Triangle Fire Site http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/ Press Release
1) Several events are scheduled to mark the 90th anniversary of the Triangle Fire, an industrial disaster that killed 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women, in a Lower East Side garment sweatshop in NYC on March 25, 1911.
2) The anniversary coincides with the Cornell University Press re-issue of "The Triangle Fire," a classic history of the event by Leon Stein, with a new introduction by William Greider. This updated edition puts the tragedy in the perspective of the global economy.
3) The International Ladies Garment Workers' Union, which at the time of the fire organized some of the Triangle factory workers, was one of the unions that merged to form UNITE! (Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees). UNITE! has been the driving force behind the many commemorations that through the years have marked the anniversaries of the event, to honor the victims and rally against sweatshop conditions, which still persist in the US and abroad. For Tuesday, March 27, 2001, UNITE sponsors two events in memory of the Triangle Fire: the Triangle Fire 90th Anniversary Rally for Global Fairness, 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm, New York City, corner of Washington Place and Greene Street; and the forum "The Triangle Fire Today: Sweatshops and the Global Economy," with William Greider and others, 6:00 pm, NYU Jurow Hall. At the rally UNITE will be giving away to high school students 50 copies of the book The Triangle Fire.
4) The School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University will launch a newly designed and expanded Triangle Fire website. The online exhibit gathers many original documents and secondary sources on the fire, held at the Kheel Documention Center at Cornell University. The site has been receiving 5,000 hits per month, evidence of the strong interest there is for the event. Many of the site visitors are high school students, who choose the Triangle Fire as topic for their National History Day competition projects. Go to: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/