#clara lemlich

[52booksproject]

Book 22: Brave Girl

Dewey was 331 Labor Economics so I chose Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers' Strike of 1909 by Michelle Markel.

This is a kids book about labor leader Clara Lemlich spearheading a strike when she was in her early 20s after joining New York's garment workers as a teen.

As you may know, or guess, conditions for young women in the garment industry at the turn of the 20th century were pretty terrible. Clara experiences these as a Russian immigrant trying to help her family survive. She teaches herself to read in her off hours, though, and never gives up even when police beat her for striking and trying to unionize. Eventually the strike is successful and it shows that you too can make a difference like Clara did.

If "shirtwaist" sounds familiar to you, you're probably familiar with the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire from a year and a half later, that particular company not being one of the ones that capitulated to the strike. If you're not familiar, basically 150 garment workers were locked in a building that caught fire and they all died. it was horrible and exemplified why people like Clara Lemlich were needed.

SHOULD YOU READ THIS BOOK : I'd recommend it for children as an introduction to labor rights of the 20th century. It's not super informative as much as inspirational, though there is some additional information after that is good.

ART PROJECT:

Clara Lemlich was originally from Horodok, now Ukraine, but her family left because of a pogrom. I decided to honor her homeland, and although the ruling country of the area at the time was the one now run by a certain Shirtless McJerkoff, I thought the spirit she embodies really reflects Ukraine now. So, thank you, Ukraine, for giving us a woman who changed American history for the better. I hope we can help as much in your times of troubles.

[professorpski]

Fire in my mouth, Julia Wolfe

A friend who knows music well was visiting and we listened to his new CD of an oratorio by Julia Wolfe which commemorates the loss of so many lives in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911. Shirtwaists were the first, popular ready-to-wear items for American women. We call them blouses. They were worn with skirts and their lower cost and the ease of washing the cotton versions made them very popular. In short, they were the first separates.

The title are the words of a a young woman who struck for better working conditions and became an important labor activist. Clara Lemlich was speaking of her younger days of activism and speech-making said, “then I had fire in my mouth.”  Of course, it also makes for an image of the young women who died, some 146, in a terrible tragedy. If you have seen the images from that day, you know of its horror. Passing legislation making factories safer for the workers and enforcing them well became a priority for many people as a result.

The oratorio traces the lives of young immigrant women to the United States, to the factories where they worked, through their strike for better wages and conditions, and then to the factory fire. It is a haunting piece.

[historybizarre]

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

On Saturday, March 25, 1911, at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in the heart of New York City, a lethal fire broke out on the factory floor, located at the top of the ten-story Asch Building near Washington Square East. Trapping many of the textile workers inside, the fire claimed the lives of one in four employees: more than one hundred women and two dozen men, many of them young, recent immigrants and non-English speakers, perished in the blaze or while jumping from windows to escape. The dangerous working conditions responsible for the fire and its casualties were typical for urban factories, often known as sweatshops, of this period. The largely preventable tragedy and its aftermath helped to galvanize a series of reforms in the working conditions of laborers that continued through the twentieth century.

[ithelpstodream]

This summer, former first daughter Chelsea Clinton released her new children’s book, She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World. In it, she profiles, among others, the Jewish labor organizer and Communist Party activist Clara Lemlich with these words: “After her family fled poverty and the threat of violence in Ukraine for a new home in New York City, Clara Lemlich got a new job working in a garment factory. She wrote that the factory’s conditions made women into machines, and so she persisted, organizing picket lines and strikes that ultimately helped win better pay, shorter hours, and safer working conditions for thousands of workers—both women and men. ”She did not flee generic “poverty and the threat of violence in Ukraine,” as you write; she fled an anti-Semitic pogrom in which 47 Jews were killed, 592 were injured, and 700 Jewish families’ homes were destroyed. Later Clara would become a union leader of thousands of immigrant Jewish factory girls in New York City whose lives and work experiences were intimately defined by the same anti-Semitic violence that she had survived. Her famous speech rousing those young women to strike, quoted in your book, was delivered in Yiddish, not English. Little girls reading your book deserve to know this history, which you neglect to mention: Clara Lemlich was a Jew. Clara Lemlich also was very, very communist. She started sneaking copies of illicit anti-capitalist literature as a child in Ukraine and was already a dedicated Marxist revolutionary by the time she came to the U.S. at age 17. As she led her factory co-workers in forming their own local of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), despite the objections of its conservative male leadership, she was arrested by the cops 17 times. She led three strikes in the lead-up to the famous Uprising that were, in her words, “broken by the police and gangsters hired by the bosses.” Hired thugs followed her home from a picket line in September 1909 to break her ribs and leave her bleeding in the street. After the famous strike, she was blacklisted from both the garment industry and the ILGWU for her radicalism. Later she went to work for a women’s suffrage organization to mobilize working-class women to win the vote… where she also got kicked out for being a Communist. http://lilith.org/blog/2017/07/dear-chelsea-clinton-clara-lemlich-was-a-communist-and-a-jew/

[naonicblog2]

Hot Girl Strike Fall: The Time 20,000 Women Created A Generation Of Labor Activists

Tomorrow in labor history!

[lyxili]

excerpt from audacity by melanie crowder. read!! it!! look for online blurbs and whatnot but this book is great in terms of historical accuracy, making you want to change something in the world, etc.

[castielcouldbeasecretdentist]

So, I live in Indiana, and in Indiana, then people who work who are 18 years old and up are not entitled to a break. I’d like to say, for the record, that this is bullshit. One of my friends (who turned 18 about a week ago) said on multiple occasions that her boss at Panda Express couldn’t wait until she turned 18 because then she could work 8+ hour shifts without a break to eat. I work at Wendy’s, and I don’t get a break to sit down and eat. Instead, I low-key eat some of the almonds and crackers, along with a cup of coffee that has some vanilla frosty in it. 

It’s a good thing I’m working here, because I am planning to work in the state government once I graduate college (I’m majoring in PoliSci). I do not want to be a politician, necessarily, unless there is no one else competent enough who can actually run and get laws passed. I will, whether I end up running for office or not, continually push for laws to be pass that entitle workers for a break, no matter how old they are. Because no one should have to go more than seven hours working without getting a break, especially if they are on their feet all day. 

[catskewl]

The Uprising of 20,000. 

1909 Shirtwaist workers strike that paved the way for the International Working Women’s Day actions.

Clara Lemlich:

  As she stood in front of thousands of her fellow female workers at the Cooper Union in New York City, speaking in her native Yiddish language, she demanded swift action. "I am a working girl," proclaimed Lemlich. "One of those who are on strike against intolerable conditions. I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in general terms. What we are here for is to decide whether we shall strike or shall not strike. I offer a resolution that a general strike be declared now." After a prolonged roar of approval, Lemlich and the thousands in attendance took a Yiddish oath to strike the following day, pledging, "If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise."

Read about Clara Lemlich and the beginning of the Uprising of 1909 here

i have complicated thoughts about IWD as it’s practised in North America now, (for instance the dropping of the ‘working’ part and the practise of tokenism as diversity instead of striving for real inclusivity of all women and women identifying people),.... so i choose to celebrate the history and struggle of its beginning. My blog is 99.99% about women/women identifying folks and their lives, celebrations and struggles, so i practise women’s day everyday. You should too.