It’s difficult to consume clothing mindlessly when pictures of the people who died in the process of sewing your crappy T-shirt are projected onto the store’s building. Such was the tactic of a group of protesters outside of New York Fashion Week who aimed to highlight recent industrial disasters in the garment industry.

Last April in Bangladesh, an eight-story building housing thousands of workers and several garment factories collapsed, leaving approximately 1,135 people dead and 2,500 injured. Cracks had been discovered in the structure the day before, but workers were forced to return to work despite recommendations to close the building.The Rana Plaza collapse is being called the worst accident in the history of the garment industry.

The Cost of Fashion, a protest group spawned from Occupy, teamed up with guerilla street artist collective, The Illuminator, to use projectors to light up city buildings with images of the victims of Rana Plaza. Their goal is to shed light on the human rights and labor violations commonly found in the garment factories that supply Western brands.

As westerners, our relationship to the global garment industry is as consumers, which means we don’t often see the sea of hands a garment passes through before we buy it. Many of these industrial processes occur in countries with little or no environmental standards and unsafe working conditions.

The global garment industry is extremely lucrative with factories supplying large retailers mainly within the U.S. and Europe. The Western World’s insatiable desire to consume, a lack of or poorly enforced regulations and low wages make it an extremely profitable industry — bringing in trillions of dollars each year.

This past November, five months after the collapse and a month after a garment factory fire claimed nine more lives, thousands of garment workers protested low wages on the streets of Bangladesh. The average Bangladeshi garment worker earned just $38 a month. These protests shut down nearly 250 garment factories and were met with rubber bullets, tear gas and the death of at least two more people.

The Bangladeshi government conceded to a 77 percent increase in wages — from $38 to $68 a month or roughly $0.39 an hour. The new minimum is still the lowest wage paid to garment workers in the world. These dehumanizing wages allow us to buy cheap, dispensable clothing at stores like H&M, JC Penney and Walmart — all retailers who contract work from Bangladesh.

The lives of Bangladeshi workers are intricately linked to the desires of Western consumers. Sustainable food systems have become a sexy topic as of late, but what about sustainable clothing systems? Most Bangladeshi garment workers are young people in their early 20s, just like us. Why aren’t we concerned for the health, safety and livelihood of our Bangladeshi counterparts?

These are questions who don’t care or think to ask. Be it ignorance or apathy, it is clear that our mindless consumption affects others. How can we reconcile the overwhelming task of researching and weighing our personal ethics against the desire to fulfill our social image?

We can boycott brands, such as Walmart and JC Penny, that are associated with poor working conditions and environmental pollution — but that is still a quiet action. Refusing entirely to participate in the garment industry by buying used clothing is another good action. But to be honest, I don’t have a feel-good solution for you, my dear reader.

I just keep reflecting on the story of a 25-year-old woman who worked in the Rana Plaza factory. She was trapped amongst the rubble for three days, because her arm was pinned beneath a beam. Once rescue workers found her, they gave her a saw and instructed her to cut off her own arm.

Compare this to the James Franco movie 127 Hours, based on the story of a hiker whose arm was similarly pinned beneath a boulder. After five days, he sawed off his arm with a pocket knife and was rescued by fellow hikers.

The hiker’s story is celebrated as one of personal strength and perseverance, while the woman’s story is shoved aside in favor of global retail brands and retaining the status quo of crappy, cheap T-shirts.

If you just checked the tag of your T-shirt, email ELLEN PEARSON at erpearson@ucdavis.edu.

Freshman year is indubitably the hardest year of college. People who succeed in the “important” stuff during freshman year are made of magic and probably know an elf or two. Note: winning a drinking game does not count in calculating your success.

However, coming a close second to being the hardest year in college is senior year. You’ve done everything (and maybe everyone) and you’re nostalgic for mom’s cooking as well as furniture on which you can hygienically lay your face. To all my friends graduating this quarter, I plead with you, stay patient. Senioritis is a struggle, but you only have two more quarters and getting lazy at this point in the game is very unadvisable.

In books and in life, patience is crucial. However, you can go back and redo your reading of a classic novel whenever you choose. Senior year, on the other hand, is a much harder feat to do over. It’s necessary that seniors ride out their brains’ depleted thinking tanks to the last drop.

Remember how excited you were when you got into UC Davis!? Think about how disappointed your past self would be to see your future self skipping class and not turning in homework. Giving up is your way of telling the universe that you are privileged enough to fail — that you are so well-off that extra effort has no marginal benefit anymore.

That being said, if you are sick — emotionally or physically — or anything happened to you that is making life hard right now, don’t be bummed.  If you have a reason for your senioritis, there is no shame in that. I am only saying that for those who are making a conscious effort to put in no effort … those people need to buck up.

If you have only contracted senioritis solely out of boredom, try to remember the last time you gave up on something. For me, this conjures up a failed tumultuous relationship with one of the greatest authors of the 20th century, James Joyce. Also the time I threw away my pencil sharpener because it seemed a bit too dangerous to try to fix myself. Out of the two, I pick to share how I badly regret getting bored of James Joyce and not putting in any effort to finish Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man.

I want to be a James Joyce consessiour. My loins ache at the idea of him. However, my reading escapades with him are always fast, intense and over quickly. Not that this is a bad way to do it, I can just only get so much accomplished (in pages, of course) when doing it for such a short amount of time and getting tired so quickly. I guess he just left me feeling, well, unsatisfied. About reading that is.

In the end, I never got through Portrait. Even worse, this book is nothing like the monstrosity that is Ulysses, it’s actually pretty short. I literally just got bored and decided that going on Buzzfeed outweighed the effort of finishing the novel.

Unfortunately for me, no one gives a damn about an opinion of a book unless you know what happens in the end. I can’t be at one of the fancy balls that I often frequent and impressively bring up James Joyce at because, well, I was lazy. Don’t be the guy at the black-tie gathering who can’t think of a thing he learned in any upper division classes because he was lost motivation to learn. Senior year is when all dinner conversation-worthy topics come up, don’t flake out now!

I guess I will close by saying “good for you” to anyone who actually made it to the end of their college career. It’s not easy to make it til the end. Give yourself a big pat on the back because at this point, you’re more likely than not going to make it to graduation. That being said, seeing the finish the line is no reason to lose pace.

It’s just college. You don’t live in old-time Ireland in a state similar to dementia where you relive your days in church over and over again and feel a constant sense of overwhelming loss about a old love. You just have to study and avoid criminal activities. Life is probably never going to be as easy as it is right now.

Go, young padawan, pick up the reading for tonight, review your notes like it’s sophomore year and say no to the Star Wars marathon at the hot guy’s house. Hot guys can wait, midterms cannot.

To get really dark about graduating from college, you should email EREN KAVVAS as ebkavvas@ucdavis.edu.

One of the most disheartening things you can say about a country is that it stands alone. Such a concern might very well hearken back to experiences in our not yet fully politicized lives as children (that is, if my interaction with my own overly diplomatic nieces and nephews is any indicator).

In fact, the site of childhood politics, i.e. the playground, can shed some much-needed light on the realm of contemporary “adult” politics.

Much like on the playground, partnerships and coalitions are part and parcel of the international political system we inhabit, and for a very good reason: they lessen the chaotic forces — or at the very least lessen the brunt impact of such forces — inherent in the system itself.

Like a playground bully who might see fit to prey on the less powerful, and lay claim to lunch money tributes, certain states exercise their own brand of schoolyard justice by laying claim to their spheres of influence.

These are childhood renderings of political reality. And while it might seem a debasement of real world politics, you can’t deny that the U.S. is the poster child for bullies with self-esteem issues.

But even a playground hegemon needs allies. The U.S. for example has a longstanding tradition of partnerships with nations who are seen to either share and or contribute to the global perspective which shapes U.S. interests abroad.

The notion of Latin Americanism (an idea which feeds this column both in name and substance) and the advent of a 21st century Pan-Americanism both speak to this very concern. After a 20th century riddled with foreign interference and forceful intervention (e.g. the Guatemalan coup of 1954, the 1973 Chilean coup d’état and ensuing state-terror, the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada, foreign-funded death squads in Central America — just to name a few) political leaders in the region called for a reimagining of Latin America. This collaborative exercise — one imbued with the spirit of Simon Bolivar, Jose Marti and Benito Juarez, among others — was spearheaded by a group of rising leftist leaders who had come of age in a Latin America which was by all means puppeteered by Yankee strings.

Pan-Americanism taken within the political context is a movement which seeks to promote relations and regional cooperation between the nations of America (the continent). It is a movement which does not hide its suspicions or historical disdain for the 50-state hegemon. In fact, one of the most striking observations to be made of the Pan-American project is that “Americanism” (once again, of the continental bent) becomes a Latin American articulation of the idea — one grounded in bloody historical reality — that the whole of the continent stands apart from the U.S.

This admittedly divisive approach to diplomacy finds its roots in another political project which has shaped the region for centuries past: the Monroe Doctrine. From its very intellectual inception and all too quick physical manifestation, the Monroe Doctrine was widely rejected, both by governments and the citizens of most Latin American countries, who understood all too well the interests that were behind its formulation.

The problem today lies in the threat of Pan-Americanism slipping once again into dormancy. The death of Hugo Chavez (much like his ascendency into power) marked a watershed moment in the region. His standing as the leading proponent of Bolivarianism — which takes Pan-Americanism to be its ultimate legacy — leaves a vacuum of leadership both in the region and in Venezuela (as evidenced by the recent turmoil facing the Maduro government). Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, while a capable leader, lacks the immediate charisma that graced Lula and which allowed him to be the moderate foil to the more boisterous voices of Chavez, Correa and Morales.

I can’t help but lament the utter irrelevance of my own nation in this continuing schoolyard tragedy. At the height of the Pan-American ethos, Mexico had the no-fun-allowed duo of Vicente Fox and  Felipe Calderon at the helm, two leaders who, rather than join the growing regional bloc, opted instead for BFF status with the U.S. (probably in the hopes of a less severe lunchtime beatdown). And now we find ourselves with Enrique Peña Nieto, a man who, rest assured, took his ball and went home as a child and might prove to do the same as president.

What the future holds for the region and Pan-Americanism as a movement is uncertain. But the present, one no longer tied to the whims of the neighbor up north, is promising.

Borrowing a most cherished U.S. idiom, one thing would seem to hold true: united we stand, divided we fall.

If you feel JORGE JUAREZ is a de facto bully for using his bully pulpit to bully bullies, send your lunch money to jnjuarez@ucdavis.edu.

Do you often feel you are too busy to spend time with friends or relax? Do you feel stressed because of being busy? If so, you are not alone.

When we are busy, we are often constantly in a hurry and worried about our duties. As a result, we cannot enjoy our surroundings or what we are doing. For example, many plants around campus are blooming with beautiful, fragrant flowers. How many of us even notice the flowers’ beauty, much less stop to smell them? If we are constantly focused on future obligations and thus do not enjoy the present, we cannot be happy even when dancing at a party.

There are two main reasons we feel incredibly busy and stressed. First, we may simply have too many responsibilities, classes, work hours, research positions, etc. Second, we may not have that many things to do, but we are so stressed about them that we constantly distract ourselves with Facebook, etc. As a result, we feel like we have no time because of how much time we spend in those distractor activities.

If we are busy because we simply have too much to do, we must reduce our workload. For example, a friend of mine is taking 19 units in six classes this quarter plus a yoga class. As a result, she has no time to relax and little time to sleep. She is stressed and has little time for friends. In addition, she is struggling in two of her classes. If we spread ourselves too thin, we cannot do well in any task. She realized that and is taking 14 units next quarter, a much more manageable workload.

Most often, paradoxically, we find ourselves truly overburdened after a period of lots of free time. I believe this occurs because we feel intense pressure to constantly do things — to be productive every moment. As a result, we fill our free time with more obligations such as a new job or more units next quarter. Then, after the period with lots of free time, we find ourselves with more responsibilities than we can handle, just like my friend.

But why do we feel such aversion to free time? Are we human beings or human doings? Yes, time is money, but is money the goal of life? No, I believe the goal of life is to be happy. Money is a useful tool, but it is not an end of itself. To be happy, we require time to relax and rest our minds and bodies. If you have free time, enjoy it; don’t feel pressured to fill it up.

On the other hand, we may feel overburdened and too busy despite not actually having many duties. This phenomenon most often results from our stress or worry about our responsibilities. If we feel this way, we cannot concentrate on our tasks and most often constantly distract ourselves from them, resulting in a short, simple task becoming a long, miserable day.

For example, this quarter I had to write a paper over the weekend for a writing class. I had all of my sources and had already written my outline, but had strong negative feelings about the paper: “I don’t want to write this. I don’t care about it,” etc. As a result, I kept wandering the internet after every few words written to distract myself from my pain. After six hours, I realized that I had only written the introduction. If we do our work this way, of course we will feel overwhelmed and busy!

This form of being busy results from and is completely dependent on a negative attitude towards our work. With this attitude, even the smallest task will seem like an impossible burden. Therefore, we must first change our attitude towards our work before attempting it again.

In my case, I gave up on writing the paper when I realized how negative I was towards it. I tried again the next day after clearing my mind of it; that time, I no longer felt so negative towards the paper. It flowed easily and I finished the rest of it in an hour and a half. The paper had not changed in any way, only my attitude towards it had changed. Our attitude towards a task is one of the strongest predictors of our ability to complete it.

Constantly being busy destroys our happiness and peace of mind. We must reduce our load, either in reality or in our minds, to enjoy even the best party. Isn’t the goal of life to be happy? Thus, if what you are doing does not make you happy, change it!

To tell WILLIAM CONNER how busy or not busy you are, contact him at wrconner@ucdavis.edu.