THIS is what the ‘baggers and GOP want… a return to the Hobbesian days of the early 20th century… people such as Rush Limboob advocate a return to that brutal and nasty world… all so that their rich backers earn another dime on the dollar…
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In the article posted above, I made reference to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire on 25 March 1911. The management locked the doors to the stairwells and exits deliberately, so that the workers would be “chained” to their worktables. The fire caused the deaths of 146 workers, who either died from the fire or jumped to their deaths. Most of the victims were recently-arrived Jewish and Italian immigrant women, aged 16 to 23. A criminal court acquitted the two owners, but a civil court awarded 75 bucks each to the families of the victims, even back then that was beans. Oh… the insurance company paid the owners 60 Gs (or about 400 clams a death)… that more than covered the court settlement. That sort of slap-on-the-wrist “justice” for the oligarch class is what the Republican Party advocates. Six of the victims remained unidentified, and were buried in Evergreens Cemetery in the Bronx in a common grave, where, later, a memorial to them was erected. THIS is what “economic freedom” means… any questions?
BMD
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The Memorial to the Unknown of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in Evergreens Cemetery in Bronx NY (Greater New York City) USA…
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Rose Schneiderman, a labour activist, said the following at a memorial meeting soon after the event:
I’d be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We’ve tried you good people of the public, and we’ve found you wanting. … We’ve tried you citizens; we’re trying you now, and you’ve a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers, brothers, and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable, the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us. Public officials have only words of warning to us… warning that we must be intensely peaceable, and they’ve the workhouse just back of all their warnings. The strong hand of the law beats us back, when we rise, into conditions that make life unbearable. I can’t talk fellowship to you who’re gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it’s up to working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.
She also said:
What the woman who labours wants is the right to live, not simply exist… the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with.
In a bizarre (but telling) epilogue, in 2011, the extremist GOP Governor of the State of Maine removed a mural that contained, amongst other things, a portrait of Rose Schneiderman. He took it to an unknown and undisclosed location. That tells you the truth about the Republican slimers… they want to rewrite history to suit themselves (doesn’t that sound like certain Orthodox parties that we all know?). It’s a crank world… but we don’t have to lie down and take it supinely. As the cap-badge of the SAS has it, “‘Quit you like men” (that’s for all of us, both men and women). Yes… our destiny IS in our hands… that’s what God gave us…
BMD
Voices from Russia 
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