COMING IN 2013 FROM VOICE OF WITNESS
INVISIBLE HANDS: NARRATIVES OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
Edited by Corinne Goria
The majority of products that we buy – cell phones, laptops, toaster ovens, jeans, detergents, sugar, and wine, to name a few – take long journeys through the supply chain and across the globe to arrive in our stores. This new book from Voice of Witness will explore the lives of the men, women, and children who have worked in, or lived in the wake of, the production of these goods– and who have suffered severe and even deadly consequences for their work.
Terri: A US war veteran and single mother who was locked out of her job at a California mine for months after her union refused to accept the mine’s cancellation of pensions, seniority benefits and secure jobs for its members.
Kalpona: Enduring 18 hour work days, beatings from her managers, and a wage of $6 a month when she began work at 12 years old, Kalpona founded an organization for garment workers’ rights in Bangladesh. In 2010 she was arrested, imprisoned and tortured, the government demanding she dissolve the organization or face death.
Normurod: At fourteen, Normurod joins thousands of children forced to pick cotton every year in Uzbekistan – the second-largest cotton producer in the world. He and his schoolmates are required to work 10-11 hour days, sleep on the school floor, and often withstand verbal and physical abuse from their teachers if they have not met the state-mandated quota.
Hae-kyung: After she was diagnosed with a rare and severe form of brain cancer at age 23, Hae-kyung discovered there were in fact many Samsung workers disproportionately affected with rare and deadly cancers after working in electronics manufacturing, but the data – which Samsung’s clinics had collected – remained hidden from the workers.
About the Editor :
Corinne Goria is a writer, lawyer and Assistant Editor of Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives, Voice of Witness’ collection of oral histories from undocumented immigrants in the United States. She is based in San Diego.
Our Partners:
In order to conduct interviews of those most affected by human rights crises in the global economy, Voice of Witness has partnered with numerous organizations and scholars, among them:
International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF)
Basel Action Network (BAN)
Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) (Hong Kong)
Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity (BCWIS)
Citizens for a Better Environment (Zambia),
Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff Project
Pesticide Action Network (PANNA)
EcoViva (El Salvador)
Centro de Apoyo del Trabajador (Puebla, Mexico)
NISGUA (Guatemala)
International Coalition for Responsible Technology (ICRT)
Uzbek-German Human Rights Forum
International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal
International Longshore & Warehouse Workers’ Union (ILWU)
Supporters for the Health And Rights of People in the Semiconductor industry (SHARPS)
California Rural Legal Assistance
Dr. Lisa Rofel, Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, UC Santa Cruz; Dr. Ching Kwan Lee, Professor of Sociology at UCLA; Dr. Alastair Fraser, Professor of Political Science, Cambridge University; Dr. Miles Larmer, University of Sheffield; and Dr. Gregor Murray of the University of Montreal are among the contributing scholars for this book.
This project, and the work of Voice of Witness, is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
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