You see brands everywhere you go in the world today. Brands and logos are helping to form a certain lifestyle for people. There are logos on shoes, billboards, cars, food; everywhere you turn you see them. To imagine a world without brands and logos would change a lot about our society that we live in. They help you be able to recognize the companies that are selling the products you want or need in life. Without brands it would be hard to individualize because everything would pretty much be the same. Logos and advertisements are there to show you all the different choices that are available to you. They want you to see their advertisement and be able to connect with their brand and what they are selling, so you will want to have that product in your life. People associate themselves with specific brands because they fit into the way they live and want to be portrayed.
Brands and logos at the same time give off an idea of something that is fantasy. They will advertise their products with athletes or celebrities to make you think that if you buy what they are selling you can look and act like them. Companies are targeting certain demographics likes and needs and tailoring it in to the advertisements they put out there to sell their products. People want to feel that if their shirt or shoe has a certain logo on it, that they will be socially accepted. They do not take the time to realize these brand items they are buying come from outsourced places, with people that are working for very little money. All they care about is the fact that the product is in style and popular. People will be walking down the isle of a store and go to grab an item and chose the brand named one over the store one even though it is more expensive, just because they have seen a commercial on T.V. advertising it.
Brands and logos play a major role in the world that we live in today. They are constantly competing and striving to make you think they are the best, while advertising using the motto of success and living the American dream. Companies in this day and age are selling you this fantasy that if you wear their brand or logo you can become rich or get girls. This is obviously not true, but people still buy into this strategy and when it comes down to choosing either the brand they just saw on television or one they have never heard of, they will pick the one that has been imprinted into the back of their minds.
There are brands for whatever lifestyle you want to live and these companies advertise that if you pick them you won’t go wrong. Social injustice obviously is shown in this battle for who is the best because large brand names are going to win the majority of the time, due to the advantages they have. Companies are now outsourcing all the production of their products to different countries that they can take advantage of and not have to pay them decent wages. While companies that we purchase goods from are making millions off outsourcing the labor, we still continue to buy their product because our society has become use to these material things that we need in order to “complete” our lives.
One major movement that was discussed by Salmon in his book Roots of Justice was the Underground Railroad. At a time when slavery was as bad as ever, slaves came together to create a network of secret routes and safe houses to help them escape to freedom. African Americans were trapped in an unjust system where they had no rights and were enslaved by whites. The Underground Railroad gave them a way to get away from this life a slavery and create a new one. By doing this they were challenging authority in a huge way. If they were caught trying to escape, there were major consequences for their actions. If you decided to run and try to get to freedom, you were risking your life and it was not easy for blacks to decide whether they should take that chance or not. 
