The delphi university. I am a founding university of the remember the Triangle Fire Coalition and a coauthor with my colleague andi sosin of the new york city triangle factory fire. I will briefly introduce my colleagues on the panel and they will have more time to tell you about themselves shortly. All of us are members of the remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, which you will hear more about as we discussed. And we are all committed to keeping the memory of the victims alive and visible. We began our Work Together as part of a team organizing a citywide commemoration for the centennial of the tragedy in 2011. This rapidly spread from a citywide commemoration in new york to a national and international Generations International commemorations around the world. Were educators, activists, and historians. Briefly, dr. Mary anne trasciatti is a professor of rhetoric at Hofstra University as well as president of the remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, which we are finding is no small task. Rose imperato is an activist and Founding Member of the remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. She works at the Murphy Institute with cunmy here in new york. Dr. Andi sosin also an activist and a Founding Member of the remember the Triangle Coalition and a coauthor of the new york city triangle factory fire. As members of an organization dedicated to memorialize in an event that many diverse constituencies hold dear, we are aware that context is everything. Our discussion today is not so much focused on parsing the events of that day, but on examining the movements, the art, the rhetoric, and the continued conflicts that have rippled out from that moment at a time a little over 100 years ago. The site of the infamous triangle factory fire of march 25, 1911 continues to serve the city and nation as a living memorial. The memory of the fire has been continually renewed and utilized as a touchstone in American History and politics and American Culture. Even after 100 years, the fire has not lost its residents. Its power to evoke strong feelings of sadness and anger, but also of hope. Most consequentially, the fire has not lost its relevance, its symbolic power for contemporary political discourse, which we will have more to say about contemporary political discourse, im sure. That the triangle factory fire is still a potent symbol has been the result of persistent efforts on the part of many, activists, unionists, artists, politicians, historians, educators, and citizens. To preserve the memory of this moment in history as an affirmation of individual dignity of each worker and as a usable path in the ongoing discourse surrounding labor issues in the u. S. And abroad. The meaning of the fire has been shaped and contested from the beginning. The year before, the main street fiery new jersey killed dozens of young women in an unsafe new jersey factory. But their horrific deaths were not noticed enough to facilitate change. The triangle fire would be different. Played out in new york, a city where labors voice was rising and women were fighting to be counted, a city with dozens of competing newspapers. The morning after the tragedy, blazing newspaper headlines told the story of the mostly jewish and italian young women who perished the day before. The images were graphic and the rhetoric piercing. One paper shouted, how long will the workers permit themselves to be burned as well as enslaved in their shops . And blamed the owners who escaped the building while other human beings who piled up profits for them, died in burned, crushed, mutilated heaps. The meaning of the fire was contested from the beginning. City leaders were anxious about a further uprising and did not want the victims to become martyrs. Mayor gainer announced the unidentified bodies would be interred in a cemetery in brooklyn far away from the sentiments of lower manhattan, to avoid protests. So the unions organized a mass funeral procession through lower manhattan. Thousands solemnly marched as hundreds of thousands lined the streets under clouds and rain. When the silent marchers reached Washington Square, insight of in site of the factory building, one reporter noted, a long drawn out hard piercing cry, the mingling of thousands of voices, sort of a human thunder in the elemental storm, a cry that was perhaps the most impressive expression of human grief ever in the city. This cry for grief was for once turned to action. One person has called the tragedy the fire that changed america. Frances perkins, secretary of labor under fdr, maintained years later, that the new deal began on the day of the fire. Indeed, reformers and unionists seized the tragedy as a touchstone for labor organizing and safety reforms. Union membership in new york swelled from 30,000 to 250,000 and a culture of unionism was born. Traditionally an tiunion tammany traditionally, antiunion at tammany hall became a driver of progressive change and surprisingly created a model for the National New Deal reforms to follow, as well as the workplace standards we all expect today. As the century progressed, memory of this Pivotal Moment has often waned. Our history books, hollywood films, and culture in general tend to feature the economist a feature white men very important white men, so the story was largely lost to time, save the yearly commemoration and family members. The 50th anniversary did see a resurgence of interest as Eleanor Roosevelt and Frances Perkins attended the ceremony and a seminal work was published on the fire. Newspaper articles were written and survivors interviewed. The decades between the 50th at 100 anniversary witnessed the rapid decline of labor and the story faded more from collective memory in the city and abroad. As the centennial approached, i surveyed School Textbooks and found cursory treatment of the fire and the changes that result out from the grief that rippled out from the grief. There may be a few paragraphs, half a page, in a u. S. History book, the same that was given to the slocum fire. They were treated as disasters and that was the end of the story. Over the years when i would Ask University students i teach students who are going to be english and social studies teachers about their knowledge of the tragedy, a few people raise their hand and had just a vague awareness. The story was not essential to American Culture any longer. Now when i ask students entering this generation, the majority of students raise their hand and they know something about the triangle fire, which is very encouraging. Davids important work i think andi may talk about this later published in 2003 perhaps led the resurgence of interest. Inspired by his work, and artist began the public art project job, a Massive Movement to remember through the arts was born. The chalk project brings people out to the city every march 25 to chalk the names of triangle victims on stoops. This powerful active naming the victims, and a similar spirit to the Vietnam Memorial and aids quilt, has inspired new ways of looking at the tragedy and memorializing the victims. My own personal experiences with the project have been some of the most profound teaching opportunities i have had. I often go with middle school classes. It is always tricky taking middle School Students into the city, but they become very serious as they chalk the names and they become public teachers. People see these kids not from the neighborhood, why are you chalking up my stoop . The students tell the story and they feel like they are public historians. They never forget it. The teachers i worked with tell me when the kids see them later, they always talk about the project. My colleagues and i will discuss this dynamic more as our conversation unfolds, but i want to emphasize the importance of the singular, living memorial, the chalk project, to all the efforts that have followed. A small group of people can make great change, but this simple art project has sparked so much creative output and political activism that i do feel the truth in the sentiment for sentiment first hand. In the last few years, there has been so much creative output. Many plays and apparatus about the fire have been produced, quilts sewn, novels written, School Curricula crafted. Much political discourse is framed once again by the triangle factory fire and the activists who followed through on making things better. My niece recently sent me a playbill for a triangle fire play performed at her local high school in suburban houston. Mary anne recently got back from a street naming in italy. We find that this story is once again central in our collective conscience and bringing people together across the country and overseas to Work Together for change. I can start preaching at this point i tend to so before i start preaching, i will turn the discussion over to my colleagues. Professor Mary Anne Trasciatti of posture university. Thank you. [applause] dr. Trasciatti thanks, rob, and thank you everyone for being here today. I am going to begin with a question i asked myself and hopefully answer, or at least begin to answer, in this presentation. It is a question i certainly wont answer it, it is a bigger question. I have started writing about it and think about it far too often. It is an important question. The question is, why does the memory of triangle stick . Why this and not other things . That is a rhetorical question. What is there about triangle that moves people that maybe does not happen with other events, other issues . In the u. S. , im sure you know, so many efforts are made to ignore contemporary labor struggles and history. What is there about the story of triangle that makes it so affecting . I use the word to get affect, it makes people feel something about this story. What makes this lf affecting for what makes this so affecting for those who come into contact with it, both at the time and now . Here are just a few thoughts that i have in answer to that question. I appreciate anything you might add later about why you are here, what you know, and what you think. First of all, it is a rich narrative. This is a story that can be told in a variety of ways. It can be framed i a m a communication scholar, and framing is an important concept. The story can be framed in a lot of ways. One way it cant be framed, which is advantageous for memory in the u. S. , which as a story of radical labor organizing or activism. The girls at triangle for girl who led the uprising in 1926 became a communist. In fact, the union she helped build wanted to deny her a pension because she was a communist. But in 1909 and 1911, she was not. The girls at triangle were not radicals. That part of the story does not have to be effaced. These are innocence, that is an s, that isre innocent an advantage. It is not a story of radicalism. It is a story of migration. These are people who came here from italy, russia, other places, for work, for a better life, however you want to frame the story of migration. This is in part a story of migration. We in the coalition dont tell it that way, although we are embarking on a project to map memorials to the victims i dont want to use that word to the triangle dead in italy, which is in part an effort to reframe the story as a story of migration. There are memorials in italy. In sicily, all 24 of the triangle that from that region have been memorialized with street plaques and images. It is in part a story of migration. It is also a story about new york city, the fashion capital of the world, a destination for immigrants from everywhere. It is a story about greenwich village, Washington Square, a Meeting Place for all kinds of people, and in particular it was in 1911. It is a story about worker struggles for better wages and a and for safer working conditions. And by workers, with regard to the story of triangle, i mean particularly, although not exclusively, women workers. Workers tend to be gendered when the term workers tend to be gendered when we speak about it. If you ask people to imagine a worker, at least until recently, they would imagine a guy. The triangle is about women workers. That is the story that we tend to tell in the coalition. We tend to begin the story with a struggle, by women workers, two years prior to triangle, which you may know as the which may you know as the uprising of the 20,000, which began with a walkout at triangle. It involved mostly jewish women workers. They were led by a russian immigrant jewish teenager, claire linley. The strikers from the ticket mind faced hostility from police and passersby and socalled respectable citizens. It was not popular when it began, and part of the reason is because the women who were striking, who were outdoors asking for better wages and safer working conditions, were space, unadvertised. That they work with their bodies in public space . Analogies were made between striking women workers and prostitutes. They are both, in a sense, streetwalkers, advertising the use of their bodies as a way to make money. They were treated very hostility. Clara lemlich had several ribs broken and prostitutes in jail said, you guys are getting treated worse than we do and we make more money. There were all kinds of linkages. It was only the presence of middleclass women, dressed well and untouchable, so does so to speak, that helped to stem the violence. The strike was both a success and failure. It brought union shop and Safety Measures but failed to bring those things to triangle. The owners max blanck and isaac harris resisted. Without a union or enforceable laws to protect workers, the factory system was a tragedy waiting to happen at triangle, and indeed it did happen. When it happened, it was very visible. I think that is the second answer i have for why this event is so important. There were other fires in new york city. I have actually read other accounts of people watching them from Washington Square park. There was a fire right before triangle that was deadly and awful, but it was largely invisible, so no one saw it. That was in newark. There were other workplace deaths, horrific accidents and in mining, timber, railroads, meatpacking. But triangle was visible and not just visible. It engaged the full sensorium of new yorkers. It was audible and smell of able and smellable as well. Middleclass new yorkers, affluent new yorkers, were not used to having their senses assaulted by the factory system. The workers were, loud sounds, injuries, smells, fights. But wellheeled new yorkers were not. They saw smoke. Womens bodies plunging out the window and exploding on the ground. They heard fire bells scream. Of course, the iconic flood dead, thud,c thud , dead reported by william gunn shepard. They smelled smoke. They smelled wet, burned stuff. As horrific as the sounds, i expect they smelled charred human flesh. That was a material rhetoric. It acted on the whole person, the mind as well as the body. It said the people, look, listen, and act. The visibility of triangle, though perhaps not the other sensory reaches, were expanded in the reportage that followed. Images of women were published, images of police, the image i showed you that was an iconic image, looking at the women, illustrations of the disaster. Some of these were quite macabre, very accusatory, and they still retain the power to move us. These images, this language, was reported in englishlanguage papers, also italian language and yiddish language. That way, it traveled the globe. We are still in the early stages of doing research on the reportage and italian newspapers. One thing we know is the language of triangle is different when reported by the italians. It was not a tragedy, it was a crime. It was a very explicit indictment of the system. In fact, triangle became resosident so nant that it is now in italy synonymous with the observation of International Womens day, march 8. It was only in 1987 that historians published the finding that the fire actually did not happen on march 8, it happened on march 25. And so that what did italians do since they are good at reworking anything for their advantage . It is a legend and . It is a legend and it is even better it is not historically accurate, it is a legend, even better to build a holiday on a legend. But this is how powerful these images were. What else . The rituals that rob mentioned. Workers mourn their own. They performed their grief, their solidarity, their determination to seek justice. These rituals engage people. The funerals went on for days. One person reported that some people got lost, they had no idea what funeral possession they were in. The largest funeral was april 5, 1911, also a political demonstration. It was a union led procession. The women fought for this for for this, for the unidentified victims, originally seven of them. 100,000 people marched slowly in the rain with empty caskets, no banners save for we mourn our loss, no slogans, no songs. No nothing. An estimated 400,000 participants marching silently, hundred thousands, the others watching them, and during the them, enduring the rain. For those who participated, it must have been a powerful communal experience, asomatic experience, feeling the rain, hearing the silence, watching the hearses. These images are haunting. Marching for triangle continued. Suffrage workers invited triangle workers to margin their parades. The mayday parade became the ritual of marching past the triangle building. They would be loud and rowdy. They got the triangle, silence. Until the past until they passed the building again. So revered, so send if i was this spot. The coalition honored these rituals. We marched with sure wastes. The intention was to invoke the spirit of the ancestors. They do haunt us. They look like the garments made and worn by triangle workers. They resemble the banners we mourn our loss. But they are empty space, like the empty caskets. They cant be filled. These are lives that cant be brought back. The shirtwaists are symbolic, but also