Lest we forget

Just to remind us that we aren't the only ones that experience bad things being visited upon on and it could be much, much worse. Saturday marked the anniversary of the  Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire that killed 123 young, mostly immigrant women and 23 young men. In response 80,000 people took to the streets  of New York to protest poor working conditions that led to the grisly and unnecessary deaths of these young people, in 1911!

 If I was good at math I could figure the number of people who lived in NYC at the time and the number now and factoring in values and calculating percentages and  how many 80,000 1911 people versus the population 2017 would be now, and I bet it would be in the millions.  This is why we have unions and why we regulate business and why we have many of the government agencies that Cheeto wants to end. If we don't regulate business they lock the doors and let girls burn to death. Cheetos and his minions believe then as now that it is more important to save a few cents than to save lives. Unions and oversight save lives. Cheetos  desire to gut the laws  and remove  over site will lead to move deaths like these. These young people did not die in vain, don't let Cheeto roll back the clocks and piss on their graves. Never forget.

What of the owners? Those Job Creators:

What happened to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory’s owners?

Not much. They survived the fire by fleeing the the roof and were later indicted on charges of first and second degree manslaughter. The two men were acquitted, but they lost a subsequent civil suit -- the plaintiffs won $75 in compensation for each deceased victim. Two years after the fire, one of the owners was arrested a second time in for locking the door in his factory during working hours. He was fined $20.freelancersunion.org

Another fun anniversary today is the 40th anniversary of the Tenerife Airport Disaster  , from Wikipedia and here is another retelling of the day Tenerife Airport Disaster, from the surviving captain of the Pan Am plane. Fascinating  reading.

The Tenerife Disaster was a huge loss of life and they should be remembered. My only actual connection to either airline is that my grandmother had a very cool  round Pan Am bag that she had for years and years and I coveted it, but it went its own way years ago.

I do have to admit that I have no active memory of this. I was eight or nine when it happened and I don't think it would have been talked about at the dinner table with air travel uncomfortable father present or on the playground or in third grade current events. It was too awful, but I'm not sure anything could have been done there. I don't think we would have spoken of it at school as DFW is very close by, and many  of my classmates parents worked at DFW and for the airlines and we probably didn't focus on bad things happening to airplanes. It was  a good fifteen years later before we had two back-to-back  ( it seemed) massive crashes at DFW, and by that time the jig was up. I did learn something from that though - NEVER fly Delta into Dallas. Ever.