New York Labor History

Providence High School Commemorates Triangle Fire

2011-04-03T07:49:00.000-07:00

hope-high-threads-triangle
from threads magazine thistle cottage studio blog

Shirtwaists

2011-04-03T07:46:00.000-07:00

shirtwaists
an excerpt from the ny times of 3/22

One hundred years after the Triangle Waist Company fire, the fashion that employed small armies of seamstresses at the turn of the last century endures.
The American shirtwaist was a trend that, quite literally, had legs. This brash but sensible pairing of tailored shirt and skirt offered a glimpse of the ankles, which was as rare in its day as it was freeing.
Designed for utility, the style was embraced at the turn of the 20th century by legions of young women who preferred its hiked hemline and unfettered curves to the confining, street-sweeping dresses that had hobbled their mothers and aunts.

Voices: Video Project On Triangle Shirtwaist Fire From Juan Morel Campos School

2011-04-02T07:34:00.000-07:00

Slide Show Of Images From Triangle Shirtwaist Project At Juan Morel Campos Secondary School

2011-04-02T07:29:00.001-07:00

Excellent Student Newsletter On Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

2011-04-02T07:25:00.000-07:00

morel-triangle-b
from Juan Morel Campos Secondary School, 215 Heyward St., Brooklyn, NY 11206
Principal: HOWARD FINEMAN
Asst. Principal: John Agnello

Archival Articles About The Triangle Fire From The Forward

2011-03-31T10:59:00.000-07:00

forward-triangle-archives
compiled from the Forward

Relatives Of Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Victims Keep Lessons From Tragedy Alive

2011-03-26T11:14:00.001-07:00

from ny 1, by roger clark

People who lost family members in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire joined a Friday procession to Greenwich Village to remember relatives lost a century ago, and to stress that New York City cannot forget the lessons learned from the tragedy. NY1's Roger Clark filed the following report.
Rosie Weiner, one of 146 victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, was only 19 when she died.
"She jumped from the ninth floor window. According to reports, she was holding her friend Tessie Wisner's hand," said Suzanne Pred-Bass, Weiner's great-niece.
Pred-Bass was one of hundreds marching in a Friday procession from Union Square to the scene of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Another of her great-aunts, Rosie's 17-year-old sister Katie, somehow survived that day 100 years ago.
"She grabbed the cable, really so courageously, of the last elevator to leave the ninth floor and saved herself. It was really remarkable," said Pred-Bass.
Annie Springsock, then 17 years old, also survived. Her granddaughter, Eileen Nevitt, came from California to pay tribute to her and the historical impact of the fire.
"These safeguards in work places, to make sure that our workplaces are safe, were hard-fought-for protections," said Nevitt. "And I think it is very important for all Americans to realize that we should very much make sure that our safeguards continue."
Denise DiCapua and Mary Alice Del Castillo were there to remember 17-year-old Josie Del Castillo, DiCapua's great-aunt who was lost in the fire.
"As a young child I has only knew that there was a relative that died in this fire, but in the past year or so we have gotten to learn more about her life and the events surrounding the fire," said DiCapua.
"I just felt that on the 100th anniversary, some members of the family should be here to remember Josie, and what happened," said Del Castillo, the wife of the victim's great-nephew.
The message from everyone at the procession was to not forget those lessons learned from a tragic day that changed so much for so many.

The Ballad Of Joe Zito

2011-03-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

Ballad for Joe Zito Music and Lyrics by Annie Lanzillotto © 2011
Lemme tell you ‘bout Joe Zito
The kinda man you wanna know.
Selfless Acts of Courage -- his destiny
Elevator Man -- Triangle Factory!
Born Giuseppe Alessandro Zito, in 1883, fifteen minutes past ten.
Sweet green eyes, strong nose, he’d grow to be the noblest of men.
At 18 he left Sere, Provincia di Salerno, Italy,
Came to America. Got a job at the Triangle Factory.
It was Payday in March, fifteen minutes to quittin time,
when Joe “Fire!” Glass smashing way up high.
Up Up Up to save lives, everyone was screaming, distraught,
Joe never gave his own safety a single thought.
Girls dove into the elevator clutching scissors,
Another guy woulda minded his own bizness.
Lemme tell you bout Joe Zito A better man you’ll never know.
Selfless Acts of Courage -- his destiny Elevator Man--Triangle Factory!
Up Up Up Joe Joe Joe Into fire higher higher he climbed
He went back up about eighteen times.
Why didn’t he go up a 19th you say?
Mezzo Morte at the bottom of the shaft, Joe lay.
Elevator dropped, smashed at basement level.
The cables gave in to fire, an overloading hell hole
Jumping on Joe’s car, girls after girls.
Clothing on fire, hair still in curls.
They dragged Joe out into the street half dead,
Rushed him to Saint Vincent’s, stab wounds on his arms and forehead.
Joe Zito, one of the strong,
We remember his name with a song.
Selfless Acts of Courage was his destiny
He couldn’t a known this when he left Italy.
Povero Giuseppe never recovered since he saw,
“Burning Rockets” from the 8th floor, fall.
He couldn’t forget girls trapped in flames,
Judge Craine said The Shirtwaist Kings weren’t to blame.
Joe left New York City in a state of deprivation,
Shell shocked from Triangle workers’ asphyxiation and decapitations.
Couldn’t get a job, Joe couldn’t keep his wife,
Our noble Joe was scarred for life.
He never recovered from all he saw,
Seven years later he joined the Army, for The Great War.
No rich man could buy Joe’s word
His green sad eyes had saw and heard.
The papers said he died without a penny,
No bribe could change Joe’s testimony.
Povero Giuseppe Alessandro was never the same,
He saved ahun-fifty girls out of the slain.
Joe kept free to tell the truth.
The Shirtwaist Kings took insurance loot.
And like many of our brave Joe was buried in an unmarked grave.
Lemme tell you ‘bout Joe Zito
Italian American Hero!
Selfless Acts of Courage -- his destiny
Elevator Man -- Triangle Factory!
Elevator Man we sing your name
Thanks Joe
Thanks Joe
Thanks Joe
Thanks Joe

Do You Hear The People Sing

2011-03-25T23:07:00.001-07:00

From the Centennial Celebration of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Visible in the segment are the outstanding students from Maribeth Whitehouse's class from Bronx Intermediate School 190, activist Teddy Auerbach and Professor Richard Greenwald from Drew University

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?

Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free!

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you give all you can give
So that our banner may advance
Some will fall and some will live
Will you stand up and take your chance?
The blood of the martyrs
Will water the meadows of France!

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Things We Had When New York Was A Union Town

2011-03-11T16:13:00.000-08:00

from, Dr Mark Naison Fordham University
With collective bargaining rights having just been eliminated in Wisconsin by legislative fiat, and with more states poised to do the same; with union teachers everywhere being made scapegoats for the nations educational problems; and with the most powerful business interests in the nation funding movements to privatize government services and decertify public employee unions, I thought be useful to look back at a time in New York City's history when unions had far more power than they have today.
When New York City emerged from World War II, the most dynamic sectors of its economy- garment, electronics, transportation, construction, and food processing- were all heavily unionized. These union gains in the private sector were soon followed by the acquisition of collective bargaining rights by teachers, employees of state and city government and workers in health care.
Given what is being said about unions by elected officials and the media, one might expect that time in New York history- the 1940's 1950's and 1950's- to be one of educational and cultural stagnation. One would expect that New York City today is a much more dynamic and democratic city than it was during a time when more than half the city's work force was unionized.
But when do some historical research and ask yourself the question, "Does New York City have better schools, public services and cultural and recreational opportunities for its poor and working class citizens than it did 50 years ago" the answer you come up with is a resounding NO.
I have spent the last nine years doing oral histories with Bronx residents through a project I lead called the Bronx African American History Project, and to a person, the people I interviewed feel that young people growing up in the Bronx had better opportunities in the 50's and the 60's than young people growing up there today. As Josh Freeman points out in his wonderful book Working Class New York, many of the programs that my interviewees talked about that made their lives better were fought for by the city's labor movement.
Here is a list of just a few of the programs which New York City unions fought for that are no longer with us today. I will leave it to you to decided whether we are better off without them,.
1. Supervised recreation programs in every public elementary school in the city from 3-5 PM and 7-9 PM, which included sports, arts and crafts and music. These programs were free and open any young person who walked through the door.
2. First rate music programs in every public junior high school in the city featuring free instruction for students in bands, orchestras and music classes. Students in those classes could take home musical instruments to practice. Among the beneficiaries of these school music programs were some of the greats of Latin music in NYC, including Willie Colon, Eddie and Charlie Palmieri. Ray Barretto and Bobby Sanabria.
3. Recreation supervisors, as well as cleaners, in every public park in the city, including neighborhood vest pocket parks, who organized games and leagues and prevented fights. One of the greatest of these "parkies" Hilton White, organized a community basketball program that send scores of Bronx youth to college on basketball scholarships including 3 who played on the 1966 Texas Western team which won the NCAA championship.
4. A public housing program that constructed tens thousands of units of low and moderate income housing throughout the city and staffed these with housing police, ground crews and recreation staffs to make sure the projects were safe, clean and well policed
5. Free tuition at the city university, at the community college, college and graduate levels, for all students who met the admissions standards
6. Parks department policies which made sure that parks in the outer boroughs were kept as clean and environmentally sound as Central Park or parks in wealthy neighborhoods
7 Free admission at all the city's major zoos and museums
These policies, all of which were eliminated during the fiscal crisis of the 1970's, when a banker dominated Emergency Financial Control Board was put in charge of city finances meant that children in poor and working class communities had access to recreational cultural and educational opportunities which are today only available to the children of the rich . These programs were not there because of the foresight and compassion of the city's business leadership. They were there because unions fought for them and demanded that elected officials they supported fund them
This is not to say that unions are right in every dispute, or that they are immune from arrogance, greed and crruption. But it should give pause to those who think that our lives would be better in a union free environment
Let me leave you with some numbers. In the early 1950's when 35% of the American work force was unionized, the United States had the smallest wealth gap (between the top and bottom 20 percent of its population) of any advanced nation in the world. Now, when 11.9% of our workforce is unionized, we have the largest.
Is this progress?
Let's think long and hard before we blame unions for the city's and the nation's economic problems
Mark Naison

Meredith Tax: Part Of The Passage From Rivington Street Read At Triangle Commemoration At FIT

2011-03-10T09:51:00.000-08:00

Not the entirety of this was read, but a part. My audio was not clear enough to post
tax-rivington

Katharine Weber: Reading From Triangle At Commemoration At F.I.T.

2011-03-10T09:40:00.000-08:00

part 1
Listen!
part 2
Listen!
part 3
Listen!
some of the pages she read from Triangle
triangle-weber

Kevin Baker Reading From Dreamland At Triangle Fire Commemoration At F.I.T.

2011-03-10T02:27:00.000-08:00

part 1
Listen!
part 2
Listen!
part 3
Listen!
from March 9
Stories and Songs of the Triangle Fire
5:30 pm, Katie Murphy Amphitheater, D Building
Meredith Tax, author, Rivington Street
Kevin Baker, author, Dreamland
Katharine Weber, author, Triangle
Songs and readings by FIT students
a few of the pages Kevin read
dreamland-pages

about the Fighting Flames exhibit that Kevin was referring to
from the jcs-group
The success of Luna Park spawned second-rate imitators. Only William H. Reynolds, a New York politician, had the clout and backing to truly compete. Reynolds bought 60 acres of land from the City of New York between Surf Avenue and the ocean. His dream was to build the most bewildering, excessive, visionary park in the world. It would hold 250,000 people. Its one million electric lights would pale Luna Park in comparison. Visitors would feel as if they had been transported to another world, so Reynolds called his park Dreamland which opened in the spring of 1904. The centerpiece of Dreamland was the 375- foot Beacon Tower. At night, its powerful searchlight shone almost 50 miles over the ocean, disorienting ships on their way into New York Harbor. The park featured an imitation Doge’s Palace, an electricity building (housing the generators that kept Dreamland’s power running) and the Fighting Flames exhibit, the six-story tenement replication that was set on fire every day.

Triangle Fire Memorial: CUNY TV

2011-03-09T12:39:00.000-08:00

Former State Senator Serphin Maltese speaks about his family's connection to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

Bread And Roses: Labor History

2011-03-09T10:33:00.001-08:00

A slide show I youtubed last year and forgot to post here. May be of interest with the triangle anniversary upcoming.
from Tom Juravich
from http://www.tomjuravich.com/tangled/songs/breadandroses.php

The slogan "Bread and Roses" originated in a poem of that name by James Oppenheim, published in American Magazine in December 1911, which attributed it to "the women in the West."
It is commonly associated with the textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts during January-March 1912, now often known as the "Bread and Roses strike." The strike, which united dozens of immigrant communities under the leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World, was led to a large extent by women.
The strikers are credited with inventing the moving picket line, so that they would not be arrested for loitering.
It was settled on terms generally favorable to the workers. They won pay increases, time-and-a-quarter pay for overtime, and a promise of no discrimination against strikers.
It has long been thought that Oppenheim was inspired by a strike sign carried by women with the slogan, "We want bread, but we want roses, too!"
We now know that he did not write it during the strike. But it was embraced by the strikers and the notion of "Bread and Roses" has become a cry for justice and dignity for women workers around the world.
Observer Ray Stannard Baker wrote in The American Magazine:
[Lawrence] is the first strike I ever saw which sang. I shall not soon forget the curious lift, the strange sudden fire of the mingled nationalities at the strike meetings when they broke into the universal language of song. And not only at the meetings did they sing, but in the soup houses and in the streets.
Bread and Roses has since become a women's movement standard with either of two melodies variously attributed to Martha L. Coleman, Caroline Kohsleet, and Carolin Kohlsaat. Utah Phillips also has a melody, as does Mimi Fariña, whose is the most well-known.
Tom Juravich adds:
For me, though, the poetry of Bread and Roses suggests a different kind of melody -- one that lends itself to a more lyrical interpretation than the march cadence of the Fariña tune. So several years ago I wrote a new melody. I also took the opportunity to revise some of the lyrics that had exhibited the sexism and racism of the early 20th century."
Bread And Roses
As we come marching, marching in beauty of the day
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts grey
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people here are singing bread and roses, bread and roses.

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go rising through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Art, love, and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for but we fight for roses too.

As we come marching, marching, we
battle once again.
We're fighting for our children, our
sisters and for men.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth
until life closes,
Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us
bread, but give us roses.

As we come marching, marching, we're
standing proud and tall,
The rising of the women means the
rising of us all.
No more the drudge and idler, ten that
toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories, bread and
roses, bread and roses.

Personnel: Teresa Healy, vocals; Tom Juravich, vocals, acoustic guitar, producer; James Stephens, fiddle, electric guitar, producer, recording, mixing; David Cain, mastering; Dave Bignell, mixing.

Patrick J. Walsh: Witness To Triangle Fire

2011-03-09T09:01:00.000-08:00

pjwalsh
His 1946 obituary in addition to a Word War II era photo

‘Help Us! Help Us! Help Us Now!’ – Forward.com

2011-03-06T19:59:00.000-08:00

‘Help Us! Help Us! Help Us Now!’ – Forward.com

From The Fire - Intro from Jaime Lebrija on Vimeo.

Composer Elizabeth Swados has dramatized tragedy before, but never the fear that rises from the gut when flames are sweeping nearby and escape is far away.
In creating the music for the most terrifying moments in an original oratorio for the centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, Swados turned to raw instinct.
“I didn’t think,” she said. “I tried to hear in the inside of my head something very frightening and something all-encompassing and something overpowering and something that was beyond human understanding.”
Her score adds resonance to a scene on the garment factory floor as frightened seamstresses chant, in panic: “Help us! Help us! Help us now!”

Great-Granddaughter of Triangle Factory Employee Acts in a Tribute to Her Relative Whose Colleagues Died in the Fire – Forward.com

2011-03-06T19:54:00.000-08:00

Great-Granddaughter of Triangle Factory Employee Acts in a Tribute to Her Relative Whose Colleagues Died in the Fire – Forward.com

Frances Perkins

2011-02-11T13:38:00.000-08:00

A slide show I put together last year on Frances Perkins after I heard Kirstin Downey speak at the tenement museum.
an excerpt from the afl site

Frances Perkins (1880 - 1965)
Frances Perkins was secretary of labor for the 12 years of Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency and the first woman to hold a Cabinet post. She brought to her office a deep commitment to improving the lives of workers and creating a legitimate role for labor unions in American society, succeeding admirably on both counts. Always a consummate politician, Perkins profoundly influenced the political agenda of her day, moving it closer to the values she embraced: economic justice and security for all Americans.
Born in Boston in 1880, Perkins grew up in a comfortable middle-class Republican family descended from a long line of Maine farmers and craftsmen. When Perkins was two, the family moved to Worcester, Mass., where her father opened a profitable stationery business. Her parents were devoted Congregationalists and instilled in Perkins an earnest desire to "live for God and do something." At Mount Holyoke College, she began to understand just what that meant. Perkins majored in the natural sciences, but she studied economic history, read How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis' expose of the New York slums, and attended lectures by labor and social reformers such as Florence Kelley, general secretary of the National Consumer's League.

From 2010: NY State Labor Commissioner Recognizes Triangle Anniversary

2011-02-09T06:31:00.000-08:00

an excerpt from her address
Albany, NY (March 23, 2010) - State Labor Commissioner Colleen Gardner today joined state legislative and union leaders to commemorate the 99th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, which led to the tragic death of 146 garment workers. At a ceremony at the Empire State Plaza, Commissioner Gardner acknowledged the importance of the fire, which significantly changed worker protection laws.
On March 25, 1911, fire swept through the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, trapping workers on the top three floors of a 10-story building, where exits were locked and fire escapes were defective. The tremendous public outcry that followed the tragedy led New York State to enact many of the first significant worker protection laws in the nation.
Commissioner Gardner said, "We are here to see that this tragedy never happens again. By enforcing the State's Labor Laws, the Department of Labor ensures safe working conditions for all New Yorkers. New York enacted many of the first significant worker protection laws in the nation. We continue to lead in protecting the health and safety of employees in the workplace. We honor the women who died at the Triangle Fire and stay true to our fight for workers' rights and workplace safety."

Joseph Zito: Hero Of The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

2011-02-09T06:13:00.001-08:00

zito1
family photos with permission of the Zito family
all rights reserved

The Brandos: The Triangle Fire

2011-02-08T09:12:00.000-08:00

recorded live at the Rockpalast/Crossroads Festival at the Harmonie in Bonn, Germany on October 20, 2007
(taken from the DVD Town To Town, Sun To Sun)
In Nineteen Hundred-Nine, from Donegal's shore
I sailed to old New York town
In the harbor Lady Liberty stands
I don't believe I'll again see Dear Ould Ireland
But the promise in these city streets is so grand
And it's there I'd wed my dear, sweet lass
A bricklayer's spade, my trade to be
And she slaved at the Triangle Shirt Factory
My God! - the dreadful conditions there
They toiled through dim light and stifling air
And gruelling hours the seamstress gave
To the industrial captains for a trifling wage

Though two years passed, we saw no change
And I grieved for my love's dark misery
Then word ran through the New York streets
There's a fire at the Triangle Shirt Factory
Twas only moments and the factory surrendered to flame
And the fire escapes soon gave way
In the windows huddled girls appeared
Flames licked at their backs, their faces gripped with fear
My God! - don't jump! came the firemen's roar
Whose ladders failed to reach the top floors
A last, shared glance and final embrace
They leaped to their tragic and senseless fate

Now I scream at the sky
There's got to be a reason why
Bewildered and grieved, I'm tangled and mired
My love is gone - oh the Triangle Fire
The world is so cold, desperate and dire
I've lost everything in the Triangle Fire

There was no reason, there was no rhyme, and now law
To save us from this crime at all
The owner's trial did reveal
That the girls were locked in - the doors had all been sealed
My God! - they've gone free! came our hopeless cry
The bossed won with their lawyers and lies
The Power and Greed again prevailed
And we were left to our sorrow, to our despair

I fear the future, I can envision the time
When our cityscape will touch the sky
Will men of Faith, of Wealth and Power
Spare their people a fate like the Triangle Fire?
My God! - forgive me! these men will cry
In Their final hour as they lay dying
And their victim's ghosts close in around
God alone may forgive their indifference now

2011 NYC Sweatshops

2011-02-06T07:21:00.000-08:00

from the nydailynews: The Killing of Juan Baten, Death in a New York Food Sweatshop
and an extended piece from counterpunch By DANIEL GROSS

When many people think of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, it's the fashionable boutiques, music scene, and hip bars that come to mind. But for thousands of recent immigrants, the eastern section of Williamsburg is where you go to find work in food processing and distribution factories that service many of New York City's markets and restaurants. If you've ever eaten a meal in New York, you can be assured that you've consumed food that has been produced and distributed through one of these food companies and those in a few adjacent neighborhoods.
Hundreds of small and mid-sized food warehouses line an industrial corridor starting in East Williamsburg and Bushwick, and extending into the Ridgewood and Maspeth neighborhoods of Queens. Rice, seafood, hummus, soda, onions, tortillas, you name it; massive quantities of those products and everything in between is produced or packed in these factories and then delivered in bulk to restaurants and grocery stores before they end up on our plates. Though not widely-known, this in-between section of the food supply chain plays an absolutely critical role in getting us the food we all need to survive and thrive.
Despite the indispensable role they play, the workers at these food businesses, largely recent immigrants from Latin America and China, constitute an invisible workforce. Out of sight from the consuming public, employers in this industrial corridor often maintain what can be fairly characterized as sweatshop conditions. Wage theft, reckless disregard for the safety of workers, grueling shifts through the night, and abusive management are all common hardships facing workers in the sector. The work is heavy and exhausting, yet workers typically earn poverty wages and almost no one receives any health or retirement benefits.
It was in this industrial zone of food sweatshops that Juan Baten, the 22-year old father of a seven-month old daughter and a devoted husband, tragically lost his life. Mr. Baten, who lived in Brooklyn and was originally from Guatemala, worked at a tortilla factory called Tortilleria Chinantla in East Williamsburg. Last week, Mr. Baten was crushed and killed in a dough mixing machine. Mr. Baten's workplace did not have a union and had never been inspected by OSHA, the federal workplace safety authority.
While it's too early to draw definitive conclusions, troubling facts have emerged indicating that the Chinantla tortilla factory is not unlike many of the other food processing facilities in the Brooklyn-Queens industrial corridor. According to a report in El Diario, Mr. Baten worked incredibly long, twelve hour shifts, from six at night until six the next morning, six days a week. Regardless of what is uncovered in pending investigations, the length of those shifts alone, working through the night on dangerous equipment and with only one day off per week, should be enough to raise alarms. (The factory is currently closed by an order from the New York State Workers Compensation Board because of owner Erasmo Ponce's criminal failure to pay for workers compensation coverage, the very coverage mandated to provide some financial protection to injured workers or to families of workers, like Juan Baten's, in the event of workplace fatality.)
Many questions about Chinantla and Juan Baten's death remain unanswered. What safety procedures and training did management have in place, if any? Was the factory sufficiently staffed so workers could meet demand at a safe speed? Was the equipment properly maintained?
Still, based on what is already known, I have no doubt that Juan Baten's death could have been prevented. He should be with us today, working towards his dream of saving enough money to return to Guatemala with his wife and daughter. Instead, his family is left navigating a profoundly uncertain future with a deep wound in their hearts.
Sadly, it often takes a tragedy to open our eyes to issues normally kept safely out of sight and out of mind. Again, the conditions which likely contributed to Mr. Baten being killed are anything but uncommon. Indeed, they are typical of the food factories in the Brooklyn-Queens industrial corridor whose business models center on exploiting recent immigrant workers. The tragedy of Mr. Baten's death will only be compounded if we treat it as an isolated case rather than a wake-up call to the systemic hardships facing workers along the food chain, mostly workers of color and immigrants.
The workers who work so hard to bring us the food we depend on to survive, often in unsafe conditions and through the night, need your support. Through workplace organizing, grassroots protests, and legal actions, a campaign called Focus on the Food Chain is helping a growing number of immigrant food workers in the Brooklyn-Queens corridor win improved working conditions and increased employer compliance with the law. But these fights always trigger fierce retaliation from employers and require robust worker and community support to win. To lend a hand through solidarity actions, financial support, or to share any other ideas you might have, please connect with the Focus campaign at http://tinyurl.com/focusonthefoodchain or focus@brandworkers.org
Together we can honor the life of Juan Baten, avoid more senseless loss of life, and ensure that this workforce never becomes invisible again.
Daniel Gross is an attorney and executive director of Brandworkers International, a non-profit organization protecting and advancing the rights of retail and food employees. Focus on the Food Chain is a joint campaign of Brandworkers and the NYC Industrial Workers of the World labor union.

The Life Of Working Girls In New York In 1910

2011-02-05T14:19:00.000-08:00

working-girls-budgets
from McClures' Magazine. This was a resource for Joan Dash's book

We Shall Not Be Moved

2011-02-05T14:14:00.000-08:00

shall-not-be-moved
a chapter from an excellent young adult book on the shirtwaist workers by Joan Dash, entitled, "We Shall Not Be Moved." I added the graphic on the last page.

Meyer London: A Socialist Elected To Congress 1914

2011-02-02T05:12:00.000-08:00

London makes it clear that he is not about to start a revolution but to begin formulating and introducing social legislation.

Images Of Meyer London

2011-02-02T00:32:00.001-08:00

meyer-london

Herbert Hill: NAACP Labor Lawyer

2011-02-01T07:43:00.001-08:00

herbert-hill

Herbert Hill (January 24, 1924 – August 15, 2004) was the labor director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for decades and was a frequent contributor to New Politics (magazine) as well as the author of several books. He was later Evjue-Bascom Professor of Afro-American Studies and Industrial Relations at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and eventually emeritus professor. He played a significant role in the civil rights movement in pressuring labor unions to desegregate and to seriously implement measures that would integrate African Americans in the labor market. He was also famous for his belief that American trade unions had downplayed the history of racism that tarred their reputations, before and after the Jim Crow era.
Hill earned a B.A. from New York University in 1945 and attended the New School for Social Research from 1946 until 1948 where he studied under the distinguished political theorist, Hannah Arendt. During the 1940s, Hill was a member of the Socialist Workers Party. Hill (although white) was appointed Labor Director of the NAACP in 1951 where he worked until 1977 when he departed for a professorship at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was highly critical of the practice of nepotism in many unions whereby relatives of members were hired. Hill criticized labour relations practises in numerous industries including the film industry as well as the progress of the Kennedy Administration on issues of racial equality in the workplace. Among the many unions he criticized for their record on racial equality were the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, the United Auto Workers, the United Federation of Teachers and the United Steelworkers of America as well as the AFL-CIO federation itself. Hill particularly objected to the AFL-CIO position that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act should not interfere with existing seniority systems. He was also a strong supporter of affirmative action. According to a New Politics article by Stephen Steinberg, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once described Hill as "the best barbershop lawyer in the United States".
He also organized pickets to raise awareness of racial discrimination in the construction industry. His conduct was so controversial that some unions threatened to withhold funding of the NAACP unless Hill was fired, but the NAACP leadership under Roy Wilkins supported Hill. Hill published over one hundred articles in journals, anthologies and newspapers and was also known for debates with labor historian Herbert Gutman as well as debates in New Politics (magazine) with union leader Al Shanker and Nelson Lichtenstein, an academic and biographer of Walter Reuther. Hill was especially sharp against Lichtenstein's support for the allegedly racist Reuther and the UAW's activities to betray the civil rights movement. He also served as a consultant for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the United Nations.
One of the most important campaigns led by Hill was his campaign against the discriminatory practices of the ILGWU. Despite the fact that the ILGWU had cooperated with the NAACP with respect to desegregation of union locals in the South, as late as the early 1960s, there were still no African-American nor Puerto Rican officers or executive board members in the ILGWU in its New York City base. The ILGWU was of particular importance because of its major role in the Liberal Party of New York. Hill played a key role in taking on a complaint against Local 10 of the ILGWU of an African American cutter, Ernest Holmes, who had been repeatedly prevented from joining the cutters' union, thereby receiving lower wages and denied the health and welfare benefits associated with union membership. Hill alleged that the ILGWU restricted African American and Puerto Rican workers to low paying jobs. In 1962, the New York State Commission for Human Rights found that Local 10 had violated the state antidiscrimination law. The ILGWU launched a public relations campaign alleging partisanship on the part of the Republican appointed Commission in response and did little to solve the problem. Writing in New Politics (magazine), a leading ILGWU official, Gus Tyler, attempted to show that there were African Americans and Puerto Ricans in the union. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. held Congressional hearings in the House Committee on Education and Labor on the ILGWU practices in 1962. Hill testified at the hearings, criticizing David Dubinsky for his governance of the ILGWU. Even though Hill was Jewish, allegations of anti-semitism were made with respect to the NAACP critique of the ILGWU. Changes to the ILGWU only came about slowly, especially after the retirement of Dubinsky in 1966.

The Tainted History Of The ILGWU

2011-01-31T14:04:00.001-08:00

Crisis Herbert Hill

Memories Of The Rag Trade In Save The Tiger, 2

2011-01-30T12:15:00.000-08:00

a clip from an excellent movie starring Jack Lemmon and Jack Gilford
from wikipedia

Save the Tiger is a 1973 film about moral conflict in contemporary America. It stars Jack Lemmon, Jack Gilford, Laurie Heineman, William Hansen, Thayer David, Lara Parker and Liv Lindeland. The film is adapted from the novel of the same title by Steve Shagan, (the first book by the author of The Formula and other thrillers, and generally regarded to be his most successful novel by literary standards).
Jack Lemmon plays Harry Stoner, an executive at a Los Angeles apparel company on the edge of ruin. Throughout the film, Stoner struggles with the complexity of modern life versus the simplicity of his youth. He longs for the days when pitchers wound up, jazz filled the air, and the flag was more than a pattern to put on a jock-strap. He wrestles with the guilt of surviving the war and yet losing touch with the ideals for which his friends died. To Harry Stoner, the world has given up on integrity, and threatens to destroy anyone who clings to it. He is caught between watching everything he has worked for evaporate, or becoming another grain of sand in the erosion of the values he once held so dear.

Memories Of The Rag Trade In Save The Tiger

2011-01-30T12:13:00.000-08:00

a clip from an excellent movie starring Jack Lemmon and Jack Gilford
from wikipedia

Save the Tiger is a 1973 film about moral conflict in contemporary America. It stars Jack Lemmon, Jack Gilford, Laurie Heineman, William Hansen, Thayer David, Lara Parker and Liv Lindeland. The film is adapted from the novel of the same title by Steve Shagan, (the first book by the author of The Formula and other thrillers, and generally regarded to be his most successful novel by literary standards).
Jack Lemmon plays Harry Stoner, an executive at a Los Angeles apparel company on the edge of ruin. Throughout the film, Stoner struggles with the complexity of modern life versus the simplicity of his youth. He longs for the days when pitchers wound up, jazz filled the air, and the flag was more than a pattern to put on a jock-strap. He wrestles with the guilt of surviving the war and yet losing touch with the ideals for which his friends died. To Harry Stoner, the world has given up on integrity, and threatens to destroy anyone who clings to it. He is caught between watching everything he has worked for evaporate, or becoming another grain of sand in the erosion of the values he once held so dear.

The Uprising Of The 20,000

2011-01-30T10:01:00.000-08:00

originally posted on knickerbocker village on Nov. 9th, 2009
Today is the 100th anniversary of the Uprising of the 20,000. Above is the clip from I'm Not Rappaport. from the ILGWU wiki page.

On November 22, 1909, New York City garment workers gathered in a mass meeting at Cooper Union to discuss pay cuts, unsafe working conditions and other grievances. After two hours of indecisive speeches by male union leaders, a young Jewish woman strode down the aisle and demanded the floor. Speaking in Yiddish, she passionately urged her coworkers to go out on strike. Clara Lemlich, a fledgling union organizer, thus launched the 'Uprising of the 20,000,' when, two days later, garment workers walked out of shops all over the city, effectively bringing production to a halt.
A dramatization of that incident, re-created in the Hollywood film I'm Not Rappaport, movingly introduces the documentary portrait CLARA LEMLICH, which recounts the life of the Ukrainian-born immigrant. Like thousands of other young women, Lemlich found work in a clothing factory where she worked 7 days a week, from 60 to 80 hours, for less than a living wage. In her burning desire to get an education Lemlich read widely and organized a study group to discuss women's problems. Her success as an organizer, which included numerous arrests and beatings by strikebreakers, eventually led to her election to the executive board of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union.
Lemlich's story is movingly recounted through interviews with her daughter and grandchildren, dramatic readings from her diary, family photos and archival footage, strike songs in Yiddish, an interview with labor historian Alice Kessler-Harris, a visit to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and excerpts from silent films of the era.
In addition to its biographical portrait, CLARA LEMLICH also chronicles the historic ILGWU strike, which demonstrated to the male leadership that women could be good union members and strikers. The union negotiated a settlement in February 1910 that led to improvements in wages as well as working and safety conditions. One of the companies that refused to sign the agreement was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, where, the following year, a fire resulted in the death of 146 young women, a tragedy that galvanized public support for the union movement

Max Blanck's Tainted Epilogue

2011-01-28T13:21:00.000-08:00

blanck-epilogue
contained within the document are pages from David von Drehle's book and google street views of where Max Blanck lived in 1900 and 1910. I don't think amyone would want to chalk those locals.

Look For The Union Label...The Tainted History of The Triangle Shirtwaist Company

2011-01-28T10:43:00.000-08:00

from the Survey of August 18, 1914 with a h/t to Jane Fazio-Villeda

The Triangle Waist Company, New' York, was last week temporarily enjoined from using on its goods a label declared to be imitative of that of the National Consumers' League.
This is the same Triangle Waist Company in whose factory a fire killed 140 girls in 1911—it being afterward proved that doors leading from the factory, which was on the ninth floor of a loft building, had been locked.
It is the same Triangle Waist Company that, two years and six months later, was again convicted of having its doors locked, and whose head, Max Blanck, was given the minimum fine on the ground that he was a first offender.
The National Consumers' League authorizes manufacturers to use its label only after investigation has showed that the goods on which it is to be used are made under "clean and healthful" conditions. The Triangle company has never been authorized to use its label.
The label declared to be an imitation, which is here reproduced, was first discovered by the Consumers' League last spring on some goods in a Boston department store. The buyer of the store told a representative of the league that he was buying waists with the league's label on.
It required several months to trace the label to the Triangle Waist Company. An effort was then made to induce employes of the Triangle company to sign' affidavits declaring that the suspicious label was used by that concern. The employes' fear of being blacklisted among manufacturers frustrated this.
A few weeks ago' the Consumers'
League served the Triangle Company with a summons and complaint in an action for a permanent injunction and with motion papers for an injunction pending trial, until final decision could be reached, which will not be till next winter. The league's action is based on the common law rules governing unfair trade and unfair competition. The label is not a registered trademark.
The Triangle company, in its answer, admitted the use of the label, but declared that it had not intended to imitate any other label, and denied knowledge of the existence of the National Consumers' League. It also questioned the right of the league to sue, on the ground that the league is not a manufacturer of shirt waists with a financial stake involved in the protection of its label, and therefore cannot invoke the common law rules cited above.
In granting the temporary injunction. Justice Leonard A. Giegerich, of the Supreme Court of New York county, declared that he was satisfied that the Triangle Company's label was an illegal imitation. While it is felt that this decision strongly presages the granting of the permanent injunction, it is pointed out that the question of law involved is a new one.

The nearest parallel case is said to be that of labor unions, which have been granted injunctions in behalf of their labels. These decisions have, however, rested on the ground that the members of the union had a financial stake, i. c. their wages, involved.
The league contends that it is but a logical extension of the "financial stake" theory to protect it in the use of its label. In anticipation of just this point, however, Bertha Rembaugh, attorney for the league, joined both a manufacturer of waists and a retail store in the action against the Triangle Company. These concerns, it is contended, have a financial interest in the protection of the league's label because their own sales would be affected by its fraudulent imitation. Should the case go against the league, it is feared that the opening which this would give to the imitation of the league's label would go far to destroy the effectiveness of the league's label work.

Frank H. Sommer: Unsung Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Hero

2011-01-27T22:00:00.000-08:00

sommer-triangle

Fannie Lansner: Unsung Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Hero

2011-01-27T09:33:00.000-08:00

I received this from Fannie's great nephew along with all the newspaper articles referred to.

Another forgotten hero is Fannie Lansner, whose selfless actions were headlined by on page two of The New York Evening Telegram of Monday March 27, 1911: “Heroic Young Forewoman Loses Her Life to Save Others from Death in Flames: Miss Fannie Lansner Guides Girls to Safety Until Her Own Escape Is Cut Off; THEN LEAPS FROM WINDOW TO DEATH ON PAVEMENT; Calm in Midst of Peril, She Does Her Utmost to Calm Panic-Stricken Women to the Last”.
“Speaking both Yiddish and English to the girls who were huddled about her, all crying and screaming, Miss Lansner guided some of them down the stairways and kept others waiting for the elevator,” the Evening Telegram reported. “Trip after trip of the elevator was made and Miss Lansner remained on the floor, and several girls begged her to go with them down the elevator, Miss Lansner said she would be ‘all right, and told them to go out as quickly as possible.”
In another account on March 30, 1911, The Hartford Courant wrote, “A number of the employees testified at the district attorney’s office to the heroism of Fannie Langner [sic], who rushed scores of girls from the eigth floor to the elevator and superintended crowding them into the car. Again and again she went into the smoke filled cutting rooms and brought out girls. Finally, she fell, exhausted and perished.”
According to the 1910 Census, Fannie live at 78 Forsyth Street.

Edward Croker: Fighting Fire, Boys' Life January 1914

2011-01-22T11:56:00.001-08:00

croker-boys-life

Edward Croker: Fire Chief During Triangle Shirtwaist Tragedy

2011-01-22T11:45:00.000-08:00

edward-croker
I too would have assumed that a Tammany relative would have had questionable abilities and/or motives. Boats against the current feels he was a man worthy of praise

All through elementary and secondary school, I heard nothing about this crucial event in American history. In fact, the first time I came across it was in the superlative chapter on Alfred E. Smith in Robert A. Caro’s biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker.
I would hope that modern texts remedy this problem, but I doubt it—kids nowadays are lucky they can figure out in which century the Civil War occurred. In certain ways, however, I believe that March 25, 1911 should be committed to memory as surely as July 4, 1776.
Both dates, in their ways, marked a movement away from heavy-handed control by an elite and toward greater freedom—in one case, for white American males of property; in the later one, for the economically oppressed laborer, frequently female and foreign-born.
So, if I were to design a syllabus to teach this event, what would I choose?
Well, I’d start with So Others Might Live, a fine account of New York’s Bravest by journalist-historian Terry Golway. The section on the Triangle fire is short—only a half-dozen pages—but they give an excellent précis for the conditions that led to the blaze and the Fire Department’s helpless anger in combating it.
It also discusses an Irish-American Cassandra, department head Edward Croker, a chief as blunt as he was fearless, who, for his repeated warnings about high-rise office and factory buildings, had to endure constant smearing by business interests for being the nephew of past Tammany Hall boss Richard Croker—until events proved him right.

Joseph Zito: Hero Of The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

2011-01-21T05:31:00.000-08:00

Joseph A. Zito was a hero of the "Triangle shirtwaist fire" NYC, of 1911. He stayed at his post in the elevator from the moment he heard "Fire" bringing it upward -through flames- several times until the weight of fallen bodies on the top of the elevator forced it down to the bottom of the elevator shaft. Between him and the other elevator operator, Gaspare Mortillalo-they saved 150+ lives- more than half of all who survived the fire. His story, and the story of the fire can be found in many sources including the following: Triangle: The Fire that Changed America by David Von Drehle , as well as The Triangle Fire by Leon Stein Joseph is also mentioned on Cornell's excellent site on the fire

Labor History In NY Schools: It's Not Happening

2011-01-21T04:38:00.000-08:00

triangle-i-ITALY
I don't know how the reporter of this story got this impression just by observing one class at last year's ceremony!

If you are a kid and go to a public school in New York City you will probably know this date by heart because every year there will be a field-trip with your classmates to the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street; under the rain or the sun, or fighting against the wind, you would proudly put on a red fire-fighter hat holding your teacher's hand or curiously looking at the much older NYU students crowding around campus, walking by....

I've contacted about a dozen schools to volunteer my services to teach about the Triangle without any success. I'm a former dept of education history grant coordinator and a district technology teacher trainer. I have materials and lesson plans, as the expression goes, "up the wazoo." The principal down the block from my home, a nice guy who I knew when he was a rookie teacher, didn't even know what the fire was, nor did his leadership academy trained AP. In addition there appear to be organizations created to educate about the fire but there is no apparent sign of that being done other than to pad a resume or make a fast buck.

Mary Fell: Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Poet

2011-01-18T03:06:00.000-08:00

from Janet Zandy's Triangle Fire Poetry site

.....Out of the darkness of the sweatshop these poems exist. Although spirituality and workers consciousness are not often juxtaposed, I want to recognize the interplay of secular and religious literary tropes as evidence of a secular spirituality calling for economic justice. Consider the element of ritual in these poems. This fire poetry calls to the reader as the events called to the writers to engage in a ceremony of mourning, remembrance and continued struggle. I imagine these poets--however diasporically situated--as conveying a women's minyan--individual voices coming together to engage in a ceremony of definition.19 Each poem is a kind of midrash on the event, a commentary on and dialogue with other voices across time. These poets do not attempt to compensate for the fire, or replicate the event. They take on the burden of mourning and memory, and the poems become a kind of Kaddish, a secular prayer evoked out of class and gender memory, and of shared knowledge of the dangers of unprivileged work. The poems are a symbolic action and a public utterance by the survivors, all the symbolic daughters of the Triangle workers. Their poetry is not a praisesong to death or to God, but a way to use language (replete with religious allusions) as a force against historical oblivion. Mary Fell begins her beautiful nine part fire poem with: "Havdallah"

This is the great divide
    by which God split
    the world:
    on the sabbath side
    he granted rest,
    eternal toiling
    on the workday side.

    But even one
    revolution of the world
    is an empty promise
    where bosses
    where bills to pay
    respect no heavenly bargains.
    Until each day is ours
    let us pour
    darkness in a dish
    and set it on fire,
    bless those who labor
    as we pray, praise God
    his holy name,
    strike for the rest.

about Mary Fell

Mary Fell (born September 22, 1947 Worcester, Massachusetts) is an American poet and academic.
The city of Worcester has always had its fingers in all areas of the arts and literature. It has been the home and the resting place of many great writers and poets. When most think of the poets in Worcester, names like Kunitz, Bishop, or Olson surface, but what has kept that fire alive has been the less known, less published poets of this generation. Mary Fell was born in and grew up in Worcester, and she is one of these poets.
Fell was born to Elizabeth “Betty” and Paul Fell in Worcester City Hospital on September 22, 1947. Betty had come from Fairhaven, Massachusetts to Worcester during the Great Depression in order to find work. Once there she met and married Paul, an Irish American “Worcester kid.” Paul worked as a custodian in Worcester, was on the city Retirement Board, and had become chairman by the time he passed away.
Fell grew up mostly in Main South Worcester with her older brother Paul. She attended Downing Street School for kindergarten, and then went to St. Peter’s through high school. Though their mother was a Protestant she sent her children to St. Peter’s because at the time children had to come home for lunch at Downing St., but St. Peter’s allowed them to bring their lunch. This was important because her mother needed to work and couldn’t be home for the children at lunchtime.
Fell spent most of her childhood days in Main South at the St. Peter’s School and church and in the local landmarks like the Park Theater, Coes Pond, Beaver Brook, and Crystal Park. Because they never owned a car, any family excursions were taken on the bus. She remembers downtown Worcester being magical with ice skating in Elm Park, and the Charity Circus at the Auditorium. .......After high school Fell attended Worcester State College and majored in English. Throughout most of her childhood the children she encountered were just like her “second or third generation Americans who were rarely ethnically diluted by more than half – Irish or Polish or Italian.” It wasn’t until she attended college that she was introduced to many of the other ethnicities and people of the world. College in the 1960s meant the anti-war movement, free speech, civil rights, and feminism. These were all accepted as part of daily life.
It was in college that Fell began writing poetry. She studied, loved and tried to write it. However, she felt that it wasn’t possible for someone like her to write poetry. It wasn’t until the Women’s Movement in the 1970s that she realized that she could write poetry about the things she wanted to write about: mostly, the life and people she had grown up with. This movement made Worcester a great place for a budding poet in the 70s. The Worcester County Poetry Association brought many of Fell’s heroes to Worcester for readings. Poets like Adrienne Rich, Denise Levertov, Ann Sexton, Muriel Rukeyser, Robert Bly, Michael Harper, Galway Kinnell all came to Worcester during this time....

She currently teaches at Indiana University

Tainted Testimony At Triangle Shirtwaist Trial

2011-01-16T20:41:00.001-08:00

Triangle Black Witness
The testimony of a porter named William Harris is highlighted. It appears the veracity of his statements were questionable. It's strange that the address given by Harris is the address of another porter from the factory named Reginald Williamson. The Times' reporter's transcription of the testimony smacks of yellow journalism.
I'm sure other immigrants who testified used broken English, yet their transcriptions seemed to have been treated more delicately.

Rose Pesotta: 1930

2011-01-16T16:49:00.000-08:00

In 1930 Rose was living in the Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn, an atypical address for an anarchist labor leader at that time.
more of her biography from the Jewish Women's Encyclopdia

Shortly before her death, Rose Pesotta was asked how she would live her life if she could live it over again. She replied, “I have no regrets of my chosen path of the past. I would choose the same path, trying perhaps to avoid some of the mistakes of the past. But always having the vision before me—in the words of Thomas Paine, ‘The world is my country. To do good is my religion.’” The sweeping idealism of that statement tells us much about Pesotta, anarchist, labor activist, immigrant, internationalist. Known primarily as one of the first female vice presidents of the international ladies garment workers union (ILGWU), Pesotta saw her union organizing as an opportunity to fulfill the anarchist mandate “to be among the people and teach them our ideal in practice.”
Rose Pesotta was born in 1896, the second of eight children, into a middle-class family in Derazhnya, a railroad town in the Russian Ukraine. Her father, Itsaak Peisoty, was a grain merchant, and her mother, Masya, was active in the family business. Pesotta attributed her lifelong concern for social justice to her “dynamic and unconventional” father, but seemed unaware that the shtetl tradition of women’s work outside the home represented by her mother may have also facilitated her career.
Pesotta attended Rosalia Davidovna’s school for girls, with its Russian curriculum and its clandestine classes in Jewish history and Hebrew. After two years at the school, she was needed at home to help care for her siblings, and home tutoring replaced formal schooling. But her political apprenticeship in one of the many leftist groups in the Russian Pale of Settlement was as important as her formal education. She joined her older sister, Esther, in the local anarchist underground. The group’s discussion of well-known leftists Pyotr Kropotkin, Mikhail Bakunin, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and the political activities of young radicals, opened a window on the possibilities of a wider world.
Her parents’ plan to marry her to an ordinary village boy precipitated her decision to join her sister in America. In 1913, her parents gave her permission to embark for the New World. Once in New York, Pesotta began working in various shirtwaist factories, and struggled to learn English. Soon, she joined Local 25 of the ILGWU. The local became a base for her union career. In 1915, she helped the local form the first education department in the ILGWU, and in 1920 she was elected to Local 25’s executive board. In 1922, Pesotta completed the program at the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Workers, and between 1924 and 1926, she was a student at Brookwood Labor College. During the 1920s, she played a key role in the union’s chronic struggles with communists. Grateful union officials recognized Pesotta’s contributions by appointing her as an organizer in the late 1920s.
Pesotta brought a charismatic personality, boundless energy, and a unique ability to empathize with the downtrodden to the organizing field. In 1933, she spearheaded the Dressmakers General Strike in Los Angeles in the face of antipicketing injunctions, hired thugs, and communist dual unions. She mobilized the largely Mexican labor force through Spanish-language radio broadcasts and ads in ethnic newspapers. Although the strike was not successful, Pesotta’s leadership established her as one of the most gifted organizers of the union.
Pesotta’s visibility in California led to her election in 1934 as a vice president of the ILGWU, serving on the general executive board. Pesotta was conflicted about her ten years of service in that position. Sexism and a loss of personal independence continually troubled her, until she finally resigned from the position in 1942.
Between 1934 and 1944, though, Pesotta was one of the most successful organizers in the United States. She carried the union message to workers in Puerto Rico, Detroit, Montreal, Cleveland, Buffalo, Boston, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles. On loan from the ILGWU to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), she joined the great labor upheavals of the 1930s in Akron, Ohio, and Flint, Michigan. In 1944, Pesotta refused a fourth term on the CIO General Executive Board, with a brief critical statement that “one woman vice president could not adequately represent the women who now make up 85 percent of the International’s membership of 305,000.”
Following her resignation from union office, Pesotta published two memoirs: Bread upon the Waters (1945) and Days of Our Lives (1958). She worked briefly for the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League and for the American Trade Union Council for the Histadrut, Israel’s labor organization. But she supported herself during those years largely as a factory operative. Her life, in a sense, had come full circle—she embraced what she called “the freedom of a plain rank and file member of the union.”
Anarchism and Judaism are key to understanding Pesotta’s identity and sense of self. Although first introduced to anarchist philosophy in Europe, Pesotta found community and support for her libertarian beliefs in the alternative culture of American anarchism. Anarchism was her ethical center. It celebrated the inherent goodness of the individual and rejected private property, the state, and authority. Like emma goldman and other women attracted to the movement, Pesotta found support for a sexually free life-style embedded in anarchist tenets of personal freedom. She was secretary of the anarchist paper The Road to Freedom and was a key member of the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee.
For Pesotta, anarchism was inextricably enmeshed with Jewish culture and communities. Although not religiously observant, Pesotta always identified herself as Jewish. The Holocaust and the foundation of Israel deepened her sense of herself as a Jew. It seems ironic that her second memoir casts Judaism in a central role after a lifetime spent in secular activism and outside of the family roles critical to Jewish practice. Closer scrutiny reveals the congruence between Pesotta’s idealized past and her American life. In her books, her need to understand “external power relationships” as a Jew in czarist Russia meshed neatly with the Jewish labor union in tension with American culture.
In the fall of 1965, Pesotta was diagnosed with cancer of the spleen. Quietly she resigned from her job and went to Miami to “recuperate in the sun.” On December 4, 1965, she died alone in a Miami hospital.

Rose Pesotta's Bread Upon The Waters

2011-01-16T16:27:00.000-08:00

from the anarchist library
Rose Pesotta Bread Upon the Waters Letter

Rose Pesotta: Labor Hero

2011-01-16T15:50:00.000-08:00

an excerpt from Rose's biography by Jane Leeder
Lisa Luchkovsky, who is mentioned (and pictured on page 4) was my wife's great aunt
pesotta

Born Rakhel Peisoty or Peisotaya, 1896 - Ukraine, died 1965 - US
Few female Jewish immigrants to the U.S. have led lives as dynamic and eventful as Rose Pesotta. She was born Rakhel Peisoty in a Ukrainian shtetl, Derazhnia1 and became a rebel early in life, sympathizing with the anti-Czarist revolutionary movement, People's Will, before she became a teenager. At age 16 she immigrated to the US to escape an arranged marriage and to join her older sister. Their father was murdered in a pogrom in 1919, perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists.
Arriving in New York in 1913, Rakhel Peisoty became Rose Pesotta in the confusion of the immigration offices on Ellis Island. Rose’s sister found her a job in a shirtwaist factory organized by Local 25 International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). Before long she became an organizer for the union. She participated in many strikes and was the first woman elected to the executive board of the local, where she established one of the first worker education programs. Meanwhile, she learned English at night school and continued her studies at the Bryn Mawr School for Workers in Industry, the Rand School of Social Science and the Wisconsin Summer School for Workers. In 1926 she graduated from the Brookwood Labor College, which existed from 1921 to 1937 as a residential school for social activists belonging to the non-Communist left.
In 1933, she became a general organizer for the ILGWU and the next year she was elected a vice-president, the first woman to hold such a high post. She accepted the position, though she strongly believed that “the voice of a solitary woman on the General Executive Board would be a voice lost in the wilderness.” Her prediction proved correct as no other women were chosen, even as their percentage of the general membership rose to 85% by the 1940s.
Pesotta was an anarchist. She attended anarchist conferences, wrote for its press and opposed World War I as an imperialist war. She was befriended by fellow anarchist, Emma Goldman and nearly shared her fate in being deported. In 1919, Pesotta was arrested in the notorious Palmer raids and held for deportation as a subversive alien. Unlike Goldman, she was able to establish her citizenship. Her fiancé was not as lucky. He was deported to the Soviet Union along with Goldman and she never saw him again. Pesotta was again arrested again in 1927 for protesting against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.
Pesota had a flair for the dramatic. During a strike in Los Angeles against a manufacturer of sportswear, she dressed some of the young female workers in evening gowns and had them march in front of a posh hotel wearing their picket signs. She made sure the press was there. The favourable publicity this event received softened the position of the employer, who did not want to be seen as the exploiter of beauty queens. The strike ended in a victory for the ILGWU.
Pesotta was such an outstanding union organizer that the ILGWU loaned her to the union confederation the C.I.O. for its organizing drives in heavy industry. In the late 1930s, she assisted the rubber workers during their sit-down strike at Goodyear in Akron, Ohio and the auto workers during their sit-down at General Motors in Flint, Michigan. Despite language and cultural differences, she also achieved success organizing for the ILGWU among Mexican workers in Los Angeles, French Canadians in Quebec and in Puerto Rico.
Her union activism took its toll, both physically and emotionally. She was beaten so seriously by anti-union thugs that she suffered permanent hearing loss. Constantly on the move, she suffered from loneliness and was unable to establish a stable personal life. In 1940, she resigned from the leadership of the ILGWU, disillusioned with male domination of the union after David Dubinsky, long-time president of the union, didn't respond to her complaints about being the only woman on the executive board. She returned to the rank-and-file as a shop worker, where she vigorously supported the Allies in World War II. At the same time, she opposed the no-strike pledge taken by the leadership of both the AFL and CIO, because it tied the hands of workers while employers benefited from rising prices and profits.
Pesotta's life took a different turn with the onset of World War II. Shaken by the news of the slaughter of European Jewry, including many of her relatives, she joined the B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation League and began speaking throughout the country against anti-Semitism and racism. After the war, she traveled to Poland and visited the Majdenek concentration camp, where she met with survivors. She worked tirelessly to resettle them in the U.S.
In her earlier years, she had an ambivalent attitude toward her Jewishness. Echoing Thomas Paine, she declared, “The world is my country and to do good is my religion.” But the impact of the Holocaust turned her into a Zionist. She became Midwest Director of the American Trade Union Council for Histadrut and from then on identified with the Labour Zionist movement until the end of her life in 1965.
Pesotta also distinguished herself as an advocate for civil rights for African Americans. During her entire public life, she remained true to the lesson she learned from a private tutor back in the Ukraine: “The people come first. It is their actions that bring about changes in society.”
Pesotta had literary interests as well. She wrote a novel about a Yeshiva student who became a revolutionary and two volumes of memoirs, Bread Upon the Waters (1944) and Days of Our Lives (1958). She dedicated the second volume to the memory of the Jewish civilization destroyed by the Nazis.
Shortly before her death, Rose Pesotta was asked how she would live her life if she could live it over again. She replied, “I have no regrets of my chosen path of the past. I would choose the same path, trying perhaps to avoid some of the mistakes of the past. But always having the vision before me—in the words of Thomas Paine, ‘The world is my country. To do good is my religion.’” The sweeping idealism of that statement tells us much about Pesotta, anarchist, labor activist, immigrant, internationalist. Known primarily as one of the first female vice presidents of the international ladies garment workers union (ILGWU), Pesotta saw her union organizing as an opportunity to fulfill the anarchist mandate “to be among the people and teach them our ideal in practice.”

Thomas Horton: Unsung Triangle Fire Hero From Harlem?

2011-01-14T20:18:00.001-08:00

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Cornell's Kheel Center for Industrial Relations updated its survivor list.
Thomas Horton is listed as a porter. In an article written about the fire he evidently performed heroically under horrific circumstances. I would suggest he was more than just a porter and if my search of the 1910 census is correct he may have had engineering skills necessary to operate and maintain the building's elevators. The Thomas Horton above is the only "colored" Horton I found living in New York. He was an assistant engineer in an office building. Born in North Carolina, he would have logically followed the migratory pattern to the north to find better jobs at the time as well as housing in Harlem.
Below a reference to him in a 1957 American Heritage article

On the Greene Street side of the Asch building, the freight elevators “ran until they wouldn’t run.” “We were putting in the switch cables till they were overrun with water,” Thomas Horton, the Negro porter recalls. “They stuck. The circuit-breakers were blowing out.”
As Horton toiled grimly in the basement to keep the motors going, the elevator operators opened their doors at random in the blinding smoke, making desperate guesses as to floor openings. Fire streamed into the shafts, flame bit at the cables, and the girls jumping in suicidal fright jammed the operation of the cars. Nineteen bodies were found later wedged between the car and shaft in one of the Greene Street freight elevator wells.

h/t to Jane Fazio, Michael Hirsch and Prof Alan Singer

Fanny Breslow

2011-01-14T01:04:00.000-08:00

From the film the Free Voice Of Labor:

The Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists is a 1980 documentary by Steve Fischler and Joel Sucher of Pacific Street Films. It memorializes the story of the Yiddish anarchist newspaper Fraye Arbeter Shtime, and the Jewish anarchist movement of the early 20th century. The movie contained a short interview with a very young Joe Conason. Paul Avrich was a consultant on the film. As of 2006, AK Press has begun distributing it as part of a double DVD release with Anarchism in America, named after the latter.

This an excerpt from part 2

The ILGWU: August 1, 1938, part 2

2011-01-13T08:27:00.000-08:00

Life Ilgwu 1938
Displayed at the Grey Art Gallery in remembrance of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire 100th anniversary. I was curious to find out whether Yetta Henner was still alive. I assumed she married Hy Stofsky, her boyfriend in the article. Sadly, a Yetta Stofsky passed away in 1995 in Florida at the same age Yetta Henner would have been. Living where she did on Rivington Street her family may have known the Greenglass family from around the corner. She was around the same age as Ethel.

The ILGWU: August 1, 1938

2011-01-12T22:46:00.000-08:00

The cover shows union members Helen Wachtel and Gladys Kamilhair. The photo is by the famed Hansel Mieth

Hansel Mieth (1909–1998) was a German-born photojournalist who worked on the staff of LIFE Magazine. She was best known for her social commentary photography which recorded the lives of working class Americans in the 1930s and 1940s.
She was born Johanna Mieth in Oppelsbohm, Germany, one of three daughters of a strict, religious family. She ran away from home at the age of 15 and did factory work before emigrating to the United States in 1930 to join her lover and fellow photographer Otto Hagel (1909–1973). The couple found themselves in the midst of the Great Depression and worked as migrant farm labourers for several years. During that time they began to photograph the brutal working conditions and suffering they saw around them, after acquiring a second-hand Leica camera. In San Francisco, Sacramento, and in the rural towns they worked in, they photographed the bitter labour strikes and the working homeless. They were involved with the San Francisco Film and Photo League during the early 1930s. They also became acquainted with working photographers and began to sell their own photographs to magazines.
In 1937 Mieth joined the staff of LIFE Magazine (only the second woman photographer to do so), and she and Otto (whom she married in 1940), moved to New York. He was then still a German citizen, so in order to escape internment during the Second World War the couple fled to a remote ranch near Santa Rosa in northern California. Mieth continued to accept photography assignments for LIFE, while Hagel never left the Singing Hills Ranch.
During the War Mieth photographed Japanese Americans who had been taken from their homes and interned by the Roosevelt government. In the early 1950s, the couple's refusal to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (where they would have been required to name names of their friends in the labour movement) led to Mieth's losing her job at LIFE, and to their being unofficially blacklisted. Shunned by their former friends, the couple retired to their ranch in California where they raised livestock and where Mieth took up painting. She died in Santa Rosa California in 1998.
Mieth's life story was told in a one-hour documentary titled Hansel Mieth: Vagabond Photographer,which aired on PBS' Independent Lens series in 2003.
The full archive of Hansel Mieth's work is located at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona in Tucson, which also manages the copyright of her work.

Pins and Needles: Sing Me A Song With Social Significance

2011-01-09T18:41:00.000-08:00

This is the song "Sing Me a Song With Social Significance", sung by Rose Marie Jun, from the 1962 revival cast of Pins and Needles.
Pins and Needles is a Broadway revue, written originally in 1937s. The revue was written, sponsored, and performed by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, who held their union meetings at the Princess theater in New York City.
The cast members all had full time factory jobs in the garment industry, and thus could only rehearse during the night and on the weekends.
Pins and Needles used its voice to air strong pro-Union opinions, incorporating current events from its time. The show features light hearted and clever use of satire and spoof to poke fun of such things fascist dictators in Europe and snooty American bigots.
The American theatre historian and writer John Kenrick said of the show Pins and Needles "is the only hit ever produced by a labor union, and the only time when a group of unknown non-professionals brought a successful musical to Broadway."

I'm tired of moon songs, of star and of June songs,
They simply make me nap.
And ditties romantic drive me nearly frantic,
I think they're all full of pap.
History's making, nations are quaking,
Why sing of stars above?
For while we are waiting, father time's creating
New things to be singing of...
Sing me a song with social significance,
All other tunes are taboo.
I want a ditty with heat in it,
Appealing with feeling and meat in it.
Sing me a song with social significance,
Or you can sing till you're blue,
Let meaning shine from every line
Or I won't love you.
Sing me of wars, sing me of breadlines,
Tell me of front page news,
Sing me of strikes and last minute headlines,
Dress your observations in syncopation.
Sing me a song with social significance,
There's nothing else that will do.
It must get hot with what is what
Or I won't love you.
Sing me a song with social significance,
All other tunes are taboo,
I want a song that's satirical,
And putting the mere into miracle.
Sing me a song with social significance,
Or you can sing till you're blue,
It must be packed with social fact
Or I won't love you.
Sing me of crime and conferences martial,
Tell me of mills and of mines,
Sing me of courts that aren't impartial,
What's to be done with 'em? Tell me in rhythm.
Sing me a song with social significance,
There's nothing else that will do.
It must be dense with common sense
Or I won't love you.

Pins and Needles: Doing The Reactionary Rag

2011-01-09T18:17:00.000-08:00

Listen!

It's darker than the dark bottom
It rumbles more than the Rumba
If you think that the two-steps got 'em
Just take a look at this number
It's got that certain swing
That makes you wanna sing
Don't go left, but be polite
Move to the right
Doing the reactionary
Close your eyes to where you're bound
And you'll be found
Doing the reactionary
All the best dictators do it
Millionaires keep steppin' to it
The Four Hundred love to sing it
Ford and Morgan swing it
Hands up high and shake your head
You'll soon see red
Doing the reactionary
Don't go left, but be polite
Move to the right
Doing the reactionary
Close your eyes to where you're bound
And you'll be found
Doing the reactionary
All the best dictators do it
Millionaires keep steppin' to it
The Four Hundred love to sing it
Ford and Morgan swing it
Hands up high and shake your head
You'll soon see red
Doing the reac-
Doing the reac-Tionary
So get in it, begin it
It's smart, oh, so very
To do the reactionary!

The song is from the play Pins and Needles. About the production:

The International Ladies Garment Workers Union used the Princess Theatre in New York City as a meeting hall. The union sponsored an inexpensive revue with LGWU workers as the cast and two pianos. Because of their factory jobs, participants could rehearse only at night and on weekends, and initial performances were presented only on Friday and Saturday nights. The original cast was made up of cutters, basters, and sewing machine operators.
Pins and Needles looked at current events from a pro-union standpoint. It was "lighthearted look at young workers in a changing society in the middle of America's most politically engaged city." Skits spoofed everything from Fascist European dictators to bigots in the DAR. Word-of-mouth was so enthusiastically positive that the cast abandoned their day jobs and the production expanded to a full performance schedule of eight shows per week. New songs and skits were introduced every few months to keep the show topical.
According to John Kenrick, Pins and Needles "is the only hit ever produced by a labor union, and the only time when a group of unknown non-professionals brought a successful musical to Broadway."
Originally written for a small theatrical production, the first production of "Pins and Needles" was directed by Samuel Roland. After a two week professional run, it was adapted for performances by members of the then-striking International Garment Workers' Union as an entertainment for its members. Because Roland was associated with left-wing causes, he was asked by ILGWU president David Dubinsky to withdraw. The better-known ILGWU production was directed by Charles Friedman and choreographed by Benjamin Zemach. It opened on November 27, 1937 at the Labor Stage Theatre and then transferred to the Windsor Theatre on January 1, 1939, finally closing on June 22, 1940 after 1108 performances. The cast included Harry Clark, who continued his acting career with roles in The Skin of Our Teeth, One Touch of Venus, Call Me Mister, Kiss Me, Kate, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?.
The Roundabout Theatre Company produced a revival Off-Broadway at the Roundabout Stage 1 Theatre in 1978, which ran for 225 performances.
The Jewish Repertory Theatre presented a concert in 2003, to include songs and sketches from all versions of the show.

ILGWU Anthem

2011-01-09T15:46:00.001-08:00

Listen!
This comes from a 1965 performance at the 32nd Convention of the ILGWU.
A reference to this anthem is made in Rose Pesotta's Bread Upon The Waters

New York House and School of Industry

2010-05-21T09:05:00.001-07:00

Prior to Class Size Matters' 2nd Annual Skinny Awards Arthur Goldstein and I discovered this beautiful building on 16th Street.

Was the headquarters of an organization that taught needletrades (and later typing) to needy women. In 1955, it was sold to the Friends of Hebrew Culture. Now the Young Adults Institute, a home for people with cognitive disabilities. This 1878 building is considered the first Queen Anne-style structure in the city.

an excerpt from the nytimes streetscapes
STREETSCAPES: The New York House and School of Industry; Where the Poor Learned 'Plain and Fine Sewing'
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY
THIS summer the New York House and School of Industry at 120 West 16th Street promised to shape up as a major preservation battle for the fall. Built in 1878, the two-story building was marked for replacement by an apartment house, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission has scheduled a hearing on it for Sept. 15.
But in late July, the owner discovered that the State of New York had taken the property by eminent domain. Now, it will remain as a residence for the mentally retarded, no longer immediately threatened.
Charity was a growth industry in mid-19th century New York. Cities were indifferent to the health and housing needs of the poor and the working class, leading concerned private citizens to form several new charities a year. Many were unusually specific. For example, one asylum took only Protestant half-orphans.
Most had a moral purpose, encouraging those in difficulty to improve their lot by ''industry,'' rather than by vice, crime or insurrection.
The New York House and School of Industry was founded in 1851 to teach poor women ''plain and fine sewing.'' For some time, it was quartered in an old wooden farmhouse on its present site, but in 1878 the organization built an asymmetrical brick building designed by Sidney V. Stratton.
The building is still largely unchanged, with a projecting two-story oriel window on the left, a central entrance and top and bottom triple windows on the right. Above the main door, a tablet bears the organization's name and the date of construction in elaborate script, still legible, although slathered with paint. The overall form of the building is picturesque, and windows make up the greatest element of decoration: the oriel has panes of bottle ends and some of the windows have 44 panes in the top sash over four panes in the bottom.

Union Square

2008-05-10T23:21:00.000-07:00

from pseudo-intellectualism 1/22/08
Last week I was in Union Square and I noticed the informative sidewalk installations that ring the square. I photographed most of them and supplemented them with other union square historical images. To complement them for a movie, the images needed relevant audio I struck gold when I found a great online play about labor history on wbai's site. The above encompasses the play's introduction.

Marching to Union Square: A Labor Play by Dorothy Fennel
Radio show produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg
Marching to Union Square is about the birth of the modern trade union movement in New York City. The script is based on historical material, including speeches and memoirs, from the first Labor Day parade—held on September 5, 1882—subsequent Labor Day parades, and the 1886 mayoral campaign of Henry George, labor's candidate. Much of the action takes place in Union Square, and evokes the loud and colorful labor marches that attracted huge numbers of spectators. For a brief time in the 1880s, NYC activists tries to organize an independent labor party that could unite people of diverse backgrounds around a uniquely working class political platform. There was no better place to do this than Union Square. To express this vision in words and music from that era, the actors in Marching to Union Square recreate some of the key moments that contributed so much to Union Square's reputation as labor's home, and as the place where working New Yorkers came to exercise their rights to free speech and assembly.
Actors: George Drance, Arthur French, Todd Griffin, Mary Neufeld
Musicians: George Mann (guitar), Ginette Van Der Voorn (keyboard)
Chorus: Members of the NYC Labor Chorus, directed by Ginette Van Der Voorn

Irving Hall, Gardiner's Hall And Bernsteins

2008-05-10T23:19:00.000-07:00

from pseudo-intellectualism 12/15/07 The map shows the 1903 location of the two halls mentioned in the news' reports about the Newsies (see below for the mention of Gardner's Hall) The movie even includes a Irving Hall as a site location. The question is would the Newsies go shopping at Bernstein's which was nearby :). The ad is from 1959
Had I known about the meeting I would have gone, since I lived at 76 Suffolk.
Here's the Tribune article about the meeting:
"Newsboys Form a New Union Elect a Man as Leader and Will Divide City Into Districts.August 3, 1899 There was a rally of newsboys at Gardner's Hall, at 21 Suffolk Street, last evening, to organize a new union and elect new officers. Abraham Lippman, who has a newsstand at Canal and Essex Streets, called the meeting to order. He is a grown-up man, and for some time he ran the meeting much to the disgust of Simon Levy, who was trying to wedge in a word without success. After some skirmishing the boys accepted a suggestion of Lippman's to have a full-grown man for a President, and elected James G. Neill, fifty years old. President Neill, in making his inauguration speech, said that the price maintained by some of the evening papers virtually imposed a tax on newsboys and newsmen, and the latter could not transfer the tax to the public as other dealers did the war tax. Mr. Neill suggested that all union boys should wear badges, and become affiliated with other labor organizations. He proposed that the city should be divided into districts and send delegates to a central union. The meeting adopted Mr. Neill's suggestions.Other officers were elected as follows: Vice President –"Racetrack" Higgins of Brooklyn; Secretary – Abe Cutler;Treasurer – Dave Ruben of Bleecker Street and the Bowery;Sergeant at Arms – "Yellow" Simon Levy. John Masin was elected head Captain, and will select his district Captains. A floral horseshoe was sent by William Reese, the colored lemonade seller in Printing House Square, for the best orator of the day. It was won by George J. Fabian."

The Internationale

2008-05-10T23:15:00.000-07:00

from pseudo-intellectualism 7/15/06 I was lucky to catch this late last night on wnet:"In 1871, an ex-mayor named Eugene Pottier wrote a set of lyrics that called for the working masses to throw off the shackles of their oppressors. Later, a French factory worker, Pierre Degeyter, added a new melody and "The Internationale" spread rapidly through France and then Europe. The song was translated into dozens of languages and quickly became a rallying cry for communists, anarchists, and socialists worldwide. During a number of strikes, "The Internationale" unified workers of different nationalities and diverse cultural backgrounds. The song often served for multiple causes, from labor rights to the defeat of fascism in Spain, but after becoming the official anthem of the Soviet Union in 1917, many associated "The Internationale" with communism under Joseph Stalin. Slowly, though, new versions and interpretations of the song began to appear, revitalizing its connection to radical movements worldwide. The students sang "The Internationale" in Tiananmen Square, and folksinger Billy Bragg added new lyrics in the late '80s. The Internationale mixes multiple interviews with folksinger Pete Seeger and others with rare archival film footage."
I combined a midi version of the song, the English version of the lyrics, and images from Spanish Civil War posters found on orpheus.ucsd (Visual Front) to make this karaoke slide show of the Internationale

LES Triangle Victim Map

2008-05-10T23:12:00.000-07:00

from pseudo-intellectualism 8/11/05 I created this map to give a historical LES context to Ms. Joseph's class project on the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Victims. I utilized a very unique map created by John Tauranac as the base. Ms. Joseph had used the historical fiction title , "East Side Story," along with archival information from Unite's (the former ILGWU) web site, ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/. Her students wrote stories with characters placed back in time with that era. They also made posters protesting working conditions simulating what the shirtwaist workers did in the 1909 strike. They brought much of this material with them as special guests of the UFT's District Representatuve, Donna Manganello, to the annual commemoration that takes place at the site of the fire. Their work was recognized by the President of Unite, Bruce Raynor, and they had the honor to be invited onstage for the official ceremony. Portions of this were broadcast locally on ny1.com.

Triangle Follow Up

2008-05-10T23:09:00.000-07:00

from pseudo-intellectualism As mentioned previously on 8/8/05 posting; Ms. Joseph's fifth graders at the Triangle Shirtwaist Commemoration sponsored by Unite on March 26, 2005. Here's a clip from ny1.com where you can see a group of students with their work on stage. Mr. Maltese is referring to the following information from David von Drehle's recent book on the Triangle Fire: http://www.groveatlantic.com/grove/wc.dll?groveproc~misc~2620
MALTESE, Catherine, asphyxiation/burns. 35 Second Ave. Identified on December 18, 1911, when her husband, Serafino, finally recognized one of her possessions. Mother of Lucy and Sara. Leon Stein, The Triangle Fire, p. 204.
MALTESE, Lucia “Lucy,” 20, asphyxiation/burns. 35 Second Ave. Identified by her father Serafino. Sister of Sara, daughter of Catherine. Multiple newspapers, March 27.
MALTESE, Rosaria “Sara,” 14, asphyxiation/burns. 35 Second Ave. Identified by her father Serafino. Sister of Lucy, daughter of Catherine. Multiple newspapers, March 27.

Pauline Pepe: Triangle Fire Survivor

2008-05-10T23:06:00.000-07:00

from pseudo-intellectualism 8/6/05
The victims of the triangle fire, NYC circa the era of Witch of 4th Street, were mostly Jewish and Italian. Here's a story about it from the Kisseloff book. The image shows the damage and the factory owners.

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire 2

2008-05-10T20:38:00.000-07:00

from pseudo-intellectualism 12/13/07
A slide show I did in 2001 with fourth graders about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. They had just read "East Side Story" and then we researched where some of the victims lived.
Some lived within a few blocks of Knickerbocker Village. Nettie Rosenthal lived at 105 Monroe Street (between Market and Pike). She was 21 years old. Another victim lived at 55 Pike Street and another at 177 Cherry Street
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the largest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York, causing the death of 146 garment workers who either died from the fire or jumped to their deaths. It was the worst workplace disaster in New York City until September 11th, 2001. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers in that industry. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Building, also known as the Asch Building and as the Brown Building, survives and was named a National Historic Landmark.

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

2008-05-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

from pseudo-intellectualism 12/13/07
The powerful segment of the New York documentary that dealt with the shirtwaist fire
Also a more complete list of the KV vicinity neighborhood victims, along with their ages, of the fire. There were 146 in total. Source, Cornell University

Fine And Dandy

2008-05-10T20:32:00.000-07:00

from pseudo-intellectualism
This was originally posted on Pseudo-Intellectualism on 1/29/07: I went to hear author Katharine Weber speak about her new book "Triangle" at the East End Temple. It was excellent, but an unexpected surprise was finding out that Katharine Weber is Kay Swift's grandaughter! Swift was an accomplished musician and composer as well as a musical historian. Many folks know her as George Gershwin's main squeeze. Here's a musical review of the event.
Kay Swift composed Fine And Dandy. The lyrics were written by her first husband, James Warburg

Please forgive this platitude
But I like your attitude
You are just the kind i've had in mind
And never could find
Honey, I'm so keen on you
I could come to lean on you
On a random bay
Give you your way
Do what you say
Gee, it's all fine and dandy
Sugar candy,
When I've got you
Then I only see the sunny side
Even trouble has its funny side
When you're gone, my sugar candy
I get so lonesome, i get so blue
But when you're handy
It's fine and dandy
But when you're gone
What can I do?

There Once Was A Union Maid

2008-05-10T20:20:00.000-07:00

from pseudo-intellectualism 12/28/07
I resuscitated this old slide show from 2002 that had triangle shirtwaist images for the google video player. Images are bad, but the songs (2 versions) still rouse the spirit. You can download a better version here
Union Maid by Woody Guthrie

There once was a union maid, she never was afraid
Of goons and ginks and company finks and the deputy sheriffs who made the raid.
She went to the union hall when a meeting it was called,
And when the Legion boys come 'round
She always stood her ground.
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union, I'm sticking to the union.
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union 'til the day I die.
This union maid was wise to the tricks of company spies,
She couldn't be fooled by a company stool, she'd always organize the guys.
She always got her way when she struck for better pay.
She'd show her card to the National Guard
And this is what she'd say
You gals who want to be free, just take a tip from me;
Get you a man who's a union man and join the ladies' auxiliary.
Married life ain't hard when you got a union card,
A union man has a happy life when he's got a union wife.

March to Save Our Healthcare: Part 2

2008-05-09T22:42:00.000-07:00

March to Save Our Healthcare: Part 1

2008-05-09T19:27:00.000-07:00

I personally filmed this as well as part 2
5/9/08: NYC Union members fight to prevent GHI-HIP from converting to a for-profit company & jeopardizing the health care of 4 million policy holders, including 500,000 NYC workers (93% of the workforce) & retirees. Mainstream politicians & union leaders support the change, hoping to benefit from the nearly $3 billion windfall profits of such a sale.

Mike Quill

2008-05-09T08:25:00.000-07:00

from youtube user smransom51

Mike Quill of the Transport Workers Union debates Congressman Hartley on the rights of public employees to strike

from wikipedia

Michael J. Quill (1905–1966) was one of the founders of the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU), a union founded by subway workers in New York City that expanded to represent employees in other forms of transit, and the President of the TWU for most of the first thirty years of its existence. A close ally of the Communist Party USA for the first twelve years of his leadership of the union, he broke with it in 1948. He drove his former allies out of the union.
Quill had varying relations with the mayors of New York City. He was a personal friend of Robert Wagner but could find no common ground with Wagner's successor, John Lindsey, or as Quill called him "Linsley", and led a twelve-day transit strike in 1966 against him that landed him in jail. However, he won significant wage increases for his members. He died of a heart attack three days after the end of the strike.
Quill was born in Gortloughera, near Kilgarvan, County Kerry, Ireland. He claimed to have been a dispatch rider for the Irish Republican Army from 1919 to 1921 while still a teenager; then a member of the IRA itself in the Irish Civil War that followed. By one account, he robbed a bank to raise funds for the IRA. Quill worked as a carpenter's apprentice, then a woodcutter after the end of the Civil War. He moved to the United States, following his brothers, Patrick and John, in 1926. In New York City Quill first lived with his O'Sullivan cousins in upper Manhattan.
Quill's account of his activities in Ireland were, however, subject to change over the years. Quill attributed his bad hip variously to a bullet lodged there after he was shot by the Black and Tans or to an accident in which he "fell off a mountainside"; he also admitted to others that the condition had dated from his childhood. Quill was also prone to exploiting his Irish background, particularly when in front of the heavily Irish-American membership of the TWU; as more than one observer noted his brogue got thicker the longer he was away from Ireland and particularly when he was on stage or in front of a microphone.
After working a series of odd jobs in New York, he went to work for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) later that year, first as a night gateman, then as a clerk or "ticket chopper". Moving from station to station, Quill got to know a large number of IRT employees, while using the quiet of the late hours to read labor history and, in particular, the works of James Connolly. The name that Quill and others chose for their new union was, in fact, a tribute to the Irish Transport and General Workers Union led by Jim Larkin and Connolly twenty years earlier.
That union grew out of a unique mixture of two revolutionary traditions: the Irish insurrectionary history of Connolly and the IRA and the Communist Party. The IRT was, in fact, filled with veterans of the recent Troubles in Ireland, to the point that some jokingly referred to it as "Irish Republican Transit". All of the founding members of the TWU belonged to the Clan na Gael, a secretive Irish organization, and the first discussions of forming a union took place across the street from a Clan meeting.
The other factor, the Communist Party, supplied organizers, operating funds, and connections with organizations outside the Irish-American community. Two Trade Union Unity League organizers, John Santo and Austin Hogan, met with the Clan na Gael's members in a cafeteria on Columbus Circle on April 12, 1934, the date now used to mark the foundation of the union.
The CP was at that time in the last years of its ultrarevolutionary Third Period, when it sought to form revolutionary unions outside the American Federation of Labor. The party therefore focused both on organizing workers into the union and recruiting members for the Party through mimeographed shop papers with titles such as "Red Shuttle" or "Red Dynamo". The new union appointed Tom O'Shea — who would later become a witness against Quill before the Dies Committee — as its first president, assigning Quill a secondary position.
Quill proved to have more leadership potential than O'Shea, however. He was a persuasive speaker, willing to "soapbox" outside of IRT facilities for hours, and capable of great charm in individual conversations. He also acquired some renown after an incident in 1936, in which some "beakies", the informants used by the IRT to spy on union activities, attacked Quill and five other unionists in a tunnel as they were returning from picketing the IRT's offices. Arrested for inciting to riot, Quill came off as a fighter in his defense of the charges, which were eventually dismissed.
Quill was closely associated with the Communist Party from the outset, but proved rebellious as well. When the Third Period gave way to the Popular Front era, Santo and Hogan directed O'Shea and Quill to abandon efforts to form a new union and to run instead for office in the IRT company union, the Interborough Brotherhood. Quill denounced the plan vociferously, to the point that he was nearly expelled from the union. Quill came around, however, by the next party meeting and began attending Brotherhood meetings — while still recruiting workers there to joint the TWU.
Given the level of surveillance, and consistent with the conspiratorial traditions of Irish political movements, the union proceeded clandestinely, forming small groups of trusted friends in order to keep informers at bay, meeting in isolated locations and in subway tunnels. Those few workers, such as Quill, who were willing to accept identification as union activists also spread the word about the new union by handing out flyers and delivering soapbox speeches in front of company facilities. After a year of organizing, the union formed a Delegates Council, made up of representatives from sections of the system.
In the meantime the new union continued its patient organizing campaign, conducting a number of brief strikes over workplace conditions, but avoiding any large-scale confrontations. That changed on January 23, 1937, when the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT) fired two union members at the Kent Avenue powerhouse plant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for union activity. The union launched a successful sitdown strike two days later that solidified the union's support among BMT employees, helped lead to its overwhelming victory in an NLRB-conducted election among the IRT's 13,500 employees later that year and helped bring thousands of other transit employees into the union.
The TWU had joined the International Association of Machinists in 1936 in order to link itself to the AFL in 1936. The union severed its relations with the Machinists and joined the Congress of Industrial Organizations as a national union on May 10, 1937. Quill had already replaced O'Shea as President of the union, while Santo became its Secretary-Treasurer.
The union soon faced challenges within, as dissidents within the union and the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists outside it challenged the CPUSA's dominant position within its officialdom and staff. The CP at that time had almost complete control over the union's administration and CP membership was necessary both to get a job with the union and to rise through its ranks. Former allies such as O'Shea attacked Quill and the CP, both in the publications of rival unions, such as the Amalgamated Association of Street Railway Employees, and in testimony before the Dies Committee.
Quill and the union leadership gave their opponents all the ammunition they needed by following the changes in the CPUSA's foreign policy, moving to a militant policy after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in 1939, then coming out against strikes after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Quill shrugged off most of this criticism from outside, haranguing the Dies Committee when it attempted to question him, and disposed of his internal critics by bringing union charges against more than a hundred opponents.
The union faced more serious challenges at home as Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia threatened to revoke the union's status as representative of the employees of the IRT and BMT when the City bought those lines in 1940. Quill had cooperated with LaGuardia when the former ran, successfully, for City Council in 1937, as a candidate of the American Labor Party. In 1940, however, both LaGuardia and Quill became bellicose opponents of each other, with Quill calling a bus drivers' strike that served to demonstrate the union's power if challenged while LaGuardia came out in opposition to collective bargaining, the closed shop and the right to strike for public employees.
The invasion of the Soviet Union changed the Party's opinion of strikes. It is simplistic, on the other hand, to treat this change in strategy as solely the result in the change in Comintern policy. Throughout his career Quill preferred to threaten strikes as leverage to calling them and provoking a decisive test of strength. In addition, the union leadership had reservations in 1941 about the depth of its support among the general public and the employees of the IRT and BMT, many of whom believed that civil service protections gained as employees of the City made union representation less critical. National leaders of the CIO and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration intervened in 1941 to avert a subway strike with an ambiguous agreement that preserved TWU's right to represent its members, even though the City continued to deny it exclusive representation.
The pressure on CP-led unions intensified after the end of World War II. These pressures fell especially hard on the TWU: the government arrested Santo for immigration law violations, and began proceedings to deport him. At the same time, Quill found the CP's political line increasingly hard to take, since it required him to oppose a subway fare increase that he considered necessary for wage increases in 1947, while the CP's support for the candidacy of Henry Wallace threatened to split the CIO. When William Z. Foster, then the general secretary of the CPUSA, told him that the party was prepared to split the CIO to form a third federation and that he might be the logical choice for its leader, Quill decided to break his ties to the CP instead.
Quill applied the same energy to his campaign to drive his former allies out of the union that he had during the union's organizing drives of the 1930s. He was able to enlist the City, in the form of Mayor William O'Dwyer, in his support, winning a large wage increase for subway workers in 1948, that cemented his standing with the membership. After a few inconclusive internal battles, Quill prevailed in 1949, purging not only the officers who had opposed him, but much of the union's staff, down to its secretarial employees.
Unlike some others, such as Joe Curran of the National Maritime Union, "Red Mike" Quill remained on the left within the labor movement — albeit in a political atmosphere in which the boundaries had shifted drastically during the Cold War — after his split with the CP. Quill was the most vocal opponent within the CIO of its merger with the AFL, attacking it for "racism, racketeering and raids". He and the TWU were early supporters of the civil rights movement and Quill was one of the first in the labor movement to oppose the Vietnam War in the 1960s.
Quill and the TWU became even more important figures in New York City politics in the 1950s. He was a key supporter of Robert F. Wagner, Jr.'s campaign for mayor of New York and became a lightning rod, based on his radical past, for Wagner's Republican opponent and unfavorable press attention. While the union repeatedly threatened to take the subway workers out on strike, it managed to settle with the Wagner administration short of a strike on each occasion.
The TWU did not have the same relationship with the administration of John V. Lindsay, a liberal Protestant Republican who had rebuked Quill shortly before taking office in 1966. Lindsay decided to take on the TWU, provoking a twelve day strike. The world's largest subway and bus systems, serving eight million people daily, came to a complete halt. The City obtained an injunction prohibiting the strike and succeeded in imprisoning Quill and seven other leaders of the TWU and the Amalgamated Association, which joined in the stoppage, for contempt of court.
Quill did not waver, responding at a crowed press conference: "The judge can drop dead in his black robes!" The union successfully held out for a sizeable wage increase for the union. Other unions followed suit demanding similar raises.
Ironically, it was Quill, who dropped dead at age 60, three days after the union's victory celebration. He had an initial heart attack when he was sent to jail for contempt. He was interred at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, NY, after a funeral Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral (New York), his casket draped by the Irish tricolor.
He was first married to Maria Theresa O'Neill, who predeceased him, and had a son, John Daniel Quill (named for Quill's own father). His second wife, who survived him, was Shirley Quill.

May Day Celebration In England

2008-05-07T14:13:00.000-07:00

from youtube user workersunited

A 15 minute film celebrating international workers day.
May Day has been celebrated in London since the 1880's. The march has traditionally started from Clerkenwell Green -- the heart of an area noted for its radicalism in the late and early 19th centuries. In 1890 London's first full May Day March progressed from the Green, organised by the London Trades Council in conjunction with 28 radical clubs and many trade unionists.
As ever this years march was a unique mix of trade unionists, workers from many international communities, pensioners, youth, students, political organisations and many others in a show of working class unity.
Filmmakers and Unison members Hazuan Hashim and Phil Maxwell captured the last two May day marches and have produced a short film using archive material as well as contemporary comments from trade Union members and leaders.
The film showcases the banners of the march, the diversity of its participants, humour and music. Often ignored by the mass media the filmmakers wanted to make the values embodied in the traditions of the march accessible to a wider audience. To this end the film has educational, entertainment and historic value.
As well as capturing icons of the movement (Jack Jones and Tony Benn) the film shows the international nature of the event as well as the contribution of ethnic minorities and women; in short the film celebrates the wide ranging membership of a confident and modern trade union movement and its traditions.

General Society Of Mechanics And Tradesmen 2

2008-05-07T11:43:00.001-07:00

This shows where the original location of the General Society was (on Broadway near City Hall) The building is a later structure on that site
A screenshot from my own google map version of New Labor History sites (intended to compliment and enhance Tamiment's work in progress

General Society Of Mechanics And Tradesmen

2008-05-07T11:39:00.000-07:00

General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen On November 17, 1785 in a tavern at Pine and Broadway, the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen was founded as a mutual benefit society. A library, clubhouse, bank, and school were later established for the use of apprentices, mechanics, tradesmen and their families. The Society moved to its present location at 20 West 44th Street in 1898.
A screenshot from my own google map version of New Labor History sites (intended to compliment and enhance Tamiment's work in progress

Teamster Local Spearheads Mayday Protest Of NYC Housing Cuts

2008-05-06T19:19:00.000-07:00

from the local 237 web site

Local 237/NYCHA members are stretched to the point of collapse, and residents of public housing – 500,000 citizens of NYC – are threatened with destruction of core services.
Teamsters Local 237 Rally at City Hall to Stop NYCHA Cuts – Thursday, May 1st, 12:00pm at City Hall. During the last eight years, the Bush administration has slashed the budget for the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) by $611 million. As a result of the latest cuts announced by Bush, NYCHA has now announced it may be forced to lay off 190 more employees. Local 237/NYCHA members are stretched to the point of collapse, and residents of public housing – 500,000 citizens of NYC – are threatened with destruction of core services. Teamsters Local 237, representing 8,000 employees of NYCHA, has called a rally to spotlight the Bush destruction of public housing in NYC. Show your solidarity by supporting our Local 237 brothers and sisters at this rally!

Norma Rae: Ron Liebman's Speech

2008-05-06T18:13:00.000-07:00

from american rhetoric

Warshovsky: On October 8th, 1970, my grandfather, Isaac Abraham Warshovsky, age 87, died in his sleep in New York city. On the following Friday morning, his funeral was held. My mother and father attended. My two uncles from Brooklyn attended. And my aunt Minnie came up from Florida. Also present were 862 members of The Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the Cloth, Hat and Cap Makers Union of America -- also members of his family.
In death, as in life, they stood at his side. They had fought battles with him, had bound the wounds of battle with him, had earned bread together and had broken it together. And when they spoke, they spoke in one voice and they were heard. And they were black and they were white and they were Irish and they were Polish and they were Catholic and they were Jews -- and they were one. That's what a union is -- one.
Ladies and gentlemen, the textile industry in which you are spending your lives and your substance, and in which your children and their children will spend their lives and their substance, is the only industry in the whole length and breadth of these United States of America that is not unionized. Therefore, they are free to exploit you, to lie to you, to cheat you and to take away from you what is rightfully yours -- your health, a decent wage, a fit place to work.
I would urge you to stop them by coming over to Room 31 at the Golden Cherry Motel and pick up a union card and sign it.
Yes, it comes from the Bible, according to the tribes of your fathers: "Ye shall inherit." But it comes from Reuben Warshovsky: Not unless you make it happen.
Thank you.

Norma Rae 2

2008-05-06T16:40:00.000-07:00

from occams razor

Second Viewing: Norma Rae (1979)
1979 was a year when modest sleeper movies won big. Two of them occupy special places in my heart, perhaps because at age 22 I was in transition at the time. I was just out of college, underemployed and nearly broke. I also was not sure what I was going to do with my life. Breaking Away spoke to my underwhelming transitional feelings toward my new adult life. Dennis Christopher, who played the biker Dave Stoller in Breaking Away, had an uncanny physical resemblance to me. In addition, he exuded all my early 20’s awkwardness. Norma Rae, starring Sally Field as the unlikely union organizer Norma Rae Watson, spoke to my feelings of disempowerment while I worked as a vastly underpaid retail drone at a local Montgomery Ward.
Sally Field plays a young and attractive mill worker whose personal life is in something of a shambles. She has two children, one out of wedlock. She and her kids live with her parents, who also work at the mill. Norma is the epitome of poor white southern trash. She is seemingly destined to cater to dysfunctional married men looking for a quick orgasm for the price of a steak dinner. Things slowly change when a union organizer named Reuben (Ron Liebman) arrives from New York. He is charged with the likely futile task of convincing the workers of the mill in this hot and sticky Southern town to unionize. In part because Reuben is forced to take a room at Norma’s favorite No-Tel motel their lives begin to intersect.
In Norma Rae, Director Martin Ritt very well captures the poverty, ugliness, hassles and facelessness of the working class. Most of the extras appear to be local townies. Sally Field seemed an unlikely choice for this part since she had hardly shaken off the typecasting from her Flying Nun days. Yet from the start, she feels like one of the townies. Norma Rae lives in a mill town in the very Deep South, an area known for its hostility toward unions. Blacks and whites work together at the mill, but racism lingers close to its surface. Virtually everyone has working class poverty and their job at the mill in common.
Sally Field won Best Actress for her role as Norma Rae Watson. Throughout much of the movie, she would seem an unlikely choice, since there is little in her acting that comes across as particularly noteworthy. It is only as Norma Rae is increasingly exposed to the stresses of being a union organizer that, much as a locomotive builds up a head of steam, we discover what Sally Field is capable of. It is hard not to be dazzled by her explosion of deft acting in the final fifteen minutes of the film. If you have seen the movie, you will know the scene. It is one of these great scenes in Hollywood cinema. I suspect Sally Field won the award principally for this scene, and yet she also shines in more measured scenes in the film’s denouement.
An impossibly young Beau Bridges (well, it is 28 years old) plays her husband Sonny. Ron Liebman playing the union organizer Reuben is really the film’s principle supporting actor. Steeped in the New York City culture, Reuben gives Norma Rae a perspective of the world outside her insular southern town where she has lived her life. Regular exposure to Reuben’s intellect and passion begins to rub off on Norma Rae. He provides a means for her to tap her restless spirit for a greater good and thus give her a way to surmount her troubled past.
In some ways, Norma Rae reminded me of Dazed and Confused, but only in the sense that both films caught the sleepy southern town of the 1970s with eerie precision. As you might expect from its academy awards, Norma Rae is a much better movie. Both movies though seem populated with common folk rather than the buffed, skinny and overly pretty types Hollywood typically throws at us.
If you hunger for a powerful human story you should consider renting Norma Rae, whose message about the ability each of us have to rise above ourselves is timeless. I do not think any other movie since the classic It’s a Wonderful Life has told this story as well. Had I thought about it at the time, I would have added Norma Rae to my list of must see movies for progressives.

Norma Rae 1

2008-05-06T15:33:00.000-07:00

from wikipedia

Norma Rae is a 1979 film which tells the story of a woman from a small town in the Southern United States who becomes involved in the labor union activities at the textile factory where she works. It stars Sally Field, Beau Bridges, Ron Leibman, Pat Hingle, Barbara Baxley, Gail Strickland and Noble Willingham.
The movie was written by Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch, and was directed by Martin Ritt. It is based on the true story of Crystal Lee Jordan. It was marketed with the tagline "The story of a woman with the courage to risk everything for what she believes is right."
It won Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Sally Field) and Best Original Song (for David Shire and Norman Gimbel for "It Goes Like It Goes"). It was also nominated for Best Picture and for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. The film was also nominated to the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival and Field was awarded Best Actress for her performance.
Norma is a minimum-wage worker in a cotton mill that has taken too much of a toll on the health of her family for her to ignore her Dickensian working conditions. After hearing a speech by New York union organizer Reuben, Norma Rae decides to join the effort to unionize her shop. This causes dissension at home when Norma Rae's husband Sonny assumes that her activism is a result of a romance between herself and Reuben. Despite the pressure brought to bear by Management, Norma Rae successfully orchestrates an election to unionize the factory, resulting in victory for the union and presumably capitulation for the demands.

Matewan 20 Years Later

2008-05-06T15:20:00.000-07:00

from youtube user wvfilmmaker

In the twenty years since John Sayles made the film 'Matewan', many things have changed for the people involved and the towns it centered around.

Matewan 4

2008-05-06T13:47:00.000-07:00

The big shootout scene

Matewan 3

2008-05-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

A fallen striker is eulogized

Matewan 2

2008-05-05T20:38:00.000-07:00

The background events for the movie and the trailer

Hold The Fort: Labor Heroes

2008-05-05T20:36:00.000-07:00

image sources: better world heroes, americans who tell the truth, northland poster
music from the Folkways' Collection of Classic Labor Songs

HOLD THE FORT
We meet today in freedom's cause
And raise our voices high.
We'll join our hands in union strong
to battle or to die.
CHORUS:
Hold the fort for we are coming.
Union men be strong.
Side by side we battle onward.
Victory will come.
(Repeat after each verse)
See our numbers still increasing.
Hear the bugles blow.
By our union, we shall triumph
Over every foe.
Fierce and long the battle rages,
But we shall not fear.
Help will come whenever needed.
Cheer, my comrades, cheer.

Notes: from workers' union

Written by Philip P. Bliss, the song has an interesting history.
The title comes from a famous incident of the American Civil War. In October, 1864, when Union troops were trapped in a fort at Allatoona Pass, near Atlanta, General Sherman sent a message which was signalled by flags from mountain to mountain: "General Sherman says hold fast. We are coming." Despite heavy attacks, the men held the fort until Sherman's army rescued them.
A certain Major Whittle, who had served with the Union forces, told this story at a Sunday School meeting in Rockford, Illinois, in May, 1870. In the audience was Philip P. Bliss, a well-known singing evangelist. Inspired by the story, that night Bliss wrote a gospel hymn with the following refrain:
"Hold the fort, for I am coming!
Jesus signals still.
Wave the answer back to Heaven -
By Thy Grace we will'.”
Soon it was published in sheet music and became one of the songs used by Ira D. Sankey, an evangelist and gospel singer. In 1873, he introduced it in Britain during a revival tour. It appeared as the first song in his collection of Sacred Songs and Solos which was published in London in 1875 as a result of requests for the songs he had popularised there. Toward the end of the nineteenth century it was parodied by the British Transport Workers Union who used it in their hard-fought battles for recognition.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the Knights of Labor had also realized the militant quality of the song. In the 1880's, when the Knights reached their peak of seven hundred thousand members, they were singing:
"Storm the fort, ye Knights of Labor,
Battle for your cause;
Equal rights for every neighbor,
Down with tyrant laws!"
This version may well have found its way to England where the Knights had a number of local assemblies, and influenced the Transport Workers when they came to write their own much better version. It in turn also crossed the Atlantic, getting back to the United States where the Industrial Workers of the World, also know as the ”Wobblies”, took it up, and ever since it has been a standard union song.

Matewan 1

2008-05-05T19:14:00.000-07:00

from youtube user SCODgreenhood

The 1912-13 events at Paint & Cabin Creek are known as the first of the Coal Mine Wars of West Virginia. There was a march of 5,000 miners in 1919. Then the Matewan Massacre in 1920 led to the shooting of Chief Hatfield. The only movie made about this was filmed in 1987 by John Sayles. Finally with the help of Mother Jones and Bill Blizzard, apx. 15,000 armed miners attacked apx. 1,500 Company thugs, State Police, & 2,000 U.S. Military units in the Battle of Blair Mountain. The "RedNeck Army" (named for red cloth around their neck) surrendered when the U.S. Air Force threatened to bomb them.
In 2005, the West Virginia Archives and History Commission voted unanimously to recommend to the National Park Service that 1,600 acres of Blair Mountain be included on the National Register.
Coal mining companies and nearby landowners promptly sued to overturn the nomination. The Sierra Club moved to join the suit, and in May 2006 a West Virginia judge granted the Club's participation. That same month, the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed the Blair Mountain battlefield on its list of America's 11 Most Endangered Places. The United Mine Workers union also came out in support of the National Register listing because of its importance to the labor movement. Bibliography:"When Miners March", William Blizzard, "Thunder in the Mountains"; Lon Savage, "WV Mine Wars"; David A. Corbin

Democracy Now: The NYC Transit Strike 12/2005

2008-05-05T18:12:00.000-07:00

from the prelinger archives

Democracy Now! Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Headlines for December 21, 2005 Mayor Bloomberg Condemns New York City Transit Strike, MTA Workers Hold Firm-A Debate on the New York City Transit Strike

John L. Lewis: 1919

2008-05-05T17:58:00.000-07:00

from the prelinger archives

JOHN L. LEWIS LEADS MINERS' FIGHT IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
In November, 1919, Acting President John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers led 600,000 miners in a five week strike that crippled the bituminous coal industry and the nation as well. The strike was in direct defiance of a court injunction against such action and Woodrow Wilson denounced Lewis as a dictator. This was John L. Lewis' first clash with a United States president; he missed battle with no other president from then on up to Eisenhower.
On December 11, President Wilson and Attorney General Palmer presented Lewis with a proposal that would send the miners back to work: a 14% wage increase (they were getting $2.00 per day) and a commission to work out other questions in the dispute such as hours, health and safety standards. Lewis accepted immediately and the men returned to work, proving their loyalty to their country, he said. Attorney General Palmer commended Mr. Lewis for his wise and patriotic action.
The coal operators, however, charged Palmer with surrender and said that he feared a terrible situation if the government had been forced to jail the miners. A Congressional Committee decided to investigate the strike.
When John L Lewis retired 40 years later, in 1960, the coal miners wages had risen to $24.25 a day, the shanty company towns had been obliterated, safe and health standards had reached a new high. He said to the miners on his retirement: "I hope that each of you will believe through the years I have been faithful to your interests...that each of you will grant me an honorable discharge in approval of my work."

Where There is a Will... There Will be a Living Wage

2008-05-05T09:09:00.000-07:00

from the prelinger archives

Where There is a Will... There Will be a Living Wage
Throughout history, women and men in the labor movement have struggled to gain power in an economy that often seems to work against them, placing profit over people. For the past hundred years, the United States has seen great strides in workers’ rights, from the formation of unions, the eight-hour workday, child labor laws, and the creation of a minimum wage. Despite these gains, there exists a growing population of working poor, people who work full-time jobs, yet are unable to meet their most basic needs, including housing, food, child care, health care, and transportation. As traditional tactics and union influence become less effective, workers and advocates of workers’ rights are creating new and innovative strategies, which are being implemented in movements for a living wage.

Union Protest Of Walmart: 2000

2008-05-05T04:16:00.000-07:00

from prelinger archives

500+ Workers, students, community and anti-sweatshop activists, Jobs with Justice, SEIU, Teamsters, UAW, and many others converge on the Hadley, MA WalMart for a day of protest against globalization and WalMart in solidarity with the protests in Prague, 9/26/00.
Protest features a sweatshop fashion show, with filmmaker and USAS activist Michael Burns on the mic, Karl X reads a Robert Burns poem, Tom Taafe on the dismantling of affirmative action in higher education, Smith College radical cheerleaders, banjo playing folk singer, and a rainbow at sunset. Long live the people's republic of Amherst!

Unions Rally 2004

2008-05-05T04:01:00.000-07:00

from the prelinger archives

"…power in a union" "Stop the race to the bottom" is a union call for international solidarity. Unions rallied as part of NYC anti-World Economic Forum discussions and marches (Jan. 31-Feb. 4). The short documentary features interviews, speeches and music from labor organizers and activists from across the globe

Deadline 1946: Part 1

2008-05-04T22:17:00.000-07:00

from the prelinger archives
How left-wing labor unions engaged in political activism to combat corporate influence on the U.S. Congress in the years following World War II.
Producer: United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE)
Reviewer: Steve Nordby - 4 out of 5 stars - March 13, 2004

Subject: Not the history you get in school
At one time, labor unions were not so in line with big business and big government that they actually tried to promote the idea of helping democracy and produced films like this. We get a history of the collusion between business and government, and a great feeling of loss that FDR is no longer in the White House. The fighting spirit of unions in this film is completely absent from post-Reagan America. 16-20 minutes into the film the interconnection of supposedly different big businesses and the concentration of weath is illustrated. The collusion of the government with international business and industry under Nazism is equated to the "American Century". (Those interested in how those these ideals not only survive but occupy the highest levels of the US Government 2001-2004 should check out the "Project for a New American Century" http://www.newamericancentury.org/)
In part 2, we hear how Churchill diverted an invasion of Nazi-held France so that troops could be sent to suppress a democratic uprising against the Greek Royal family. Injunctions are cited by a union official with a heavy accent as a tool companies use to have the police power of the state break strikes. Footage of police beating up strikers in Philadelphia is the highlight. The result was a win for labor, but only to be followed by business counterattack. We are told it will become a company town, state, nation "and ultimately" BANG (illustration of an atom) war!
Ends with a patriotic call to democracy at the Republican president Lincoln's memorial.

Reviewer: Christine Hennig - 4 out of 5 stars - January 8, 2004

Subject: Death to the Scary Octopus of Big Business!
This film, made by the electrical workers union of the CIO in the late 40s, gives the other side of all those pro-business films also made during that time. It criticizes big companies like GE for cutting paychecks after the war, ostensibly because they could no longer afford to pay wartime wages. However, the unions research showed that production and labor costs to the company had actually gone down and that the pay cuts were done to increase profits. But it goes a lot further than just that issue, pointing out how American big business is getting bigger and bigger and more and more powerful. It also points out the links big American companies had with Axis companies during the war, and equates big businesses dream of an American Century with the Nazi goal of world domination. The answer is shown to be participating in strikes and voting the union ticket. This is actually pretty scary to watch, because Im sure things are ten times worse now in terms of big business dominating government. Of course, its hard to tell without doing your own research how accurate the film is, just as with the pro-business films of the periodits obviously meant to be propaganda. It is a fascinating account of union political views of the period. It also has lots of great propaganda graphics, including smashing fists and a giant octopus to represent big business. And theres a memorable, though somewhat puzzling, scene to represent the concept of 31 million dollars (how much of Americas assets are controlled by Morgan interests): They dont just talk about laying that much money in $100 bills end-to-end; they show a guy discovering the line of bills on the sidewalk and trying to pick them all up. A memorable film overall.
Overall Rating: ****.

ILGWU And The Signing Of Anti-Communist Clause: 9/3/1947

2008-05-04T13:28:00.000-07:00

from the nytimes

ilgwu-9-3-47 - Upload a doc

Cigar Makers Strike: 5/1/1884

2008-05-04T13:27:00.000-07:00

from the nytimes

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Cigar Makers Unrest: 2/21/1884

2008-05-04T13:26:00.000-07:00

from the nytimes archive

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They Made History

2008-05-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

from uft.org

They Made History - Upload a doc

Battery Park

2008-05-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

A screenshot from my own google map version of New Labor History sites (intended to compliment and enhance Tamiment's work in progress
An image from Newsday's New York History site of John Van Arsdale on the pole

This special online section combines community profiles with historical snapshots and maps from the turn of the century. Clicking through the section reveals just how much Long Island and Queens have changed over 100 years.

127 Monroe Street, 1908

2008-05-04T07:05:00.000-07:00

I came across the old photo above, on Flickr, while gathering resources for this site. Those kids could have gone to PS 177, which was right next door to their building. Right now that address is either part of the Coleman Oval ball field or the skating park that adjoins it.

Todt Hill-Iron Hill

2008-05-03T15:47:00.001-07:00

A screenshot from my own google map version of New Labor History sites (intended to compliment and enhance Tamiment's work in progress
Another view of Todt Hill below

Maiden Lane Slave Revolt

2008-05-03T15:43:00.000-07:00

A screenshot from my own google map version of New Labor History sites (intended to compliment and enhance Tamiment's work in progress

May Day Special Edition: Joe Hill

2008-05-03T03:54:00.000-07:00

Lyrics by Phil Ochs:

Joe Hill come over from Sweden shores
Looking for some work to do
And the Statue of Liberty waved him by
As Joe come a sailing through, Joe Hill
As Joe come a sailing through.
Oh his clothes were coarse and his hopes were high
As he headed for the promised land
And it took a few weeks on the out-of-work streets
Before he began to understand
Before he began to understand
And Joe got hired by a bowery bar
sweeping up the saloon
As his rag would sail over the baroom rail
Sounded like he whistled on a tune
You could almost hear him whistling on a tune
And Joe rolled on from job to job
From the docks to the railroad line
And no matter how hungry the hand that wrote
In his letters he was always doing fine
In his letters he was always doing fine
Oh, the years went by like the sun goin' down
slowly turn the page
And when Joe looked back at the sweat upon his tracks
He had nothing to show but his age
He had nothing to show but his age
So he headed out for the California shore
There things were just as bad
So he joined the industrial workers of the world
'Cause, The union was the only friend he had
'Cause, The union was the only friend he had
Now the strikes were bloody and the strikes were black
as hard as they were long
In the dark of night Joe would stay awake and write
In the morning he would raise them with a song
In the morning he would raise them with a song
And he wrote his words to the tunes of the day
To be passed along the union vine
And the strikes were led and the songs were spread
And Joe Hill was always on the line
Yes Joe Hill was always on the line
Now in Salt Lake City a murder was made
There was hardly a clue to find
Oh, the proof was poor, but the sheriff was sure
Joe was the killer of the crime
That Joe was the killer of the crime
Joe raised his hands but they shot him down
he had nothing but guilt to give
It's a doctor I need and they left him to bleed
He made it 'cause he had the will to live
Yes, He made it 'cause he had the will to live
Then the trial was held in a building of wood
And there the killer would be named
And the days weighed more than the cold copper ore
Cause he feared that he was being framed
Cause he found out that he was being framed
Oh, strange are the ways of western law
Strange are the ways of fate
For the government crawled to the mine owner's call
That the judge was appointed by the state
Yes, The judge was appointed by the state
Oh, Utah justice can be had
But not for a union man
And Joe was warned by summer early morn
That there'd be one less singer in the land
There'd be one less singer in the land
Now William Spry was Governor Spry
And a life was his to hold
On the last appeal, fell a governor's tear
May the lord have mercy on your soul
May the lord have mercy on your soul
Even President Wilson held up the day
But even he would fail
For nobody heard the soul searching words
Of the soul in the Salt Lake City jail
Of the soul in the Salt Lake City jail
For 36 years he lived out his days
And he more than played his part
For his songs that he made, he was carefully paid
With a rifle bullet buried in his heart
With a rifle bullet buried in his heart
Yes, they lined Joe Hill up against the wall
Blindfold over his eyes
It's the life of a rebel that he chose to live
It's the death of a rebel that he died
It's the death of a rebel that he died
Now some say Joe was guilty as charged
And some say he wasn't even there
And I guess nobody will ever know
'Cause the court records all disappeared
'Cause the court records all disappeared
Say wherever you go in this fair land
In every union hall
In the dusty dark these words are marked
In between all the cracks upon the wall
In between all the cracks upon the wall
It's the very last line that Joe Will wrote
When he knew that his days were through
Boys, this is my last and final will
Good luck to all of you
Good luck to all of you

May Is Labor History Month: We Do The Work

2008-05-02T17:34:00.001-07:00

More images the laborarts collection. The music is from the Folkways' Collection of Classic Labor Songs. This one is entitled, "We Do The Work, " by Jon Fromer.
The textual explanation for many of the images

May Is Labor History Month: Bread And Roses

2008-05-02T09:19:00.000-07:00

The images come from a great collection at laborarts:

LABOR ARTS is a virtual museum; we gather, identify and display images of the cultural artifacts of working people and their organizations. Our mission is to present powerful images that help us understand the past and present lives of working people. AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney has urged all international unions to cooperate in locating for display on Labor Arts "the treasure trove of cultural objects that have moved workers into action from the very inception of our movement."

Bread and Roses, version by Joe Glaser from the Folkways' Collection of Classic Labor Songs

As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: "Bread and roses! Bread and roses!"
As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for roses, too!
As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler -- ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

below the text that accompanies the buttons, banners, etc in the slide show

May Day Special Edition: There Is Power In The Union

2008-05-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

from youtube user WonderBoysFan, sung by Billy Bragg, the lyrics:

There is power in a factory, power in the land
Power in the hands of a worker
But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand
There is power in a Union
Now the lessons of the past were all learned with workers' blood
The mistakes of the bosses we must pay for
From the cities and the farmlands to trenches full of mud
War has always been the bosses' way, sir
The Union forever defending our rights
Down with the blackleg, all workers unite
With our brothers and our sisters from many far off lands
There is power in a Union
Now I long for the morning that they realise
Brutality and unjust laws can not defeat us
But who'll defend the workers who cannot organise
When the bosses send their lackies out to cheat us?
Money speaks for money, the Devil for his own
Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone
What a comfort to the widow, a light to the child
There is power in a Union
The Union forever defending our rights
Down with the blackleg, all workers unite
With our brothers and our sisters together we will stand
There is power in a Union.

Bridewell Prison

2008-05-02T09:04:00.000-07:00

A screenshot from my own google map version of New Labor History sites (intended to compliment and enhance Tamiment's work in progress. This location near City Hall Park's western edge on Broadway. The text:

In 1775, a debtors' jail was erected on the ground of City Hall. Half a century later, the Working Man's Party successfully fought for the elimination of debt as a crime.Work on a new and larger debtors prison or workhouse known as Bridewell, designed by Theophilus Hardenbrook, is begun, also in New York City Hall Park but nearer Broadway. The War for Independence interrupts construction of the two-story, dark gray stone building. During British occupation of the city both its City Hall Park prisons, old and new, are pressed into service to hold American POWs. Under the British Provost Marshal Cunningham, the older prison came to be called the Provost.

from the nypl digital collection