Kids sing against toxic toys

by Mike Hall at AFL-CIO Now Blog 12/17

A chorus of kids on YouTube has a holiday message for the Bush administration, Congress and toy manufacturers.

Set to the tune of the holiday classic “Jingle Bells,” the kids plead:

Toxic toys, toxic toys.

Make them go away.

Please don’t bring us toxic toys

This year on Christmas day-ay.

Toxic toys, toxic toys.

They will make us sick.

Better check the recall list

And notify St. Nick.

Over the past year, we’ve seen headlines about lead-tainted toys and other toxic products hitting our store shelves—usually made in China for U.S. manufacturers seeking the cheapest labor possible. Tens of millions of well-known and popular toys have been recalled.

Full Story

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By Joe638NYC

Please read the entire article, as there are some great stories and campaigns to be active in, heres my response to the post at AFL-CIO Blog:

At Union Review I picked up Consumer Union's Not In My Cart campaign and got a lot of signatures via the website and via my MySpace account, the E-Petition got roughly 5,000 signatures a day. When my Congressman (R)Vito J. Fosella responded to me via e-mail, with some very good points including food contamination concerns, we did a follow up story and the E-Petition gained 20,000 votes the very next day. Many of the toxins we are ingesting are a health risk for today and the long term, while the big corporations have continually exported good jobs to the lowest bidding nations, the idea of safety and work conditions has been diminished. I personally feel that the sole responsibility of such unsafe merchandise should lay upon the company who places the merchandise on their shelves. That includes sweatshop abuse as well, it all ties together.

Take a look at Toxic Toys and Sweatshop Abuses are Two Sides of the Same Coin. which is based on reports by the National Labor Committee who also gave me the basis for Merry Wal-Mart Christmas- Kids come forward telling of horrendous work conditions in Chinese ornament sweatshop.

Also to note some sites where people can get safety reports on items which have been independently tested and what other safety risks are out there. Just Green, Healthy Toys and ItsInUs.org are a few good ones which a friend of mine, who's son has autism pointed out. Unfortunately with so many different organizations out there doing the same thing it can get rather confusing, maybe we need to have a parent organization to tie it all together.