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MILD PROTEST
Just e-mail it

BY KRISTEN LOMBARDI

You’ve probably received an e-mail about Jonah Peretti’s failed quest to stamp the word “sweatshop” on his Zoom XC USA running shoes. If you haven’t, chances are you will. The MIT graduate student, who happens to study media and technology, has achieved his 15 minutes of fame and then some after forwarding an e-mail exchange he had with Nike officials to 10 friends — who forwarded it to 10 others, who sent it to 10 others, and so on.

In the past few weeks, Peretti has fielded calls from reporters in England, New Zealand, and Australia about his exchange with Nike. He has graced the radio airwaves in Seattle, Providence, and Boston. Even Katie Couric has seized the chance to interview him on The Today Show.

“I feel like I’m in a Don DeLillo novel,” says the 27-year-old Peretti. “It’s all very surreal.”

The buzz stems from a dialogue Peretti had with Nike representatives back in January. When he found out that the shoe manufacturer lets people personalize their shoes — for $50 the company will stitch a word on each shoe below the Nike swoosh insignia — he sent a request to sew “sweatshop” on a pair of Zoom sneakers.

Several days later, Nike informed him that his order would be canceled: “Your Nike ID order was canceled for one or more of the following reasons. 1) Your personal ID contains another party’s trademark or other intellectual property. 2) Your personal ID contains the name of an athlete or team we do not have the legal right to use. 3) Your personal ID was left blank. 4) Your personal ID contains profanity or inappropriate slang, and besides, your mother would slap us.”

Peretti fired back a cheeky retort: “My order was canceled but my personal ID does not violate the criteria outlined in your message. The personal ID on my custom Zoom XC USA running shoes was the word ‘sweatshop.’ ”

Nike replied: “Your Nike ID order was canceled because the ID you have chosen contains, as stated in the previous e-mail correspondence, ‘inappropriate slang.’ ”

Peretti remained undaunted: “After consulting Webster’s Dictionary, I discovered that ‘sweatshop’ is in fact part of standard English, and not slang.... Your Web site advertises the Nike ID program is about ‘freedom to choose and to express who you are.’ I share Nike’s love of freedom and personal expression.... I was thrilled to be able to build my own shoes, and my personal ID was offered as a small token of appreciation to sweatshop workers poised to help me realize my vision.”

Unamused, Nike wrote back: “While we honor personal IDs we cannot honor every one. Some ... may contain material we consider inappropriate or simply do not want on our products.”

Peretti got the final word when he made one last request: “Please send me a color snapshot of the 10-year-old Vietnamese girl who makes my shoes.”

Peretti, who doesn’t actually own any Nike products, says that he never expected the company to fulfill his request. And while he’s never been especially active in the anti-sweatshop crusade, Peretti describes his request as “politically motivated” and says, “I wanted to challenge and poke fun at Nike. I was trying to engage [Nike officials] in a discussion about their labor practices, but they wouldn’t address the issue.”

In an ironic twist, Nike was forced to talk about that very topic after the watchdog group Global Alliance released a report — commissioned by Nike — on abuses in nine of its shoe factories last week. Factories in Indonesia have become the scene of verbal and physical mistreatment of workers, with many female workers reporting incidents of sexual harassment and abuse. (The study’s full text can be seen at www.theglobalalliance.com/content/indonesia.cfm.)

Of course, Peretti’s sudden fame has enabled him to heighten awareness around Nike’s ugly use of sweatshop labor — and he’s happy to take Nike’s advice and “just do it.”

“If my e-mail makes people think,” Peretti adds, “great.”