Kat Gale > Recent Status Updates

I want to say explicitly why Virginia opted not to stay silent, which certainly would have been easier for her. From the beginning, she told me she believed that her story would help other people–not just survivors of Epstein's cruelty, but any person, male or female, who'd ever been coerced into sex against his or her will.

Society is underinvesting in addressing climate change, even though action today will be far less costly than in the future.

Social capital needs to be nurtured for economic capital to grow.

If you see something wrong in the world, it's your personal responsibility to try to fix it. "But what can someone like me possibly do that would make a difference?" didn't wash; you write letters to your elected representatives [Call them! Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121]. You band together in civic groups with others who share your cause. You put your body on the line in acts of civil disobedience.

Meaningful solutions cannot be devised if they are devoid of direct input from those the solutions are meant to assist. This is particularly true in the Congo, where the voices on the ground tell a very different, if not antithetical, story to the one told at the top.

Lasting change is best achieved when the voices of those who are exploited are able to speak for themselves, and are heard when they do so...Advancing the ability of the Congolese people to conduct their own research and safely speak for themselves is the first step to solving the calamities taking place in the mining provinces of the DRC.

When I saw the tragic consequences of a tunnel collapse with my own eyes, it was utterly devastating. 63 buried alive...No one has ever accepted responsibility for these deaths. The accident has never even been acknowledged. This was the final truth of cobalt mining in the Congo: the life of a child buried alive while digging for cobalt counted for nothing. All the dead here counted for nothing.

I asked Hani if he ever made any inquiries as to the source of the cobalt ore he purchased.
"What do you mean?” he asked.
"I mean, do you try to determine if the ore came from child labor like Arran uses or some other kind of abuse?”
He laughed and lit a cigarette in the candle at our dining table.
“One does not ask such questions here,” he said.
“Why not?”
“There would be no cobalt left to buy.”

The translator for my interviews, Augustin, was distraught after several days of trying to find the words in English that captured the grief being described in Swahili. He would at times drop his head and sob before attempting to translate what was said. As we parted ways, Augustin had this to say, “Please tell the people in your country, a child in the Congo dies every day so that they can plug in their phones.”

The depravity& indifference unleashed on the children working at Tilwezembe is a direct consequence of a global economic order that preys on the poverty, vulnerability, & devalued humanity of the people who toil at the bottom of global supply chains. Declarations by multinational corporations that the rights and dignity of every worker in their supply chains are protected& preserved seem more disingenuous than ever.

Campaigns of violence and intimidation work up to a point, and the point at which they no longer work is the moment a person feels they have nothing left to lose. For those from whom everything has already been taken, even the harshest penalty means little compared to the power of speaking … or for speaking on behalf of those who can no longer speak.

The Congolese government directly contributed to the crisis by auctioning off massive parcels of land for billions of dollars & collecting concession fees, royalties, & taxes....So long as the political elite were content to continue the tradition of government-as-theft established by their colonial antecedents, the people of the Congo would continue to suffer.

What else could the purpose of this kind of remote night marketplace be, other than to launder artisanally mined cobalt into the formal supply chain completely out of view, beyond any tracing or auditing of cobalt supply chains that were purportedly taking place? Can any company at the top of the chain legitimately suggest that the cobalt in their devices or cars did not pass through a village marketplace like this?

A society designed for the oppression of one people rarely stops at the one.

The Belgians sold a 75,000 square-kilometer concession of rainforest filled with palm oil trees to the Lever brothers [on April 14, 1911], whose new soap recipe required palm oil. Following Leopold’s model, the Lever brothers used forced labor in the extraction of palm oil under a quota system. The riches they generated helped build the multinational powerhouse Unilever.

Imagine that on a remote hill deep in the Congo’s mining provinces, a child can be found digging for cobalt, wearing a muddy shirt with the logo of the behemoth American financial services company that had to be bailed out for $180 billion during the 2008 financial crisis. Imagine what even 1% of that money could do if it were spent on the people who needed it, not stolen by those who exploited them.

Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, and Booker T. Washington were among the many supporters of the Congo Reform Association...bringing an end to the most brazen system of slavery in the history of Africa. Or so it seemed...More than a century after Morel & Casement’s extraordinary campaign to end slavery in the Congo, a new system of “legalized robbery enforced by violence” thrives in the mining provinces.

The dividends of an education were too theoretical&too far into the future for those who survived day-to-day, especially when schools lacked support. It was no wonder that impoverished families across the Congo’s mining provinces relied on child labor to survive. It felt like cobalt stakeholders up the chain counted on it. Why help build schools or fund education when children could dig up cobalt for pennies instead?

To recognize something as beautiful, sometimes all it takes is a change of perspective.

Far removed from any signs of civilization, there was something akin to an ant colony of humans who tunneled, excavated, washed, packed, &fed cobalt up the chain to the companies that produced the world’s rechargeable devices &cars. I never in all my trips to the Congo saw or heard of any of these companies or their downstream suppliers monitoring this part of the supply chain, or any of the countless places like it.

Having nothing in their lives, they took the little that came and made the best use of it, exploiting the slightest event to nourish their starving spirits.

Anger was my only weapon against the horror.

The original Belgian copper mines were run by Gécamines, and most of the men who lived in Likasi and Kambove worked at them. After Gécamines closed the mines, people started digging for themselves...Solange said that everything changed in 2012. They made it seem like a blessing. They said we should dig cobalt and get rich. Everyone started to dig, but no one became rich. We do not earn enough to meet our needs.”

After a trip to the Congo, the world back home no longer makes sense. It is difficult to reconcile how it even inhabits the same planet. Neatly arranged mountains of vegetables at grocery stores seem vulgar. Clean air and water feel like a crime. The markers of wealth and consumption appear violent. Most of it was built on violence, neatly tucked away in history books that sanitize the truth.

Predators use AA to target vulnerable women. Women who have only recently stopped using alcohol or drugs may have little confidence&ability to stand up for themselves. They're in a fragile place where a bad experience can set them back in their recovery. Even if they stay sober&have the courage to speak out, others may not believe what they say, if someone with more status, authority, & long-term sobriety denies it.

If I was a human being, my story was as important as that of King Lear or of Prince Hamlet that William Shakespeare had taken the trouble to relate in detail.

At the heart of my understanding—gleaned not only from the generation who endured the Holocaust but also from my own explorations into spiritual practices—I know I am powerless over almost everything that might happen to me. But I do possess some power to choose my attitude.

There is an agenda to promote a false picture of the conditions here. The mining companies claim there are not any problems here. They say they maintain international standards. Everyone believes them, so nothing changes.

Two-spirit, same-sex couples used to play an important role in Anishinaabe communities, because they adopted children who had lost their parents...and other special duties, like keeping fire, healing people, or leading ceremonies. My kokum explained that two-spirit people were once loved and respected within our communities, but times had changed and they were no longer understood or valued in the same way.

My mother used to repeat a saying that is nearly universal in multiple languages (she spoke seven): “Where there’s life, there’s hope.”