MADRE just received this message from Sunila Abeysekera, a longtime friend of MADRE. She wrote about commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire last Friday, March 25. The 1911 fire took the lives of over 100 women, mostly young, immigrant women. You can read Sunila's message below:
Yesterday I was privileged to be in New York on the day that marked the 100th anniversary of the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in which 146 garment workers, mostly young (from 14 to 40) migrants, were killed. The women were members of the garment workers' union that had the previous year participated in a very widespread strike calling for better working conditions. There is a lot of information on the website, Remember the Fire.
Anyone who has ever heard me speak on Women's Day knows that this incident is one which I refer to, it is a tragedy that led to a great moment in working class and women's history and one which led to a series of laws and policies that improved wages and conditions in factories.
In the evening, I went to a memorial meeting at the great hall in Cooper Union, where in 1909, the woman garment worker Clara Lemlich initiated the call for the garment workers' strike. It was very interesting because the whole event linked what is happening in the world today to what had happened 100 years ago: in terms of attitudes towards women, towards workers, towards immigrants.
There was a Bangladeshi woman worker who spoke and referred to the women killed in a garment factory fire last year. She called for a campaign against Walmart which apparently is a buyer that pays no attention to work conditions. Among other speakers, there was a Chinese woman who had worked in garment factories in the US when she was young and who now works with factory workers in China, women descended from migrants from Italy and Mexico and Central America, men and women from teachers' unions and someone from the coal miners union where also people had been killed in a fire in West Virginia.
There was music, a slide show, readings from newspaper reports of the time, performances, it was an amazing atmosphere, very moving, bringing home the appalling reality of women being burned to death in a matter of minutes because the bosses had locked the doors, because the fire escape collapsed, because the fire engine ladders didn't reach far enough, because the fire department safety nets broke when the women's bodies landed on them, because actually nobody cared about the safety of these young 'disposable' workers.
And there was an amazing affirmation of hope in working class organizing and solidarity!
It was so old fashioned, ... and yet so timely... and many who were there felt it was symbolic of an emerging interest in labour organizing. In past weeks there has been a flurry of union activity in many states against Republican attempts to make inroads into hard-won union privileges.
The New York City workers' choir sang 'bread and roses' and 'union girl'...
I thought of us all,
Sunila
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