Listen: Triangle Factory Fire’s Lessons for Today
The annual Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Memorial is being held today in Manhattan.
By Bob Hennelly
This week on the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour we mark the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in lower Manhattan when 146 mostly young immigrant women died a gruesome death back in 1911.
The anti-union owners had locked exits to keep these workers at their machines and to limit access by union organizers. Many of them still in their teens had to jump several stories to their deaths to escape the firestorm that in just minutes tore through the factory.
Tuesday in lower Manhattan the descendants of those women, members of the labor movement and their supporters will gather at 11:30 a.m. at Washington Place and Green Street, just a block east of Washington Square Park. They will commemorate that tragedy and resolve not to let the labor and workplace safety reforms enacted over the last century be undermined by the Trump-Musk junta which has tried to decimate vital federal agencies like the Department of Labor and the EPA.
In the first 50 days of the junta, which includes the unelected billionaire Elon Musk, the regime has tried to illegally fire hundreds of thousands of federal civil servants who do essential work like forest fire fighting or nursing in Veterans Administration hospitals.
Late last week President Trump added the U.S. Department of Education, created by an act of Congress in 1979, to this list of vital federal agencies he's trying to dismantle by executive order. The wreckless move upends a wide array of programs local communities rely on to educate millions of children with special needs as well as the nation's higher education finance system that so many families depend on.
Meanwhile, the GOP Congress is pushing $2 trillion in cuts to lifeline programs like Medicaid and Medicare to fund another round of obscene tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and corporations that have seen their share of the national wealth skyrocket while ten of millions of working Americans struggle to get from month to month.
At the same time, U.S. federal immigration officials are indiscriminately arresting hundreds of people they believe to be Venezuelans here in the United States illegally who they allege are members of a violent gang. These detainees have been sent to a private prison in El Salvador in direct violation of a federal judge's order that immigration officials document the basis for these deportations which the Trump administration has refused to do.
Meanwhile, scores of grassroots protests have sprung up across the country to protest the unprecedented power grab by President Trump who has described himself in social media as a "King."
Over the weekend at rallies convened in Wall Township and Bridgewater standing room only crowds turned out to hear U.S. Senator Andy Kim speak about the Trump-Musk junta's attack on essential federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
In this episode we hear from Debbie White, RN, president of NJ HPAE, Maura Collinsgru NJ Citizen Action Director of Policy & Advocacy and Eric Benson with NJ Policy Perspectives campaign director NJ for the Many who all spoke at the weekend rallies.
We also hear from NY Senator Zellnor Myrie (D-Brooklyn) who is running in the June Democratic primary for Mayor.
Listen to the entire show below: