Selling people is wrong

This is a short email exchange about this issue:

Dear Liz

Thanks for this.  I would say that the things she is concerned about are directly related to the consumerist culture created by the growth paradigm - which is espoused by all 3 of the grey parties.  ‘Growth’  (measured only in terms of traditional GDP) is simply an endless race between nation states , which sets up the culture which turns everything into a commodity, including human beings.  Hence the term – ‘he would sell his own grannie’.  The rise in exploitation of humans (along with everything else) is astronomical at the moment – and trafficking, particularly of young women for sex slavery is on the increase  all over the world.  See the 2010  film   ‘The Whistleblower’ which is the story of a young woman working for the UN (as part of a UK-based security firm)  in post-war Bosnia  who discovers that most of her  colleagues are actually encouraging  sex slavery !

Of course, advertising is an obvious and  inextricable part of the growth paradigm, and it too uses sex as much as it is allowed, and of course children see a lot of this.  Computer games also express  the dominant paradigm and, again, they use sex and violence as much as they can.  Young people now are far more likely to spend time watching TV or playing computer games than, say, playing in the woods or helping on the farm  as they used to do just a couple of generations ago.

We are all (depending on how much we engage with television etc)  immersed in consumerist values at the moment.  The opposite of the growth paradigm is a value system based on  respect for people and planet.  This is what the Greens promote.

The young woman's very understandable concerns are about a particularly serious manifestation of the consumerist paradigm…and this is where the Greens and the LDs are completely different as we challenge that paradigm fundamentally - through all our policies -  and they don’t.

Hope this is helpful.

Best

Shan Oakes

Equalities and Diversity Coordinator

Green Party of England and Wales

01482 862085 07769 607710

http://shanoakes.blogspot.com/

Hi There

I've just received the following enquiry from a very engaged young woman who I met while taking part in a Question Time event at a local grammar school on Friday.  As you can see she's pitting me directly against our local (high profile and elected councillor) Lib Dem so I'd like to give her a solid response.         best Liz

Hello 

 I am a year 12 at ...Grammar School 6th form.  I am interested in both of your parties, however I am curious as to whether you have any policies or ideas on the sexualisation of children and the increase or increase in awareness of sexual violence, particularly against girls and women? Because these are important issues for me and seem to be prominent in the community at the moment.