On March 8, 1911 Women marched for bread and roses in the streets of New York City and they called for a day of remembrance for those women who earlier that year had been killed in a garment factory that had gone up in a fire, with no working fire escapes and no safety for its workers, all of whom were women. These were not just suffragettes asking for equal rights or the vote. These were women who provided meagre wages to support their families, their children, some of whom worked right beside them. Their men may have been dock workers or steel workers or on the bread lines looking for work. They were embroiderers, stitchers, sewing machine operators, helping the fashion trade meet deadlines at the various shows, at the various celebrated "megastores" of the day in NYC. Fifth Avenue was even then a fashion mecca. And these women were part of the chain of workers who fed the hungry rich and idle who wanted the latest fashions from Paris, London or Rome, or whatever patterns could be copied for their next soiree.
Fire - death by fire is suffocation, fear and intense pain by burning to the third degree - down to the bone. What the women and children in the Shirtwaist garment district must have suffered is unimaginable.
Each year, during the International Women's Week and especially on March 8, women around the world remember their unnecessary death, their horrible sacrifice and stand side by side for justice for all women everywhere. Because as one noted politician - Rosemary Brown of British Columbia said, "until all of us have made it, none of us have made it."
We are all still standing in the fire, with our children.
Until women everywhere have an equal voice, an equal place and equal power - that fire burns around us and within us.
A Woman's Place is in the House --- and in the Senate! (Bumper Sticker from the 1970s)
Let's get to it!
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