I wear garments touched by hands form all over the world
35% cotton, 65% polyester, the journey begins in Central America in the cotton fields of El Salvador.
In a province soaked in blood, pesticide-sprayed workers toil in boiling sun
Pulling cotton for two dollars a day.

Then we move on up to another rung – Cargill
A Top Forty Trading Conglomerate, takes the cotton thru the Panama Canal
Up the Eastern Seaboard, coming to the U.S. of A. for the first time.
In South Carolina
At the Burlington Mills,
Joins a shipment of polyester filament courtesy of the New Jersey Petro-Chemical Mills of Dupont.

Dupont strands of filament begin in the South American country of Venezuela
where oil riggers bring up oil from the earth for six dollars a day.
Then Exxon, largest oil company in the world
upgrades the product in the country of Trinidad and Tobago.
Then back into the Caribbean and Atlantic seas
to the factories of Dupont
on the way to the Burlington Mills
in South Carolina
to meet the cotton from the bloodsoaked fields of El Salvador.

In South Carolina
Burlington factories hum with the business of weaving oil and cotton into miles of fabric for Sears who takes this bounty back into the Caribbean sea
Headed for Haiti this time
May she be one day soon free

Far from the Port-au-Prince palace
Third world women toil doing piece work to Sears
Specifications for three dollars a day
My sisters make my blouse
It leaves the third world for the last time
Coming back into the sea to be sealed in plastic for me
This third world sister
And I go to the Sears department store where I buy my
blouse
on sale for 20% discount
Are my hands clean?

(Composed for Winterfest, Institute for Policy Studies. The lyrics are based on an article by Institute fellow John Cavanagh: “The journey of the blouse: a global assembly”. Lyrics and music by Bernice Johnson Reagon, 1985)