Events Calendar

Behind the Swoosh is a 90 minute, interactive, multi-media presentation that includes slide shows, role-playing, powerful video footage, and a Question-Answer period with EFJ Director Jim Keady. “Our goal is to introduce students to the issue of sweatshops through the lens of social justice by using an exciting and easily understandable case study: Nike's labor and environmental practices in Indonesia,” said Keady. The presentation details the month that Keady and colleague Leslie Kretzu spent in an Indonesian factory workers' slum living on $1.25 a day, a typical wage paid to Nike's subcontracted workers. Along with personal accounts of lived solidarity, the presentation includes the latest information on Nike's labor and environmental practices that EFJ has researched in Indonesia from 2000 to the present. Behind the Swoosh attempts to de-commodify "labor" and as such, challenge the audience to deal in human terms with the women, men and sometimes children, who are the foundation of global manufacturing. “This Educating for Justice event concretizes the abstract theories of business ethics, human rights and globalization,” said Keady. “And by exploring the issue from a range of perspectives, including Business, Theology, Sociology,Athletics, Economics, International Affairs, and Political Science, we can reach a very broad audience.” To date, Keady has visited more than 250 universities and high schools across the country and have spoken to more than 50,000 students, administrators, faculty and community members.