Ms.Abad’s piles of outdated information

At a student demonstration in Washington, Ms. Chie Abad, a Flilpina who worked in one of the apparel factories here continues to demonize the NMI with outdated information about working conditions in the islands. Perhaps she simply refuses to acknowledge that a lot has changed since her stint here more than four years ago.

But then, Ms. Abad, like student demonstrators in San Francisco whose time out of classes is being paid for by the US Textile Labor Unions and misplaced human rights activists, has found an avenue to make quick and hefty speaking fees just to regurgitate old and irrelevant though sensationalistic information. What a way also to tour the US where all expenses are paid for by the textile labor unions.

If anything, Ms. Abad, the US legal system is in place and fully functional in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. If you had taken the time to review court records, your naked eyes and nimble mind would be numb by complaints and subsequent decisions against all who have braved violating worker rights. In fact, the problems we’ve seen in the formative of the apparel industry here were never intended. It’s known as “developmental” problems that were refined in every conceivable way for our Christian values doesn’t allow us to tolerate the violation of human rights in any form and fashion.

How sad that you continue demonizing the NMI with old and irrelevant information speaking among students, most of whom don’t even know the geographical location of these isles. But then would they give a damn when there’s an avenue to make fast cash? In fact, student demonstrators (and please include your cranium too) need not take your warped cause all the way to these isles. Visit the State of California and find out the motive behind all the controversy against the Pacific’s Little David.

You see, Ms. Abad, the central issue in this controversy isn’t so much human rights issues as much as the fact that the Pacific’s Little David has modernized its production capabilities while the textile industry in California hides behind its well greased sense of complacency only to see most US manufacturers from apparel to automobiles relocate elsewhere. The latest plant shut-down Levi Strauss, an American icon in apparel goods. It has decided against high wages in an industry that basically reaps marginal profits. Thus, its shut down in North America headed to a foreign country.

Furthermore, if you have any sense of real facts, how about researching how state and federal officials have looked the other way when enforcing labor laws in California? How about reviewing how California farmers have permitted young migrant workers (sterling case of child slavery) who march every morning to farm fields while American children their age head to classrooms? How about reading up on how minorities (yourself included) have been discriminated throughout the country despite the fact that they too wear the same halo of “US Citizenship” though viewed with disdain for their original sin of being “Americans of Color”?

Ms. Abad, you have an awful lot to learn and you can begin by brushing your teeth until all the yellow tar of ignorance are removed forthwith. Are we communicating? If the people of these isles really had no conscience, then it goes without saying that your fellow country men (our brothers and sisters) would have returned home years ago. That most have chosen to stay here to avail of employment opportunities is a tale that the NMI is far from the negative portrayal we’ve seen and read about in US mainland print and electronic media since 1993.

Finally, how about sticking to facts (not perceptual facts propped-up so that you can continue to make quick bucks), but real facts that can’t be twisted into piles of persistent lies about conditions out here. In other words, I challenge you and the people who allegedly are bankrolling your big mouth to, well, put your mouth where your money is in fairness to the image of these isles we the indigenous people call home.