I spent some time exploring the sites and totally agree with you. Hopefully this will get people thinking about the connections between what they buy and drink and wear and the exploitation that goes into making them.

Thanks for bringing attention to this!

If you click around his websites and his YouTube channel, you’ll find information about the very issues you mentioned. And he is trying to generate as much press coverage as possible so he can talk about how we can be more responsible consumers, not buying diamonds, cacao, or other products that are harvested by the hands of children (or other exploited people, for that matter).

I think he’s on to something, though. Amidst the thousands of other issues–all of which are important–sometimes you’ve got to do something crazy just to call attention to the issue. Many people simply don’t know that human slavery still exists. And if they don’t know it exists, then they can’t do anything about it. Like all other social problems, basic awareness is the first step toward change; the really hard work comes next!

Are these extravagant efforts getting to the root of the problem, which is the economic and political structures behind slavery? It’s all well and good to donate to organizations which work to help free people from slavery, and that’s certainly necessary, but there’s also the very real issue of knowing where the chocolate or the diamond you’re buying is coming from. How are the things we buy or the actions we take in everyday life in our home societies influencing these issues?

I think this is a noble and very helpful mission in a lot of ways, but I also think that there’s not enough focus on why this problem actually exists: major, major inequalities, not so different from those under colonialism, still exist, and capitalist culture worldwide perpetuates them.