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March 31, 2011 Tomgram: Andy Kroll, Union-Busting or Republican-Busting in Wisconsin?
One hundred years ago, 146 people, mostly
young immigrant women, died in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist
Company in downtown New York City, a building lacking sprinkler
systems, fire walls, or adequate fire escapes. Onlookers watched
horrified,
writes
historian Steve Fraser, as many of the trapped workers jumped to their
deaths from upper-story windows. Those below “talked of the sky raining
flaming bodies.”
Anger at the unnecessarily harsh and dangerous working conditions that caused such a toll was widespread. One hundred thousand New Yorkers would file past the coffins of the dead workers. Within days, 350,000 New Yorkers would take to the streets in a massive march of protest -- many, adds Fraser, “to vent their anger and express their determination that tragedies such as this should never be allowed to happen again.” That moment is now considered a turning point for the movement to improve working conditions in America. That was then, of course, and until this February, the centennial anniversary of that tragedy would have been considered nothing more than history, and those thinking about it sentimentalists for a bygone era when people cared about and organized around the needs of working people in this country. No one would have imagined that those sorts of mass protests over the conditions of working people would ever again leave the history books for the streets of America. But as in the Middle East, so here, it’s often true that what no one expects or predicts happens, that one day the streets in Madison, Wisconsin, or Cairo, Egypt, suddenly, miraculously begin to fill. Now, in a moment when labor is under assault and some leading politicians seem to be dreaming of returning American workers to a state of powerlessness not seen in perhaps 80 years, something’s happening, even if we don’t know what it is, Mr. Jones. What occurred in Madison may already be altering the normal political landscape of this country. The question is whether it will also, perhaps in unexpected ways, create a new terrain beyond the usual electoral politics. TomDispatch associate editor Andy Kroll covered the Madison protests for Mother Jones magazine and for this site in a stirring piece, “ Cairo in Wisconsin.” Now, he begins to explore the spread of what might be called "the Madison effect" and the changing contours of political America. (To catch Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Kroll discusses his time in Madison and the larger meaning of those protests, click here, or download it to your iPod here.) Tom Return to Wisconsin |
