Click above to view our event program
The events depicted were not mere items in a text book. Unfortunately,
they still resonate. As our presentation makes clear, workers are still
dying — in the United States and around the world — as a result of
negligence and unsafe working conditions. Fires still occur in garment
sweatshops, child laborers still toil, oil workers and miners are constantly
sacrificed on the altar of greed. Unions and collective bargaining are
under assault.
 it 
Hershl Hartman (left) and Bill Ratner
“A Flame That Keeps Burning” produced and edited by Jeffrey Kaye and directed by Allan Katz, drew on material from a number
of different sources. In particular, “Bread and Roses,” the 2000
play produced by the Sholem Community and written by Katherine
James with Rose Auerbach, Hershl Hartman, Michael Hersh, Alan
Levine, Linda Post, Bill Ratner, and Eric Schoenbaum.
From left:
Janet Hawkins,
Hershl Hartman, Bill Ratner
|
The first major strike
of garment workers,
the “Uprising of the
20,000” began on
November 23, 1909.
It came the day after a
packed meeting called
by the International
Ladies Garment
Workers Union
(ILGWU) in New
York’s Cooper Union.
 it 
The shirtwaist
(blouse) makers,
mostly Jewish and Italian women and teenagers, voted for an industry-wide strike to protest poor wages and working conditions. The strikers
received help from the New York Women's Trade Union League, which
united workers with upper and middle class women fighting for, among
other causes, the right to vote.
During the presentation, the audience was called on to join in — by singing and by playing roles as garment workers and their supporters. The lines included, a Jewish and union oath that touched off the 1909 “Uprising of the 20,000,” a strike for better working conditions:
"If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge,
may this hand wither from the arm I now raise!"
 it 
Historical Background
The fire on March 25, 1911 at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in
New York City killed 146 workers, mostly young Jewish and Italian
women. The two Jewish owners of the company were acquitted of
manslaughter charges. The fire led eventually to workplace safety laws, and remains a vivid symbol of the need to ensure a safe
workplace.
 it 
Photo on left: Scott Wilkinson (tuba), Lenny Potash (guitar)
Photo on right: Katherine Collins, Sara Kaye
Three of the leaders depicted in our presentation were:
Clara Lemlich Shavelson (1886-1982), a Ukrainian immigrant,
active in the labor and peace movements, as well as in secular
Yiddish children's schools; Rose Schneiderman (1882-1972), a
Polish immigrant and labor leader who helped organize the first
female local of the Jewish Socialist United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers
Union; and Pauline Newman (1888-1986), Lithuanian immigrant,
ILGWU organizer, liaison between the union and government
reformers, and suffragist.
|
