From Ashes to Action

In this riveting episode, Joel Sosinsky and Andi Sosin take us inside the 1911, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire—one of the deadliest workplace disasters in U.S. history—and the fierce determination to make sure it’s never forgotten.

146 immigrant workers, mostly young women. Locked exits. A burning building. And out of the horror—a reckoning. Labor laws. Fire codes. Frances Perkins. The seeds of the New Deal.

Joel and Andi helped launch and build the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition—and the public memorial that speaks in steel, fabric, and fire. This is about more than history. It’s about who we choose to remember—and who we’re still willing to fight for.

Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition  

The New York City Triangle Factory Fire  

Today's episode is brought to you by the Joan of Arc Scroll Medal, a beautiful brass alloy medal, designed by award-winning artist, Pat Benincasa. This uniquely shaped medal is ideal for holiday or as a special occasion gift!    Visit www.patbenincasa-art.com

Please Note: The views expressed by our guests do not necessarily reflect the views of the podcaster.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
• 9:55 Origins of Labor Activism and the Fire
• 19:11 Women at Work: Immigration and Suffrage
• 28:21 Forming the Remember Triangle Fire Coalition
• 34:52 Creating a Memorial that Honors Workers
• 46:33 The Legacy and Ongoing Struggle for Workers

Transcript

Pat:

Fill To Capacity where heart grit and irreverent humor collide. A podcast for people too stubborn to quit and too creative not to make a difference.

Pat:

Hi, I'm Pat Benincasa and welcome to Fill To Capacity . I'm so glad you're here. Episode 107, "From Ashes to Action," the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was one of the deadliest workplace disasters in US history and its impact still echoes. Today. On March 25th, 1911, a fire broke out on the eighth floor of a Manhattan garment factory packed with nearly 500 workers, mostly young Jewish and Italian immigrant workers, some just 14 years old, locked doors, a collapsed fire escape, narrow stairways ladders that couldn't reach. In just 18 minutes, 146 people died. Now, I gotta tell you, as the daughter of Italian immigrants, this story hits home, but it's not just about ancestry. The working conditions for immigrants, and I don't care where they come from. Those conditions matter then and now. These were workers, mostly young, mostly poor, put in harm's way while chasing a better life, and the system failed them.

Pat:

But out of the fire came fury and change that tragedy ignited safety reforms, still protecting workers today. That brings me to the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition founded in 2008 to keep this story alive and visible. Their mission to educate, commemorate, and advocate is still going. They're the force behind the public memorial now installed at the site of the fire so that those 146 names are not just remembered, but honored. And I have to say, this group truly sets the gold standard for how we carry memory forward. Their work is fierce, focused, and unforgettable.

Pat:

My guests are Joel Sosinsky and Adrienne, Andi Sosin, a formidable husband wife team. They are founding members of Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. Joel is Secretary of the Coalition, and Andi is co-author of the book, "The New York City Triangle Factory Fire," A powerful photo history that brings this tragedy to life through rare images and personal stories. I'm telling you it, it's a remarkable read, and I will put a link to the book in the show notes. Well, welcome Joel and Andi. This episode has been on my can't wait to do list. Welcome.

Joel :

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Pat:

Great. Let's start with why does the story of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire still matter today? Why is that?

Joel :

Well, it was at the time when labor unions were starting to get active in organizing. If you go back a year and a half before the fire was the uprising of the 20,000 garment workers walked off their jobs in New York City because of working conditions, and they were seeking unionization. Many of the shops settled with the unions to get back to work. But the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, one of the largest clothing manufacturers in the city, did not settle March 25th, 1911, and a fire breaks out on the eighth floor. There was no union there to basically say, we need some improvements, we need fire drills. Sprinklers were invented in the late 1870s, and they could have been installed throughout the building in case of a fire. But you know what? That would've cost the manufacturer's money and they'd rather put that money into their pocket.

Joel :

That's part of the story. But the fact of the matter is that the fire was one block east of Washington Square Park, and when the fire broke out, people saw the smoke, they went over to see what was going on. The fire engines got there right away. And as you said before, the ladders only reached up to the sixth floor. The people on the eighth floor where the cutters were, where the fire started, basically all of them were able to escape down the stairways or through the elevator that was working. They called up to the 10th floor where the management was and the packaging and the salespeople were, they escaped over the roof to the NYU law school, which was adjacent to the building. Nobody called down to the ninth floor until, you know, they started smelling smoke, and then they started racing, found one locked door.

Joel :

The door was locked because the owners were afraid that people would steal things. They were also afraid that union organizers would get in and talk to the people there. So there was only one exit in the elevator, and the elevator managed to save a whole bunch of people. Yeah, made several trips up and down. The last couple of people on the floor actually jumped into the elevator pit and landed on top of the elevator. Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, it turns out to be in our estimation, about families, because when you see the people who died in the fire, there were sisters and the mothers who were employed there. There were husbands of workers who were employed there. It was just a horrible thing.

Pat:

Why do you think this particular tragedy captured the public's attention and held it? What was it about the Triangle fire that struck such a deep cord?

Joel :

I think it was the women, because when you see the number of people who died in the fire, 127 women, 19 men, that was one thing. But it was also at the time when women did not have the right to vote, there were a bunch of women activists who were looking to get the right to vote. It was also the time when unions, as I said before, were trying to become more powerful. And so between the women and the labor movement, things move forward. One of the witnesses to the fire, and this is very important, was a woman named Frances Perkins, who you may have heard of.

Pat:

I was just gonna say, can we talk about one of my all time favorite people, Frances Perkins?

Joel :

Certainly a critical part of the story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

Pat:

Wait, before you go any further, Frances Perkins became President Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor, and she helped shape New Deal, Social Security, and Fair Labor Laws. Okay, take it away.

Joel :

Frances Perkins was near the building when the fire took out, so she was able to see the fire and to watch people jumping to their deaths from the ninth floor because it was either being burned to death or jumped to your death. The fire department had nets out to catch people, but from the ninth floor, the nets did not work. But Francis Perkins then became the head of the Factory Investigation Commission in New York State, and they went around all New York state looking at factories, common factories, other places, laundries bakeries, and they came up with, I think the number is 32 laws that were passed in New York State legislature basically protecting workers' rights. But she was very close with Franklin Roosevelt as he became governor of New York. And then President you, you mentioned that she became a cabinet member to Franklin Roosevelt. She was the first female cabinet member. Yes. And we believe that part of the deal that she made with Franklin Roosevelt was that if she was to be named labor secretary, there was this whole list of things that she wanted to get done, which were now called a New Deal. She is truly responsible for much of went on to get the New Deal and all of the important legislation that we still appreciate in this day and age.

Pat:

From what I understand, when she gave FDR the list, she said, if I can't have all of them, I don't want the job. Yeah.

Joel :

That's the story we've heard.

Pat:

Okay. Andi, I wanna ask you, most of the victims were young immigrant women, working long hours in dangerous conditions. How does their story echo in today's conversation about labor, immigration, justice,

Andi:

They were original immigrants. They were coming and fleeing pogroms in Russia and famine in Southern Italy. So they came to New York and the time were processed through, my grandmother went through Castle Garden, which was at the Battery. Before Ellis Island was open, she would call it Kissel Garden.

Andi:

These were young immigrant women. They were often brought to cousins relatives and were taken to go to work because many of them became the sole breadwinners for families. In the case of Caterina and Rosaria and Lucia Maltese, it was a mother and two daughters who went to work every day and the father was left with all the women in his family gone. It was an uncommon situation, but industrialization in the United States demanded this labor and offered the opportunity for young girls to actually make money and have a life of their own. And at the same time, women's suffrage was beginning and having its genesis in Great Britain and being echoed in the United States with women seeking a greater role in having a say over what laws they were bound to. It was a time of great upheaval. Joel mentioned the Uprising Of The 20,000 in 1909.

Andi:

At that time, the wealthy women who desired suffrage supported the strikers by bailing them out at the courthouse and helping the strikers with their strike. They held a strike parade and they got to ride in a fancy car. Immigrant workers became part of the cause of suffrage, and those two movements, the labor movement and the suffrage movement combined in the Women's Trade Union League and the Women's Trade Union League supported the unionization to help the women be able to do the jobs and also stay at home when they need to, when they would raise a family. The Women's Trade Union League was supportive of women both in the workplace and as family leaders.

Pat:

What you're highlighting is the intersection of social political upheaval. I don't know how many people can meet the moment, and here we have the moment for labor suffrage, the influx of immigration, the rise of industrial need. It's like all these things created an alchemy.

Pat:

That's right.

Pat:

Actually, a powerful alchemy because of the movements that came out of it. And I can speak to, when you talk about the pogroms, in Southern Italy, there's a thing called la Miseria- "the misery." And that's when my grandfather and my relatives started to come over. All these people leaving dire, dire circumstances coming to this country,

Andi:

You're getting enough to have to pay for a passage in steerage and photographs of huge crowds on the ships and being processed through Ellis Island and then fanning out into major metropolitan areas. So that there were a huge influx of immigrants in New York and in Philadelphia and in Boston. All along the East coast, the ships arriving from Europe really brought over the workers then who filtered into these shops? And because most garments were made in America at that time, they were made locally. We had transitioned from garments made at home during the Civil War. They figured out sizing for uniforms, and that then translated into women's wear and ready to wear sizes. And basically the invention of the shirtwaist for women, the adaptation of men's shirts became women's shirtwaists. They called them waists because they ended at the waist and then the long skirt was the completion of the outfit. And you could wear multiple shirtwaist with one long skirt and wash one and have one. So you know, women with very limited money and with very limited budgets was still fashion conscious. They could buy a shirtwaist for a dime. At the time, they were only making $6 a week, so $6 a week didn't go all that far when you had to pay for rent and food and then a blouse to wear.

Pat:

It's also another intersection of the world moving from handmade clothing to on the rack clothing, which is a sea change when you think about it.

Andi:

And sizing was created during the Civil War because otherwise people wore home spun.

Pat:

I wanna shift gears. How did, Remember The Triangle Fire Coalition come together? Did someone or a group of people say this history needs more than remembrance, it needs action.

Joel :

You gotta go back to 2009. And we became aware of a woman named Ruth Sergel who had created what is known as the Chalk Project. And the Chalk Project, which started in 2004, involved people going out to the addresses where the people who died in the fire live. Now, some of the buildings are still there, obviously, and some of them have been torn down. Now  instead of a tenement, there's a multi-story apartment building.

Joel:

At the time you'd go, you'd chalk the name and age of the victim and you'd say died in March 25th, 1911. And as you were doing that, people would come by and you'd talk to them and you'd be able to engage them in a conversation. The first rain would come and the chalk was gone. But we found out about that in 2009, and we started getting involved. The commemoration of the centennial of the fire in 2011 was on our minds, the coalition that devised the project, where we went to one of our members' homes and we developed these things we called shirtwaist kites, which are basically a wire hanger on which we attach a single piece of cloth in the shape of a shirt and in various fabrics.

Joel :

And for each of these shirtwaists, we created these sashes, which had the name and age of the victim that we could attach to each shirtwaist. So when you get down to the centennial in 2011, we had 146 people assemble in Union Square Park, handed out the shirtwaist, and then marched down Broadway to Washington Place, which is where the ceremony was, and marched in with 146 shirtwaists.

Pat:

Moving in a different direction. I wanna know the upfront and personal part, Andi and Joel, what pulled you into this work? Why did this story grab hold of you, Andi?

Andi:

Okay. I was a union kid. I grew up in a union family. My father was a printer for the New York Times, and he was part of the International Typographical Union, local number six, the big six, the good thing. I grew up in that union family. My father was able to support two daughters and his wife on a single salary, a good union salary. Both my sister and I went to college and I became a teacher. I became a language arts and social studies teacher in the city of New York. And I joined my union, the UFT.

Pat:

United Federation of Teachers.

Andi:

And I became an educator, and I ultimately became a literacy educator. And I met colleagues who were like-minded and unionists, and we decided to do a book called "Organizing the Curriculum," which was about teaching labor studies in the high schools and ideas for teaching labor studies because we knew that labor studies had been basically left out of the curriculum besides few major strike in history and the Triangle Fire, which was taught in New York State as part of immigrant history, labor history was much left out of the curriculum across the country. So we looked for project, we put together a book of essays called "Organizing the Curriculum," and during that time, we also founded a group called the Education and Labor Collaborative, and we held a forum, and that's where we met Ruth Sergel, who was doing this artistic chalk project and had created a website where she mapped the places each of the victims had lived so that they could do the chalking in front of their homes.

Andi:

We became interested in the Triangle Fire and her project as the centennial came. And in 2009, we launched the, remember the Triangle Fire Coalition as an advocacy and and activist organization that was interested in two missions. The first was to really make the centennial an important event. Yeah. And to have people remember the Triangle Fire in different artistic ways. There were all sorts of events that went on around the period of March 25th in 2011 that the organizers in our group were able to manage. And the families had events that went on and the artists put on things, and there was an oratorio written that was presented at Judson Church. There were many events that went on during that period of time.

Pat:

So Andi, your entryway into the Triangle Fire Coalition, your upbringing in a labor household, number one. Yes. Number two, becoming a teacher and then writing curriculum about labor for high school. So all of that. And then you meet the woman responsible for the chalk drawings that pulled you in.

Pat:

That is true. Now that's exactly right.

Pat:

Joel, how did you get pulled into this?

Joel :

I was born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. My family owned a business on Orchard Street. I spent most of my youth in the store. I graduated high school and went off to the State University of New York at Stony Brook, graduated there. But my favorite courses were the labor law courses and labor history. Don't ask me why. Being the son of a merchant with really no union background, who would've known? Anyhow, I met Andi at Stony Brook at the end of my junior year. We just celebrated our 57th year together.

Pat:

Oh, congratulations!

Joel :

Yes, thank you. I then went on to law school after law school, actually during the last semester of law school, in the middle of my finals was a civil service exam in New York City. And I passed the exam and I got on the list, graduated, went to work at a hospital for a while. I was in management. The crisis of 75 resulted in layoffs. I was laid off, but fortunately my name came up at that time on the civil service list. So I was appointed as an attorney for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. I go to the office and during the first week, one of the other attorneys comes into the office and puts a union card down in front of me and I go, what? He goes, attorneys who work for the city and civil service titles are all represented by the Civil Service Bar Association, which is affiliated with Local 237 of the Teamsters, at which point I go, "Far out."

Joel :

Well, I have that gene in me that wants to lead and get things done. So I became active in the Civil Service Bar Association and in 1983, I was elected chair of the Civil Service Bar Association. One of my accomplishments, which I'm very proud of, is that our welfare fund was the first welfare fund in the city to give benefits to registered domestic partners, which I think is a very important thing. Other unions have done the same thing. We were the first, I worked at that for 10 years, and in 1993, the head of the local change and the new president's name was Carl Haynes. And we had worked together and he invited me up to be his executive assistant and council at the local. In 2001, he was elected to the Internationals board is a vice president, and he was made the chair of the Public Services Division.

Joel :

He appointed me the Deputy of Public Service Division, and I served at that for 10 years, did whatever I had to do with God to organizing tribes across the country. I think one of the things that comes out of that I realize is a very important thing is that when you get into a union environment, you go on these organizing drives with other union members and advocates, and everybody refers to each other as brother and sister. It's a sense of family, which gets back to what I may have said later. One of the things about Triangle is the concept of family, and I bring that to the group of people we got together with to form our coalition who became family. Those are my Triangle family now, and it's one of those things that, oh my God, I retired from the Teamsters in 2010 and took up the cause of the memorial. I was active in getting the designation as a 501 C3 charitable organization so that people who donated could write that off in their taxes. And that time we were still pondering about how to get a memorial up.

Pat:

What I'd like to know, we're talking about the nuts and bolts of how the coalition came together now over the years, what kinds of challenges or obstacles have you faced in keeping this history visible and relevant?

Andi:

I'm gonna talk about keeping the history visible and relevant. The Triangle Fire represented how business exploited workers. What happened to cause the Triangle fire was that the businesses were able to resist union demands for safety. There was also a problem with the insurance industry at the time because insurance agents were paid commissioned based on the amount of premium that they collected. And so they were willing to ensure big risks for big premium. And there had been fires before in the garment factories, and many of them had been purposefully set to clear out old inventory that was done late at night. Nobody was there, nobody was hurt. This was an accidental fire. But it really did show how lax safety regulations that were fought against by businesses really contributed to a loss of life. Now we know it was an accident because the owners of the factory, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were in the factory the day it went up in flames that Saturday afternoon.

Andi:

There were no other significant groups of employees in the building at the time because the smaller shops had settled with the union for a half a day work on Saturday. But this was 4:45 on Saturday, and Triangle was still at work because they hadn't settled after the strike of 1909. So they were still at work, still roughly 500 people. We don't know exactly how many people were in the building. We don't know exactly who those people were either because the employers used subcontractors. So the employees reported to subcontractors rather than to the actual bosses of the, the factory. But there were many employees in the factory that day. And it was a full group, but just triangle workers were the ones who were the victims. What makes it relevant to today is that when you, we hear politicians saying, we're gonna get rid of all those regulations that hamper business. Some of the regulations that hamper business are safety regulations, protecting workers, and we see that happening now, and it's a call for unions to oppose that. Getting rid of regulations doesn't necessarily mean it's a good thing.

Pat:

Your work isn't just about remembrance, it's about advocacy. And so you're touching on it now. How do you see the coalition's role in current movements for labor rights and worker protections? Because that's what you just walked into with what's going on now.

Andi:

Exactly. And we are an activist organization. We are not just a historical organization. We believe that workers need unions. They need to have full rights and they need to be respected and have dignity. And that is worldwide. We have relationships with the International Labor Federation, and we have marched and protested where appropriate. We've protested against major brands, sneaker manufacturers who are abusing their workers, the people in Bangladesh who have had too many tragedies that look just like triangle between the Tarzeen factory fire and the and collapse of Rana Plaza. Those are new examples of an old problem. We are transitioning at this point because having completed the memorial and having an actual triangle fire memorial, we are transitioning into being an educative and an activist organization that remembers triangle in the hopes that people will take up the defense of workers, make their safety a stronger issue. What came out of Triangle was safety laws that protected everybody. We have exit doors and doors that open outwards and sprinkler requirements. What New York State did to protect its workers, including workers' compensation insurance, traveled from state to state and as people wanted those protections,

Pat:

And let's not forget, fire escapes redesign so that they didn't twist and the steel didn't buckle. And when you go anywhere in New York, you see these fire escapes everywhere.

Andi:

That's true. Yeah.

Joel :

The fire escapes is an interesting story. In the fire, people tried to escape to the fire escape because at the time the building codes required three stairways in the building. So, there were two stairways, and the inspectors allowed the fire escape to be counted as the third exit. A bunch of people went onto the fire, escape it, detached from the building, fell to their desks.

Pat:

Now let's talk about the memorial.

Joel :

The memorial design had already been picked and we knew that it was going to be a collective ribbon, as we're calling it, that goes from the ninth floor down to the top of the first floor. But you had to anchor that to the building. And what did we find out about the building? It's an iron core building, and attached to the iron core are the, is the brickwork of the building. In order for us to safely hang the memorial, we had to spend an additional $800,000. It was to go up the side of the building, remove the brickwork, get back to the iron core attachment pieces, put back the brickwork so the memorial could be hung. The question is why did the fire escape detach from the building? Because it was attached to the brickwork and not to the iron core. That was one of the clues that we got. We were able to raise all the money we needed to pay for the memorial. We got a grant from the State of New York of $1.5 million. But that meant we had to raise basically over the course of time, another $1.5 million and God bless the various local unions, individuals, organizations that contributed to make up that amount of money.

Pat:

What is this Triangle Fire Memorial?

Andi:

I'm gonna start by sharing, building a memorial. A permanent public art memorial was the second mission after putting on a centennial. And Ruth Sergel, who founded the, Remember The Triangle Fire Coalition, had made attempts to see how to do that, engage it. After the centennial, Mary Anne Trasciatti became president of the Coalition, and she is a labor history professor at Hofstra University. She's strong leader and was able to engage the whole group in this mission of creating a public art memorial. We wanted it to be close by or at the site of the fire, which is a building owned by NYU called the Brown Building of Science. Now it was the Asch building when it was built in 1900. Then it was turned over a few years after the fire NYU had been leasing classroom space in it. And then Mr. Brown bought it and donated it immediately to NYU.

Andi:

It is now an NYU owned laboratory building. The idea of siting the memorial at the site of the fire was very attracted to us and we had to negotiate with NYU for the ability to place a memorial on their building. And they said it so that it would be the exterior of the building only. And we then came to a memorandum of understanding between the Coalition and NYU, we were able to launch an international design competition for designs that met the parameters we fundraised to engage a competition director whose name is Ernesto Martinez. He's an architect and he created an international design competition for designs that would meet the criteria, a public art memorial that referenced the triangle fire and would explain it.

Joel :

There were over 70 entries from 32 countries. When we got to the 10 finalists, we went back to NYU and showed them the 10 finalists.

Joel:

We had a jury made up of architects and designers and historian, a member of the families. We brought in all the groups who were interested in making that The Triangle Fire was represented appropriately in this design.

Joel :

And when we got down to the 10 finalists and we finally chose the one, we didn't know who the people were because it's all anonymous. And it came down to we picked "Reframing the Sky," which is the name of the memorial by Uri Wegman. And Richard Joon Yoo. Happened to be two New York City residents. They have been active with us since then.

Joel:

Their design was modified later on. We had to go before the community board and then to the Landmarks Preservation Commission because the building is landmarked by the city of New York. It's a landmark because it was the site of the fire.

Joel :

It's a national historic monument.

Andi:

We had a lot of regulatory issues going forward that we had to do after we had a model of what the, the memorial would look like. And it was a stainless-steel panel that rose along the corner of the building up to the ninth floor. It would've been shiny stainless steel. And some of the building residents at the community board from the building across the street were concerned. They thought that the shiny stainless steel would reflect into their apartments

Joel :

And set them on fire.

Andi:

And in response to that though, the designers were in and Richard suggested that we etch the stainless steel and make it non-reflective. And the way they thought about doing that was to bring the public in as to make a collective ribbon. And we actually then brought in the public to FIT fashion, the Fashion Institute of Technology. And people sent in or brought in scraps of fabric that were meaningful to them to remember their families or their connections to the Triangle Fire. We publicized this on our website. We sent out brochures, hundreds of people sent in and brought in scraps of fabric. And I brought in my father's New York Times Apron. And Julia Wolfe, who is a composer, did an oratorio based on the Triangle fire, which was beautiful. It was premiered at the New York Phil Harmonic. She and a chorus of teenagers came and sang at the Collective Ribbon Event. And that was a weekend. And we created a collective ribbon with 400 feet of muslin, covered in scraps and patches.

Joel :

And one of the interesting things about the collective ribbon, As the ribbons were done, they would go, and they would be photographed. And so every piece of clothing

Joel & Andi:

Or every piece of cloth,

Joel :

Every piece of cloth is identified. And we can actually tell where on the memorial that piece of cloth is located. It's like her father's union apron may be on the sixth floor between six and seven, but if you wanna go to the website, ultimately, it's not up yet. But ultimately people will be able to, oh yeah, I have put a piece there that's up there. 

Pat:

Your story, this project is like a magnetic force field. It's attracting the arts, music, literature, and best of all people who have fabric and cloth that means something to them.

Andi:

Somebody brought their grandmother's or mother's hair and sewed it into the, and that all was then photographed, and the photography etched into the metal, it's really gorgeous. It goes up the corners of the building to the ninth floor, which is where the victims stood on the window sills before they jumped.

Pat:

What I love about this memorial, it features, names and testimonies in English, Yiddish, and Italian.

Andi:

That's right.

Pat:

That is really something to incorporate those languages.

Andi:

The explanation for the memorial is a short piece of text that was written by Kevin Baker, who is a fairly prominent writer and on the board of the, remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. And Kevin wrote a piece of text, which is in English, and then it was translated into Yiddish and Italian that explains the tragedy and its importance. And the memorial begins with his piece of text and then ends with the translations on the other end. The memorial wraps around the building with the names suspended above the first floor in reverse steel so that it reflects down to a panel of where the viewer looks at. The names in reflection can see themselves and can see the sky at the same time. So that's why the title is "Reframing the Sky."

Joel :

I would tell you anybody who comes to New York City should come and take a look at the Triangle Memorial. For many years. We'd be out there for whatever reason and people would come by and say, do you know where the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire happened? And we would point over our shoulders and go right in this building. Because up until the time we put the memorial, there were actually three plaques on the building, two of which Andi mentioned, which was the National Historic Monument and the New York City landmark. But on the 50th anniversary, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union put up a plaque also. So those were the three plaques on the corner. But they're still there. You can still see them, but now when people walk down there, they're go, what's this? And it's the type of thing where if you start at the beginning and sort of walk around the corner, there's a whole line of text with quotes from people going back to the fire itself. We are very proud of the design, incredibly proud of the people who have joined in this. People get involved and they just latch on. It's the people, it's the event itself.

Andi:

Each year we've been doing a commemoration event on the anniversary of the fire, and some years is bigger than other years, but unions in particular are drawn to remember the fire because that's part of the union movement and part of the New Deal. Frances Perkins had the ideas for the New Deal. One of them was the Fair Labor Standards Act, and another one became the Wagner Labor Act that authorized collective bargaining and unions as the preferred way of dealing with labor peace in the United States. And before that, unions were considered conspiracies and restraint of trade and were illegal. And union leaders were often jailed this authorized unions and strengthened the labor movement. And that's really one of the most important outcomes of the fire, was the fact that more people were safe, and more unions were able to protect those people.

Pat:

The memorial being a work of public art, as someone who has done public art projects, a seven-ton glass and steel skylight sculpture on the state capitol grounds, which means I had to deal with federal, city and state. I'm getting the head nods because you know what I'm talking about. 

Andi & Joel

Oh, absolutely. 

Pat:

In the quarter inch contracts, memorandums about every bit of minutiae. But I digress. What I wanna say when it comes to public art, the penultimate compliment is this. It looks like it's always been there. And it sounds like this beautiful ribbon memorial integrated beautifully with the corner of the building. It must look like it's always been there.

Andi:

It's a beautiful design.

Pat:

I'm gonna switch gears here. We're almost near the end. It's been said that in map-making maps are not neutral. They reflect the choices and the biases of the mapmaker. The same goes for monuments. You've said this is one of the only public memorials in the United States dedicated to workers. What does that say about who we choose to remember and who gets left out?

Joel :

We choose to remember rich people, powerful people who have made changes in this world. What I think our memorial says is, in order for these rich people to get where they were, they needed workers to work the factories and work the businesses and the mines and the other places, which brought them the money. The fact of the matter is we live in a society where you have some incredibly rich people, don't like to pay a lot of taxes, and you have an incredible population of people who could use government assistance in whatever form, which is what the tax system provides for. So it's frustrating.

Pat:

So, what have you seen or heard from people visiting the memorial that really, really hit you

Andi:

During the commemoration ceremony? We read the names of the victims each year and we place carnations for each victim as a symbol. Each of the family members who show up regularly recite the names of their lost family members. It is a moving and emotional moment. Personally, I had no connection with Triangle, but my grandmother worked in the garment industry. Okay. I know that she either knew these people or knew of these people. My parents grew up in New York, they knew about Triangle. It's an emotional time for lots of people, descendants of these victims. The Maltese women have morphed into a family association where other family members and they're part of the coalition, we all respect the family members connection to Triangle. And knowing that we have that background, we've been able to move forward into more contemporary issues like the women in Chinatown who were working in the Chinatown sweat shops and went on strike in 1982.

Andi:

And the union prevailed at that point as well. So, we are still working with the unions. We're very close with the Central Labor Council in New York. And other unions across the country have contributed to the memorial. They feel connected as well. This tragedy has legs basically because it represents the other tragedies that have happened in industry. I'm thinking about the Colorado Coal miners and actually I think they were silver miners. They were on strike the coal miners in West Virginia. And that union struggle. The struggle continues. All of us unions now are more threatened than they have been in many years. So this administration was actually hostile to unions and collective bargaining has been ended with a stroke of a pen for federal workers right now. And that's gonna be a struggle. We are morphing into a much more activist organization and we're trying to, uh, make sure that people remember the Triangle Fire and what happened afterwards that made life better for everybody.

Pat:

As we wrap up our conversation, Joel, Andi, thank you. And thanks to the, remember the Triangle Fire Coalition for your tireless, vital work. History is so fragile, it disappears when no one's looking. But remembering, it's not just about facts or dates, it's about honoring the life of a community saying you mattered. You still do.  That kind of remembering, doesn't just preserve the past, it holds us together.

Andi:

I wanna invite people to go to our website, remember the trianglefire.org because on that, we do have a part about the memorial, and we would definitely invite people to use the resources page. Find out more about the memorial, find out about the Triangle Fire itself. Our resource page includes a page for educators, a page for the general public, links to important books. And we have novels. There is a host of art related to the Triangle Fire. We've tried to curate the pages so that things that come out are on top. I curate the resources page. There's a link on that page to my email.

Pat:

I will put your website on the show notes because it is a one stop has everything like you're outlining. It is a beautiful, remarkable website.

Andi:

I wanna give props to the Kheel Center at Cornell University, which is also a very important source of original and contemporaneous records about the Triangle Fire and invite people to actually come to New York and see the memorial.

Pat:

Andi, Joel, thank you so much. Big respect for you two and what the Coalition is doing. Thank you for coming on today.

Andi & Joel:

Thank you, Pat. It's been a pleasure.

Pat:

Hey listeners, thank you for joining us today and take care. Bye.