May you thrive in a way that enhances the justice, and the safety, and the dignity of every person who has made the clothes that you are wearing today.
Cynthia Enloe
Connecticut College Commencement 2011, 2011
The Story Behind This Quote
Enloe's closing benediction was a masterful reframing of the traditional commencement wish for graduates to 'thrive.' Rather than wishing them generic success, she added a moral condition: thrive, yes, but in a way that doesn't come at the expense of invisible workers around the world. It was a direct callback to the Triangle fire—where 123 women and 23 men died so that fashionable Americans could wear affordable shirtwaists—and to the modern global supply chains that produce our clothing today. By ending with the clothes the graduates were literally wearing at that moment, Enloe made her argument viscerally physical. Every person in the audience was connected, right then, to workers they would never meet, in factories they would never see, in countries they might never visit. The challenge was to carry that awareness forward into their careers and their consumer choices, ensuring that their success contributed to justice rather than perpetuating exploitation.