Top: Tim Cook and Steve Jobs; photo credit to James Martin/CNET. Bottom: Mike Daisey at the Public Theater; photo credit to Mike Daisey.

[Editors’ Note:  This letter to Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, is one of several written by participants in the Fall 2011 Theater Teen Reviewers and Critics program after attending a performance of THE AGONY AND ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS at the Public Theater.  At the end of Mike’s Daisey’s solo performance, fliers are distributed with information about the labor practices he discusses in the show, along with Tim Cook’s email address and a call to action.  Mr. Daisey suggested emailing Mr. Cook with concerns.  He politely asks that you do not send SPAM.  We obliged, and decided to publish them as open letters as well.]

Dear Mr. Cook,

Every time I use my newly bought iPhone 4, I see blood on the immaculate touch screen. I am seventeen years old. And if I were born in the special economic zone of the Chinese city Shenzhen, it’s very likely that I would be working in an assembly factory, say Foxconn, putting together one of the most popular technological devices for first world countries. Mike Daisey’s THE AGONY AND ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS opened my eyes to this all too horrific possibility.

If I were in a factory like Foxconn, my hands would have become mangled little claws, destroyed by the amount of work I would be forced to go through. If I were a seventeen year old laborer at a factory plant (one of many, I might add), I would probably have thrown myself off of the roof of the factory and onto the ground, in hopes of a death that might release me from this prison. If I were a laborer at a factory like Foxconn, I would work and live and eat there, because I wouldn’t be able to do anything else but try to earn enough money to live.

For every Apple product made at a factory plant like that, a worker’s hands are destroyed by the neurotoxic chemicals employed and crushing work hours. For every Apple product made at a factory plant like that, thousands of unskilled workers at factories suffer without ever having used such a product.

Steve Jobs made Apple special. He made it a company to watch, to behold, to adore blindingly. He made Apple products environmentally friendly, he made them beautiful, he made them a must-have necessity. He changed the world and Apple was his tool.

Now that Steve Jobs is gone, Apple has to do something to distinguish itself. What makes it any better, any more desirable than any other technology company out there in the world? Where is the magic feel that permeates Apple? What sets Apple apart from the rest of Them?

Mr. Cook, you can help make Apple even better in Steve Jobs’ wake. Even if he’s gone, you can help the company’s reputation, the policies, the products. You can do this by forcing plants to stop hiring underage workers. You can do this by forcing plants to pay overtime and set a maximum amount of hours to be worked each week. You can do this by helping better the work conditions, by making Apple products clean instead of allowing them to be covered in the blood of thousands of overworked innocents.

Apple alone has the profit margins to enforce these types of regulation. Apple alone has the power, the prestige, the money, the ability to make places like Foxconn listen.

The question is: are you brave enough to try?

Yours respectfully,

Ceci K.