Part of the Series
Ladydrawers
“Red Tape,” our second strip with Melissa Mendes in “Our Fashion Year,” our yearlong look at international gender and labor issues (click here for “Fast Fashion,” “Let’s Go Shopping” and “The Business of Thrift” with Julia Gfrörer, and Mendes’ previous strip, “Zoned“), takes on the policies and people that govern the international flow of garments through the United States. Sound boring? That’s ’cause I’m leaving out the parts about bras and terrorists.
As always, our archive of previous strips can be found here. Next month’s strip will trace the apparel production line back even farther: to the offshore manufacturers where the garments are produced, and who makes them.
Angry, shocked, overwhelmed? Take action: Support independent media.
We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
As we undertake this life-sustaining work, we appeal for your support. Please, if you find value in what we do, join our community of sustainers by making a monthly or one-time gift.