Romney told the room that the factory employed 20,000 young women in
their teens and twenties, living 12 to a room in triple bunk beds, 10
rooms sharing one little bathroom, working long hours for a "pittance."
The factory was surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers. "And we said
gosh, I can't believe that you, you know, keep these girls in. And they
said, no, no, no. This is to keep other people from coming in. Because
people want so badly to work in this factory that we have to keep them
out."
What galled Prouty was that Romney bought the lie. He told the story
not to condemn slave labor, but to say how lucky American are to be born
in a land of so much opportunity that we don't have to stop people from
scaling walls to get work.
Looking around the room, Prouty saw that none of the guests were
appalled. He thought it wrong that only people with $50k to shell out
could see the real Romney. Afterward, searching online, he learned that
the factory was Global-Tech in Donguan, and that Charles Kernaghan,
an international labor rights activist, had exposed Bain's interest in
ventures built on outsourced American jobs and exploited workers. Two
weeks later, when Prouty decided he'd be a coward if he kept what he'd
seen to himself, it was this story alone that motivated him to go
public. China, not the 47 percent, was his lede.
AlterNet
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