Will Your Chocolate Easter Bunnies Contain Child Labor?

by Tim Newman · March 18, 2011

Now that Lent has officially begun, Easter is coming soon. While many people will be giving up something leading up to this holiday, chocolate will likely not be one of the popular items being avoided in the next month. In fact, Easter is thesecond top-selling confectionery holiday of the year, as consumers stock up on chocolate Easter bunnies and Easter eggs. With forced, trafficked and child labor continuing in the production of cocoa, will this year’s Easter bunnies be contaminated by labor exploitation?

As the production of Easter-themed chocolate products jumps in to high gear, children continue to work in hazardous conditions on cocoa farms throughout West Africa. Some workers are also in situations involving forced labor or may have been trafficked from neighboring countries to harvest cocoa beans. It has been almost ten years since major chocolate companies committed to eliminating these abuses in their chocolate products, but unfortunately, these labor abuses are still connected to the products we buy.

Many companies are starting to shift their cocoa to beans that have been certified by independent third parties to comply with international labor rights standards, but the Hershey Company has lagged behind in making such commitments. The iconic Hershey Company makes many most popular Easter-themed chocolate treats, but the company has not implemented the demands of well over 7,000 Change.org readers calling for Fair Trade Certified Hershey chocolate.

The International Labor Rights Forum, Global Exchange and Green America now have new resources that you can use for Easter and Passover to support the Raise the Bar, Hershey campaign. You can download this Easter-themed letter and mail it to Hershey. The letter includes a picture that can be colored in which is a great activity for kids. For Passover, you can use this supplement for your seder and collect Passover-themed letters to Hershey. Additionally, these organizations are also sponsoring a creative Hershey Brand Jamming Contest and have just announced a new grand prize of $1,000 for the best entry and have extended the deadline to April 10, 2011. More details on the contest are online here.

You can also take action by sending an e-mail to Hershey through Change.org and inviting your friends to join. If you are on Twitter or Facebook, you can send a message to Hershey through its Twitter account (@Hersheys) or on its Facebook wall saying that you want a Fair Trade Certified chocolate bunny from Hershey this Easter.

Photo credit: dearbarbie

Tim Newman is a campaigns assistant at the International Labor Rights Forum. He also works on the Stop Firestone campaign.

This story was published at www.Change.org

And the Easter season continues on as we reflect on our call to new life throughout the coming weeks. But that’s my next article!

Yet

The quiet spoke,
with a force more powerful
Than thunder
When the earth quaked in fear and the sun hid shame
At the sight of God-man Crucified

For three days the deadly stillness reigned
Nature watched and waited.
Filled with longing
With hopeful excpectancy.

A faint stirring–a rustle–a gentle breeze–
Then
Suddenly the whole world leaped in joy.
The green grass humbly kissed
His wounded feet.
The Flowers bent their lovely heads in homage.
The soft breeze caressed Him
As a mother does her child.

All awaited upon
His caring smile of love
And in that precious moment found the
Meaning of life.

Ao it was then–
So it always will be–

Flowers will watch and wait,
In sheltered gardens
Until
Love arises.

–Sister Lucille Hintze, SHF

Easter Blessings
from the
Sisters of the Holy Family!

We end our service in darkness and silence. Though we know the end of the story, it does seem as if darkness and evil have triumphed. Friday night and Saturday are solemn as we keep vigil with the Crucified One.
And Then Comes the Morning…

Darkness and evil cannot hold the Lord of All, and our Easter Vigil is a fitting celebration of the triumph of God’s love and power over the power of sin and death. With the blessing of the new fire and the new candle, the proclamation of Easter, the telling of our salvation history through God’s Word, the reception of new members into the church through baptism or profession of faith, the renewal of our own baptismal promises, and the celebration of the Eucharist, the Vigil can go on for three hours or more — and is followed by a reception, because who can sleep after all that excitement?

The Vigil marks the transition from the power of darkness, the power of the prince of this world, to the Power and Love of God. We move from darkness to light; we move from silence to shouts of joy. We return the “Alleluia,” which has not been uttered since before Ash Wednesday — and we sing it and shout it again and again. “Praise the Lord!” “Alleluia!”

This Holy Thursday liturgy is the beginning of the Easter Triduum, or “three days.” Marking time in the ancient Jewish manner, from sunset to sunset, our first day is from Thursday at sunset to Friday at sunset; the second day from Friday at sunset to Saturday at sunset; and the third day from Saturday at sunset to Sunday at sunset. Lent is officially over, and we enter into a different kind of time, a three-day movement from intimacy and mandate through suffering and death and finally to triumph over death and resurrection. Like a long drama, our three days of celebrations are arranged as if they are one continuous movement.

Holy Thursday ends with the procession of the Blessed Sacrament to the altar of repose, the stripping of the altar in the main church, and the solemn vigil before the Blessed Sacrament, keeping watch on this holy and scary night of betrayal and intrigue.

Palm Sunday’s procession into the church with palms and cries of “Hosanna” began our celebration of Holy Week, our ritual commemoration of the last week of Jesus’ life before his saving death and resurrection. How easily the crowd moved from cries of “Hosanna!” to cries of “Crucify him!” How easily we ourselves moved from cries of “Hosanna!” to cries of “Crucify him!” just a few minutes later as we read the Passion from this year’s Gospel, Mark.

Monday evening brings the celebration of the Mass of the Oils, celebrated at one of the larger churches in the Diocese. At this annual Mass, the Bishop blesses the Oil of Catechumens, the Oil of the Sick and the Sacred Chrism, the three oils that will be distributed to parishes of the Diocese for the anointings that will occur during the coming year. Also at the Mass of the Oils, the priests of the diocese renew their commitment.

According to today’s Gospel, the difference between a good shepherd and a bad shepherd is that the good shepherd cares for the sheep, while the bad shepherd is just doing a job. In our individual lives as Catholic parishioners – “sheep,” in the church’s parlance – we have no doubt experienced many shepherds, some good and some not so good. It seems, especially in the last decade, that the bad shepherds get a lot of press while the good shepherds quietly go about caring for the sheep. The good shepherds care in this way not because it’s what they get paid to do, not because we’re always such adorable little lambs, but because the Big Shepherd has “put into [their] hearts a marvelous love for the faithful ones who dwell in the land” (Psalm 16:3).

Take some time this Good Shepherd Sunday to thank the good shepherds in your life.

Last week we spoke of Jesus’ three commands – to love, to trust, and to fear not. This week in our Gospel we find the two disciples on the way to Emmaus filled with doubt and fear, and the disciples gathered in the upper room hearing their story also filled with doubt and fear.

The sudden appearance of the Risen Lord in their midst does nothing to calm their fears and restore their faith. It is only as he keeps talking to them, reassuring them, showing them evidence of his identity and his reality, opening the Scriptures to them that they let go of doubt and fear. These are the things we need to do for one another in times of doubt and fear: talk to each other of our faith, reassure one another, give testimony about our own faith and why we believe, share Scripture.

The early church shared faith as an urgent matter, to keep hope alive in times of persecution and doubt. We must take our faith as seriously today.

What is the biggest challenge to your faith today? What strengthens you to confront it?

In today’s second reading we are reminded of the importance of obeying God’s commandments. What started as Ten Commandments in the book of Exodus grew to numberless laws as people tested the finer points of obedience, until Jesus summed up the commandments in two: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus also said quite frequently, “Do not be afraid. Have no fear. Fear not,” and once, “Fear is useless. What is needed is trust,” and again, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

The three commandments to love, to trust/believe and to fear not are central to our lives of faith. Thomas in today’s Gospel refuses to believe until he has the evidence of his own senses. We today are far removed from Thomas’ time when he was in fact able to see and touch the risen Lord. We need to trust and believe our invisible God and the generations of witnesses who have come between Thomas and our day.

If we put into practice Jesus’ commandments to love God and others, to have faith and trust, and to not be afraid, we will find our faith will hold us in times of trouble and challenge.

Where are you most challenged in following Jesus’ commandments? What helps you?

Good Friday: Isaiah 52:13—53:12; Psalm 31; Hebrews 4:14-16,5:7-9; John 18:1—19:42

Easter Vigil: Genesis 1:1—2:2; Genesis 22:1-18; Exodus 14:15—15:1; Isaiah 54:5-14; Isaiah 55:1-11; Baruch 3:9-15,32—4:4; Ezekiel 36:16-17a,18-28; Romans 6:3-11; Matthew 28:1-10

Easter Sunday: Acts of the Apostles 10:34a,37-43; Psalm 118; Colossians 3:1-4 or 1 Corinthians 5:6b-8; John 20:1-9

The Easter Triduum – three days by Jewish reckoning, sunset Thursday to sunset Sunday – is the liturgical celebration of the central mystery of our Christian faith.

It is this Paschal Mystery that awakens in us our trust for God in a world where many ask, “Where is your God now?” Four Oakland police officers were killed recently as the result of a routine traffic stop. Where is God? The economy is in bad shape, because of fraud, mismanagement and because the economy works in cycles. Where is God as people are losing “everything”? Plane crashes, natural disasters, suicide bombings, illness continue to take their toll. Where is God?

Throughout salvation history, God has assured us of his covenant love. God’s ways are not our ways; God did not spare his Son; God saved us from slavery in Egypt, even at the cost of a number of his beloved Egyptians; death is not the end; things are not as they seem – all these assurances and more pile into the readings for our celebration of the Triduum.

Resurrection – new life from death – is not just something that happened once for Jesus 2000 years ago, nor is it limited to the ends of our earthly lives. God has resurrection power in our lives at all times, and if we open our hearts to trust God, we will experience that power. This is the way of God in our world.

Happy Easter!