A World of Misery and Outrage ... A World Crying Out for Revolution

On November 24, 2012, 121 garment workers—most of them women—were killed when fire swept through the Tazreen Fashions sweatshop on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Survivors said exit doors were locked, and the eight-story building had no emergency exits. A reporter sifting through the ashes of the fire found Mickey Mouse hoodies manufactured for Disney; children’s shorts with Walmart’s Faded Glory label; and clothes with hip-hop star Sean Combs’ ENYCE tag. These capitalist clothing brands are in dog-eat-dog, global competition with each other to produce at the lowest possible cost, to gain market share and reap the highest possible profit. For them, Bangladesh is a perfect fit. Two million workers, mainly women, work in the dangerous garment sweatshops of Bangladesh—many earn less than a dollar a day. Surrounding the factories are vast slums—home to over half of Dhaka’s 18 million people who live five-to-a-room in flimsy bamboo shacks, many without safe drinking water or toilets. In the days that followed the fire, thousands of workers and others shut down factories and highways and clashed with police, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets.