Why I picked the fashion industry: All of us are literally touched by its products 99% of our lives. That's also why I decided to write a corporate story, not just a victim story. That corporation is exposed in a profoundly public way, and by that exposure the company and its customers are presented with a question that all of us are left to wrestle with: Now that you know the truth, what are you going to do about it?

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Unraveling the International Garment Trade

My guest today is human rights activist and international best selling author, Corban Addison.

Joan Brunwasser: Welcome back to OpEdNews, Corban. We last spoke about a year ago, regarding The Tears of Dark Water. And just a few days ago, on January 24th, your latest book A Harvest of Thorns was launched. That's pretty exciting. Tell us why you wrote this one, please.

Corban Addison: A couple of years ago, my wife suggested I write a story about forced labor in the consumer economy--the blood, sweat, and tears that go into the things we love to buy and wear. I'd tackled human trafficking in my first novel, A Walk Across the Sun, but that novel primarily addressed forced prostitution, not forced labor. I thought it was a good idea (my wife's ideas usually are), but forced labor is a massive subject. It affects many different industries in many countries around the world. To make a story work, I had to narrow it down, and I had to find a way to connect it to the average reader.

That's why I picked the fashion industry. All of us are literally touched by its products 99% of our lives. That's also why I decided to write a corporate story, not just a victim story. In A Harvest of Thorns, I tell the stories of workers subjected to all manner of abuse while making clothes for the American market. But at the heart of the book is a great American corporation with an explosive secret--the truth of what's really going on in its global apparel supply chain. In A Harvest of Thorns, that corporation, Presto, is exposed in a profoundly public way, and by that exposure the company and its customers are presented with a question that all of us are left to wrestle with: Now that you know the truth, what are you going to do about it?

JB: While this book is a novel, it's based on or inspired by something that happened. Can you share that backstory?

CA: The story is inspired in part by the Tazreen Fashions factory fire in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2012. Early in the research, I came across a fascinating documentary comparing the Tazreen fire to the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in New York in 1911. The two incidents were identical in remarkable ways--an eerie and deeply troubling example of history repeating itself. Yet where the Triangle Shirtwaist fire energized the labor rights movement in the United States and led to legal and societal changes that made conditions much better for factory workers here, the Tazreen fire changed nothing about the way clothes are made for the US market. It took the subsequent factory collapse at Rana Plaza to get the world's attention, but even after Rana Plaza, the business model of fast fashion hasn't changed.

I set out to write a book that answers a fundamental question: How much pain would it take to convince a $65-billion-dollar multinational retailer to revamp its business model and place the dignity of factory workers making its products on par with its bottom line? After traveling around the world, interviewing a range of experts, and exploring every dimension of the global apparel supply chain, I concluded that it would take a great deal of pain for something like that to happen. The giant would have to be brought, quite literally, to its knees. That's, in essence, the story of A Harvest of Thorns.

JB: Capitalism is the basis for our economy. It's based on profits. So, how can we inject values without throwing out the entire system? Because it appears that the global fashion market is no more really than a natural, if disturbing, outgrowth of globalization and the race to the economic bottom for workers and conversely maximal profits for owners. Which is the name of the game. Do these facts leave us with a vexing, perhaps unsolvable, conundrum?

CA: There's nothing fundamentally wrong with capitalism as an economic system, though, of course, it's had its critics. The problem, as I see it, is capitalism devoid of conscience. Business is in business to make money. But business has to operate in a competitive environment where consumers ultimately determine who wins and loses. The good news is that consumers--especially millennials--are increasingly conscientious about their buying habits. We are willing to pay more for "fair trade." As a result, consumer-facing brands that seek only their own bottom line at the expense of workers and the environment will, ultimately, fall by the wayside. Those that adopt a more ethical approach will rise.

Right now, the brands (not just in fashion but across the consumer economy) are facing an existential dilemma. On one hand, they know they need to adopt a less extractive business model to compete for the loyalty of the (younger) consumers of the future. On the other, investors on Wall Street (most of them Boomers) are demanding ever greater quarterly earnings regardless of social and environmental cost. Retooling a business model requires long-term decision-making, the opposite of maximizing short-term yield. The solution, I believe, lies in the social entrepreneurs and business leaders of the future, the ones who will be starting and running companies in ten to twenty years. They know the business case for corporate responsibility. They understand the social instincts of their generation. They will make the case from the inside that I (and many others) are making from the outside. And we will see change. It won't come easily, but it will happen.

JB: That is a much cheerier forecast than I was expecting, Corban. You brought up something earlier that I'd like you to expand on. You asked, "Now that you know the truth, what are you going to do about it?" That is the bottom line but of course, it's more complicated than that. First of all, we may now understand more about the conditions that affect how our clothes are manufactured. But, in a practical way, how can we know how to vote with our pocketbooks and choose ethically produced goods? Where can we get that information to make us educated and ethical consumers?

CA: As consumers, we're largely in the dark about how our clothes are made. That lack of transparency is the first problem the industry has to address. And, ironically, it doesn't begin with consumers. It begins with the brands mapping their own supply chains. There are so many layers in the sourcing system, so many middlemen and subcontractors, that the brands typically only know their first-tier suppliers, the ones that get the orders from the buyers. The rest of the process happens in the dark, which is where most of the abuse happens.

Here are a few things we can do as conscientious consumers. First, we can ask questions of the brands we love. Go to the websites, find the customer service numbers, and ask them who is making their clothes? Do they know? What are they doing to make sure their clothes aren't being made in sweatshops or by forced labor? They may not have answers (in fact, they probably won't), but if enough consumers ask, the brands will have to find the answer.

Second, we can use the information out there to make the best choices possible. The UK group Fashion Revolution has published a Fashion Transparency Index rating major brands according to a number of metrics, as has the US group Know the Chain. These indices are at best general guides, but they're something.

Third, we can follow a basic rule of thumb: If a deal looks too good to be true, it's probably not fair. T-shirts should not be $3. Dresses should not be $12. Soft-shell winter jackets should not be $19.99. There's no way to be certain, but those kind of prices scream exploitation.

JB: I don't mean to be difficult but let's take a company that slaps its name and logo on many products. Like LL Bean, for instance, which attracts customers at least partly because of their fabulous forever guarantee. Is one polo shirt made in Vietnam the same as another shirt, polo or otherwise, also made in Vietnam from that same company? How can we know? It seems like an endless, impossible puzzle to decipher.

CA: There is a mystery to it, no doubt. As consumers, we buy on the basis of trust. That's why the brands so jealously guard their reputations. There is simply no way to tell, at the present moment, whether a particular garment from any retailer was made ethically or not. Even Patagonia, the gold standard for ethical clothing, has found evidence of forced labor in its supply chain. The difference is they're willing to admit it and work toward a solution. Many brands would just as soon turn a blind eye and keep churning out profits as long as they can get away with it. The best we can do is ask questions of the brands we buy from, do as much due diligence as we can before we buy, and avoid the "too good to be true" deals.

JB: Makes sense to me. Your book just launched. How's that going? What kind of reception has it gotten so far?

CA: The reception has been really lovely. The relevance of the topic has generated a lot of interest in the media, and readers have been extremely kind with their reviews. Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review and Library Journal spotlighted it. But my favorite compliments have come from people who know and work in the fashion industry. A friend who worked at the World Bank and the International Labor Organization and who knows the abuse in Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Jordan from her own personal experience has become one of my biggest champions. Also, after a dramatic reading of the prologue at a meeting of apparel industry experts in Sri Lanka, a female garment worker and labor organizer from Bangladesh told me I had truly captured her experience. At the same time, she told me, "Please tell your American friends not to stop buying from Bangladesh. Not everything is bad. We need the work." As we've been discussing, the truth about clothing is very complex. There are no easy answers, but the book is helping to generate conversation in all the right places, including in the living rooms and book clubs and social circles of people like you and me.

JB: Once again, you've tackled a difficult and complex issue and breathed life into it. Thank you so much for talking with me, Corban. I urge our readers to grab a copy of A Harvest of Thorns. You won't be sorry!

CA: Thanks so much for a thoughtful interview. I really enjoyed it!

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Past interviews with Corban:

Somali Piracy Dramatic Backdrop for "The Tears of Dark Water" 12.6.2015

Novelist Corban Addison Tackles Human Trafficking in "A Walk Across the Sun" 10.29.2013

Authors Website: http://www.opednews.com/author/author79.html

Authors Bio:

Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of transparency and the ability to accurately check and authenticate the vote cast, these systems can alter election results and therefore are simply antithetical to democratic principles and functioning.



Since the pivotal 2004 Presidential election, Joan has come to see the connection between a broken election system, a dysfunctional, corporate media and a total lack of campaign finance reform. This has led her to enlarge the parameters of her writing to include interviews with whistle-blowers and articulate others who give a view quite different from that presented by the mainstream media. She also turns the spotlight on activists and ordinary folks who are striving to make a difference, to clean up and improve their corner of the world. By focusing on these intrepid individuals, she gives hope and inspiration to those who might otherwise be turned off and alienated. She also interviews people in the arts in all their variations - authors, journalists, filmmakers, actors, playwrights, and artists. Why? The bottom line: without art and inspiration, we lose one of the best parts of ourselves. And we're all in this together. If Joan can keep even one of her fellow citizens going another day, she considers her job well done.


When Joan hit one million page views, OEN Managing Editor, Meryl Ann Butler interviewed her, turning interviewer briefly into interviewee. Read the interview here.

While the news is often quite depressing, Joan nevertheless strives to maintain her mantra: "Grab life now in an exuberant embrace!"


Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at Huffington Post, RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.