Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory Fire, virtually and on-site
BY TEQUILA MINSKY
At the base of NYU’s
Brown Building, the
sash on the Triangle Fire
remembrance wreath reads: Commemoration
March 25, 2021.
It’s the 110th anniversary of
the 1911 fi re that swept through
upper fl oors of the building, then
named the Asch Building, when
146 garment workers mostly
young Jewish and Italian women
sewing shirtwaists—blouses that
looked like shirts— died, the
result of that fi re.
A chained exit door locked
them in on the ninth fl oor and
sealed their fate. The fi re escape
collapsed and the ladder
from the responding fi re engine
only reached to the 6th fl oor. To
escape the fl ames, most of the
victims jumped to their death; in
less than a half-hour, 123 women
and 23 men died.
The corner of Washington
Place and Greene Street— the
actual location of the fi re— has
for decades been the site both to
remember those who died and the
subsequent struggles that helped
Greenwich Village denizen Michael Hirsch left 146 long-stem,
white carnations at the former Asch Building remembering
those who died, each flower labeled with the name and age
of a victim.”It took me a full 30 minutes to say each of their
names during my solitary remembrance.”
create worker safety mandates.
Union members, children from
local schools, politicians, labor
PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY
leaders, workers’ struggle activists
and always a fi re truck annually
fi ll the intersection in observance.
Even during the women’s
rally and march earlier this
month, ACLU’s Donna Lieberman
beganremarks under the
Washington Square archwith
a focuson the Triangle Fire just
blocks away. She connected that
tragedy and the COVID loss of
too many immigrant loved ones
and reminding those present that
“the Triangle fi re killed women
and girls….but the conditions
and the refusal of our country to
protect workers crossed racial,
gender and ethnic lines.”
To mark the date this year,
the Remember the Triangle Fire
Coalition organized an hour-long
webinar, a screening of a dynamic
fi lm by Ruth Sergel (seen at www.
rememberthetrianglefi re.org) that
weaves the past and present to
remember the tragic losses and
learn about historic (1982 Chinatown
workers strike) and current
(Amazon fulfi llment center, Bessemer,
Alabama) labor struggles.
During this virtual commemoration,
former union organizer,
now with NY State Department
of Labor Ed Vargas and Edgar
Romney, Secretary/Treasurer,
Workers United, welcome the
public.
“We shall never forget and we
still have a lot of work to do,” says
Vargas, referring to the fi ght for
decent wages, good healthcare
and safe working conditions for
workers. He then quotes Romney:
We remember the past, fi ght like
hell for the present and work for
the future.
The fi lm fl ows through archival
photos and victim’s portraits,
current worker testimonies and
remarks from labor leaders and
victim family members.
Musical interludes add fuel for
the soul: “A Change is Going to
Come” (Rachel Perez singing),
“Rich Man’s House” (The Resistance
Revival Chorus), Crawl
in the Promise Land (Roseanne
Cash singing) and Solidarity Forever
(Elsie Bryant singing).
During the moving eightminute
fi nale, 146 individuals
each present the name and age of
one of those who died.
Over 800 viewers tuned-in to
the commemoration.
A proposed memorial is set
for this site, the design and all
approvals, in place. Construction
delays both by structural work on
the building and the Pandemic
have pushed the completion date
to about the end of 2022.
Family sues Soho’s Arlo Hotel for racial profi ling
BY DEAN MOSES
Parents of Keyon Harrold Jr,
a 14-year-old boy who was
falsely accused of theft,
announced they have offi cially
fi led a lawsuit for racial profi ling
against Arlo Hotel.
Accompanied by attorneys Ben
Crump and Paul Napoli, the parents
of the teen, Keyon Harrold
Sr. and Katty Rodriguez, called
for a press conference in City
Hall Park on March 24 to declare
they will now hit Arlo Hotels, its
manager, and the boy’s accuser
Miya Ponsetto with a lawsuit. The
complaint accuses the hotel of racially
profi ling Keyon Harrold Jr.
“This happens to marginalized
people of color all the time.
We are falsely accused of stuff
then we have to prove our innocence.
It is assumed that we
are guilty, it is assumed that the
burden of proof is on us,” Crump
said.
On Dec. 26, Keyon Harrold Jr.
and his father entered the lobby of
the Soho hotel they were staying
within when a white woman by
the name of Miya Ponsetto began
accusing the Black minor of
stealing her cellphone. When the
father and son pair attempted to
remove themselves from the situation,
Ponsetto is seen on camera
tackling Harrold Jr. to the ground.
The phone was later found in the
back of an Uber and not at the
hotel.
The boy’s parents and lawyers
declared the hotel is at fault
for siding with the accuser by
demanding the young man hand
over his own phone to prove that
he did not steal it, something
Crump calls “racial profi ling 101.”
This is a situation the group says
Black people have to deal with
Attorneys Ben Crump and Paul Napoli posed with Keyon
Harrold Sr. and Katty Rodriguez as they hold up a copy of their
lawsuit against Arlo Hotels.
every day in America, which they
fear could have ended in tragedy
if police would have arrived to
discover a Black individual wrestling
with a white female, who
they added was not a patron of
PHOTO BY DEAN MOSES
the hotel.
“The nineteen second video the
public has seen is only nineteen
seconds of a four-minute video,
and that four-minute video is just
a little bit of what happened that
day. Our son—who was fourteen
at the time—he has suffered
something that will mark him forever.
To be accused of theft when
you have never stolen anything in
your life and then to be attacked
for something that you haven’t
done has an impact, and it has
an impact on a person of color,”
Katty Rodriguez said, mother of
Harrold Jr.
Rodriguez and Harrold Sr.
work as prominent musicians and
over the course of their travels
they have seen and experienced
racism, but they shared that is
something their son should never
have to face, especially as paying
customers of a hotel that should
have been a place of refuge. Harrold
Sr. concluded the conference
by playing the song “This land is
your land” on his trumpet before
stating: “Thank God my son is
still here.”
4 April 1, 2021 Schneps Media
/re.org