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  1. #1
    Senior Member Brian503a's Avatar
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    Globalization Reality Show: Surviving as a Maquiladora Worke

    http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_art ... f129d08417

    Globalization Reality Show: Surviving as a Maquiladora Worker

    La Prensa San Diego, News Report, Luis Alonso Pérez, Jan 24, 2006

    Can you imagine watching a corporate lawyer on television work an exhausting eight-hour shift at a foreign-owned maquiladora plant for 60 dollars a week, and living in a wooden shack in one of the poorest shantytowns in Tijuana?

    The California Western School of Law’s Proyecto Acceso (Access Project) has produced a pilot program called “Globalization: The Reality Show,� in which a group of law school students work in a manufacturing plant south of the border and live on a 60 dollar a week salary.

    The purpose of the project is to let people know that globalization has its own rules, according to James Cooper, assistant dean at CWSL and director of Proyecto Acceso, an innovative training program designed to promote the rule of law, strengthen the administration of justice, and empower communities through education in Latin American countries.

    “Why do networks produce a reality show with people trying to survive in Guatemala, when you have Guatemalans trying to survive on the border?� asked Cooper.

    The pilot show was produced last summer as part of the NAFTA summer course at CWSL. Students were invited to take part in this two week video project. The two future lawyers who participated had to work and live like regular maquiladora workers, doing backbreaking work, living in a hut in the poorest part of town and making ends meet on miserable salaries.

    “When they told me what I would be doing I didn’t know if it was an offer or a challenge,� said Matt Holt, one of the law school students in the project. “I took the job because I wanted to see what our neighbors go through so I could understand why people will risk their lives to get here.�

    On their first day at the maquiladora Holt was eager to get to work. “I’ve never worked in a plastics company before, but from a law office to here it can’t be that hard,� he said.

    Think Again.

    Their jobs consisted in scraping the residue off hot plastic pieces for eight hours straight. Roxana Castañeda, the other student who participated in the reality show pilot learned on her first day about the hardships the factory workers face. After seven straight hours of manual work Roxana had had enough. Her hands were sore and she was so tired she was falling asleep.

    Matt and Roxana had to build their own home out of scrap wood, because they couldn’t afford new pieces. On their first day as maquiladora workers, the contestants couldn’t figure out how people could survive with these wages when groceries on the Mexican border cost almost as much as in the United States.

    After three straight days of work the law students were about ready to quit.

    This experiment resulted in a 42-minute video, which is currently being proposed to television networks hoping it gets picked up for a full season production. If approved, the first season of Globalization will be produced next summer during the California Western School of Law’s NAFTA program. But selling the idea to network executives has been a tough and sometimes frustrating job for James Cooper because, he says, the show is too smart.

    In spite of the difficult process, the project has been successful in a very important way: it has made future lawyers and lawmakers aware of the real implications of free trade.

    “Working in the plastics plant gave me an insight of what is like to live in Mexico,� said Matt Holt. “Even though we are twenty miles away, we don’t think about what their day to day (life) is (like).�

    If you would like to know more about Proyecto Acceso and the Globalization reality show, visit www.proyectoacceso.com
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  2. #2
    Senior Member jp_48504's Avatar
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    Thanks, I have forwarded this to some folks in DC who might be interested....
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