The Gap

A televised Honolulu news report featured a number of picketing protesters in front of a San Francisco Gap clothing store yesterday. The angry protesters were protesting the well known retail clothing chain’s purchases of “Made in Saipan sweatshop clothing.” The broadcasted news report made alarming mention of “forced abortions” and assorted other human rights and labor atrocities allegedly perpetrated by the CNMI’s garment factories.

It was a damning scene–one deliberately calculated to scare off our garment buyers and force the ultimate destruction of our struggling garment industry–and, by extension, of the entire CNMI economy as well.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans probably saw that televised protesting scene–and not many Americans are likely to question it. Most people believe what they read in the press, or see passed off as news on television.

How do you tell the average American that it’s just not true? How do you convince American public opinion that these stories are nothing but outright lies? How do you do it effectively, when so much negative media publicity, aided and abetted by the US Department of Interior, already besets are beleaguered commonwealth?

The situation is grim and disgusting. Do you know what the average mainland American citizen thinks of our tiny commonwealth?

They think that we are all a bunch of labor abusers. Go to the states and see for yourself. When someone asks you where you are from, say, “I am from Saipan.” See what their reactions will be.

This has already happened to me recently. I told a professor at the University of Hawaii that I was from Saipan. And do you know what trite remark he made?

“I guess you can’t cut cloth in a church”–that’s what he said. That’s what he told me. What an outrageous remark!

I tried to patiently explain, as best I possibly could, without getting angry–and do you know what he said?

“Sure, sure,” came his response, with obvious skepticism. He didn’t seem to believe me. How about that?

What we have here is a serious credibility gap. During the 1960s, a “credibility gap” was a euphemism coined to cover White House lies concerning the Vietnam conflict.

Today we have the same “credibility gap” in Washington. That credibility gap has spread all the way to The Gap clothing store in San Francisco. Yet, as far as the American public is concerned, we in the CNMI are the ones suffering from a credibility gap, not Washington.

This credibility gap, in fact, has been extended even further, as a certain Mount Carmel student–an indigenous resident, citing federal Interior Department fabrications–recently rallied for federalization. Such an incident would no doubt increase our credibility gap even further. (Even if that student has never extensively toured CNMI garment facilities in her life, rest assured, her erroneous and misguided statements will no doubt be circulated widely in The Gap protesting circles everywhere.)

To combat this enormous gap between truth and political fabrication, we must spare no expense and immediately hire competent public relations firms to set the record straight once and for all. Governor: bring back Preston Gates!