The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Ninety Nine Years Later

[Omaha Steve]

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Ninety Nine Years Later

with Poet, Sophia Henderson Holmes

On March 25, 1911, 146 young immigrant workers died in a tragic fire at the
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory near Washington Square Park. Within minutes
the fire spread to consume the building's upper three stories. Firefighters
who arrived at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped inside because
the doors were locked and their ladders could not reach the factory floor. This
tragedy galvanized New York City to fight for protective legislation and unions
to eradicate sweatshops. On similar nondescript buildings all around the city
there is no way to know that inside there are sweatshops in which today’s
immigrants toil under conditions not very different from the Triangle workers.
A brilliant young poet, Sophia Henderson Holmes, once stood at the Triangle
site and pondered the plight of those workers. We now bring you on this 99th
anniversary of the fire Sophia reading her epic poem commemorating the lives
of those who died. And, the poem itself serves as well as a tribute to Sophia
Henderson Holmes, who has since passed on but has left us her stirring words
and the challenge to organize for workers' rights.

[virgogal]

1. What an awful thing that was.

[Happyhippychick]

2. If you haven't seen it yet, I recommend "Schmata", an HBO documentary.

[maryf]

3. People need to be reminded...

lest we regress too far...thanks!

[Yuugal]

4. K&R

[struggle4progress]

5. Fire poetry on the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire of March 25, 1911

... The company employed subcontractors who hired immigrant women to sew separate pieces of the garment. The rate was fixed between the owners and the contractors; the women never knew how much their work was worth. The payroll listed only the contractors; the company never knew exactly how many workers it employed ...

The Red Cross raised substantial emergency funds for immediate distribution on the Monday after the fire. But .. no one came to claim the aid ...

One of the jurors who acquitted Harris and Blanck was a shirt manufacturer, another was an importer, both felt there was no one responsible for the fire, one claiming that "the girls who worked there were not as intelligent as those in other walks of life and were therefore the more susceptible to panic" ...

Inherent to the struggle for economic justice is the struggle for language dominance--for the circulation of meaning and judgment in the public forum. Harris and Blanck invested in an advertising campaign on their own behalf in the New York City newspapers. The socialist newspaper The New York Call, whose masthead proclaimed: "Devoted to the Interests of the Working People", photographed their check and returned it, printing the whole transaction in its next editions ...

http://www.english.illinois.edu/Maps/poets/m_r/pinsky/zandy.htm

[Supply Side Jesus]

6. Never Forget

What greed can wrought from desperation.