These days Mike Daisey is run off his feet.
“I don’t even have time to listen to my voicemail now. That’s a phenomenon I have not experienced before,” he said this weekend with an amazed laugh.
Perhaps he should not be so surprised. In the past two weeks, Daisey has gone from being a gifted, but obscure solo act in the US theater to the public face of a backlash against one of the iconic corporations of the 21st century.
Daisey’s latest work, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, has triggered off a spasm of soul--searching about the sometimes appalling labor conditions in China under which many of the US’ most cherished products are made. Specifically, the shiny, sleek iPhones, i-Pods and iPads produced by Apple.
The Agony and the Ecstasy was devised after exhaustive research talking to exploited and abused workers in China, for almost 18 months. Daisey played to small but appreciative crowds across the US, winning critical praise, but stirring little trouble, not even with the target of his ire: Apple itself.
However, everything changed last month when a discussion and partial performance of Daisey’s monologue appeared on the National Public Radio show This American Life. It rapidly became the most downloaded episode of the show’s history and an online petition calling for Apple to reform its practices began. Within 48 hours, it attracted 140,000 names. Then the New York Times ran an exhaustive investigation of Apple’s supplier network in China that revealed industrial accidents, brutal working conditions and child labor. Suddenly, Apple’s Chinese supplier network was huge news.
Daisey is a man in intense demand. He has appearances lined up on CNN and other TV shows.
On his blog, he has been updating the story regularly and fending off criticism from Apple’s defenders, including comedian Stephen Fry and Forbes columnist Tim Worstall. Daisey is delighted, but exhausted, having been up until 5am the previous night composing a response to a public attack from Worstall.
“I am tired, but I am encouraged to see traction. The only way you can fight for a thing like this is when you know the truth is on your side,” he said. “It’s the first time maybe in a generation that the American theater has affected change.”
The play’s premise is simple enough. It blends Daisey’s own backstory as a nerdy geek who loved — and continues to love — Apple products with the story of how Jobs ran the company with a mix of tyranny and genius before he died last year.
However, it then heads into dark territory as Daisey recounts how he became obsessed with photographs that emerged from inside the giant Foxconn factory in which many Apple products are made.
His fascination with how his beloved gadgets were built ends up with a subversive trip to southern China and interviews with ordinary workers who describe the physically and mentally crippling conditions in which many toil.
On the trip, Daisey was stunned that he, as a playwright, was the one digging up the truth.
“I wanted journalists to tell the story. I am a monologuist and it’s not the same thing, but I had to act as a journalist,” he said.
Daisey is scathing about many of the journalists who cover Apple. He recites the story of one tech journalist who agreed to appear on a panel with him only to be contacted by Apple and warned off doing so.
“Apple has built an incredible institution of secrecy and people understand that when Apple threaten them, they mean it. Everyone knows that,” Daisey said.
As a performer, though, Daisey is immune.
Yet he confesses he still has a complex emotional relationship with the company. He still uses an iPhone and does not tell people to boycott the company, just spread the word about Chinese labor practices in the hope that they change.
Apple, for its part, says many of the stories emerging from China are not true and that it already is acting to monitor its suppliers’ behavior and bring in greater transparency.
Other defenders of the firm say that many other electronics firms are equally as culpable as Apple, if not more so.
For Daisey, that is not good enough.
“It is like watching a friend lose his way. It is hard to imagine the Apple of a generation ago making this ham-fisted error,” he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese