Clean Clothes fair to raise awareness about sweatshops

A former sweatshop worker will discuss the deplorable conditions at the Fruit of the Loom factory in El Salvador during the fourth annual Clean Clothes Fun Fair from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 15, at West Market Square.

A celebration of community action to end sweatshops, the downtown fair features a Clean Clothes Market Place with 20 mostly local retailers offering clothes made with dignity, as well as a Clean Clothes Fashion Show, free food, music, and activities for people of all ages.

Fruit of the Loom worker Francisca Sanchez could have helped make T-shirts for Bangor’s 2000 Kenduskeag Canoe Race, according to Bjorn Claeson of Peace Through Interamerican Community Action, which is sponsoring the fair.

Bangor’s Clean Clothes purchasing policy enables the Clean Clothes Campaign to inquire about the factories in which clothing is made, Claeson said.

“We want to celebrate the city’s courageous stand for Clean Clothes,” he said in a news release. “When large corporations hide factories in the far corners of the globe behind concrete walls, barbed wire and guards with shotguns, it is a giant step forward simply to find out where and in what conditions our clothes are made.”

Since PICA has a connection with the people of Carasque, El Salvador, through the Bangor-El Salvador Sister City Project, the fair offers a chance for area residents to meet factory workers “and come to know them as real people,” Claeson said during a recent telephone interview.

“We do this every year to celebrate the connections we have with people and how we can work together to make a better world,” he said.

Participating retailers are: The Grasshopper Shop of Bangor, Niman’s Big and Tall, Marlene’s Uniform, Peruvian Link, Best Bib and Tucker, Cadillac Mountain Sports, Ski Rack Sports, Apron Strings and Deborah Brooks, all in Bangor; Coyote Moon and The Green Store, both in Belfast; Liberty Graphics in Liberty Village; Terra Cotta Stylish Stuff in Ellsworth; Rosen’s in Bucksport; Winterport Boot Shop in Brewer; Knowsweat Jeans in Kennebunk; The Maine Blanket in Washington; and World Market Place in Blue Hill.

Also, the Bangor-El Salvador Sister City Project will offer fair-trade products made in the sewing and embroidery workshop of Carasque.

The fair will celebrate Maine’s recent first-in-the-nation Anti-sweatshop Purchasing Law with a giant cake brought in by the Hathaway Shirt Parade.

Sen. Peggy Pendleton of Scarborough will be on hand to receive a “Clean Clothes legislator of the year” award for her role in passing the path-breaking legislation.

Also scheduled are clean T-shirt painting; prize giveaways; juggling with Zachary Fields; video making with the Maine Discovery Museum; a globalization art project and teach-in; and music by Tree by Leaf, Spiracle Twine and Solstice.

The fair is funded largely by the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation.