Say It Out Loud. I Fix and I'm Proud

"We demands a chance to do things for ourself/we're tired of beating our head against the wall/and workin' for someone else" - James Brown (I'm Black and I'm Proud, 1968)

1968, I was 6 years old, and I remember this song.  I remember my parents, whites from the Ozarks, reacting to it... good people, but completely unable to appreciate James Brown's signing, or the lyrics to his song.  (skip to bottom to play Brown's music video)

And now we demands a chance To do things for ourselves we tired of beating our heads against the wall And working for someone else 

How can people be anything but proud to do business with these technicians of color in Ghana?  How low can we possibly stoop to defend the prison sentence of Joseph Benson for selling gently used electronics goods to these smart people in these markets?

The hardest working man in show business had a lot in common with the hardest working people in the electronics reuse and repair business.  I speak to people who are afraid to sell to these techs of color.   They would be ashamed, they say, if the clients knew they were trading to Africa.

Color and shame?

Say it loud.

The trip to Africa is not like my trips to China in 2002 and 2005.  This time, I already have the photos, I already have the records.   This time I'm not going to "investigate", to be the great white savior.  Been there, ashamed of that.   This time I'm going to meet friends of my friends.



Uh, with your bad self 
Say it louder (I got a mouth) 
Say it louder (I got a mouth) 


Look a'here, some people say we got a lot of malice 
Some say it's a lotta nerve 
I say we won't quit moving 
Til we get what we deserve 
We've been buked and we've been scourned 
We've been treated bad, talked about 
As just as sure as you're born 
But just as sure as it take 
Two eyes to make a pair, huh 
Brother, we can't quit until we get our share 

FIREHOSE BLOG: Africans, Malaysians, Middle Eastern Technicians - Run for cover

The firehose of disinformation about our Fixer brethren continues.

There is a war against the "Good Enough Market".  CAER, Greenpeace, and Basel Action Network have refused to withdraw the falsified and disproven statistic that 80% of used electronics exports are primitively burned in a horrible toxic process.  Interpol in Europe, acting on the fake, discredited, false, made-up statistic, has arrested 40 African export businesses.  USA EPA has publicly accused an Egyptian man of primitive ape-like processes for 100,000 computer monitors for which he paid $28 each ($21 per monitor plus approximately $7 in shipping).

You think the USA had a problem in the deep south in the 1960s?  Look at how we are treating the Deep South of the world.  Firehose of false, fake, brutally dishonest allegations against technicians in developing world.  And it's "environmentalists" holding the firehose.

Emerging markets (3 billion people with per capita income ~$3k/year) online more hours than West

Greenpeace Europe video accuses these men of burning these TVs.  Interpol arrested their boss.

Malaysia has now taken away the permit from this factory, written about by Shanghai reporter Adam Minter.

I got out of the Egypt business just before the crackdown by shipping monitors to the Malaysia company, which refurbished them to new-in-box warranty for my old Egyptian partner.  Now, the Environmental Malpractice is making them the fourth victim.