Invisible Hands: Voices from the Global Economy (Voice of Witness)

Invisible Hands: Voices from the Global Economy (Voice of Witness)

Language: English

Pages: 364

ISBN: 1938073908

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


The men and women in Invisible Hands reveal the human rights abuses occurring behind the scenes of the global economy. These narrators — including phone manufacturers in China, copper miners in Zambia, garment workers in Bangladesh, and farmers around the world — reveal the secret history of the things we buy, including lives and communities devastated by low wages, environmental degradation, and political repression. Sweeping in scope and rich in detail, these stories capture the interconnectivity of all people struggling to support themselves and their families. Narrators include Kalpona, a leading Bangladeshi labor organizer who led her first strike at 15; Han, who, as a teenager, began assembling circuit boards for an international electronics company based in Seoul; Albert, a copper miner in Zambia who, during a wage protest, was shot by representatives of the Chinese-owned mining company that he worked for; and Sanjay, who grew up in the shadow of the Bhopal chemical disaster, one of the worst industrial accidents in history.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

farmers.1 Numerous surveys and reports link farmer suicides to debt and the pressures of repaying loans with steep interest rates. Increasingly, cotton farmers will borrow money in order to buy seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides, and the cost of these investments has risen dramatically, even as the market has kept the price at which farmers can sell their cotton relatively flat. We meet Pournima Akolkar at a banquet in honor of over two hundred widows of cotton farmers in Vidarbha, a region with

asset we couldn’t get a loan of more than 10,000 rupees.20 then, from 2007 through 2010, the rains betrayed us. for two years it didn’t rain, and the other two years it rained so much the seeds were washed away. because bank loans were small, my husband started to take out loans from other farmers or private moneylenders, and he wouldn’t tell me exactly what the interest rate for these were. he would just say, “Why are you worried about the interest rate? i’m taking a loan, that’s it. you don’t

would agree to send her? she is the only daughter we have. but we can’t do anything about it. if we don’t send our daughter to the fields, the school cannot punish her officially, but we’ve heard that those who didn’t go to the fields were expelled from school. the school districts can fire school directors if their schools don’t meet harvesting requirements. uzbeks have a saying: “the government official who is threatened from above in turn threatens the school director below. the director

women of Ijatz produce and sell as part of a catering business that supports the work of the cooperative. Francisca struggles through memories of her earliest years, and the deaths of her parents still weigh heavily on her. But when she speaks of her current work and her future, she seems cheerful and confident. i had to be the resPonsible one my name is francisca ajcibinac cocón. i was born on the tenth of october, 1968, in a finca called san bernardino. it’s near Pochuta in the province of

lok editor: dave eggers managing editor: luke gerwe education Program director: cliff mayotte education Program associate: claire Kiefer Publicity & communications consultant: alyson sinclair founding editors dave eggers Co-founder, Voice of Witness; co-founder of 826 National; founder of McSweeney’s Publishing LLC, and award-winning author lola vollen Co-founder, Voice of Witness; founder & Executive Director, The Life After Exoneration Program voice of Witness board of directors mimi loK

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