Part of the Series
Ladydrawers
“Our Fashion Year” – the year-long comics journalism investigation into connections between the garment trade and the sex trade – finally comes back home in this strip. Looking more closely at recent events, Anne Elizabeth Moore and Melissa Mendes find similarities in language used by US-funded international anti-trafficking NGOs and shut-downs that endanger domestic sex workers. In “Unraveling,” the threads that tie anti-human trafficking organizations to the international garment trade finally give way.
For the previous entries in The Ladydrawers’ series, see here. You can also check out “Fast Fashion,” “Let’s Go Shopping” and “The Business of Thrift” (with Julia Gfrörer); “Zoned,” “Red Tape” and “Outta Sight (Out of Mind)” (with Melissa Mendes); and 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); and Leela Corman’s “The Grey Area” and “The Somaly Problem.” Next month the series wraps up with Corman’s final strip before we go on break ’til the new year.
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.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
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.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
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With love, rage, and solidarity,
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