exploitation – kimi blog

Some kids buy Nikes. Others kids make them.

When I shared this graphic on Facebook, friend Leen de Weerd-Mosley commented that Nike’s long history of youth exploitation,

… all started with their logo. They held a competition, and paid 50 euros to the student who designed it. Nope, no royalties … Paid $35 in 1971; offered 500 shares worth $150 when it really became public in 1983

The Daily Mail tells us

At the party in her honour in 1983, an early Nike employee joked, ‘As everyone here knows, (Carol Davidson) invented the Nike swoosh and got paid the outrageous sum of $35 bucks for it’ read more

The announcement on July 12 that Wells Fargo had agreed to a $175 million dollar settlement to avoid prosecution by the U.S. Justice Department for race bias in its lending policies follows a settlement with Bank of America Corp. last December to pay $335 million to avoid similar charges. Unfortunately, this amount is just a wee drop in the bucket when compared with the destruction these financial institutions’ policies have wreaked in the lives of Latino and Black families. Thanks to the exploitative lending policies they’ve been much harder hit by our harsh economic climate specifically because housing has cost them hundreds more each month than White families paid, even when the Black and Latino borrowers had equally good jobs and purchased properties valued at the same price. read more

Tag: exploitation

Nike continues a long tradition of youth exploitation

Black and Latino borrowers victims of mortgage red-lining