I’m writing to you as President of the Board of Directors of Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. For the past decade the Coalition has been working to erect a permanent public memorial on the facade of the building (at Washington Place and Greene Street, in Greenwich Village) where the fire that killed 146 mostly young Italian and Jewish immigrant workers took place in 1911.
The designers of the memorial have planned an opportunity for the public to get involved in making the memorial (an interesting response to the current debate around who makes memorials).
Attached is an invitation to the workshop that will be held on March 16th and 17th at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). I hope that members of LAWCHA will attend or send a piece of cloth to the address on the flyer.
I will be contributing a handkerchief that my dad sent to my mom while he was in the army and stationed in Germany. Both of my parents were garment workers and union members (my mom was an ILGWU). In fact, I learned about the Triangle fire from my mom, who told me that she and the other girls who worked with her in the factory knew that they were safe because of what happened to the girls at Triangle.
It should be amazing event. I hope you can join us! And please spread the word.
Kind regards,
Mary Anne Trasciatti
Associate Professor
Rhetoric and Public Advocacy
Director of Labor Studies
Hofstra University
