Remembering The Triangle Fire

From Forward.com:

For years, I’ve been obsessed with the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. I don’t remember when I first heard about this event, which was New York City’s worst workplace disaster before 9/11. On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out on the factory’s eighth floor; 146 workers, most of them young Jewish and Italian girls, died. The fire department’s tallest ladders only reached the sixth floor; girls clung to the window ledges while the flames licked at them; some jumped in desperation, shattering the sidewalks. ...

We’ve forgotten the names; we’ve forgotten the strike; most of us have forgotten the fire itself. But filmmaker Ruth Sergel wants to help us remember.

For the last four years, Sergel has worked on a participatory art project called Chalk. Shortly before the anniversary of the tragedy, she emails the name and former address of a Triangle fire victim to anyone who wants to be involved. On the day itself, participants write the victim’s name in chalk in front of the building in which she lived. Beneath the name is written the person’s age, address, and “Died in the Triangle Fire, March 25, 1911.”...

But why this particular project? “I was thinking how much political activism is based on the Internet,” she said. “While it can be very powerful, it’s also highly depersonalized. The sense of being in the streets is lost. There’s something about physically, literally engaging in the New York streets. Sometimes someone stops to talk: Their great-aunt worked at Triangle, or you hear about working conditions somewhere else today. And it changes you: Once you’ve chalked in front of a building, you remember that building for the rest of time. You remember it held someone’s life. Also, chalking is a physical representation of the activist process, moving from individual to community. You start off alone and self-conscious, then you move toward the site, passing other chalkings on the way to the memorial service, and suddenly you’re with a community. We all know that the chalk will rub away or wash away in a few days, but you add your piece, and we’re all back next year. It’s like communal memory.”