Triangle Shirtwaist Fire: The Race to the Bottom

[Omaha Steve]

Run time: 09:19 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXS6ChOO868   Posted on YouTube: March 22, 2011 By YouTube Member: Steelworkers Views on YouTube: 176   Posted on DU: March 24, 2011 By DU Member: Omaha Steve Views on DU: 1550

 
Tomorrow afternoon (March 24) is the 100th anniversary of the fire. Memorials are scheduled nationwide.

[HockeyMom]

1. My Grandma was 11 years old

She watched these young girls, only a few years older than she, jump out windows to their deaths on the pavement. Not many years before, her Dad fell off the scaffold of the Flatirons Bldg. as the foreman of the steelworkers. Great-grandfather lived, but was a cripple and unable to work for the rest of his life. Great-grandma worked as a cleaning lady to support the family.

Horrible and tragic events for a young girl. If any good came of these two disasters, was the public outrage and the subsequent establishment of UNIONS.

Very sad in light of this country's new efforts to bust Unions. As they say, though, those who cannot learn from the past, will be doomed to repeat it.

[The Wielding Truth]

2. Republicans are leading the race to the bottom. They are ruining our future.

[swilton]

4. Republicans are being helped

by corporate friendly Democrats

[The Wielding Truth]

8. I wouldn't say helping. I would say weak at stopping them. We try to play by the real rules.

[GoneOffShore]

3. Shared on my Facebook page & tweeted

Spread this video.

[FailureToCommunicate]

5. Still amazing, the impact. Still more amazing: the attempt to scrub unions

from the landscape of America.

[Shallah Kali]

6. Account from an eyewitness to the Triangle Fire

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/primary/testimonials/ootss_WilliamShepherd.html

I was walking through Washington Square when a puff of smoke issuing from the factory building caught my eye. I reached the building before the alarm was turned in. I saw every feature of the tragedy visible from outside the building. I learned a new sound--a more horrible sound than description can picture. It was the thud of a speeding, living body on a stone sidewalk.

snip

I was walking through Washington Square when a puff of smoke issuing from the factory building caught my eye. I reached the building before the alarm was turned in. I saw every feature of the tragedy visible from outside the building. I learned a new sound--a more horrible sound than description can picture. It was the thud of a speeding, living body on a stone sidewalk.

Thud-dead, thud-dead, thud-dead, thud-dead. Sixty-two thud-deads. I call them that, because the sound and the thought of death came to me each time, at the same instant. There was plenty of chance to watch them as they came down. The height was eighty feet.

Thud-dead, thud-dead-together they went into eternity. I saw his face before they covered it. You could see in it that he was a real man. He had done his best.

[Maine-ah]

12. I think I threw up a little.

I have watched so much shit today, I could just throw my damn computer at the wall I'm so pissed.

Everyone should watch this.

[FailureToCommunicate]

7. Poem referencing Triangle Fire by US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky

(the same workers had protested for safer working conditions a year earlier, and been ignored)

link:

http://rememberthetrianglefire.org/open-archive/shirt-by-former-poet-laureate-robert-pinsky/


The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes--

The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers...
---(con't)

[2banon]

9. K & R'd Solidarity

:thumbsup:

[DemReadingDU]

10. morning kick

[AnneD]

11. Two men were standing at the edge of platform edge....

'we were deciding whether it would be better to be burned alive or jump to what might be our death' paraphrasing a worker from the BP Deep Horizon rig after it exploded and caught fire.


The more things 'change' the more they stay the same. We will continue to re-learn these lesson if greedy corporate self interests have their way.

[Hutzpa]

14. Excellent

but the problem is ourselves, we are our own worst enemy. We sell each other for a buck or two
just so we can drive that nice looking car we saw at the dealership. Corporation knows this and
know exactly how to divide us to maintain that superiority over us, heartbreaking.

[chillspike]

13. absolutely outstanding vid

totally riveted the entire 9+ minutes. it's sick who and what these corporations really are. they should be closed down. if people can't have access to decent resources through decent employment, then corporations shouldn't have access to resources either. shut them down!

[Hutzpa]

15. I watched the whole program from Democracy Now this morning

it was exhilarating and it was heartbreaking to see and hear from these wonderful people, listening to them
speak about the garment industry and how they fought for unions and such, you begin to
fully understand that statement; "THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM"

[Lifelong Protester]

16. guaranteed to make you cry

I cannot bear to watch those kids in Bangladesh being beaten. I am outraged.

Steve, do you know anything about the organization (global labor rights?) I'd like to get further involved. I have never shopped at WalMart, I will not shop at GAP again.

[nolabear]

17. Please add this to your FB status and other network arenas. It's too important to let go.

[Citizen Worker]

18. It did not end with Triangle. In the mid-90s in North Carolina at a chicken processing plant 29, as

I recall, Black women were killed by fire. The exit doors were padlocked from the outside to prevent theft, there was no way out. I spoke with the state investigator and he was in tears as he related to me his findings. I asked if there would be criminal prosecutions of management personnel. He didn't know the answer but said that's what he had recommended in his report. North Carolina is a right to work state, the women did not belong to a Union. Do you see the connection?

[Duer 157099]

19. kick n/t