Part of the Series
Ladydrawers
“Our Fashion Year,” our year-long investigation into gender, labor, and cultural production, has followed the threads of the international garment trade from your local fast fashion emporium all the way back to their source, and then some. There, in the factories in developing nations, women who have trouble with the long hours, low pay, unsafe conditions or harassment have few other options besides sex work. But, as we’ve seen, anti-sex trafficking NGOs often seek to place them right back in the precarious garment industry they often sought to escape in the first place. The question Leela Corman and Anne Elizabeth Moore ask this month is, what else do these organizations do?
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 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 and Out of the Factories Part 2 (also with Melissa Gira Grant) brought us from the garment trade into the sex trade abroad. Next month, we’ll look at The Somaly Problem – or, how tiny fibs can have a big impact, and who benefits from it. (As always, our previous strips can be found here.)
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
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There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
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