0:04: (background music)
0:10: (Jim Keady) At the age of 18,
0:12: I was just on track. Go to a good college, get a decent degree, do good and
0:20: you’re going to get an entry-level job down at Wall Street.
0:22: You’re going to work real hard; you’re going to be a broker; you’re going to make tons of money;
you’re going to be retired, and
0:26: by a young age, you’re going to have a house on the beach in New Jersey and a
0:29: couple of Mercedes. And a
0:30: trophy wife, and that will be the end of the game.
0:32: I’m done—multi-millionaire—that’s it!
0:38: I was playing professionally for the New Jersey Imperials;
0:41: I was playing the best soccer my life.
0:51: (background music)
1:03: I get offered
1:04: this coaching job by one of my teammates to go coach at Saint John’s University,
1:08: the NCAA Division 1 national champions; they are the best team in the country.
1:12: I was having a blast. I was loving coaching; I was loving playing.
1:16: I’m living in New York. I’m also studying stuff that I really enjoy.
1:20: I’m digging into studying theology
1:22: for the first time in my life in a formal way.
1:26: I get online, I start doing searches about Nike and
1:29: sweatshops and labor practices. And what I found was,
1:33: if you wanted to pick a company that completely violates everything
1:37: the Catholic social teaching is about, Nike would be your perfect case study.
1:41: At the same time I’m doing this research, Saint John’s University Athletic Department
1:45: starts to negotiate a $3.5 million endorsement deal with Nike
1:49: that would require me, as a coach, to wear and promote the products.
1:52: Saint John’s University is the largest Catholic institution in the country,
1:56: coupling itself with the largest sportswear company in the world,
2:01: and I said “how can we, as such a public symbol of Catholicism,
2:07: do something that runs completely counter to our mission?”
2:11: We’re saying to the world, “Look,
2:14: you should care about the poor, and we should fight against injustice, and we
2:18: should seek out the causes of poverty,
2:20: well unless you’re getting some really good athletic equipment
2:23: and $3.5 million along with it.” I mean you want to talk about just
2:27: hypocrisy manifested
2:31: in the real world—this was it! (News broadcast- “And you have the story at Saint John,”
2:35: “Jim Keady has caused a massive pile up.” “He is clearly an idealist.”) I didn’t go to Saint
2:40: John’s University
2:41: to work for Nike; I went there to coach
2:44: and to study theology. (News broadcast: “Keady, a devout Catholic
2:48: protested, ‘How does he reach the point where he thinks it’s immoral to wear the swoosh?’
2:51: ‘Because he’s coming at it from a background of faith and religion;
2:55: this isn’t about
2:56: just money or power or a job or anything. Think about this,
2:59: how many of us on a job that we really want
3:02: are prepared to get a memo from the boss saying stop doing this or you’re out,
3:06: and you keep doing it?’”) I was given an ultimatum by my head coach,
3:09: wear Nike and drop this issue or resign,
3:13: end of story. So, in June of 1998, I was constructively fired.
3:24: People were telling me, “you don’t know what you’re talking about;” “you know, those are great
3:27: jobs, and you can live like a king or queen on those wages, and those people are
3:30: really happy to have those jobs.”
3:32: I want to go find out.
3:35: Doesn’t everybody just want to know the truth? So I wanted to know the truth
3:39: first hand. I wanted to see it. I wanted to smell it. I wanted to hold it in my hand.
3:49: I knew I was going to need other people,
3:50: Leslie was a natural match.
3:54: (Leslie Kretzu) Jim and I went to college together; we came together ultimately because
3:58: we share an interest in labor rights issues.
4:01: (Jim) I eventually met back up there a few years after school
4:05: through an email about sweatshops.
4:08: (Leslie) I really wanted to be working with these issues.
4:11: (Jim) I wrote to my buddy, and said “who is this woman that’s writing you about this stuff?”
4:15: And he said, “she’s nuts like you; you should email her.” She was actually in route
4:19: to go work with Mother Teresa’s sisters in India, and I sent her off this email.
4:23: “Hey, I’ve got this great idea; let’s go starve on Nike’s wages in Indonesia.”
4:26: (Leslie) And so he’s like, “I really need to go.” (Jim) And she wrote me back,
4:29: “sounds great.” (Leslie) Let’s go!
4:37: (Jim) We plopped down in Tangerang, Indonesia, this industrial suburb outside of the
4:42: capital of Jakarta,
4:43: with the plans that, for the next month, we were going to live
4:46: as Nike’s factory workers lived, which
4:49: meant that we were going to go live in a worker’s slum outside of the capital,
4:53: and we were going to live on the workers’ wages, a $1.25 a day,
4:57: for the next month. To try and come to a better understanding
5:01: of what it’s like for Nike factory workers
5:04: to make this kind of money and live under these conditions.
5:11: We lived in a 9 by 9 cement box.
5:15: It was over 100 degrees, 100% percent humidity, a small window, and certainly no air
5:20: conditioning.
5:21: (Leslie) No furniture, you slept on a very thin mat
5:24: on an uneven cement floor covered in shelf paper.
5:28: (Jim) The streets outside of your home
5:31: are lined by open sewers,
5:34: and what that means in the rainy season is you would have all that feces just
5:38: float up into the streets and into your house.
5:40: (Leslie) And every time that you go to the bathroom, it comes back out into the sewer for
5:44: everybody else to see and smell.
5:46: (Jim) You would have football size rats that would stampede over the ceiling at night
5:51: and come up through the toilet and look for stuff to eat in the house.
5:55: Or the fish size cock roaches that would crawl over you at night.
6:03: I’m Jim. Just like anyone
6:09: around the world, you can’t just drop into someone’s life and be like,
6:12: “hi we’re here; we want to live in your life, and tell us how much it sucks.”
6:16: You had to build bonds of trust.
6:19: Jim, nice to meet you.
6:26: (Leslie) They treated us very politely, and it wasn’t until they saw
6:30: that we were committed in
6:33: the capacity of living on the wages that they’re forced to live on,
6:37: in the conditions that they are living, that they felt that they could
6:41: start to begin to trust us. You get to know them, and you hold their children, and you
6:46: eat with them, and you share stories with them; they become part of your family.
6:51: (Jim) We would go to different workers homes,
6:53: you’ve got like four women sleeping in like an 8 by 8 cement box and
6:59: all of their possessions are in there.
7:00: Like, everything is in this small area.
7:03: (Leslie) The workers would have to share a bathroom with five to ten
7:09: other families. The workers would have to share living
7:13: quarters, actually like a row
7:16: of shacks with hard-hit tin roofs.
7:19: All those families would share a laundry
7:23: corner and a kitchen facility.
7:26: And they would all share the same well to take the water out of.
7:35: (Jim) A $1.25 a day after you’ve paid for your rent, water, electricity, and any major transportation
costs,
7:41: you’re going to be left on average
7:42: with roughly 7,000 Rupiah per day. What the hell does that mean?
7:49: That’s going to buy you two simple meals of rice and vegetables,
7:52: a bag of peanuts, a bottle of iced tea, and some dish detergent.
7:58: And that’s all you can get.
