No Sweat!

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I was excited about buying shoes. I was at a store called "The Shoe Doctor" in the awesome community of Wolseley, Winnipeg, a store where they sell different brands of shoes that aren't Nike or Adidas etc. One of the brands of shoes that they sell is called "No Sweat", which is an organization that makes "100% union made apparel" which includes shoes. "No Sweat" also makes other clothes such as t-shirts, sweaters etc.



I bought a pair of black, converse-style shoes that are 100% union made in Indonesia. This means that "No Sweat" employs people who desperately need these jobs and who will be treated fairly. This means no child labour and no 16 hours work days.

To learn more about "No Sweat" visit their website: http://www.nosweatapparel.com/index.html

Another interesting shoe brand that I found at "The Shoe Doctor" was "Oliberté", which, similar to "No Sweat" fairly employs people in developing countries, for "Oliberté" they mostly employ people in Ethiopia. "Oliberté" is a bit more expensive than "No Sweat" and unlike "No Sweat", they only make shoes. The shoes that they do make though are made from premium leather from Ethiopia and rubber from Liberia.

To learn more about "Oliberté" visit their website: http://www.oliberte.com/home/

The reason why these two companies are able to do such great things is because they do not spend money on advertising, and so they encourage people to spread the word. By writing this, I hope that someone will go out and but a pair of "No Sweat" or "Oliberté" shoes that really will make a difference in the world.

The Interesting Politics of Iceland

Reykjavik, the capital city of Iceland recently had a municipal election in May of this year. A new political party that was running to be elected was the Best Party, whose original goal was to satirize Icelandic politics. The party's platform consisted of things like "free swimming for everyone and free towels", "free bus rides and dental services for children and the poor" and to "listen more to women and old people." Well low and behold, the Best Party won the latest municipal election in Iceland's capital city, and now comedian Jon Gnarr is the mayor of Reykjavik.

Here's the campaign video for the Best Party, featuring the song "The Best" by Tina Turner:



If only Canadian politics were this interesting!!!

To learn more about the Best Party, visit their website: http://bestiflokkurinn.is/. Warning: it is in Icelandic!

I will be visiting Iceland for one week at the end of this month, and I am getting extremely excited about my trip! I will soon write a post about all the things that I hope to do in Iceland, and about more interesting things in Iceland's capital city of Reykjavik such as the world's best hot dog stand!

G20 Protests Continue

In Toronto there are still many protests taking place even though the G20 summit ended two weeks ago. This time though, they are not simply protesting topics that would be talked about at the summit, but how the police responded towards protesters during the weekend of the summit in Toronto. Yesterday (Saturday), around 1,200 marched from Queen's Park to the Toronto Convention Centre to protest how the police and the Canadian government is handling the aftermath of the G20. It's not just rowdy protesters who are angry though, Shanaaz Gokool, the head of Amnesty International Toronto thinks that more needs to be done in handling reviews and investigations into the police. Over 1,000 arrests were made during the G20, which makes that weekend the largest mass arrest in Canadian history.

I've posted some things regarding the G20 and my feelings about it on Facebook and I've gotten many responses saying that the police presence was completely necessary. And I agree. The police presence was completely necessary, but the way that the police acted, was completely unnecessary. There are many videos on YouTube circulating of violent arrests made by the police, but there was one video that really caught my eye:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Heb9BXjYcII

This short 31 second video shows a large group of protesters singing O Canada in front of a large group of police. Near the end of the song, they sit down, clearly showing that they are peaceful. As the song ends, police charge the crowd, shoving them back and pushing many people over. Could they not have simply said "please, move?"

Canada is not a police state, but from looking at some videos posted during the G20 in Toronto, that was kind of hard to tell.

I also understand that there were some violent protests that happened during the G20 where police cars were actually set on fire, and yes, those are the people who the police should be arresting and spraying tear gas on. But the people yelling "we are peaceful, how 'bout you?!" should not be arrested just for expressing your opinion. In connection with my class video project that I made on human rights, I think that many human rights were violated two weekends ago. Mainly by the police towards the protesters and I think that something like that is unacceptable in our society.