Clothes for change.

• Author: Cummins, Ronnie

Compared to awareness about food issues, public consciousness and responsible consumer purchasing in regard to clothing and apparel is woefully inadequate. Environmental and anti-Frankencrops activism has barely begun to impact the US garment and fashion marketplace, a $300 billion industry. Unfortunately, just about the same can be said for the campus-based anti-sweatshop movement, despite a decade of activism, including spirited protests against Nike, the Gap, and other brand name bullies.

America's fashion statement: Pesticides, frankencrops, and sweatshops

If Americans are what we wear, then we--even rebel youth, trade union members, and progressives--are increasingly corporatized. The fashion statement we're apparently making with what we wear is that we don't care. A look at the labels in our clothing or the corporate logos on our shoes reveals that the brand name bullies, the transnational giants in the garment and apparel industry, reign supreme.

Walk into any department store or clothing retailer. Look for a label that says "Union Made in the USA with Organic Cotton (or hemp or wool)." Search through rack after rack, in store after store, but you aren't likely to find such an item. in fact there are no union made and organic clothes or shoes on the market period, with the exception of a new company in Los Angeles called SweatX, which promises to provide USA made, union made, and organic clothes to the buyers who are demanding them. SweatX's workers are members of the garment workers union, UNITE. Unfortunately even SweatX's trade union customers, members of the AFL-CIO, seem unwilling at the present time to take a stand against agricultural sweatshops and pesticides by paying a bit more for organic T-shirts and sweatshirts bearing their union logos. Worse yet, a number of national environmental groups are peddling non-organic merchandise made in China, emblazoned with their logos.

There are, however, a growing number of clothing companies, mainly smaller ones, which offer non-sweatshop and organic clothes. These companies include Patagonia, Gaiam, Maggie's Organics, Mountain Equipment Co-op, Hempy's, Globalwear, and over a hundred others. Unfortunately, most US consumers, even organic consumers, have never heard of these socially and environmentally responsible clothing companies.

Do we care what we wear?

Do unions (except for the United Farmworkers Union) simply not care about toxic pesticides, genetically engineered cotton, or the literal "sweatshops in the fields" which characterize most cotton farms and plantations around the world? Don't environmental, church, and social justice groups see a contradiction in putting their logo on pesticide-drenched or genetically engineered cotton items made in sweatshops? Do...