As a paid celebrity spokesman for Hanes underwear, it’s time he used his connections to put an end to the company’s sweatshops in the Dominican Republic.

Six Degrees of Exploitation: Anti-Sweatshop Activists Target Kevin Bacon
By Zack Knorr
If you’ve ever taken a long-distance car drive, there is a good chance you’ve played the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” On the off-chance you haven’t, this is the game — riffing on the idea that all of the earth’s people are connected by no more than six intermediate degrees — where you try to connect movie stars to Kevin Bacon through the movies they have appeared in. Now, with the help of student anti-sweatshop activists, Kevin Bacon is getting a taste of real life “Six Degrees,” and the connections are unsettling.

Meet Marlenny Franco. A textile worker in the Dominican Republic and the mother of a new born child, Marlenny stood up to her bosses at the Hanes factory where she works to stop discrimination against women and unsafe conditions. The company retaliated by firing her, along with many others who protested. And now students are holding Kevin Bacon accountable.

The connection? Kevin Bacon is a paid celebrity spokesperson for Hanes, helping to sell the company’s T-shirts and underwear through a high-profile ad campaign. The students are asking Bacon, who has a reputation for liberal politics, to use his status to help stop labor abuses at Hanes overseas textile plants.

The students, who are part of a national organization called United Students Against Sweatshops, confronted Bacon in New York at the premiere of his film Death Sentence. According to Connor X, a Columbia University student who held a banner at the protest reading “Kevin Bacon: Tell Hanes to Stop the Exploitation of Workers,” Mr. Bacon came up to the protestors and promised he would look into the situation.

But since then, say the activists, there has been no follow-up from Mr. Bacon’s camp and the situation at the factory has only gotten worse. In response, the activists have launched a national campaign, with student protestors showing up to challenge Mr. Bacon at events across the country — from the Emmy awards, where they say their protest won a brief glimpse on national TV, to small-town concerts by the Bacon Brothers, the rock band led by Kevin Bacon and his lesser-known brother, Michael.

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