A Harvest of Thorns

by Corban Addison

  He fixed his eyes on Cameron, who stared back at him transfixed. “I’m thankful for my son. I’m thankful for the boy you once were and for the man you’ve become. I haven’t always understood you. But this year has helped me appreciate you in a new way. I don’t have a lot of time left to make it up to you. But I want you to know that I’m proud of you. That’s it.”

  The astonishment at the table was evident in the silence. No one seemed to know exactly how to respond. Noel sniffled and wiped an eye. Rita Mae, who was sitting next to Cameron, squeezed his arm. Justine put her hand on her father’s. The husbands fiddled with their napkins. The young people glanced around, hoping for someone to end the awkwardness.

  Finally Cameron spoke, his gratitude undisguised. “Thanks, Dad. That means a lot.”

  At once, Ben cleared his throat and turned to Justine. “You’re next.”

  Later that evening, when everyone but Ben was down in the basement watching a movie, Cameron slipped out and found his father in the study, a thick blanket draped over his legs, a space heater at his feet, and a mug of cider in his hand.

  Ben looked up from the book he was reading. “I was just thinking of you,” he said, gesturing toward the armchair next to him. “It’s been awhile since we’ve talked.”

  “I’m sorry for that,” Cameron replied, taking a seat. “I plan to visit more often.”

  Ben set his book aside and fixed Cameron with an inquisitive gaze. “I know there are things you can’t tell me, but I’m going to say what I think. I think you settled the case. I think they used you as leverage, and you used it with Vance, and Vance turned the board. That’s what I would have done, at least. But what I can’t figure out is how you managed to turn Vance from a self-impressed egomaniac into a defender of workers in the developing world.”

  Cameron bit his lip, wishing for a moment he could cast off the mantle of general counsel and tell his father the whole story. But he couldn’t. So he did the next best thing. “People are complex. There’s more to Vance than meets the eye. He has a daughter he loves. He has a creed he believes in—that private enterprise is one of the most productive forces in society. I happen to think he’s right. He just needed to give that vision a broader frame.”

  Ben’s eyes glistened behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “I imagine Stephen Carroll’s buy-in helped. Was it you who charmed the billionaire?”

  Cameron said nothing, allowing a half smile to convey his answer.

  “Damn,” Ben said, shaking his head in wonderment. “I’ve got one more question for you, and I don’t think it’s out of bounds. What made you do it? What made you go to Joshua? I don’t care how I felt, I don’t think I would have had the guts to put myself on the line like that.”

  Cameron nodded and stood, part of the answer a few steps away. He found his briefcase in the entryway closet, Cornelius’s journal in the back pocket. He took it out and ran his thumb over the cracked cover. He remembered the way his father had given it to him outside his mother’s room hours before she died. He remembered reading it by the window and seeing the path charted out for him in the footsteps of his ancestor, not the details, but the shape of the quest. The book had taken him to a place far beyond himself, and he had made it his own, smudging the pages with his fingers, stretching the fraying spine. But it didn’t belong to him. It belonged in this house. He had brought it home.

  He returned to the study and handed the journal to his father.

  “I remember this,” Ben said, examining it. “I never read it. I take it you want me to now.”

  “Just the last paragraph,” Cameron said and watched his father turn the pages. “He wrote it after Esther’s death, after he had found the man who had last enslaved her holed up like a fugitive in DC and sued him for reparations. The judge laughed him out of court.”

  Ben regarded Cameron over his glasses, his look rich with poignant feeling. Then he began to read out loud.

  “When I left the courthouse clutching nothing but the skin of my fist and the rage curled up like a stillborn child in my heart, I looked out across the city and saw the truth. Even if the judge had hearkened to my plea and granted Esther justice, it would not have been enough to satisfy the demands of men, let alone God. Even if the scales fell from the eyes of all the courts of this nation and they handed down judgments in favor of every newly freed slave, forcing their former masters to pay them honest wages for all the years of their toil, it would not be enough. For the debt of slavery is stitched into the fabric of this great land, from the hallowed halls of Congress to the New York Stock and Exchange Board to the textile factories and clothing shops in my own beloved Boston. This whole country has been enriched by the blood and sweat of the slave. We have reaped the harvest and enjoyed its fruit, ignoring the fact that it is a harvest of thorns. The very shirt on my back was stitched with cotton fibers harvested from southern plantations. All of us are implicated in our nation’s sin. What are we to do with this? What am I to do? What would it take to right this wrong? The world would have to be made anew. And so I say with the prophet Amos words written about the last days. ‘Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’ ”

  By the time Ben stopped reading, his voice had dropped from its resonant pitch to a half whisper, and tears had formed in his tired eyes. He closed the journal gently and cradled it in his lap, breathing in and out, his musings beyond reckoning. He looked Cameron in the eye. “That boy I raised, he never left, did he?”

  Cameron shook his head slowly, saying the words that came to him like the blessing he intended. “Whatever I am, whatever good I have done, I learned at your feet.”

  Ben’s tears fell down his whiskered cheeks. He grasped the arms of his chair and levered himself to his feet, shrugging off Cameron’s attempt to stabilize him. When at last he stood at full height, he stepped toward Cameron and embraced him with the full force of his waning strength. In Cameron’s fifty-four years, he had no recollection of such a moment—not the hug, for there had been others, but the acceptance and devotion it expressed. It was as if Ben had finally claimed him as his own, the son of his flesh, the firstborn of the line that would come after him, and heir to his call as a servant of the law, a servant of mankind.

  When Ben let him go, he was as vulnerable as Cameron had ever seen him. He gathered himself and grunted. “I love you, son. It’s been too long since I said that.”

  Cameron closed his eyes, knowing his father meant it. Then he opened them again and spoke his own benediction, his soul finally at rest in his own home.

  “I love you too, Dad.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  On November 24, 2012, a fire broke out on the ground floor of the Tazreen Fashions factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and quickly spread up the stairwell, cutting off the only safe escape route available to the more than sixteen hundred workers laboring overtime at their machines to fulfill a last-minute order. The eight-story building had no fire escapes, no emergency exits. Its corridors were littered with fabric. When the workers heard the alarm, they had nowhere to go except to the windows, which were blocked by iron bars, cloth netting, and panes of glass. Eventually the lights went out and the factory was plunged into darkness.

  With the fire raging in the stairwell, many workers made the fateful decision to break through the barricades on the windows and leap into the abyss. Some workers were impaled on the bars and cut by the glass. Others died in the fall. Still others survived with permanent disabilities. According to official reports, at least one hundred seventeen workers perished that night, and over two hundred were injured. But many bodies remained unclaimed and were buried without a name—likely villagers whose families were not in the city to identify them.

  Before the dust had settled, a public-relations battle broke out between the media and Walmart, the world’s largest retailer. Despite an attempt by the factory owner to shutter the site, the press confirmed that clothes destined for Walmart stores were inside the factory when the fire starte
d. Walmart, however, claimed that Tazreen was no longer an authorized supplier and blamed another supplier for sending orders to Tazreen without its approval. When the New York Times reported that multiple Walmart suppliers had been sending orders to Tazreen over the past year, Walmart pleaded ignorance and denied responsibility. (The Times also claimed that Tazreen had been making clothing for Sears at the time of the fire. Sears made similar denials.)

  In the spring of 2015, I traveled to Bangladesh and met a group of Tazreen survivors not far from the burned-out factory. I will never forget the stories they told me: the way they felt when they realized they had no way out; the work it took to break the windows and dislodge the bars; the thoughts that passed through their minds before they jumped; and the miraculous ways they survived—falling through roofs that cushioned the impact, landing on bodies that were softer than the ground. They also described the extent of their injuries. One young woman who broke her back in the fall was about to be evicted from her home because she could no longer pay rent. Another woman who cracked her skull had episodes every day in which her head felt like boiling water. A third had a broken back, neck, and skull. A fourth had an injured back and a dislocated hand. None of these women could work again. All were desperately poor.

  When I asked if anyone had offered them compensation for medical expenses and basic needs, they told me the shocking truth. Apart from the nonprofit Caritas Group, which had given each of them four thousand taka (fifty dollars) a month for fourteen months, and the buying agency, Li & Fung, which gave each of them one hundred thousand taka (about twelve hundred dollars), they had received no compensation from the factory owner or the brands that had sourced clothing from Tazreen. The brand C&A did give each of them a manual sewing machine and training, but for those with disabling injuries, the gift was impractical. One woman told me she used her machine as a coffee table. “I broke my back,” she said. “There is no way I can sew.”

  After I listened to the women’s stories, I asked them to name the brands whose clothes they had made at the factory. They reeled off a long list—Walmart, Gap, Zara, Target, and many more. I then asked them what clothes they were making on the night of the fire. All of them said, “Walmart.” The day of the fire was a holiday. They were only there after hours because they had to finish a last-minute order for Walmart. I asked them how they could be sure. They told me they knew all of the buyers. They said Walmart’s buyer was in the factory until lunch that day.

  Given the complexity of the apparel industry, they may have been partially mistaken. It might have been Walmart’s supplier, not Walmart itself, whose buyer was in the factory that day. Indeed, the supplier may very well have subcontracted the order to Tazreen without Walmart’s permission. Nevertheless, the stories I heard at Tazreen, coupled with the reporting I read in the Times, shaped the novel I was developing. I came away from my visit with more questions than answers. I talked to a long list of experts—garment workers, factory owners and managers, auditors, buying agents, journalists, lawyers, activists, and academics—trying to understand how it was possible that clothes destined for the US market—for stores my family and I shop in—could be made under such awful conditions and then, when disaster struck, disavowed by the brands whose labels were on the clothes.

  In my research, I learned something truly disturbing. Most of the clothing offered for sale in North America and Europe comes from what one expert called the “Independent Republic of Global Supply Chains,” which means that nobody really knows how it is made or by whom or under what conditions. It’s possible that the sweater I’m wearing right now was made by a slave. My shirt could have been made in a sweatshop by a young teenager working eighty-hour weeks. My pants could have been made by a girl whose manager raped her. My shoes might have been made in a factory about to collapse or erupt in flames. As consumers, we’re in the dark. And so are the brands we trust. Or so they claim. A number of people with deep insight into the industry told me that the brands know more than they let on. But the extent of their knowledge is a mystery. Most corporations protect their secrets like the NSA guards its ciphers.

  At this point, I should make one thing clear. Presto Omnishops Corporation is not a fictional rendition of a real company. It is a product of my imagination. Nevertheless, my description of Presto’s business model and practices, the mindset of its executives and directors, its global sourcing methodology, the tension between its sourcing and compliance departments, and the perverse incentives built into the system is based on my research around the world. In writing A Harvest of Thorns, I hoped to raise questions about the soul of the global economy, about the responsibility and irresponsibility of global business, and about the need for all stakeholders—companies, investors, consumers, and governments alike—to take proactive measures to ensure that the products offered for sale in our markets are being made under conditions that any decent person would consider humane.

  If you’re interested in learning more about supply chains and corporate responsibility, here are a few resources. To find out how the products we buy are tainted by slavery, check out SlaveryFootprint.org and MadeInAFreeWorld.com. Also, look at the US Department of Labor’s Tainted Goods List (www.dol.gov/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods). To see how different clothing brands stack up in the areas of supply-chain transparency, factory monitoring, worker wages, and other metrics, you can download the Fashion Transparency Index published by Fashion Revolution (www.fashionrevolution.org/about/transparency) and the review brand ratings compiled by Free2Work.org, an initiative of Not For Sale. Also, for a visual exposé of the apparel industry, check out the documentary The True Cost (truecostmovie.com).

  Many groups in North America and Europe have been pressing for legislation requiring companies to publicly disclose information about their efforts to cleanse their supply chains of abuse. In 2010, with support from the American nonprofit ASSET (assetcampaign.org), California passed its Transparency in Supply Chains Act. In 2015, with leadership from Unseen (unseenuk.org), a British nonprofit, the UK government adopted a transparency mandate within its Modern Slavery Bill. (A similar bill has been proposed in the US Congress.)

  In addition, groups like Fashion Revolution (www.fashionrevolution.org) and EcoAge (www.eco-age.com) are working with brands, celebrities, consumers, governments, labor unions, and other stakeholders to raise awareness about supply-chain issues in fashion. There are many opportunities for people like you and me to advance the conversation, including, quite simply, contacting your favorite brands and asking them, “Who made my clothes?”

  Other organizations doing great work to combat supply-chain abuses and expand worker rights include Verité (verite.org), the Southern Poverty Law Center (splcenter.org), the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights (globallabourrights.org), the ILO’s Better Work Program (betterwork.org), the Clean Clothes Campaign (cleanclothes.org), the Worker Rights Consortium (workersrights.org), United Students Against Sweatshops (usas.org), the Fair Labor Association (fairlabor.org), Tenaganita in Malaysia (facebook.com/tenaganita), Warbe in Bangladesh (awo-southasia.org), and Tamkeen in Jordan (tamkeen-jo.org).

  There have been far too many factory disasters over the past one hundred years. Far too many workers have lost their lives and livelihoods and been deprived of their dignity because of malfeasance at all levels of the global supply chain. There is no excuse for this. I am convinced that if we, the people of the world, stand together and demand that our governments and the companies we patronize take action to ensure that all factories are safe and that all workers are treated as human beings, not as cogs in a profit-making machine, we will see change. As the story makes clear, such change doesn’t need to undermine the bottom line. There is a powerful case to be made that social responsibility actually improves profitability in the long term. It’s time for retailers everywhere to make the dignity of every worker part of their brand promise. As a consumer, I demand that. I invite you, my readers, to demand it too.

  Corban Addiso
n

  September 2016

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As with all my novels, I never could have written A Harvest of Thorns without the steadfast love and patience of my wife, Marcy, and the generous support of a battalion of friends who gave me time on the phone and online, fielded my endless questions, made strategic connections for me, and offered me assistance in my research overseas. If I have learned anything in my eight-year journey of writing stories about injustice, it is that the world, despite its sometimes grotesque ugliness, is also brimming with kindness. It never ceases to amaze me when people I have never met welcome me into their circles, open doors for me, and put their safety on the line to help me get my stories right. I am truly honored and humbled by their friendship.

  In the United States, I wish to thank Michael Shively at ABT Associates for your insights into labor trafficking and excellent research ideas; John Grisham for making connections and critiquing the manuscript; Mary Bauer at Legal Aid Charlottesville, Dan Werner at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Gus May at Bet Tzedeck for educating me about human trafficking and labor litigation in US courts; Shawn MacDonald and Quinn Kepes at Verité for giving me a glimpse into the underside of global supply chains; Barbara Briggs at the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights for offering me insight into the misbehavior of suppliers and brands in Bangladesh and Jordan; Ben Skinner for opening doors for me in Bangladesh, opening my eyes to the role of activist investors in driving corporate change, and being such a steadfast champion for the book; Sarah Labowitz at NYU’s Stern School of Business, Justin Dillon at Made in a Free World, and Steven Greenhouse at the New York Times for educating me about business and human rights; Peter, Ida, and Brandon Caramanis for sharing with me your family’s experiences with childhood leukemia; and Blaec Kalweit at Sunshine Sachs for your insights into PR campaigns in times of corporate crisis.