Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition

The Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition is a national alliance of more than 200 organizations and individuals honoring the victims and legacy of the infamous 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, which took the lives of 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women, and galvanized a movement for social justice.

Members of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition include arts organizations, schools, workers’ rights groups, labor unions, human rights and women’s rights groups, ethnic organizations, historical preservation societies, activists, and scholars, as well as families of the victims and survivors.
In March 2011, the Coalition spearheaded more than 200 commemorative events in the New York City area as well as in cities across the nation to mark the centennial of the fire. Based in New York City, the Coalition continues its work today toward the establishment of a permanent public art memorial.
History of the Coalition
The Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition was established in 2008 to encourage and coordinate nationwide activities commemorating the March 25, 2011, centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and to create a permanent public art memorial to honor the victims of the fire. Over 200 organizations and individuals partnered in the coalition including Workers United, NYC Fire Museum, New York University, Workmen's Circle, Museum at Eldridge Street, and the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.
The Coalition established its mission to support a) the creation of innovative participatory activities, to build the muscles of active social engagement; b) new collaborations between communities; c) establishing a permanent memorial.
Chalk
The Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition grew out of a public art project called Chalk the brainchild of New York City filmmaker Ruth Sergel. Beginning in 2004, and happening each year on the March 25 anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, Sergel and volunteer artists fan out across New York City to inscribe in chalk the names, ages, and causes of death of the victims in front of their former homes. They chalk in white, green, pink and purple, and often include drawings of flowers, tombstones or a triangle. Artists have chalked, for example, “Pauline Horowitz, Age 19, Lived at 58 St. Marks Pl., Died March 25, 1911, Triangle Factory Fire.” And “Albina Caruso, Age 20, Lived at 21 Bowery, Died March 25, 1911, Triangle Factory Fire."
Centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
From July 2009 through the weeks leading up to the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition served as a clearinghouse using Internet communications and social media like Facebook and Twitter to network some 200 activities as varied as academic conferences, films, theater performances, art shows, concerts, readings, awareness campaigns, walking tours, and parades that were held in and around New York City, and in cities across the nation, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston and Washington, D.C.
The Workers United commemoration ceremony was held on the 100th anniversary of the fire, March 25, 2011, at the site of the fire, now New York University’s Brown Building, located at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street, which in 1911 housed the Triangle Waist Company on the 8th, 9th & 10th floors. The ceremony included a procession of almost 1,000 people holding bamboo poles draped with the blouses that were part of the shirtwaist style, each decorated with the name and age of one victim inscribed on a funeral sash. Speakers included the United States secretary of labor, Hilda L. Solis; U.S. Senator Charles Schumer; New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; the actor Danny Glover; and Suzanne Pred Bass, the grandniece of Rosie Weiner, a young woman killed in the blaze. Most of the speakers that day called for the strengthening of workers’ rights and organized labor. Sen. Schumer drew loud cheers when he pledged to fight "right wing ideologues" trying to curb worker protections.
On March 25, 2011, at 4:45 PM EST, the moment the first fire alarm was sounded in 1911, hundreds of bells rang out in cities and towns across the nation in memory of the victims of not only the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, but also all workplace disasters. For this commemorative act, the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition organized hundreds of churches, schools, fire houses, and private individuals in the New York City region and across the nation.
The Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition established in 2011 that the goal of the permanent memorial would be
* To honor the memory of those who died from the fire;
* To affirm the dignity of all workers;
* To value women’s work;
* To remember the movement for worker safety and social justice stirred by this tragedy;
* To inspire future generations of activists.

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