Skip to content Skip to footer

Ladydrawers: Out of the Factories Part Two

Part of the Series

Also See Part One: Ladydrawers: Thin Line Between Garment and Sex “Trades”
Last month in “Our Fashion Year,” we tracked garment production all the way to an anti-human trafficking NGO in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This strip takes place in the same NGO – which Anne Elizabeth Moore visited in January – one of the expanding field of organizations that offers sex workers alternative employment opportunities. Yet when viewed economically, these “alternatives” just don’t compare.
It’s only the latest in our year-long investigation into gender, labor and cultural production. (You can read our previous three years of strips here.) We’ve so far followed the threads of the international garment trade from your local fast fashion emporium all the way back to their source, in the factories of developing countries, in “Fast Fashion,” “Let’s Go Shopping” and “The Business of Thrift” (with Julia Gfrörer); and “Zoned,” “Red Tape” and “Outta Sight (Out of Mind)” (with Melissa Mendes). Ellen Lindner’s “It’s the Money, Honey” and “Out of the Factories Part 1” (also with Melissa Gira Grant) brought us from the garment trade into the sex trade abroad. Next month, with a new top-secret artist, we’ll start looking at who’s funding anti-trafficking NGOs – and why.
(Click here to enlarge)
2014.5.6.Ladydrawers.New.compressed
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.