Transcripts For CSPAN3 Remembering The 1911 Triangle Factory Fire 20170729

The delphi university. I am a founding university of the remember the Triangle Fire Coalition and a coauthor with my colleague andi sosin of the new york city triangle factory fire. I will briefly introduce my colleagues on the panel and they will have more time to tell you about themselves shortly. All of us are members of the remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, which you will hear more about as we discussed. And we are all committed to keeping the memory of the victims alive and visible. We began our Work Together as part of a team organizing a citywide commemoration for the centennial of the tragedy in 2011. This rapidly spread from a citywide commemoration in new york to a national and international Generations International commemorations around the world. Were educators, activists, and historians. Briefly, dr. Mary anne trasciatti is a professor of rhetoric at Hofstra University as well as president of the remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, which we are finding is no small task. Rose imperato is an activist and Founding Member of the remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. She works at the Murphy Institute with cunmy here in new york. Dr. Andi sosin also an activist and a Founding Member of the remember the Triangle Coalition and a coauthor of the new york city triangle factory fire. As members of an organization dedicated to memorialize in an event that many diverse constituencies hold dear, we are aware that context is everything. Our discussion today is not so much focused on parsing the events of that day, but on examining the movements, the art, the rhetoric, and the continued conflicts that have rippled out from that moment at a time a little over 100 years ago. The site of the infamous triangle factory fire of march 25, 1911 continues to serve the city and nation as a living memorial. The memory of the fire has been continually renewed and utilized as a touchstone in American History and politics and American Culture. Even after 100 years, the fire has not lost its residents. Its power to evoke strong feelings of sadness and anger, but also of hope. Most consequentially, the fire has not lost its relevance, its symbolic power for contemporary political discourse, which we will have more to say about contemporary political discourse, im sure. That the triangle factory fire is still a potent symbol has been the result of persistent efforts on the part of many, activists, unionists, artists, politicians, historians, educators, and citizens. To preserve the memory of this moment in history as an affirmation of individual dignity of each worker and as a usable path in the ongoing discourse surrounding labor issues in the u. S. And abroad. The meaning of the fire has been shaped and contested from the beginning. The year before, the main street fiery new jersey killed dozens of young women in an unsafe new jersey factory. But their horrific deaths were not noticed enough to facilitate change. The triangle fire would be different. Played out in new york, a city where labors voice was rising and women were fighting to be counted, a city with dozens of competing newspapers. The morning after the tragedy, blazing newspaper headlines told the story of the mostly jewish and italian young women who perished the day before. The images were graphic and the rhetoric piercing. One paper shouted, how long will the workers permit themselves to be burned as well as enslaved in their shops . And blamed the owners who escaped the building while other human beings who piled up profits for them, died in burned, crushed, mutilated heaps. The meaning of the fire was contested from the beginning. City leaders were anxious about a further uprising and did not want the victims to become martyrs. Mayor gainer announced the unidentified bodies would be interred in a cemetery in brooklyn far away from the sentiments of lower manhattan, to avoid protests. So the unions organized a mass funeral procession through lower manhattan. Thousands solemnly marched as hundreds of thousands lined the streets under clouds and rain. When the silent marchers reached Washington Square, insight of in site of the factory building, one reporter noted, a long drawn out hard piercing cry, the mingling of thousands of voices, sort of a human thunder in the elemental storm, a cry that was perhaps the most impressive expression of human grief ever in the city. This cry for grief was for once turned to action. One person has called the tragedy the fire that changed america. Frances perkins, secretary of labor under fdr, maintained years later, that the new deal began on the day of the fire. Indeed, reformers and unionists seized the tragedy as a touchstone for labor organizing and safety reforms. Union membership in new york swelled from 30,000 to 250,000 and a culture of unionism was born. Traditionally an tiunion tammany traditionally, antiunion at tammany hall became a driver of progressive change and surprisingly created a model for the National New Deal reforms to follow, as well as the workplace standards we all expect today. As the century progressed, memory of this Pivotal Moment has often waned. Our history books, hollywood films, and culture in general tend to feature the economist a feature white men very important white men, so the story was largely lost to time, save the yearly commemoration and family members. The 50th anniversary did see a resurgence of interest as Eleanor Roosevelt and Frances Perkins attended the ceremony and a seminal work was published on the fire. Newspaper articles were written and survivors interviewed. The decades between the 50th at 100 anniversary witnessed the rapid decline of labor and the story faded more from collective memory in the city and abroad. As the centennial approached, i surveyed School Textbooks and found cursory treatment of the fire and the changes that result out from the grief that rippled out from the grief. There may be a few paragraphs, half a page, in a u. S. History book, the same that was given to the slocum fire. They were treated as disasters and that was the end of the story. Over the years when i would Ask University students i teach students who are going to be english and social studies teachers about their knowledge of the tragedy, a few people raise their hand and had just a vague awareness. The story was not essential to American Culture any longer. Now when i ask students entering this generation, the majority of students raise their hand and they know something about the triangle fire, which is very encouraging. Davids important work i think andi may talk about this later published in 2003 perhaps led the resurgence of interest. Inspired by his work, and artist began the public art project job, a Massive Movement to remember through the arts was born. The chalk project brings people out to the city every march 25 to chalk the names of triangle victims on stoops. This powerful active naming the victims, and a similar spirit to the Vietnam Memorial and aids quilt, has inspired new ways of looking at the tragedy and memorializing the victims. My own personal experiences with the project have been some of the most profound teaching opportunities i have had. I often go with middle school classes. It is always tricky taking middle School Students into the city, but they become very serious as they chalk the names and they become public teachers. People see these kids not from the neighborhood, why are you chalking up my stoop . The students tell the story and they feel like they are public historians. They never forget it. The teachers i worked with tell me when the kids see them later, they always talk about the project. My colleagues and i will discuss this dynamic more as our conversation unfolds, but i want to emphasize the importance of the singular, living memorial, the chalk project, to all the efforts that have followed. A small group of people can make great change, but this simple art project has sparked so much creative output and political activism that i do feel the truth in the sentiment for sentiment first hand. In the last few years, there has been so much creative output. Many plays and apparatus about the fire have been produced, quilts sewn, novels written, School Curricula crafted. Much political discourse is framed once again by the triangle factory fire and the activists who followed through on making things better. My niece recently sent me a playbill for a triangle fire play performed at her local high school in suburban houston. Mary anne recently got back from a street naming in italy. We find that this story is once again central in our collective conscience and bringing people together across the country and overseas to Work Together for change. I can start preaching at this point i tend to so before i start preaching, i will turn the discussion over to my colleagues. Professor Mary Anne Trasciatti of posture university. Thank you. [applause] dr. Trasciatti thanks, rob, and thank you everyone for being here today. I am going to begin with a question i asked myself and hopefully answer, or at least begin to answer, in this presentation. It is a question i certainly wont answer it, it is a bigger question. I have started writing about it and think about it far too often. It is an important question. The question is, why does the memory of triangle stick . Why this and not other things . That is a rhetorical question. What is there about triangle that moves people that maybe does not happen with other events, other issues . In the u. S. , im sure you know, so many efforts are made to ignore contemporary labor struggles and history. What is there about the story of triangle that makes it so affecting . I use the word to get affect, it makes people feel something about this story. What makes this lf affecting for what makes this so affecting for those who come into contact with it, both at the time and now . Here are just a few thoughts that i have in answer to that question. I appreciate anything you might add later about why you are here, what you know, and what you think. First of all, it is a rich narrative. This is a story that can be told in a variety of ways. It can be framed i a m a communication scholar, and framing is an important concept. The story can be framed in a lot of ways. One way it cant be framed, which is advantageous for memory in the u. S. , which as a story of radical labor organizing or activism. The girls at triangle for girl who led the uprising in 1926 became a communist. In fact, the union she helped build wanted to deny her a pension because she was a communist. But in 1909 and 1911, she was not. The girls at triangle were not radicals. That part of the story does not have to be effaced. These are innocence, that is an s, that isre innocent an advantage. It is not a story of radicalism. It is a story of migration. These are people who came here from italy, russia, other places, for work, for a better life, however you want to frame the story of migration. This is in part a story of migration. We in the coalition dont tell it that way, although we are embarking on a project to map memorials to the victims i dont want to use that word to the triangle dead in italy, which is in part an effort to reframe the story as a story of migration. There are memorials in italy. In sicily, all 24 of the triangle that from that region have been memorialized with street plaques and images. It is in part a story of migration. It is also a story about new york city, the fashion capital of the world, a destination for immigrants from everywhere. It is a story about greenwich village, Washington Square, a Meeting Place for all kinds of people, and in particular it was in 1911. It is a story about worker struggles for better wages and a and for safer working conditions. And by workers, with regard to the story of triangle, i mean particularly, although not exclusively, women workers. Workers tend to be gendered when the term workers tend to be gendered when we speak about it. If you ask people to imagine a worker, at least until recently, they would imagine a guy. The triangle is about women workers. That is the story that we tend to tell in the coalition. We tend to begin the story with a struggle, by women workers, two years prior to triangle, which you may know as the which may you know as the uprising of the 20,000, which began with a walkout at triangle. It involved mostly jewish women workers. They were led by a russian immigrant jewish teenager, claire linley. The strikers from the ticket mind faced hostility from police and passersby and socalled respectable citizens. It was not popular when it began, and part of the reason is because the women who were striking, who were outdoors asking for better wages and safer working conditions, were space, unadvertised. That they work with their bodies in public space . Analogies were made between striking women workers and prostitutes. They are both, in a sense, streetwalkers, advertising the use of their bodies as a way to make money. They were treated very hostility. Clara lemlich had several ribs broken and prostitutes in jail said, you guys are getting treated worse than we do and we make more money. There were all kinds of linkages. It was only the presence of middleclass women, dressed well and untouchable, so does so to speak, that helped to stem the violence. The strike was both a success and failure. It brought union shop and Safety Measures but failed to bring those things to triangle. The owners max blanck and isaac harris resisted. Without a union or enforceable laws to protect workers, the factory system was a tragedy waiting to happen at triangle, and indeed it did happen. When it happened, it was very visible. I think that is the second answer i have for why this event is so important. There were other fires in new york city. I have actually read other accounts of people watching them from Washington Square park. There was a fire right before triangle that was deadly and awful, but it was largely invisible, so no one saw it. That was in newark. There were other workplace deaths, horrific accidents and in mining, timber, railroads, meatpacking. But triangle was visible and not just visible. It engaged the full sensorium of new yorkers. It was audible and smell of able and smellable as well. Middleclass new yorkers, affluent new yorkers, were not used to having their senses assaulted by the factory system. The workers were, loud sounds, injuries, smells, fights. But wellheeled new yorkers were not. They saw smoke. Womens bodies plunging out the window and exploding on the ground. They heard fire bells scream. Of course, the iconic flood dead, thud,c thud , dead reported by william gunn shepard. They smelled smoke. They smelled wet, burned stuff. As horrific as the sounds, i expect they smelled charred human flesh. That was a material rhetoric. It acted on the whole person, the mind as well as the body. It said the people, look, listen, and act. The visibility of triangle, though perhaps not the other sensory reaches, were expanded in the reportage that followed. Images of women were published, images of police, the image i showed you that was an iconic image, looking at the women, illustrations of the disaster. Some of these were quite macabre, very accusatory, and they still retain the power to move us. These images, this language, was reported in englishlanguage papers, also italian language and yiddish language. That way, it traveled the globe. We are still in the early stages of doing research on the reportage and italian newspapers. One thing we know is the language of triangle is different when reported by the italians. It was not a tragedy, it was a crime. It was a very explicit indictment of the system. In fact, triangle became resosident so nant that it is now in italy synonymous with the observation of International Womens day, march 8. It was only in 1987 that historians published the finding that the fire actually did not happen on march 8, it happened on march 25. And so that what did italians do since they are good at reworking anything for their advantage . It is a legend and . It is a legend and it is even better it is not historically accurate, it is a legend, even better to build a holiday on a legend. But this is how powerful these images were. What else . The rituals that rob mentioned. Workers mourn their own. They performed their grief, their solidarity, their determination to seek justice. These rituals engage people. The funerals went on for days. One person reported that some people got lost, they had no idea what funeral possession they were in. The largest funeral was april 5, 1911, also a political demonstration. It was a union led procession. The women fought for this for for this, for the unidentified victims, originally seven of them. 100,000 people marched slowly in the rain with empty caskets, no banners save for we mourn our loss, no slogans, no songs. No nothing. An estimated 400,000 participants marching silently, hundred thousands, the others watching them, and during the them, enduring the rain. For those who participated, it must have been a powerful communal experience, asomatic experience, feeling the rain, hearing the silence, watching the hearses. These images are haunting. Marching for triangle continued. Suffrage workers invited triangle workers to margin their parades. The mayday parade became the ritual of marching past the triangle building. They would be loud and rowdy. They got the triangle, silence. Until the past until they passed the building again. So revered, so send if i was this spot. The coalition honored these rituals. We marched with sure wastes. The intention was to invoke the spirit of the ancestors. They do haunt us. They look like the garments made and worn by triangle workers. They resemble the banners we mourn our loss. But they are empty space, like the empty caskets. They cant be filled. These are lives that cant be brought back. The shirtwaists are symbolic, but also material. There are things we can see and touch and the names make them not allegorical. This is not liberty, it is a particular woman. We honor the particularity of the triangle story. The 146 dead. Joseph zito, the heroic elevator boy. Labor organizers and politicians who worked to change the system. Rose schneiderman, al smith, the list goes on and on. The story of triangle is not merely selfreferential. It has tremendous didactic potential. We use triangle much like we use vietnam. This is another vietnam. This is another triangle. If you think about the coverage of bangladesh, the plaza, the factory fire. That didactic potential of the fire is powerful and important, and i think another reason why the memory continues. I will turn it over to andi sosin to talk about that. [applause] dr. Sosin now comes the show and tell portion. Hi. Just press the enter key. I am andi sosin. I was a Teacher Educator for most of my career and a new york city schoolteacher when i started and trained as a historian, so this is very important to me and im delighted to be here. Thank you for coming. These two books we are showing you, one of them is organizing the curriculum perspectives on teaching the u. S. Labor movement. The other is the new york city triangle factory fire. These are the books we collaborated on. I collaborated on this one with rob linne and others. We edited a series of essays about teaching labor studies in the public schools, basically. So for this book, we collected essays that showed how labor studies was being avoided, submerged, belittled, you name the thing that keeps students from understanding what labor is and from protecting their own interests in the corporate society, and thats what has happened to teaching about labor in the american schools. So this book got us started on finding curricula that were laborfriendly, and helping teachers manage to insert labor into their curriculum in order to prepare their students for what was going to be most of their lives. During that time, we met ruth circle, rob talked about, who began the chalk project, and became Founding Members of the remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, in order to make the centennial of the triangle fire an event that people would remember, that would enter american memory and keep the memory of the triangle fire and its victims and its import for all workers alive. We worked on this book, which is the new york city triangle factory fire, which i am inordinately proud of because it is the largest collection of contemporaneous photographs that tell the story of the triangle fire and the immigrants who worked at the triangle waist , Waste Company through the waste, company through the new deal to just up to the present day, up to the centennial. It was published before the centennial in february of 2011, so does not include the centennial, but it is the largest collection of photographs and print that tell the story. At the same time, we worked with the producers of the hbo documentary triangle remembering the fire, which if you have not seen, i highly recommend it. Hbo brings it back every so often. Their method was to find descendents of both survivors and victims and interview them about the import that the triangle has said to their the triangle family has had to their families. It is a riveting documentary because it shows that the triangle fire has had an effect has had effects on people even through the generation. And not necessarily because of what came out of it, but just to family members, people who were associated with those people who passed. Another book that i want to bring to your attention is see you in the streets. This is newly published. This is ruths memoir about establishing the coalition and about about how an activist goes about establishing and getting people on board and making things happen, and it is highly i like it, it is entertaining, but it is also a good handbook almost for activists. I wanted to bring that to your attention. Going back, rob mentioned leonstein. Read mentioned beyond mentioned leon stein. They reissued his book at the centennial, published in 1961. He was the editor of the newsletter for the International Ladies garment workers union. When he did the research for this book, he was working on his own academic career, but the publication of this book actually linked what had happened and how the fire all es and the happenstanc system of worker exploitation, basically, how that all came to happen in the fire. It handles the fact that out of the fire, the accidents were so conscience stricken and the public was so conscience stricken, that there was action and a new idea, basically, that unions, and unionization was not bad for the country. Out of that, when Frances Perkins said the new deal was born on march 25, 1911, she meant there was a change in government, and government started to take responsibility. Before that, unions were illegal. Organizations were strength of trade. They were considered conspiracies. The idea that the wagner act, which was known for robert wagner, which was the head of the state senate during the Factory Investigating Committee investigating commission that followed the triangle fire the fact that he wrote the new deal legislation really embodied what had happened. It was a change of philosophy in government. Government took responsibility for industrial relations. The 2003 publication of davids book triangle the fire that changed america, was really important in making the triangle fire an event that drew people in the early 2000s before the centennial. It caught the interest of one of our coauthors who was a distant relative of one of the victims of the fire. They brought us to ruth brought ruth to triangle commemoration and brought us into that. This is a journalistic account, but it is really a i am struggling for the word. It is a good read. Dr. Sosin it is a good read. It is good journalism, plus, it is good research. It was not perfect research, but it was good research. I highly recommend this book as a foundation to understand why triangle changed america. Out of triangle came the new york state laws. Over 30 new york state laws were passed after triangle, based on the findings of the factories investigating commission. Plus, Workers Compensation insurance, they date that law. The new York State Labor Department dates its strength and funding to the triangle fire. The new York City Fire department and Fire Departments across the country got better equipment, more moderate equipment, and more funding because of the triangle fire. There were a lot of systematic changes that came out of the triangle fire. My purpose here is to talk about kids. Ok. Ok . These are the kids who come every year. We get kids, we give out little plastic fire hats, and we get kids whose teachers are interested enough to get kids involved. They often get involved with chalking, like the middle schoolers at the bottom who came to the commemoration, who came to walk with shirtwaist. That is a big attraction. We give them the shirtwaist flags we have created. They come with their posters, they listen to the speeches, some of them write songs and perform, it has been gratifying to have kids involved in the annual commemoration, which takes place at or around march 25 at the site of the fire. The Fire Department comes and they raise their ladder. The actual Ladder Company Comes Company that responded to the fire comes every year and raises it to the sixth floor, which was the floor that was as far as the latter reached in 1911. It reached the six floor only. The workers were trapped on the ninth floor. It was really no help. They would jump into the nets and the nets would collapse. It was a tragedy all around. From that, the Fire Department grew into strength. When they talk about the kids, i want to talk about, what are we trying to teach the kids . This is one of the illustrations i took from our book because it was published in newspapers all around. There was more than 30 newspapers in new york city at the time. My father was a newspaper printer. It is a sad story when all of these newspapers are dying the way they are now and turn into and turning on the web presence. This is what we are trying to show them. As we fight for 15, and as we look at the right to organize, and right to work is being pushed now, it is a very scary situation. What is out there for teachers and young people to read about . I highlight this book because flesh and blood so cheap was one of the ways they talked about. I highlight this book because, just as an example, there is a lot of illustrations, easy print. This book is what we call it is a resource. It is nonfiction, of course. I am blocking the word. But, um, there are so many good illustrations. So many illustrations interesting to young people. There are many of these. This one, the triangle shirtwaist factory comes out of elastic of scholastic freedom series. You will find these in School Libraries. If School Libraries do not have these you can ask for them. Another one is, landmark of American History the triangle fire. It is also it tells the story, print is large, vocabulary is controlled, but it is a way of sharing an individual work. Here is another School Library addition from spotlight on American History. Junior scholastics is used in classrooms. Here they did a play. A readers theater on the triangle fire. One of my favorite books one of my favorite books recently is brave girl. It is about clara, and the shirtwaist makers strike of 1909. I want to highlight an illustration here. I like this one because it is revolt of the girl. Ok . This was not usual in new york at the time. The fact that women were striking as part of the union was not a usual thing. Women were supposed to be in the home. The womens trade union league was founded by middleclass women who helped working women be able to raise their families and have a high enough wage to not have to work. It is sort of an interesting i brought another book. Marianne mentioned that all over mary and mentioned that all over it was terrible. This is about the newsies around the early 1900s. Child labor was not unusual. These newsies were on strike, so here is another one. I brought two other resources for you. Immigrant kids. Russell friedman wrote good biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt , Franklin Roosevelt and kids on strike. Very good resources. There is fiction, lots of fiction. Little fiction for young people. Fire at the triangle factory. , fire at the triangle factory. Libby is about a spinner in libbye be the what is about a spinner in vermont. Dreamland and Alice Hoffman just wrote one that mentions the triangle fire. This one happens to be out of print, but it is really fabulous. We shall not be moved, about the 1909 strike. This one is portraits. School biographies, short biographies. You can use a lot of these. This might be the play that they put on, the triangle factory fire project in houston. You can get these materials. We list our resources for teaching about the unions, labor history, and triangle fire on our website. That is why i gave you brochures because it has them listed. Because it has it listed. Thank you. [applause] rose i am going to stay seated. Would you mind staying up there . I am very happy everybody is here. I have heard this story of triangle for years and years. When i heard mary and thats when i heard mary anne describe it as felt my stomach tightening. It is that this role for me. Harry it is that visceral forming. When you talk about the girls trying to escape flames from the ninth floor, it gets me every single time. I want to start off with the word intersectionality. At the womens march, i was holding a poster that had that word and another supportive statement by now. I got it when it came out of the metro. As i was walking in the march, an amused march, onlooker said what does that , mean . I was swept up in the crowd and the emotion and i said come and find out. Later on, my husband said, you should have said to him, it means your concerns are my concerns. At least that would have piqued his interest and maybe he would have stepped in. When you look at this photo here, these are people, volunteers, 146, who on the day we commemorated the hundred 40th the 100thdreds anniversary of the fire it was awful out. They volunteered to carry a shirtwaist. Those are the names and they are on there, all 146 of the people who died are listed on the front of the sashes, then the age that they were when they died. Their concerns are our concerns. It is evident because when you see people hold these, they feel very connected. As she said, they cannot inhabit the space, but the activists do hold the space. As a feminist, but also a labor activist, labor has been a dirty word for so long. The idea that this is a teachable moment, that people can connect with the girls, with the workers. Oh, i just turned around my sign and rose was only 15 years old when she died in the fire. The students, they say im 17, i could have been there. I have a parttime job, maybe i would be working in a factory. The resonance is deep. The workers at the time, their concerns are our concerns. It leaves me to this final piece, our efforts to memorialize. You can go to the next slide. Thank you. We have among our group a quilter. She felt she needed to do something that was going to reach students, was going to be a calling card for this that even the black and white images would not be as effective. She got the images that she could, there were only a few of the 146, then the other she sketched out from family photos that cannot be replicated, which she believes to be as close to a rendering. Then, she took images that were poems, these are lists of the names of those who died and their ages. Union slogans at the time. This has traveled around the country. It was on display at the cathedral in new york city for a couple of months last year and the year before. You can hit the next slide. This is a convenient quilt following the plaza disaster in 2013 in which 1100 garment workers were killed. The bangladeshi activist have the bangladeshi activists have been in touch with us. The activists who remember the triangle fire and some workers in new york city are accentuating the fact that this issue that happened at triangle is still salient, unfortunately. Safety is being eroded in the country today and around the world we have exported those same problems. Our efforts you can go to the next slide, to go beyond a plaque that a lot of students by at nyu campus, it is to build a true public art memorial on the side of the building. We held an international competition, over 30 countries represented, and a jury of incredible artists pick the artists picked the winning design. The winning design was altered some to fit nyus safety regulation. He did not want a good trunk of the building covered with the art. We could use the corner and wrapping around the side. There would be text to tell the story, then the names of all 146 who died. It is not enough, the living memorials, all the things she held up that we are doing, writers are doing, playwrights are doing, puppeteers, all of it helps to bring it out so that labor can be talked about. Young people get it. I went into a middle school in the bronx. They had a whole day were every single student in the school was tasked with creating something. They made posters and little dioramas and they get it. They understand what oppression means. They could talk about oppression theory and a second because it resonates for them what is fair and what is not fair. These girls went to work and their only crime was showing up that day. There is something that the triangle fire still presents to us as a challenge and inspiration, hope, as well as a reflection on the tragedy. Not forget,lest we it could happen again. We are in tough times right now so it is a powerful teaching tool that we have found. We are doing our best to not only keep the story alive, to help it find relevance today, and their concerns are our concerns. I believe that and we are glad you are here. We will open up for questions now. Thanks. [applause] rob at one point you talked about the victims and you said you did not want to call them victims. Can you talk about that . Dr. Trasciatti i have had this conversation with ruth, who also tries to stay away from the word victim. For me, i feel very strongly. When we are building this memorial, we are very aware that what we are doing is memorializing something that happened in labor history. 146, 129 of the people where women, immigrant women. We are well aware it is subversive to have a monument with 150 historical representation of people. 129 women with foreign names, which, at an immigrant sentiment is a radical thing. We are always interested in the coalition and keeping these people from becoming allegories, and keeping them from becoming onedimensional. I think if you call them victims , then their life is reduced to the story of what happened to them at the triangle. They work strivers, migrants, some were born here, they were children, mothers, so i refrain from that because it then becomes an identity of subject position and limits who they were. That is my reason. It is a very rhetorical reason. Triangle, they died at triangle, but they were not victims. They were, but they were so much more. Rob i want to follow up on that, just as an educator. I think you see a theme throughout our discussion about naming people and telling their stories. The most important lesson we have learned in the education you can pick about traditional education, there are two metaphors, the textbooks had a few paragraphs of the triangle fire. They talk about the 146 people who died horrific deaths. It is not stick with people. A lot of students came to my class did not remember that from high school. It has been amazing how this has come together and so much of the work that has gone on around the triangle fire, it is about maintaining this balance. If there is a story we want to tell about a Labor Movement, womens movement, especially for young people to get to the bigger stories, we will not forget the people. There are individuals and we named them. When we have a relative of one of the victims talk to people and show a picture, and tell a story about what they like to do or what they were going to do that weekend, the students really relate to them and they feel a connection. Another example is the hbo film, i encourage you to watch the film andi talked about. It really shifts in way that a lot of historical documentaries have done. You will not see i do not think there are any talking heads of historians, will maybe historians, well maybe one, michael hirsch, but most of the people they decided to interview were family members of the women in the fire. They were able to tell the story in the full range. They were able to tell the full range of the story of humanity. There is a pbs documentary, which is more traditional. If you can compare the two i compare them with students, it is fascinating to see how students analyze, do we tell the Historical Context of a group of people who died or what is the difference when we talk about individual . Another thing we are finding that works well in terms of education and young people is to have them make connections to what is going on today and to tell them not to just say there are people having struggles in line struggles in bangladesh or upstate new york, but to actually hear from individual people and their lives. They are often young people themselves. Segueing into child labor, if you are a high school student, those Connections Work very well. The other thing i think the triangle fire brought out for a lot of us, it brought out the light of us educators and multi generational aspects. It can be young people, older people, we often try to have a relative. We are finding the multi generational aspect of the triangle fire has been a lightbulb for a lot of us in education. The last thing we try to end with is, action that can be art, but trying to get involved in some type of activism. Looking at what is going on with farm workers in the state. We can study the past but young people dont understand that connection. Rose since this is being taped for cspan, i felt i have to get it right. When i mentioned to names of the victims, one of the names i was right. I was looking for the name rose, rosey was the most common name and i picked out the last the and i picked out the wrong last name. I dont know what i said on the tape, but i am just getting it right. Questions . Good morning, this is a wonderful presentation. I am glad that i am here at 8 30 in the morning because labor history and women trade unionist s are not always featured. I am delighted that you are here, but also really interested in the intersectionality point. Rose, have you gotten much response from, or how is the material you are all using it, i know it is a huge issue in new york. Are the unions picking up, the steelworkers or the iron walkers or the current workers trying to use the story, or do you see it in study classes . Feminist history, womens in feminist classes . Feminist history, womens history outside of the Cornell Murphy center . Is that something you are working on . Dr. Trasciatti im sure other people could contribute, as far as the first part of your question, this past july i was invited twice actually. San francisco does a labor fest every summer where the whole city is alive. I think it is the month of july where it is labor, activism, history, etc. The two times i have been invited to talk about the memorial project and the centennial. Just last summer to give a talk about triangle in the context of work place safety today, also to help fill in the gaps to help labor history walking tour. No, im sorry, our history im sorry, in a history walking tour that emphasizes a italian in San Francisco. To link what i knew about italian activism in the Labor Movement and community. San francisco is really interested in the fire. We have someone who does chalking in San Francisco as well. I have given several talks on long island about triangle to womens groups and the Womens Committee of the Central Labor Council on long island. Rose i can add that for a short period of time i was the Operations Manager for the coalition. It is now a volunteer organization. I would go through the emails that would come in from students around the country. We were formed in 2008, a couple of years before the anniversary before the 100th anniversary in 2011. I did not hear much from students in emails. In recent years since the centennial, many students are sending in saying, for my National History project i want to focus on the national movement. Can you send me material to help me understand the life of one of the people who died and what her life was like . The students tell me it is a tip off that it is being taught and is spreading. Our Wikipedia Page has a lot of hits on it. If you google remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, there is a subsection. Just Little Things like that help us to know. Adrienne sosin i will add to that as well. The webpage we have on the remember the triangle fire on the remembert if you go to resources, it is sort of an idiocratic list of resources. You know, the basic everything we knew about it that was films videos, literature, poetry, roberts short poems, lots of books of poetry. All sorts of resources. But the links are pretty accurate still. All the adult literature on the resources page. Then the education page is for young people, juvenile literature, why a literature, ya literature, for student projects and we have worked on a number of National History day projects. Some of their projects are linked to on our resources page. I would recommend annalees at alise orlich at dartmouth who is doing work on labor and feminist studies. And also oh god. Dr. Trasciatti i notice how few panels there are here in women is just and that observation, and evaluating. It is true. But there was an event at the New York Historical society called flood equity. It was funded in part by a request from the estate of jean appleton, who is the daughter of dubinski. He was the president of the iopwu. A colleague the woman who made , the quotes contacted me and , said there is nothing about triangle in this daylong conference of women in the Garment Industry. There is nothing about the triangle fire. We called them, or wrote to them and said, it would be a really good idea if you had something on triangle. They said you are right. Oh my gosh, they included us. But we had to nudge them a little bit. It is not always selfevident. But it happens. Rob it seems to be a good site for this. We have had some success. The successful teachers unions are the ones who are involved in communitywide social justice, like the chicago teachers. So as that is happening i have , recently had more discussions with nicer teachers here in new york about widening the perspective about what our union is about and widening it to community issues. That is where triangle could fit into some of that conversation. Do have a conversation you go hi, thank you, that was really interesting. You guys all seem to be educators and you talk about educating students from middle school. You showed some little kid books and up through University Levels. I am wondering how does the story of china angle triangle change when you are teaching about this deadly fire to kindergartners, to middle schoolers, to High Schoolers and on University Level . How much depth do you get into at every level . Does that make sense you go sense . Rose i will touch on it briefly, then probably andy who is a teacher, they are more involved in the classroom experience. I have found that the teachers and the students that query us for information they are already selfselecting. They want to know more about it. A second grade class wrote a song and they wanted to know the lyrics to solidarity. I think they are looking for the piece of the puzzle that is the most interesting to them. Because it is fairly gory and fairly scary to talk about being locked in because doors were locked. They did not want labor organizers coming in and did not want the girls stealing fabric scraps. So they could not get out. Things were not maintained, the sprinklers were not maintained, the fire escape was not maintained, it was horrific. So yes i had a parent who said , their High School Daughter actually had a difficult time, even with the documentary shown by pbs. So it is tough. It is a tough story, but the books that andy held up, they handle it really well. They deal with the friendships between the italian girl and the jewish girl. This sort of get into it from the angle that students of any age could deal with. But it is a really good point. I have come up against it. Adrienne sosin they also tell about the world of work. It is really interesting for young children. I hold up this page of brave girl, because here is clara sitting with the sewing machines and the cutters. The oppressors are behind her. It says as the week grinds by clara makes friends with the , other factory girls. At lunch they share stories and , secrets as if they were in school where they belong. So it is a really interesting take on what is happening and how relatable this is. Fire at the triangle factory, it is not really about the fire itself. The girls are caught in the fire but one girl is jewish and one , is italian and they are making friends across boundaries. Her father said do not go there , do not be friends. Otherelp one helps the after the fire get home. It is that kind of thing. When you get into the more middle school range, then it becomes really visceral. It is gory. You know you get to see children , who were wearing i got involved with fashion with do sashes for the shirtwaist flags as a way of showing solidarity, but they wore sashes. They all wore sashes. You saw the 1909 strikers, they all wore sashes. They wore sashes at the Metropolitan Opera House because they were in mourning. Sass is sashes were here are the picket line strikers of 1909, same idea. But this gets sort of gory because it uses the contemporaneous cartoons that showed up. You know, photography was very young and very hard to do. I mean the news photographs that , we see now are the black and whites, and they are very grainy. So the photographs that we collected through the book, they were collected through the library of congress, but views shaft,is like of the air and one of the things about the triangle factory it was a modern factory. It was not a sweatshop, it was a factory building. It was 10 floors high, it had ceilings and 240 sewing machines on tables that were bolted together. Stairs that were not maintained. The building went up in 1900 and in 1911 it had not been maintained. The fire equipment, the pails had not been maintained. There was no water pressure. And get to see that, we have one more question. Rob two things that i want to talk about, maybe you are wondering about the appropriateness. We are finding more and more recently that there is always a big idea of protecting children. We have probably been a little too overprotective. The new York Jewish Museum has programs for thirdgraders. They do not go through all levels of the museum but they do , learn about the holocaust. It is sometimes not as graphic or as in detail. It is the same as the fire. There are kindergartners and firstgraders, they start studying the triangle fire, and they start studying abstract issues. Kids are very into fairness. Like if your teacher passes out pizza, every slice better be the same. So you can really lead into that conversation through the idea of fairness. The other thing is, work is left out of every discussion in the school. In new york state apples are , part of the curriculum for firstgraders. They talk about everything about apples, where they grow. But if you one of my colleagues asked the teacher what about who picked the , apples . And they had no reason, why would we talk about who picked the apples . So even the curriculum leaves out work, you can use that. For the older kids, one entryway is clothing. Middle school teenagers are into clothing, so you can bring the conversation in through clothing. Thanks for the presentation. I have a question that relates more to the intersectionality issue. How do you teach this particular issue and address race, especially in labor history . It is arguable that these images were so effective, particularly because they were not predominately women of color. Know, emerging labor codes that came about reflected this message, right . That certain workers do not belong they are not statutorily laborers. They do not deserve labor protection. I mean not only that, but they , reinstitutionalize the privatepublic distinction so that Domestic Work is not recognized. Dr. Trasciatti great question. And so it is a thorny issue yet, there are ways around it. I think one of the flaws of the way we tell the story that is why i brought up framing is if you start with 1909 there was the uprising then the , triangle fire. Some of the girls who died were not here in 1909. If you were here less than a year then you are not on the , picket line in 1909. It leaves people out which is , why we need to open the frame. One of the ways to get at intersectionality is to tell the story of migration. There were jewish women who came and italians who came. This is who was migrating primarily at the time. And this we have been successful at. Rose is one of the organizers. We did an event at the museum of chinese and america. In america. I think Governor Cuomo financed the budget to the tune of 1. 5 million. When that came out, the Tenement Museum contacted me and said can we do an event here . And we did it with asian women who were organizers of the 1982 chinatown garment strike. So what is triangle mean to you . There are opportunities there to collaborate with latino women as well. I have relatives who were a primarily with latinos because they came to the u. S. After the second world war. The Garment Industry was centered on latinos, and then it was about the chinese. If we reframe the story to be about migration, we can open up the possibilities for who migrated later to be part of the needle trades or whatever industry. When we did an event at moving your help system the Health System my partner in seeking , attention and funding for the up in albany trying to meet with sheldon silver. We met the executive director who is africanamerican. , he said come, we are all about safety, we are in your neighborhood we had ambulance , drivers to the fire. I thought, how do we frame this discussion for in audience of an audience of primarily latinos and africanamericans, and caribbean americans . One of the things we talked about was, it is kind of a highclass problem to be working at triangle in 1911. These were jobs that people of color could not get. That opened up a discussion that they were not allowed in the iog. There was a black man who worked at triangle, he was an engineer working in the basement. He is not usually brought into the discussion. He then, we think was enlisted to help with the elevators. So we brought up his story. We also brought up stories that many of you in this room were not even been allowed in the union if triangle had been unionized at all. There are ways to do that, but that is why i am trying to hammer at us for 19091911. It leaves a lot of people out. Adrienne sosin they actually try to use black women as strike breakers in 1909. I was looking in some of the books, i saw it recently. There was a woman who was one of the founders of the naacp who urged the black women not to allow themselves to be used as strike breakers. Dr. Trasciatti even then, even that to me is a little disturbing because it becomes , they almost broke our strike. But we talk sense that is not a personal but it began a a problemis again with 19091911. If your role in 1909 was possibly a strikebreaker, that marginalizes you in the story. So i think again for me, the , answer is moving beyond 19091911. It opens it up to intersection alley. Rose i just had a thought, a little riff off of what you are saying. When i went to see occupy wall street take to task the Labor Movement about not being creative enough they said you , have to throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks. I think the fact that you have david brooks, who is a conservative referencing the triangle fire as he is making his arguments means there is some intersectionality where we can reach a Broad Spectrum of people with the story and use it to tell other tales of oppression. I mean, i think there is something there that reaches the people. This activist uses the triangle when she talks about walmart. She is an activist from bangladesh. She talks about triangle and considers it a sisterhood. But thank you that was a great , question. Dr. Trasciatti there is a woman who has written she is a political scientist an essay on the funeral and whiteness and the outpouring of grief with the both the sign of the emerging understanding of jews and italians as white and helps to solidify that. If that is something you are interested in, it is an interesting approach to it. You might want to read it. Adrienne sosin it is sad and shameful that the Union Movement was so prejudiced and segregated. It was segregated also by ethnicity. One thing i think may be a hook two things. One thing i think may be a hook for students child labor is legal in this country until the 1930s. They pass laws in the state and struck them down or not, one of the ways they got children out of factories was compulsory schooling laws. You are in school because it was one action to keep children out of factories. It was also something families resisted because they needed that labor power. The other thing i think is significant, i dont want to say comparative oppression, it is the whole notion of who is white and two is not who is , legitimate. The language used to describe jews and italians and this time is that they are not american. It is not just they are immigrants, but they are not like us if us means white or anglo born or protestant. So i think we can, in this story of who successfully immigrated or not if we dont talk about discrimination and prejudice to these women, you can gloss over how they were viewed too. [indiscernible] adrienne sosin it is not just class, it was ethnicity as well. Nonenglish speakers. When you say ethnicity, they referred to the jewish race. [indiscernible] they used a language in the 1920s that is very resident today. Rose by the way let us know if , you see triangle related activities in kentucky or near various states. We hear about a lot of them, but we miss them. Adrienne sosin there is a link on the resources page to my email. So if you look at the top of the resources page you can send me , email, easily, or or you can go to info with the remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. Erthetrianglefire. Orh. G. Sunday, we look at two u. S. President s. John f. Kennedys life and photos from this collection of images that chronicles the life of the 35th president. The wonderful thing about the kennedys as they never pushed photographers or writers away. They did not care how they were photographed, they never cared how the tie was fixed or if the coat was on. They knew that if they made themselves accessible to the media, they would be published ad of course, it was groundswell. There was no question about it, that the Media Coverage of jfk was the first time we had ever seen anything like it. That will be followed at 8 00, looking at Ronald Reagans relationship with pope john paul. I it is interesting. Cable to ii had sent a reagan when reagan was shot, saying i am praying to you. And reagan sent one to the vatican, i am praying for you. They developed one of the worlds most mutually exclusive prayer societies. As for moscow, if they are worried this point about a kinship between the pope and the president , now they have to to really worry about it. American history tv, all weekend, every weekend on his band three. Cspan3. Up next on American History tv, university of maryland history Professor Robert munsey talks about womens Voting Rights in the following years, especially africanamericans in the