2008 I guess we all need something beneath us.
– Jonathan Mooney, The Short Bus

almost american
.
you can’t coax an orange to grow
the way you can a migrant worker to
climb two stories into a tree of
thorns, atop a ladder n...more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Nov 29 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Sep 03 21:10:33 -0700 2008 Thu Oct 29 14:23:30 -0700 2009
At the same time, it was...more...]]> 2 0 false false Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 02 09:39:44 -0700 2008 Thu Aug 21 19:18:27 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Sep 26 12:35:53 -0700 2008 Fri Sep 26 12:37:35 -0700 2008 more...]]> 2 0 false false Wed Jul 02 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 02 15:30:57 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 02 15:43:07 -0700 2008 5 0 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Apr 08 12:41:21 -0700 2008 Sun Jul 26 11:32:56 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=1908367