The "Let's Change the WORLD" Movement

The euphoria was understandable when rescuers pulled 19-year-old Reshma Begum alive from the wreckage of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, last week. More than 1,127 were killed and thousands more injured when the factory fell on April 24. It had been 17 days since anyone had been found alive.

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  PHOTOS: Inside the lives of Bangladesh’s garment workers

Even in a country where life expectancy is low, the devastating collapse sparked protests, with rioters calling for the owner of the factory to be hanged. The outrage was worldwide — and had previously been missing among Western observers and consumers about the working conditions in factories in Bangladesh. They have been deplorable for years while churning out cheap clothes for some of the West’s best-known clothing brands. Despite its small size, Bangladesh is the second largest garment exporter in the world with the U.S. being its largest export market, with 19.4 percent of exports coming to the States. Wal-Mart alone does more than $1 billion worth of manufacturing in the severely impoverished country.

But while everyone is quick to point at the labels that produce their clothing there — J.C. Penney, Gap, Sears, Zara, among thousands of others — Chris Rhomberg, associate professor of sociology at Fordham University who specializes labor and labor movements, says it’s a very complex and multilayered situation. “These labels don’t actually own the factories in Bangladesh,” he notes. “They contract the work out to contractors. But this is how the garment industry works: The contractor then contracts them out to subcontractors that are even cheaper and creates this enormous pressure on all the labels to go even cheaper.” Rhomberg and others in his field call this continual outsourcing and downward push of cost “race to the bottom.”

“Bottom” is an apt term. Since there is little to no direct oversight by these western clothing brands, workers making these garments work in shockingly unsafe and unregulated factories. Many are forced to work seven days a week, are bullied into working overtime – and the youngest of them, mainly girls often as young as 10 — earn as little as $400 per year.

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“No company is willing to spend the money for safety, adequate standards and wages if that makes their product more expensive than their competitors,” notes Rhomberg. “If you allow this race to the bottom to occur, there is pressure on each one to go cheaper.”

And who is cheap? Women and children. Estimates vary, but up to 30,000 children are said to toil away in the sweatshops. The average age of the children is 13, of whom 10 percent, according to the United States Department of Labor, are married by the age of 10. The USLD report supported the findings of the Institute of Global Labor and Human Rights. “In a recent visit to Bangladesh, a Department of Labor official spoke with children who … also reported that, like adult workers, they are often paid two to four weeks late, and rarely paid extra for overtime.”

Out of the 3.5 million people who work in Bangladesh factories, 85 per cent are women. Although the principle of women working in this predominantly Muslim country has been accepted – largely for economic reasons – they still face paternalism, at best, and outright discrimination at worst, according to the European Union, which noted high levels of forced, early marriage and domestic abuse.

But even with this global spotlight shining brightly on the working conditions in Bangladesh — and the international outcry almost overwhelming — change is still very hard to initiate. There is immense international pressure for brands to sign the binding Fire and Building Safety Agreement, which protects garment workers. This five-year accord, which H&M and Zara signed this week, promises that they will not hire manufacturers and contractors whose clothing factories fail to meet safety standards; it will also commit them to paying for necessary repairs and renovations. The Bangladeshi government is acting as well — they are raising the minimum wage for workers and will make it easier for them to unionize. Still, the Gap, J.C. Penny and most notably Wal-Mart, had refused to sign as of Wednesday afternoon. Wal-Mart believes that their own safety plans are enough. “Walmart believes its safety plan meets or exceeds the IndustriALL proposal, and will get results more quickly,” the company said in a statement.

A major U.S. retail trade group on Wednesday spoke out against a Bangladesh fire and building safety accord, saying that signing on would expose American companies to a legally questionable binding arbitration provision.

“While the proposal put forth by the labor unions addresses a number of shared concerns, the accord veers away from commonsense solutions and seeks to advance a narrow agenda driven by special interests,” Matthew Shay, chief executive of the National Retail Federation, said in a statement.

Unionizers and labor activists worry that if these garment behemoths don’t join the pact, the agreement will lack influence.

Still, H&M’s decision to sign the accord is crucial, said Scott Nova, executive director of Worker Rights Consortium, in Women’s Wear Daily. “They are the single largest producer of apparel in Bangladesh, ahead even of Wal-Mart. This accord now has tremendous momentum.

Rep. George Miller, the senior Democratic member of the House Education and Workforce Committee, who has been working in Congress to fight sweatshops and improve working conditions in factories, also stressed that the onus lies with major fashion brands, not just the Bangladeshi government.

“Right now, [these retailers] must join other brands, unions and civil society groups in [signing on to the Fire and Building Safety Agreement] and begin the very affordable process of making their supplier factories safer. If they fail to sign an enforceable agreement, they are declaring that they accept blood on their labels.”

Eyewitness account

The images that accompany this story were taken by Taslima Akhter, a Dhaka-based photojournalist and activist for the rights of women garment makers in Bangladesh. It shows two workers, a man and a woman, locked in a final embrace in death. Akhter took the image shortly after the collapse of the garment factory on April 24.

She told Metro: “Sometimes owners and the government try to say that activists and workers are trying to make a conspiracy against industrialization – a common tactic when it comes to undermining workers’ rights.

“But as an activist and photographer I want to say that I, other activists, trade union activists and workers support the development of industrialization. We believe that without improving the conditions of workers through proper wages and safety standards, it cannot be possible. And it’s not only our local issue, it’s an international issue too.

“Buyers get products from our country at a very cheap rate, and our labor has become the cheapest labor in the world. International buyers also do not really care about pay rates and safety standards. Through my photography for last five years I am trying to campaign against low wage of workers and insecure working condition of workers.”

Akhter, 39, works as a photography tutor at Pathsala University, Bangladesh. In 2011 she participated the summer course on human rights and photography at New York University.

Involved in student politics during her student life, she became the president of Bangladesh Student Federation. She continues her involvement with women’s and worker organization as an activist. Considering photography as a part of her activism, she chooses to work on gender-environmental-cultural issues and the issues of social discrimination.

Bangladesh by the numbers

Bangladesh’s economy has grown by nearly 6 percent per year since 1996, despite, according to the CIA’s summary of the country, “political instability, poor infrastructure, corruption, insufficient power supplies and slow implementation of economic reforms. Bangladesh remains a poor, overpopulated and inefficiently governed nation.”

The country’s population is 90 percent Bengali Muslim. Per capita income is $2,000 dollars per year – making Bangladesh the world’s 192nd poorest nation. As a comparison, the average wealth per head in the U.S. is nearly $50,000.

Dorothy Robinson and Tina Chadha contributed reporting.

Amanda Berry was screaming into the fresh air, trying to claw her way out of the confines of 2207 Seymour Avenue. It was May 6 and countless lives were about to be irrevocably altered.

Charles Ramsey heard her screaming for help. Charles Ramsey happened to be in the right place at the right time – a point of fate that strung together 10 years of mystery and pain and hope.

Cleveland police began making their way toward the otherwise quiet thoroughfare that shoots off of West 25th Street, just a stone’s throw from I-90. The wreck of a home stood tall in the late afternoon light, almost bracing for the grand reveal of all the secrets waiting within. Soon enough, two other women emerged from the home, and internationally breaking news began spreading a message of joy around the world. Three long-missing women had been found. Alive. Relatively healthy and coherent.

Ariel Castro, 52, and his brothers Pedro and Onil were arrested following the rescue of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight. Ariel owned the Seymour Avenue home where the women had been kept. Police sources paint a grim picture of chains, restraints, locked doors, and rape.

“Those guys were walking out of the house with 1,000-yard stares,” said one source.

The details surrounding who knew what in the neighborhood and within the Castro family remain murky at best. But the investigation is plowing on this week, thanks to bravery from unsuspecting corners.

For Amanda’s actions and Charles’s quick assistance, both are lauded as heroes in the community.

But it’s unclear whether their rescue needed to wait so long. Leads came and went during the past decade.

Israel Lugo, a neighbor, told MSNBC that he summoned cops in 2011 after “his sister spotted a woman with a baby in the home, banging on the window ‘like she wants to get out.’”

“The cops came,” he said. “They pounded on that man’s door around 15, 20 times, real hard. They looked in the driveway, they got back in the squad car and left.”

“Every single lead was followed up no matter how small,” Cleveland police Deputy Chief Ed Tomba said during a press conference.

But lingering loose ends remain as law enforcement officials, family members, neighbors and investigators work to meld the disparate pieces of this puzzle.

***

Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, as sources put it, were close with the Castro family. Emily and Arlene Castro were similar in age to the girls, and they often hung out in the neighborhood.

“These kids all knew each other,” private investigator Chris Giannini says. During and after the girls’ disappearances, in 2004, he employed a man named Fernando Colon – Ariel Castro’s ex-wife’s husband – as a security site supervisor at a local shopping center and got to know the inner workings of the family fairly well.

Colon had fallen under the suspicions of the FBI during their investigation into DeJesus’s whereabouts. By way of marriage, he was somewhat close to the Castro family, and his step-daughters certainly ran in the same circles at the missing teenager. Colon was soon brought in for questioning regarding the disappearances.

But he was cleared following a polygraph test. The man in turn insisted that FBI agents look into Ariel Castro, a man who seemed to attract tumult and disorder throughout his adult life.

“They did not follow up on that,” Giannini says. The Cleveland Division of the FBI offered no comment on the matter when contacted by Scene.

It was 2004, still within the first year of DeJesus’s disappearance. She, along with Berry and Knight, were still regular fixtures in local conversation. Within the Castro family, however, turmoil was bubbling. As Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight grew up painfully inside Ariel Castro’s home, he was fighting to keep the eye of the law far away.

Emily and Arlene Castro, teenagers themselves, did not live with their father. Their mother, Grimilda Figueroa, had married Colon and brought her daughters to live with them over on West 110th Street. Allegations of sexual molestation against Colon soon threatened the stability of the household. Law enforcement once again zeroed in on Fernando Colon, all while Ariel Castro egged them onward. As his daughters continued to accuse Colon of touching them inappropriately – of penetrating them – Ariel Castro began visiting them more frequently and showering them uncharacteristically with gifts. They didn’t spend much time at Castro’s Seymour Avenue house, though. He ensured that much.

The Castro girls’ mother did not believe their mostly frantic allegations. Nor did their older brother, Ariel “Anthony” Castro. Nonetheless, Colon was indicted in late 2004 on 27 criminal charges, including kidnapping and gross sexual imposition, and later offered a light sentence that he couldn’t realistically appeal. Ariel Castro had testified against him in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. His wife and Castro’s son had testified on his behalf, hoping to clear Colon’s name in this increasing confusing tangle of allegations. Colon’s wife repeatedly told investigators that there was no credence to any of the charges.

This personal history is resurfacing following the arrest of Ariel and his brothers, mostly because it paints one of the few concrete images of life within the family. Ariel Castro had free range of the Seymour Avenue house — his son told the Daily Mail that his father kept the basement, garage, and attic locked and off-limits — and keeping his three kidnapped victims quietly within became a simple task.

***

“Words can’t even explain,” Tasheena Mitchell, Berry’s cousin, told Scene as she gathered with hundreds of neighbors and family members outside MetroHealth Medical Center Monday night. She was nearly shaking at times.

“I feel blessed. I’m ecstatic,” she said, adding that there was never a day where she gave up hope on finding her cousin. “I think about her everyday.”

A neighbor chimed in: “Prayers do come true. It’s surreal.”

The three women were released from the hospital in good condition Tuesday morning. Unconfirmed reports from family members at the scene, which police and doctors had not publicly commented on as of press time, noted that at least one and possibly as many as five babies were born during the women’s captivity. A six-year-old child left the house with Berry as police arrived.

Speculation on the condition of the Seymour Avenue home abounded in the hours and days following the rescue. By any standards, the relative health and coherence of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight was a miraculous turn of events.

“This isn’t the ending we usually get to these stories,” Dr. Gerald Maloney, who works in the Emergency Room at MetroHealth, said.

Family members and friends spent the day and the night – every waking hour – rejoicing. It was the best of all possible family reunions, save for the void left by Berry’s mother’s death in 2006.

Louwana Miller, bereft of her daughter and any semblance of meaningful information about her disappearance, died of a broken heart, friends and family have said. She spoke with Scene in 2003, seven months after Berry disappeared. Already at that point, Miller openly feared, the city had given up on her.

“Me and her was very close,” Miller said. “She always called when she was going someplace.” She was last seen a day before her 17th birthday as she left for a shift at Burger King on West 110th and Lorain. Miller acknowledged that much of Cleveland bent over backward in the weeks following the disappearance, working to maintain awareness and follow up on any possible light. But news cycles demand change, and Miller was soon lamenting the loss of her daughter to few outside of her immediate social circle.

She offered stirring words in 2003, complete with the silver lining that truly never escaped her:

“One good thing is that they haven’t found her body.”

Family members, of course, wished openly that Miller could be here now.

***

Ariel Castro spent much of the past decade working as a bus driver for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. According to police, his most notable interaction with the law occurred when he left a child on a bus in 2004, resulting in a call from Cuyahoga County Children and Family Services. “He was interviewed extensively,” Tomba said.

Castro would eventually be fired in November 2012 after leaving a child on his bus.

Public Safety Director Martin Flask said at the same press conference Tuesday morning that Children and Family Services were not able to make contact with Ariel after visiting his home. It’s unclear what developments really followed the report of a child being left on the bus, but no charges were ever brought about in that case.

Once again, Tomba’s words at the Tuesday morning press conference hang in the air: “Every single lead was followed up no matter how small,” he said. Unavoidable thoughts hearkening back to Anthony Sowell’s 2011 serial murder convictions hang in the air, as well. The rescue at the Seymour Avenue house will bear out a legacy on the backs of all involved, much like Cleveland’s other high-profile crimes.

Stories revolving around Castro’s work as a bus driver and his interactions with family members fill out characteristics about the man – elements of his personality that may have led to both the kidnapping and to his evasion from law enforcement.

In 1993 and 2005, Castro was accused of domestic violence from his one-time wife. The former charges were reduced to mere disorderly conduct, while the latter incident offered grisly imagery of a fractured marriage still capable of wreaking havoc. Castro broke his ex-wife’s nose and ribs, dislocated her shoulders, knocked out one of her teeth and battered her so hard that a blood clot formed on her brain, according to filings in court. In an interview with investigators after the fact, Castro denied ever being abusive toward her.

That filing effectively killed Castro’s chances at even partial custody of his children. Nevertheless, as sources familiar with the man report, his penchant for manipulation pulled Emily and Arlene back into his gravitational pull at times.

Several years after the gross sexual imposition conviction of Colon blew over, Emily Castro gave birth to a girl. It’s unclear who the father was – though speculation points to either a former boyfriend who now lives in Cleveland or, according to the private investigator, something much more untoward, evil, and incestuous.

Emily was living in Fort Wayne, Ind., where she attempted to murder her 11-month-old daughter by slashing her throat four times in 2007. She was later convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

“It is certainly a mystery as to how this happened or why this happened,” Allen Superior Court Judge John Surbeck told The Journal Gazette at the time.

It is indeed a mystery that may yet hold more clues as to who Ariel Castro has been all these years. Any answers that lay within may illuminate a gap in local law enforcement’s own investigations.

***

The Regional Fusion Center and the Cleveland Police Department currently maintain a list of 96 missing persons in the area. Some of them have been missing since the mid-2000s. One was last seen in 1995.

Each person carries with them a story, a life.

Women like Ashley Summers and Christina Adkins have garnered attention in the region, thanks to widespread reporting and an insistent base of family and friends that maintains the vigil.

Summers was last seen at her West 96th Street home, near Madison Avenue, in July 2007. The FBI has not come close to solving the mystery of Summers’ whereabouts, though various reports indicate the possibility that she has been held against her will and that foul play has not been an immediate suspicion in her case. The FBI had tied the investigation into Summers’ disappearance into those of Berry and DeJesus as recently as 2009, though the department never explained why.

It took about 10 years for three of the most prominent names on the city’s list of missing persons to come off that roster and back into some semblance of normalcy. Ten years for three names.

***

WEWS posted an interview Monday night with Charles Ramsey, the neighbor who found Berry as she was running out of the house. In the hours following the rescue, that interview went about as viral as it could go, hitting all corners of the Internet and bestowing upon Ramsey a heroic bit of worldwide fandom. “I heard screaming…And I see this girl going nuts trying to get outside,” he said. “I go on the porch and she said, ‘Help me get out. I’ve been here a long time.’”

He had been working over a meal from a nearby McDonald’s just moments before – a fact that figured prominently in the Internet’s collective gushing. The fast food corporation reached out on Tuesday, writing: “Way to go Charles Ramsey- we’ll be in touch.”

Ramsey stepped into local history Monday night, precisely as the names Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight re-entered local conversation with fervor and optimism.

All of their actions, which won out over the evil brewing on Seymour Avenue this past decade, are a testament to the power of will in this community and to the need for hope in the face of darkness. This matter of profound significance was not ushered in by way of police investigations or federal law enforcement insight. Three long-missing women are safe and out of harm’s way today solely due to the faith they fostered and the bravery they summoned.

Going forward, the weight of unanswered questions is countered only by the overwhelming joy resounding through Cleveland and the rest of the world.

Happy reunion: Amanda Berry (center) was all smiles at the Cleveland Hospital alongside her emotional sister (left) and a young girl that is believed to be the one who fled Ariel Castro’s house with Berry

Found: Amanda Berry (left) and Gina DeJesus (right) were found alive in Cleveland on Monday following a decade-long search

Awaiting good news: The disappearance cases have gripped the attention of all Cleveland residents for the past decade and crowds gathered at the police station on Monday evening

Questions answered: The families of DeJesus and Berry kept their names in the news, though little is known about the third woman who was found in the home, who has been identified as Michelle Knight

Before they went missing: Amanda Berry, pictured before her disappearance, was last seen leaving her job at Burger King as she told her sister that she was getting a ride home

Other case: Gina DeJesus went missing in 2004 on her way home from school, and her parents think that part of the reason why her case was not given much attention was because no Amber Alert was issued since no one actually saw the abduction take place

EARLIER FALSE ALARM: THE 2006 HOAX THAT RAISED HOPES

Help: A neighbor named Charles (pictured) was the one that heard the woman trying to get out and he helped break her out and call the police, when she identified herself as Amanda Berry

Scene: The women were helped out of this home on Seymour Avenue that belongs to Ariel Castro