“I believe once you start work for worker rights, you cannot stop. You just can't stop yourself. I need to protest. I need to have these workers’ backs.”
Kalpona Akter is a former child worker and labor activist from Bangladesh. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Bangladesh Center for Workers’ Solidarity and was awarded Human Rights Watch's Alison Des Forges award for Extraordinary Activism.
About The Labor Link Podcast
The Labor Link Podcast supports workers' rights in global supply chains by sharing personal stories and perspectives of the men and women organizing the workers who make our stuff. The Labor Link Podcast is hosted by Judy Gearhart of American University’s Accountability Research Center and produced by Empathy Media Lab of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. For media inquiries, contact gearhart@american.edu.
About the Host of The Labor Link Podcast
Judy Gearhart is a Research Professor with the Accountability Research Center at American University’s School of International Service. She co-teaches a class on Human Rights and the Politics of Inequality at Columbia University, has served as the executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum and the programs director for Social Accountability International. She got her start as an organizer in Mexico and working for UNICEF and the ILO in Honduras.
About the Accountability Research Center
The Accountability Research Center (ARC) is based in American University’s School of International Service. ARC bridges research and frontline perspectives to learn from ideas, institutions, and actors that advance strategies to improve public accountability.
Through extensive dialogue with partners and collaborators, ARC co-designs exploratory research that is relevant for their strategies and can contribute to international thinking about how change happens.
Originally published January 20th, 2022
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