I wasn’t sure if people would understand the reference. 

I was about to speak to a labor rally protesting the attempted union busting by Wisconsin’s governor. 

Yesterday, I had been reminded of a major event in labor history – the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 

In 1911, 146 workers – most of them immigrant women in their teens and twenties, died in a fire because the exits were locked – to make sure no employees left their workplace.  

            Six of those bodies remained unidentified until recently.  Yesterday’s New York Times story put the fire in its historical context:

The fire was a wrenching event in New York’s history, one that had a profound influence on building codes, labor laws, politics and the beginning of the New Deal two decades later.

            One hundred years later, I wondered if anyone in today’s crowd would understand if I mentioned that fire. 

            Plenty of them did. 

“The Triangle fire is beaten into us when we start in the labor movement,” one of the rally organizers said to me afterwards. 

One of my political mentors was Jake Edelman, a Russian Jewish immigrant, labor organizer in the garment trades, and member of the Baltimore City Council.

He endorsed me when I first ran for office in 1982.

I’m sure he would have appreciated my historical reference. 

February 22