S1 E3: Transcript
Fashion Revolution with
Raakhi Shah &
Kalpona Akter

Dana Thomas: This is Dana Thomas, and you're listening to The Green Dream, a podcast about how to green up your life, by Wondercast Studio.

Climate change is bearing down on us like a mighty hurricane. And it's scary as hell, but it doesn't have to be. I'm Dana Thomas, a leading voice in the sustainable fashion movement. On The Green Dream, I welcome global experts, creators and change makers from politics, business, and the arts for dynamic conversations on how you can green up your life. The Green Dream is the podcast of hope.

This episode is sponsored by Another Tomorrow, a women's fashion brand that redefines luxury with a commitment to ethics, sustainability, and transparency from farm to fabric to atelier. Find Another Tomorrow on its website, anothertomorrow.co, at its flagship boutique, 384 Bleecker Street in New York City, and at select stores.

Today on The Green Dream I have two guests. First, Raakhi Shah, Chief Executive of The Circle, an NGO founded by British singer-songwriter Annie Lennox, which fights for a fairer world for women and girls. My second guest is Kalpona Akter, the leading garment factory activist in Bangladesh and an ambassador to The Circle. I first met Kalpona exactly four years ago this week, in Savar, a major clothing manufacturing center in Bangladesh. It was the fifth anniversary of the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Savar, a horrific tragedy that injured 2,500 garment workers and killed more than 1,100. I was at the former factory site, now an empty lot, to speak to survivors of the collapse for the New York Times and for my book, Fashionopolis. Kalpona was there to lead a protest march calling for improved worker rights, pay, and safety regulations.  

Kalpona's story is as empowering as they come. She was sent by her family to work in the garment factories when she was a young child – her father was ill, and they needed her income to make ends meet. By the time she was a teen, she was fed up with the horrible treatment she had to endure by factory owners and brands, and moved into activism. Her powerful story will change the way you think about clothes, shopping – everything, really.

Before we get to Raakhi and Kalpona, I'm excited to share that we have something new  on this episode of The Green Dream: following our discussion about worker rights, the respected literary critic Hermioine Hoby joins us to review Rebecca Solnit's book,  "Orwell's Roses." Hermione, a Brit living in Boulder, Colorado, is herself an acclaimed writer: last year, Riverhead books published her first novel, Virtue, a powerful story about youth, desire, and moral conflict. The New York Times called Virtue "intense and addictive" and Interview magazine said that Hoby "might have just written the defining New York City novel of our fraught, socially anxious, and politically tumultuous times.” Hermione is only the first in a series of regular cultural contributors to The Green Dream; we have more in store for you in the coming weeks. We're honored to have her on the Green Dream Team.

But first, let’s get back to Raakhi and Kalpona, who I am so pleased to have as guests during a week that counts both the anniversary of Rana Plaza and Earth Day. During a Pulitzer Center I attended online last month, one of the speakers said that in the media today, every story is a climate story, and every climate story is a labor story. I think our conversation today confirms that statement. When we recorded, it was morning for Raakhi at The Circle's headquarters in London, and afternoon for Kalpona in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, where she was observing Ramadan. The noise of the city's epic traffic can be clearly heard down the line. 

Dana Thomas: Is the window open? 

Kalpona Akter: No, window is not open, but you know, my office is next to the main street.

Dana Thomas: You know, I remember when we were there and I was talking to you and there would be that man whose job it was to beat the side of the buses to tell them they could go when the bus was full. That's really effective, but that poor bus is so beat up.

Kalpona Akter: Yeah.

Dana Thomas: And the noise! The noise! The noise of him whacking the bus. Wow. What a scene.

Kalpona Akter: Bangladesh is famous for a few things. One is noise, then pollution, and then people. Okay?

Dana Thomas: And clothes! And clothes, which brings us to our subject. Bangladesh is known for clothes. It's the second largest garment producer in the world after China. And that's saying a lot since it's a much smaller country than China.

Kalpona Akter: That's true.

Dana Thomas: So you started working in the factories when you were 12 years old, didn't you? What was that like? What was your job in the factory, and what was your everyday life like in the factory?

Kalpona Akter: Yeah, it is true that when I started working I was just 12. And you know, definitely it is not my choice to be a factory worker. It was my father who was the primary earner in the family, and he got ill. So, my mom, she first started working in a factory, but she couldn't continue as we had baby sister at home. So mom had to take care of the infant, and she got sick too. So she couldn't work more than six months, and she quit and she stayed home. Then it was me in the family who was the older. Mom talked to me and the day I went to school and came back, mom says it is time. We need to decide. So we decided, and following morning, I went to the factory with a few adults who'd been living near to our home, and they will be already working in that factory. So they said they already has been requested their supervisor, for a person to get hired as a helper, and supervisor agreed. So they said I should go with them. And following morning, I went with them. It's a cultural shock. I had to wait for like two hours outside of the building before I go inside. And when I went inside, it was the official who asked me if I know the counting in English. And I said, yes, I know that. And then they took me to the production floor.

As I said, it is a cultural shock. I haven't seen that many people together except the annual day in our school where all parents would come. And then I never heard that the adults scream to the adults or to other people with that bad language, like slangs. So it was verbal abuses that first came into my ear when I was in the factory. So noise and then the verbal abuses. So then I heard that my position as a helper, I'd be helping the operator. But the first job I got, it is cutting the loop that is using in the pant. That is my first job, and it wasn't easy to do. The first day, I worked till 10:30 or 11:00 PM till the night, and whole time I stood up on my feet. So in general, it wasn't easy life for a 12 year. And especially when I was able to see my school playground from the rooftop of my factory where I would be working. And there were many other children with me working. So this was my first factory. And when I switched to second, for a 50 Taka raise, the situation was same. The verbal, physical abuses, sometime sexual abuses, was common. And the poverty wages was common. I was being paid like $6 a month, working over 400 hours in 30 days. I stood up on my feet for whatever long a shift I worked. And the supervisor will be throw the merchandise in our faces if I would do any minor mistake. There was many children working, but the younger one I can remember, he was seven years old. So life was hard for all of us. After me working the factory, I think year one or two, my ten years old brother also joined with me. And we two were the breadwinners for the family, and a little amount for my father's medical. So that was life.

Dana Thomas: How much were you earning at the time? What were you paid?

Kalpona Akter: It was $6 a month, if I can convert Taka to dollar, wages was 240 Taka and then 1 Taka for one hour overtime. Sorry, 50 cents, like 50 paisa in our currency was for overtime hour. So if I would do 300 hours overtime, I would get like 150 Taka. So altogether, it is not more than $6 that I would be making in those days.

Dana Thomas: And what were you sewing? What were the clothes that you were making?

Kalpona Akter: The very first factory where I joined, that factory would be making pants and shirts, but when I switched to other factory, it is more like knitting stuff they would be making. T-shirt, polo shirt, sweatshirts, cargo pants, all other stuff they would be making. And I can remember the brands in that time, it was Sears and Walmart whom I would be producing for in that factory.

Dana Thomas: And you worked there until you were what age? And what happened? Why did you have to leave the factory?

Kalpona Akter: I was working you know without knowing the law and rights. I knew those factory owners was rich people, they have a factory, and they're kind enough to give a job. I haven't had any idea whether I'm getting the right wages, or whether I'm working in a right shift in hour.

Dana Thomas: Well, of course not. You were 13, 14 years old, right?

Kalpona Akter: Yeah. I mean, nobody in the factory told me how long should be my working hours. It was you know, after a few years, during the Eid month, the factory management said they will be paying us less for overtime, which we disagreed. And I disagreed, because it is during Eid, and I had a plan with money, because I wanted to buy a new clothes for my brother and sisters. So I don't want to lose that money. And, we went for a strike. Without knowing what is the strike is. Like, stop the work. So it was 1,800 workers, and we were 92, 93, frontline strikers who called a strike. And 92 was men, and I was the only young female worker who joined with them, because I really needed that money.

So after back and forth, we one-day strike with the condition that management still would pay us less. And I was fine with that, because I didn't know how much I supposed to get. Then the factory management, started firing the strikers. So in a first batch, 26 workers lost their job, but they were smarter.  Rather stopping they started finding the organization who can help them, to fight for them. So they found the organization called, now they're called American Center for International Labor Solidarity, which is Solidarity Center. And it's a win for AFL-CIO, the American union. So they were helping a group of garment workers here to form an independent union, and also providing workers a level of training as well as legal support.

So my folks ended up going to them and sued the factory owner. And they went back to us, and they were talking to me that, "Hey, we sued the factory owner!" And, for me, it was like fresh new thing that I heard. I was like, "What the hell you're talking about?" I mean, how you can even sue the factory owner? The rich people? And they said, "There is a labor law, and we are protected by that." I was like, oh my gosh, this like something new coming to you. And they insisted that I should come for that training. So after the week or two later, I came. It was four-hour long training, which just completely changed my life.

There I only learned that my work shift supposed to be eight hours. I should get a minimum wage. And I should not be slapped in the production floor. And something beautiful I learned: that I have right to organize and right to bargain. For a teenager, I was already like 14 and a half or near to 15 years then, I was so eager to share this with my coworkers. So following morning, when I came to the factory, it was like butterfly in my stomach. I just wanted to share it. So I started whispering with my coworker, and everyone was like, "Yo, what you are saying?" And during the lunch break, I shared them, "You know, this is what we learned. And now we have to organize ourselves. We have to join with union. And then we can bargain with our factory owner for our rights." And it was all new for all of us, but we were young, and we were ready to fight. So it started filling the union form and joining with union. We got like, 99% of union membership on the production floor. But unionism was difficult in my time, it is still difficult in here. So the factory management wasn't happy with it. So they started harassing, torturing us, retaliating us every single way they can, filing complaint in the police station. Finally, when we submit the union application, we just got rejected, because of the influence and corruption by the factory owner and government. And I got fired, I worked like another factory, maybe one week or two weeks or a month, And soon as they would know, they fired me. I got fired, you know, blacklisted throughout the industry. And my life was miserable. I didn't get job anywhere, but the union and where I got the training, they saw a spark in me. So they hired me as a union organizer and a labor educator.

Dana Thomas: And you're still doing it.

Kalpona Akter: Since I started learning the law  I never stopped. Though there is many ups and downs in my life. I got fired, blacklisted. When I became a full-time organizer, I was being arrested. I was in prison for a month. My coworker faced the imprisonment as well. Many of them is still facing the charges. I lost my coworker who abducted, brutally tortured, and beaten to death because of the activism. Throughout these years, we lost the workers in a factory fire and collapses.

So rather than getting afraid or frustrated, and it stopped myself, I got anger in me. And you know, that anger keep me to doing what I'm doing. And I think it is also what I got from my mom. She once said when I started organizing, when I was fear and asking her, "Mom, I'm not sure that I can do it. These are rich people, and I'm still teenaged. And I don't know how I can fight with them." And Mom something beautiful said, that, "You know, if there is an injustice, someone can always stand up and speak out. If it is someone, then why not you?'' That's the encouragement that I got, and that encouraged me every single day, and not just me, that, yes, I mean, injustice in everywhere. Someone need to speak out, someone to stand up, and if it's someone, why not me? So I started, you know, making difference for myself and my coworkers, but I'm just fighting to make difference for workers here in Bangladesh, as well as in other production countries.

Dana Thomas: And Raakhi, this is exactly what you all are doing with The Circle, right? But you're doing it around the world for women workers in the garment industry and other industries, trying to support women like Kalpona and make change?

Raakhi Shah: Exactly. I mean, The Circle's, a global feminist organization. We're drawing on the collective power of women allies to make change for women around the world. And we focus on two areas, ending violence against women and girls, and also the economic empowerment, which lends itself to this so strongly. And one of the things that The Circle has been working with others on for a number of years now is The Living Wage Project, which was initiated back in 2015 when women from our lawyers network and activists such as Kalpona and Livia Firth, who many listeners will know, were struck by the severity of the issue poverty wages in fashion’s global supply chain. And there’s that conviction that laws exist to attack and solve these sorts of injustices, and that group of lawyers did some really good research into, at the time, 14 garment producing countries. And the research showed that none were close to giving a living wage.

Dana Thomas: Let's just explain to listeners — a living wage is what economists calculate is what you need to house, clothe and feed your family.

Raakhi Shah: Exactly. And they were finding only 40% of women and garment workers were even getting close to having a decent pay for just a decent standard of living, let alone anywhere close to a living wage.

Dana Thomas: Right. And so how did you all connect with Kalpona?

Raakhi Shah: So Kalpona's been connected with The Circle for a number of years, and we are so glad, last year, she became our newest ambassador, our first from the global south. And Kalpona is extraordinary and has been supporting in lots of ways, giving insight from the ground. And over the last six years has worked with us and our lawyers on three distinct reports around this notion of a living wage. The first being the legal foundation actually defines living wage as a fundamental human right. The second, the system's failures that perpetuate the problem of poverty wages and garment workers. And our third that was last year was a groundbreaking legislation, for brands and at the EU. The aim is being rather than a race to the bottom, let's try and aim for a race to the top and incentivize brands to only purchase from garment producing countries that pay a living wage. Now that would be extraordinary to get that through.

Dana Thomas: And let's explain to listeners because they may not understand it, why brands are not paying a living wage. I mean, the short version of it, from what I can see, is that they're just trying to raise their profits, right? And so if they can pay as little as possible to have something made, they will pay that little bit. They nickel and dime everything along the supply chain in order to keep the costs down and the profits up. And one of the ways to keep the costs down is by paying the workers not what they're due.

Raakhi Shah: Exactly, fashion talks a lot about sustainability at the moment. Plastics, climate change, all so important, but what about the human cost? This is a women's solidarity issue and the fact that we're buying clothes off the back of women and families who aren't able to send their kids to school because they are, as Kalpona said, having to take them out of education to work at a really young age.

Dana Thomas: Because most garment workers are women?

Raakhi Shah: Exactly. 80 percent. There's 60 to 80 million garment workers around the world, estimated, and 80 percent of those are women.

Dana Thomas: Kalpona, tell me. Tell me a bit more about life in the factory. It's women sewing and it's men overseeing, and the factories, at least in Bangladesh, some are safer now than they used to be, correct? Because of the reforms of Rana Plaza. But there’s still a lot of work to be done?

Kalpona Akter: Absolutely. The goal of my work, I always say that me and my organization, we are fighting for a dignified job. And dignity, when we talk about dignity, the first thing comes is a living wage. 

Dana Thomas: In Bangladesh today, what is the living wage? What is the calculation for a living?

Kalpona Akter: There is no living wage, Dana, in Bangladesh. So, for workers, it's a minimum wage. $85 US dollars. 

Dana Thomas: $85 a month.

Kalpona Akter: Yeah. When we talk about living wage, we need like four times than this, because cost of living is too high in here. The workers, those are working and getting this minimum wage, they need to spend like, 35 percent of their money for housing. And that's not a dream house. It's a 10-feet-by-10 feet concrete room, and sometimes doesn't have window, and they're sharing with kitchen and toilet with another hundred people. Like another 20 or 22 families. They need to queue for cooking, because there is only four or eight burners for everyone. And food cost, like rice, these days, it is almost I think 75 to 80 cents, one kilo rice. If there is four in the family, they need like two kilos of them. So their earning and their expenses, it's not balanced. And it is always happening, because of the profit greed from the manufacturers to the brands. It is not a rocket science to understand that these workers need living wage. It is not rocket science to calculate that. They just need to do a less profit, and that can make sure our workers have decent wages. And during pandemic, the life was more tough. Thousands of workers lost their jobs. We don't have social security. We don't have any unemployment insurance for our workers. So workers, when they lost their job, they were literally starving. On the other hand, you say that factories are more safer? Yes. I mean, compared to Rana Plaza and now, last eight years, a remarkable improvement has happened. And that was because Accord on Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety has done a tremendous job in the ground, included workers' voices and made sure workers have right to say no to unsafe workplace or unsafe jobs.

Dana Thomas: And they do, they do actually say no. They will walk out or they will protest?

Kalpona Akter: Yeah. Workers in Rana Plaza only died because they saw the crack in the building, but they had a right to say no to that unsafe job. They had to keep going while factory said or the building owner said that this factory will be or this building will be there till like a hundred years. But that did not last like a hundred minutes. This has collapsed. But under the Accord, factory workers, they can say no to their job if they see any faulty wiring, if they see any crack in the building, or if there are any other safety hazards they face. And that is without a fear, that is without losing job, and without losing the pay.

Dana Thomas: I remember when I went to Savar and I met with the survivors of Rana Plaza, they talked about how they saw the crack in the wall, and they were very nervous about this. And they did not want to go back to work the next day. They thought it was dangerous, and they were told, if you don't go to work, you will not get paid for your entire month's work, because you get paid at the end of the month. It's not like you get a paycheck every week. And they said, right, well, we have to go, because if we don't, we'll starve. Because we need to get paid, and we'll get fired, and what will we do? And then the factory collapsed on them and killed workers. And the ones I saw, these survivors, they're still suffering, they're in so much pain and torment, mentally but also physically, and all because they couldn't stand up. So the Accord has been good for that. It has improved the conditions of the factories, right?

Kalpona Akter: Absolutely. Absolutely. And it is great because it is binding. It's not a voluntary initiative. And we are looking the opportunity to introduce Accord in our neighbor country in South Asia, that can be Pakistan or Sri Lanka, because the factories are unsafe there as well. So maybe Accord will be extending in those country as well.

Dana Thomas: So we could have a Rana Plaza in Sri Lanka, for example, because the system is as broken as it was before Rana Plaza in Bangladesh?

Kalpona Akter: Yeah. And more, maybe, in Pakistan, where you had every month or every other week either a factory fire happening or a chemical explosion happening. When the law is not adequate for the workers to save their lives, then the initiative like accord is really a key to make the improvement, so…. 

Dana Thomas: Now Raakhi, on International Women's Day last month, The Circle launched a new campaign called "Hear Her, Empower Her" to support women globally. Can you explain this new campaign and its impact?

Raakhi Shah: International Women's Day continues to be such a key moment to focus on women's rights — although it should be happening every day, and that's what The Circle strives for. But one of our aims is to continue to bring the voices of those with lived experience to the forefront. And our "Hear Her, Empower Her" campaign is very much that. We brought together a series of stories from different women who have been survivors of gender-based violence, or women from Afghanistan, garment workers from some of the partners we're working with in Sri Lanka and Pakistan and other countries. And it's just been a really powerful tool to explain what's going on right from the voices of those women who are suffering and fighting, like Kalpona, for dignity. And The Circle's supporting them along the way. 

Dana Thomas: And last year, California passed garment worker's legislation that would protect them from wage theft. And wage theft is when you're working, say you're getting paid $2 an hour in Los Angeles, which is America's largest garment industry, and then you work overtime but they don't pay you for the overtime. They're not paying you the state minimum wage, which is nearly $15 an hour now, or even the federal minimum wage, which is about $7.50 or $8 an hour. So that difference between what they pay you and what you're supposed to be paid is called wage theft. And California now says that brands have to be responsible for that difference. Before, the brands would say, not our problem, it's the contractors' problem, they're not paying the workers. It's not our problem. And California said, no, it is your problem. Which is tackling what Kalpona was talking about, the greed factor of the race to the bottom, to finding the cheapest cost, and then washing your hands of it when there's a problem that arises, or a catastrophe like Rana Plaza. I wonder if there's any legislation that you all are following or you are working on at The Circle that you think will also help garment workers and raise their dignity and protect them from things like wage theft?

Raakhi Shah: Voluntary codes have been tried for so long to work to a certain extent. But as you've talked about with California, and what we’re talking about with this Living Wage Project is legislation's needed now. And there is a ready draft legislation for adoption. So we're gonna be continuing to push that. in the last few days as well, there's another example of legally binding agreement with H+M signing the sexual violence and harassment for one of their biggest Indian suppliers after one of their workers was raped and murdered and harassed at work. So that's the first time a brand's ever signed up to that sort of agreement. Huge step. 

Dana Thomas: And this legislation, the EU is important, not only for the workers outside of the EU in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, like Kalpona, but also within the EU, because there are workshops in Leeds and in Prato outside of Florence and here in Paris, where people are, just like in Los Angeles, they're working for far less than the minimum wage, that there's cases of wage theft, that they're being forced to work overtime, which means that you work overtime and you don't get paid for it. So these laws would also hold brands accountable within the EU to pay workers what they're due, which we take for granted, but in fact, it's not really the case. We have these same issues right here in Europe, or in the United States.

Raakhi Shah: Yeah, absolutely. And you've given great examples, and last year, the scandal of the Boohoo brand in Leicester.

Dana Thomas: Can you explain that?

Raakhi Shah: So in the UK, there was the Boohoo brand, which is one of the fast fashion companies, was exposed as not paying workers fair wages, minimum wages. The factory conditions were not up to the standard. And there was a huge outcry. But this legislation, if it's implemented, could help women and garment workers globally. The fashion industry's, what's, the global value's like 2.5 trillion pounds and growing…

Dana Thomas: …and growing, and growing.

Raakhi Shah: Exactly. And we can see not only the monetary power that brings. We saw in the early months of COVID when so many of the brands pulled their contracts and didn't fulfill the wages, and garment workers were left destitute. And we want to be tackling those situations.

Dana Thomas: The garment workers are paid at the end of the month. So they were sent home with zero — I mean, there are no benefits anyway, forget about benefits, but — they were sent home with nothing. They were just sent home and said, you know, "Go home." 

Raakhi Shah: No. And we were hearing reports out there that said 77 percent of workers were experiencing hunger daily, 88 percent had drastically reduced the amount of food they were consuming. The Circle launched a COVID appeal at that point and were supporting garment workers with emergency food and hygiene parcels. Also support for legal rights to fight some of this. That's why we are so focused on long term structural change, as Kalpona says, it's about dignity, isn't it?

Dana Thomas: Absolutely. Now Kalpona, what about tech? Is tech coming to the garment industry in Bangladesh? When I went to Vietnam for my book Fashionopolis, I saw laser distressing machines for jeans, as opposed to hand sanding and hand rasping, which of course is terrible for your health and dangerous. This technological revolution in jean distressing was creating safer jobs and better paying jobs. Do we have the same thing happening now in Bangladesh? Is the robot revolution coming? And is this going to make the workers' jobs safer and cleaner and maybe even a bit better paid?

Kalpona Akter: We are in the beginning of the fourth Industrial Revolution. And it's really taking over the worker's job. So a few years back, like a sweater factory, 10 worker would be working for one machine, but now it is one worker just needed for one machine, so workers lost job. But when you compare men and women, man workers are getting opportunity for the training, but the women workers’ space is shrinking. So country doesn't have any plan. I mean, specific plan that we can see, in order to create space for workers, for training, as women workers cannot compete, the number of women workers in garment industry declining. Even a couple of years ago, we would be saying that we have 84 percent are women working in the industry. Now it is like, a little bit up for 60 percent. So the women are declining because of the technology, because the workplace is not women friendly. 

Dana Thomas: Now that you mention it, I remember when I was in Vietnam, all the people running these high tech machines were men. And they were getting the training and becoming managers and moving up the ladder and getting better paid. But it was men. There were no women running the high tech machines. This was a man's job. And the women still sat at sewing machines or swept. Now, I'm gonna have listeners who are scratching their heads saying, how is this all related to sustainability? And as I said in the introduction, I was told by the Pulitzer Center this week, all news stories today are climate stories, and all climate stories are labor stories. But, I mean, how would you all explain how sustainability and labor are linked? For me, it seems like you really can't solve the climate issue until you solve the poverty issue. And of course, paying people one-fourth a living wage is surely a poverty issue. But how else do you see the link between sustainability and labor and why you need to empower these women through The Circle?

Raakhi Shah: Kalpona can talk more about the effects of climate change,on countries like Bangladesh, but they are gonna be at the forefront and are at the forefront of feeling the effects, combined with endemic poverty in many countries is a disaster waiting to happen.

Dana Thomas: Climate disaster. Yeah.

Raakhi Shah: Climate disaster. And it is women and girls that are always at the front line of being affected worst and first by the climate disaster and are already feeling the effects by things like the lack of living wage. So it's gonna be a double hit.

Dana Thomas: When you say girls, you mean really girls because the age to be able to start working at a factory is what in Bangladesh now?  

Kalpona Akter: So the starting age should be 18 years, because child labor is not allowed in the industry, and it is forbidden in the law as well. Adolescent can work from 14 years, but there is a special clauses for them.

Dana Thomas: Right. I saw kids who were very young. 13, 14, 15 years old.

Kalpona Akter: Yeah. In the subcontract factory, it is difficult to deny that there is no child worker or adolescent worker. But no one goes to the root cause of child labor. I know the root cause.

Dana Thomas: What is the root cause?

Kalpona Akter: Why I had to start working in the factory? Because my Mom did not pay the living wage. If my Mom would be paying the living wage, she could hire a nanny to take care of her infant and she can pay for my education, and still take care of my family's food and medical for my Dad. And she didn't get paid the living wage, so I had to start as a child. And child today, and elsewhere, not in Bangladesh only, elsewhere they're working. So if we wanted to end that child labor, pay the living wage to their parents.

Dana Thomas: Absolutely.

Kalpona Akter: That's the solution.

Dana Thomas: Exactly. I mean, the parents are earning one fourth a living wage. So to order to make ends meet, all four members of the family have to go to work. It's crazy!

Kalpona Akter: Yeah. And, you know, the discussion you and Raakhi was having, whether sustainability and workers are connected, it is absolutely connected. I'm against fast fashion. But you know, when we talk about climate change, when we talk about green economy, carbon free economy, do you think about the workers? Who is making clothes down through the chain? How about them?

I mean, if we go for sustainable clothes, the job will be cut. That is fine. If we ensure a living wage for workers, the workers will be not hurt. Like now, to run a family, four person from the family, they need to work, because they earn the poverty wages. But if one of them would be having living wage, maybe two do not need to work. They can choose education or a better job. So when we discuss the sustainability, we need to discuss about the living wage, too. When we discuss about green economy and climate change, we need to discuss about living wage, too. 

Dana Thomas: Now, are you going to be protesting again? Because this podcast is coming out the week of the anniversary of Rana Plaza and Earth Day. You know, I find the fact that both of those land on the same week, within a couple days of each other very interesting. Will you be out in Savar, in front of that empty lot where I met you the last time leading protests?

Kalpona Akter: Yes. We will be. I mean, I hope that the government will be allow us. Last few years they're not allowing people to be there. Pandemic or traffic. So hopefully the government will be allow. And even if they don't allow, every avenue we know we'll be protesting, we'll be asking the brands, those haven't signed the Accord yet, to sign the Accord and make sure that our factories are safer here in Bangladesh and elsewhere they're sourcing the clothes. And the government to improve the safety law. We definitely don't want to see any more Rana Plaza anywhere in our planet.

Dana Thomas: Now tell me, how can listeners help with the worker situation? With you, Kalpona, how can they help you fight the fight to bring dignity to the garment workers?

Kalpona Akter: When you see clothes that made in Bangladesh or you know, made in India or Sri Lanka, Pakistan, El Salvador, or Jordan, or maybe somewhere in Europe, after hearing that all the sweatshop is there, don't freak out. Don't think that you shouldn't buy. Don't be in dilemma whether you should buy or you shouldn't buy. You should buy the clothes. We are in a civilized world. We cannot be without clothes, so we need to buy them. But when you buy them, buy with conscious. Take a responsibility as a consumer. Start speaking to that, when you were in the store, like very clearly, I know that you look for size, color, design, and then price. Please add one. That you need to know more about these workers who making clothes for you. Start asking question to the store manager. That will ring the bell in the boss's office, that the consumer asking more question. Join with The Circle. Circle is fighting for women, women voice fighting for the living wages for workers. So join with the consumer campaign. The dignified job we are looking for, there is a five element in the dignified job. One is, living wage. Second, union voice at workplace. Third, safe workplace. Fourth, gender-based violence-free workplace. And fifth is our pillar, a safe childhood. So, all these things only can be ensured if consumers start speaking and make responsible for these brands to do more. Because the brands that pay, the payment they do for the clothing, is not enough to make sure a workers living wage. So brands need to add few cents more. So there are many campaigns going on and around. So join with them. Don't feel depressed. Feel anger, and use your anger in your activism. Do something. Stand up for us.

Dana Thomas: And Raakhi, tell me how listeners can get involved with The Circle.

Raakhi Shah: Make sure, as consumers, as Kalpona says, call for garment workers to receive fair pay, whether it's talking in store, whether it's on social media, follow Kalpona and The Circle on all our different social media platforms, and then you can reshare things. Join us in calling the EU to implement the legislation we've talked about at length here today. And then just join The Circle and other organizations, like Clean Clothes Campaigns. Join and donate so we can continue our advocacy work, and at the same time, supporting garment workers on the frontline right now as well. Those are three things.

Dana Thomas: Excellent. Well, thank you both so much for being on The Green Dream. Here's to raising women's dignity in the garment industry and in every industry, and trying to get fair wages and respect and safety in all of our work and lives. Kalpona, go knock 'em dead in Savar this week when you lead your protest and try to make the world a better place. Thank you so much for being on.

Raakhi Shah: Thank you.

Kalpona Akter: Thank you for having us.

Dana Thomas: This episode is sponsored by Another Tomorrow, a women's fashion brand that redefines luxury with a commitment to ethics, sustainability, and transparency from farm to fabric to atelier. Find Another Tomorrow on its website, anothertomorrow.co, at its flagship boutique, 384 Bleecker Street in New York City, and at select stores.

If you are enjoying this conversation, you’ll love my sister podcast on the Wondercast Network, Fashion Conversations with Bronwyn Cosgrave. Fashion Conversations is fashion’s equivalent to Inside the Actors Studio—an in-depth interview podcast with fashion and luxury’s leading creators that explores their craft and creative process as well as their personal journeys. Find Fashion Conversations wherever you get your podcasts.

Dana Thomas:  American author Rebecca Solnit has written more than 20 books on various topics, including feminism, politics, and art. Her most recent book, Orwell's Roses, looks at how English writer George Orwell's passion for gardening informed his work and his politics. The book, published in 2021 by Viking, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and a finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bogard Weld Award for Biography. We thought, with English rose season upon us, Orwell's Roses was a perfect debut to the Green Dream's culture series. Here’s our new literary critic, Hermoine Hoby.

Hermione Hoby: If we were to imagine some kind of geo-political weather report for 1936, the map of Europe would look like a mass of mounting storm clouds. This was the year that Hitler shattered the Treaty of Versailles with the invasion of the Rhineland, the year that a terrible new alliance formed between the Third Reich and Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship in Italy, and the year that civil war erupted in Spain as Franco seized power as head of a Nationalist regime. Meanwhile, in the USSR, Stalin was murdering hundreds of thousands and sending millions to gulags. While these cataclysmic events were shaking the world stage, presaging World War II, somewhere in England, unnoticed, a man was planting roses.

This was George Orwell, the great socialist writer whose anti-totalitarian works of the 1940s, particularly his novels Animal Farm and 1984, have helped turn the man into an adjective. When we describe something as “Orwellian” we tend to think of the horrors of authoritarianism, of brutal police states and surveillance, of the suppression of heterodoxy, pleasure, and imagination. We do not, however, tend to think of anything as frivolous as tending roses while the world burns. Isn’t such a thing a dereliction of civic duty, a shameful indulgence?

If Orwell has become a totemic, heroic figure in the Western political imagination, it’s because the moral stridency and fierce clarity of his works represent the opposite of cowardly retreat from the world - one famously mocked at the end of Voltaire’s Candide with the phrase “tend your garden.” For the activist and historian Rebecca Solnit, this modest and remarkable act – George Orwell planting roses in 1936, a man quite literally tending his garden – is the sprig from which a succession of essays bloom. Solnit’s expansive, hopeful new book, Orwell’s Roses, invites us to reconsider Orwell and the place of pleasure in his politics. 

Here was a man who, contrary to crude conceptions of him as some kind of dour prophet of political doom, believed in beauty and joy as human necessities. The flowers of the book’s title, then, are both literal (Solnit makes a pilgrimage to the writer’s cottage garden in England where his bushes endure) as well the figurative kind present in the slogan “Bread and Roses.” That phrase, sprung from the women’s suffrage movement, continues to express a utopian yet achievable wish: namely, for a robust, leftist politics that delivers the basic material conditions a society needs –  i.e. the bread part – but, through this foundation, allows us to meet our other, less quantifiable needs, those things which allow a person to thrive rather than merely survive. “Bread fed the body,” Solnit explains, “roses fed something subtler: not just hearts, but imaginations, psyches, senses, identities.” And this, as Solnit suggests, can become a mutually reinforcing dynamic: “Pleasure,” she insists, “does not necessarily seduce us from the task at hand but can fortify us.” In other words, it's the roses that equip us to fight harder for the bread.

Solnit’s wandering and exploratory route through history, across the globe, and between ideas, is more rambling rose than rigid hothouse bloom, and this style is a reflection of her politics. Like the great Hannah Arendt before her, and like Orwell himself, Solnit is leery of rigid ideologies. She admits that, “Thinking about Orwell’s roses and where they led was a meandering process and perhaps a rhizomatic one.” Rhizomes, those underground plant stems capable of sending out roots and runners in many directions, represent the non-hierarchical, the decentralized, and the associative: they reach and ramble and grow, resisting the rigid and containable. In this way, you could even say that they themselves are Orwellian. Because by this point of the book, Solnit has succeeded in imbuing the adjective with positive meaning. To be Orwellian does not only mean to be against totalitarianism. It means to be for individualism, creativity, pleasure, joy, and freedom of expression in all its forms.

In the spring of 1946, a decade after planting these now celebrated rose bushes, Orwell published an essay about toads. “Is it wicked to take pleasure in Spring […]?” he asks, in a spirit of exuberant provocation. “Is it politically reprehensible, while we are all groaning under the shackles of the capitalist system, to point out that life is frequently more worth living because of a blackbird’s song, a yellow elm tree in October, or some other natural phenomenon which does not cost money and does not have what the editors of left-wing newspapers call a class angle?” Here, thanks to Solnit, is an answer to that question that is both instructive and optimistic. 

Dana Thomas: New episodes of The Green Dream come out the first and third Tuesday of the month, and we’ll be back in two weeks with a conversation with Bloomberg's automobile writer Hannah Elliott about the switch to electric vehicles, why they are all so ugly, which ones she loves anyway and why, and what the shift from gas to electric powered engines will do to the classic car market. (Will there ever be Electric Muscle Cars? Gearheads like me wanna know!) We hope you'll join us.

This episode of the Green Dream was sponsored by the sustainable fashion brand Another Tomorrow. Written by Dana Thomas, with a book review from Hermione Hoby (HermioneHoby.com). From Talkbox Productions with executive producer Tavia Gilbert, with mix and master by Kayla Elrod. Music performed by Eric Brace of Red Beet Records in Nashville, Tennessee. The Green Dream is a production of Wondercast Studio in association with Mortimer House. You can find us online at wondercast.studio or at WonderCast Radio. I’m Dana Thomas, the European Sustainability Editor for British Vogue. You can read my monthly column, also called The Green Dream, in the magazine or online at Vogue.co.uk. You can follow me on Instagram and on Twitter where my handle for both is @DanaThomasParis. Thank you for listening.