Thanks to Jewschool for letting us remember it was on November 22 1909, that sweatshop operators in New York got a wakeup call from Jewish women sick and tired of being exploited.
On November 22nd, 1909 — the International Ladies Garment Workers Union began a fourteen week strike of 20,000 shirtwaist makers in New York City. It was the first mass strike by US women.
The strike showed that women had enough of being treated badly.
At a series of mass meetings on November 22, after the leading figures of the American labor movement and socialist leaders of the lower east side – Meyer London, Morris Hillquit, Joseph Barondess, and Samuel Gompers – spoke in general terms about the need for solidarity and preparedness, a teenaged worker, Clara Lemlich, rose to speak about the conditions she and other women worked under and demanded an end to talk and the calling of a strike of the entire industry. The crowd responded enthusiastically and, after taking a traditional Yiddish oath – "If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise" – voted for a general strike. Approximately 20,000 out of the 32,000 workers in the shirtwaist trade walked out in the next two days.
Throughout her life Lemlich was an active campaigner against those who exploited others. She even took an active stance against butchers and the price of meat.
Wikipedia reports:
In 1929, after the Communist Party created a Women's Commission, Lemlich launched the United Council of Working Class Women, which eventually had nearly fifty branches in New York City, as well as affiliates in Philadelphia, Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit. The organization recruited among CP members but did not identify the Council with the CP or press non-Party members of the Council to join the party as well.
The UCWCW led a widespread boycott of butcher shops to protest high meat prices in 1935, using the militant tactics of flying squadrons of picketers that shut down more than 4000 butcher shops in New York City. The strike became nationwide and the UCWCW won support outside the Jewish and African-American communities to which it had been limited in New York.
Anyone in the community willing to do something like that these days?
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