Triangle fire still burns

     The March for Our Lives was inspirational, as people across the country, mostly young, gathered Saturday to refute the culture of death that our leaders have allowed to take hold of our country.

     While it was certainly historic, it is also a reminder that change is seldom easy, and that common people ALWAYS have had to win basic human conditions under which to live by protest and action. 

     Sunday happens to be the anniversary of one of the most horrendous workplace tragedies in history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City. Many of the safety changes in place today—the sort of standards threatened by the Trump administration—were put in place in the wake of the fire.

     I wrote this piece to commemorate its centennial. Note the third paragraph from the end, and remember that promising to enact change, and actually changing, are two very different things.

     At 3:40 p.m. today, Chicago time, it will be exactly 100 years to the minute since someone tossed a cigarette into a bin of scrap cloth on the 8th floor of the Asch Building on New York's Lower East Side, touching off what for the last century has been known as the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

      It was a Saturday, so only 600 of the usual 1,000 employees—500 women and girls and 100 men—were working. Their 12-hour shift over, they had put their street clothes on, collected their pay envelopes—$6 a week—and were waiting for the bell. Ten minutes later the place would have been empty.
     The fire raced through the eighth floor, fed by piles of lint, linen hanging on wires from the ceiling and oil stored in the open to keep the machines running. It spread to the ninth and 10th floors, sending panicked workers running to the two fire escapes. One was anchored to the outside of the building, down into the alley. The other was inside.
     The building was 11 years old, considered both "modern"—it was served by four elevators —as well as "fireproof." But the ladders between the levels of the outside escape were missing—those who fled there couldn't get down. And the doors to the inside fire escape were locked, to prevent theft.
     The first fire engine company to respond arrived in minutes, firemen dodging what at first they thought were bolts of cloth being tossed from the burning building.
     They weren't bolts of cloth, but workers leaping to escape the flames. The firemen raced to set up their ladders, but they needn't have hurried—their ladders fell 20 feet short.
     The streets filled with onlookers watching in horror as those trapped above were squeezed between burning and falling to death. Most were teenage girls from immigrant families—Italians, Russians, Germans; most "could barely speak English." The weight of the women on the back fire escape tore it from its moorings and sent it crashing into the alley, killing everyone on it.
     The crowd on the street shouted "don't jump!" but the seamstresses had little choice.
     Five girls watched from one window as the firemen tried to work a ladder to them but couldn't reach. "They leaped together," the New York Times reported the next day, "clinging to each other, with fire streaming back from their hair and dresses."
     A 13-year-old girl hung by her fingertips for three minutes from a 10th-floor ledge before dropping to her death.
     There was heroism. Three of the four elevator operators kept at their posts, making repeated runs to the smoky eighth floor, returning packed with survivors. When one operator finally fled screaming "fire!" into the street, a New York University law student took over and made four more trips before the flames destroyed the shaft.
     It was all over in half an hour—146 workers had died. Examining the charred bodies, the New York City coroner was seen "sobbing like a child." There had been warnings aplenty, which the factory owners ignored.
     "This is just the calamity I have been predicting," said the city's fire chief. "Look around everywhere; nowhere will you find fire escapes. . . . Only last Friday a manufacturer's association met on Wall Street to oppose my plan [for a] sprinkler system, as well as the additional escapes."
     That night at the morgue, another hellish scene unfolded as bereaved relatives gathered to identify loved ones, "the sobbing and shrieking mothers and wives and frantic fathers and husbands of those who had not been accounted for." Many victims, burned beyond recognition, were identified only by the heel of a shoe or the scar on a knee.
     The next day, the police at the morgue turned away many curious New Yorkers: well-dressed businessmen and groups of schoolgirls who came to "see the sights."
     Ironically, the year before, the International Ladies Garment Workers had struck the Triangle, demanding higher wages and better working conditions, the first mass strike by women in the United States. The owners promised to meet their demands, and the strike ended. No changes were made, of course—instead, one by one, those involved in the union were fired, and so were not there that fatal day, but lived to press for the reforms that came in the wake of the disaster.
     The Asch Building was indeed fireproof—largely undamaged by the fire, it stands today, part of New York University.
     Triangle owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were charged with manslaughter but acquitted. Their insurance company compensated them handsomely for their loss.

                    —Originally published in the Sun-Times March 25, 2011 

Visit to the woodshed

     I invariably turn down invitations to luncheons and dinners, because they're time-consuming and tedious. The food is mediocre and the speeches are so-so, especially when I am the one doing the speaking.
     But since the election of Donald Trump, the American Civil Liberties Union has taken on the role of the American Free State, filing 100 lawsuits this past year, fighting for our country's core values during the twilight of amateur despotism that is descending upon our nation's capital, and I eagerly accepted an offer to attend Friday's annual luncheon.
      No sooner had I got my name tag at the Hilton than I ran into Daniel Biss, accepting condolences from the faithful for his recent defeat in the governor's race. We chatted briefly and pleasantly—I had gone to bat for the increasingly antique notion that government should be run by people with actual experience running government. He liked that, though when I asked him to sum up how he is doing now, he moved off without a word, smiling sphinxlike.
    A minute later, heading into the ballroom, my beeline toward Table 127 put me on a collision course with J.B. Pritzker and his running mate, Julianna Stratton. I could have fixed my eyes forward and hurried past, I suppose, but that seemed the way of the coward. A path I am fully able to tread. When he came by the office, I had actually flattened myself against a wall, to avoid him. 
    But you can't do that forever, and now he was the Democratic challenger. Might as well get this over with. So I slapped my best Dale Carnegie smile across my mug and headed into the woodshed to be chastised.
     "Howdy Governor," I said, shaking hands. "I hope we can put all the unpleasantness of the primaries behind us."
     Unpleasantness, I hasten to point out, emanating entirely from me, writing various uncharitable—if not unkind if not cruel—things about J.B. Pritzker simply because I sincerely believed them to be true, based on my glancing assessment of the situation and my desire not to accept the status quo.
     Malice is the coin of the realm, online, and if you are going to be in the opinion business, you'd better have a bucket of mud at the ready.
     Not all believe that, of course. Some journalists view elections as horse races, and like to bet on the winner, certainly never saying a harsh word, currying favor in the dubious theory that it increases access and authority. Or they let others do the dirty work, acting as mere conduits. Don't blame me I just report the stuff. I knew Pritzker was going to win, but bespattered him anyway, for what I considered his deficiencies. Facing the music afterward is the price you pay.
     Pritzker was good about it. He said he was surprised that I had backed Biss. I reiterated my whole experience-in-government-is-good notion, and tried to pour oil on the waters. 
     I should have mentioned that I supported him in the bugged-phone-call-to-Blago controversy, in an article in that infamous lawn jockey issue of The Reader. He hadn't said anything wrong. But it slipped my mind—these political kerfuffles are delicate as dew and evaporate with each new dawn. Instead I told him something I had told Rahm Emanuel, whom I am also highly critical of, primarily because he so often fails as a human being and as a civic leader.
    "If I stand on my chair and cheer from the start, then I'm just one Jew supporting another Jew, and it means nothing," I said. "If I'm critical initially, then it might actually have some kind of significance if I come around at the end, when it matters."
     Or words to that effect. I didn't take notes.
     "But Biss is Jewish," Pritzker observed.
     Good point. I hadn't thought of that. I took another tack.
     "You know, after I wrote a book about my father, he didn't talk to me for six months..."
      What I was trying to say is that fondness and sharp observations are not necessarily mutually exclusive. That approach didn't work either. I cut to the chase.
     "You're the man standing between Illinois and four more years of Bruce Rauner." I told him, adding that I admired the brio of his acceptance speech. "If you are going to take Vienna, as Napoleon said, take Vienna."
     Here Pritzker surprised me.
     He said, in essence, that he didn't want to merely be the guy who isn't Bruce Rauner, but he wants to be elected on his own merits, and if I were more familiar with him, I might actually know what those were, and we would have to work on that.
      That impressed me, as had his acceptance speech Tuesday night. He was more forceful than on the commercials. He might not be what I had assumed him to be—a hand puppet for the various Democratic forces behind him. Pritzker surprised me by how nimble and engaged he was—every time I bumped into Rauner and tried to talk to him, to reach out, I drew back a handful of slime—and it dawned on me that I hadn't been fair to Pritzker, judging him by his TV commercials and my biases about hereditary wealth.
     I'm not the Jedi Council, I call things as I see them, but those initial impressions can be off base and can change. When I first heard the name "Barack Obama," I conjured up the image of a man in a dashiki, dark glasses and a big afro, tossing a black power salute, which was very far from the soft-spoken, clean-cut law professor who showed up in front of the editorial board.  We are all going to be stuck with J.B. Pritzker during his struggle to send Rauner back to the Land of Bad One Term Republicans, along with Peter Fitzgerald and Mark Kirk, so we might as well get to know him a little better. 

When Trump is re-elected, we'll remember "An Enemy of the People"

Tadeus Langier, Zakopane
by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Saturday evening, out on the town, we had finished dinner and were strolling to the theater. I was about to draw my wife's attention to the dead body on the sidewalk across the street, then thought better of it.
     We were on the northeast corner of Dearborn and Lake, heading to the Goodman Theatre, attempting to cross west, when we came upon the tableau. The cop standing beside the corpse gestured for us to go south instead. We took his direction. Acting on instinct, I raised my iPhone up and snapped a photo: cop, yellow tape, 7-Eleven, police SUV, and a body wrapped in a white sheet.
     It didn't take a sleuth to figure out where it came from. Balconies directly above. It was St. Patrick's Day. We had threaded our way through mobs of costumed revelers, lining up to get into places I never imagined anyone would line up to get into. Moe's? Really?
     So either suicide or tragic, booze-induced, hey-look-I-can-balance-on-this-railing accident.
     A photo wants to be shared. I considered posting it to social media, Facebook and Twitter, with a wry remark about Chicago on a Saturday night. But I immediately dismissed that idea, for a value that doesn't get touted as much as it should: because there are people other than myself, friends and family members of the man on the sidewalk. They were about to get the worst news of their lives. Why add a note of indifference if not mockery just so I can flash sardonic?
     Lately I've been thinking that people can be roughly divided into two types: those who sympathize with others and those who don't. Those who can shift their perspective away from themselves to contemplate the condition of someone else. And those whose small well of sympathy is drained dry sprinkling concern over themselves and those immediately around them.

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Night of the Living Politically Dead

"A witch carrying a child on her broom,"
by José Guadalupe Posada (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

      

    There was considerable good news from Tuesday night's primary, so I'll limit myself to the top two. No. 1 the dispatch of Joe Berrios to the dustbin of history, just for the promise of real reform to a sinkhole of nepotism and corruption, followed closely, No. 2, by crude Republican hatemonger Jeanne Ives, who just now came blinking onto the statewide stage, underfunded and lacking a soul, and yet nearly unseated the most unpopular governor in America, Bruce Rauner, through the sheer force of her appeals to the lowest kind of fear and bigotry endemic in fearful, bigoted Red Illinois. 

    She lost, but it was a near thing, 51.4 to 48.6 percent. The Resentment Wing of the GOP promptly announced they were taking their ball and going home. Ives refused to phone Rauner to congratulate him, another small kick at civilized society and democratic traditions, the kind of scorched earth gracelessness that has come to define the party.
     “Governor Rauner can talk to himself in the mirror and look at himself and decide whether or not he’s proud of what he’s done all around, from his governorship to the way that he ran his campaign," she told fawning radical right cheerleaders Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson. "I really don’t care, to say anything to the Governor at this point, quite frankly."

     Then, asked if she'd vote for Rauner nevertheless, Ives showed must how roiled her resentments are.

     "I've said I will vote for him," she replied, her voice dripping contempt. He sucks, but he's got my vote.

      I dipped into the show to check Ives' quotes and, as usual with conservative radio, it was an earful of malice and self-immolation.
      "You want the Rauner Republican party, you can have it," said Proft. "Bumbling idiots, cowards and sell-outs."
      Every bullfrog tries to puff himself up into something bigger, but it had a whiff of truth when callers suggested they represented an army of fellow Illinoisans who find Bruce Rauner too much of a hippy-dippy liberal to bother voting.    

     "They're not going to get anybody out to vote now that Jeanne lost," said Joe from Mnooka.
     Some couldn't bear the prospect of surrendering just because they lost.

     "Why are we talking like this is over?" said Nicole from Bourbonnais. "Why aren't we talking about a write-in campaign? We shouldn't be giving up. There's still enough of us left that say, 'No matter what, we do not want Rauner back.'"

     We're of a mind on that one, Nicole.

    I had never listened to Proft's program before, but was the same tissue of bluster and ignorance that's de rigueur (“required by custom,” Dan) in far right talk radio. Proft was waxing on how close the primary was. then ventured: "I don't believe there's an incumbent governor who's ever lost in the primary. I don't think so."
      Umm Gov. Dan Walker in 1976, paving the way for Republican Jim Thompson. Both within human memory and kind of a big deal really, though admitted 42 years ago, and thus over the edge of the event horizon for some, apparently, vanished into the unknown, forgotten and unaccessible land of the past, next to the Here be Dragons on the mental map. 

     Ives' phone call to the station was the highlight. She predicted this is only the beginning of her tremulous hordes rising up and marching boldly back toward the lost Eden of 1950s America, where they're more comfortable.
    "The grass roots is waking up," said our latest Joan of Arc. "This is not the end."          

    Really? It sure smells like the end, both for Ives and, come November, Rauner, who will go back to being an obscure rich guy with nine houses and a heart the size of a gumball. 

     Still, if the Trump fiasco has any lesson, and it has 100, it is that confidence is risky. The wounded serpent is the most dangerous, and just as Ives clutches at the curtains and refused to leave the stage, so we can't expect Rauner to go quietly, and one hopes that J.B. Pritzker is smart enough to keep campaigning hard, to run as if he's afraid he might lose. Don't ease up just because your opponent is a political corpse being gnawed on by the cadaver from the next GOP grave.

     The Democrats shouldn't underestimate Rauner, or give up on him, even if half the Republican Party has. At least for the moment. Never underestimate the Right Wing talent for lying in order to create an effect. Give them eight months to contemplate the prospect of Gov. Pritzker, and perhaps Bruce Rauner won't look quite as loathsome as he does today. Ives' inability to see that would be in keeping with her general myopia toward all things human.

     "He's ruined his run in November already," Ives said. "We said that on the campaign trail. It's not like I was lying to anybody... He's unelectable in 2018. My husband's not going to vote for him. There's no way. He cannot be elected."

     From your lips to God's ears, Jeanne. 

Heaven, with donuts.

     You know where I never, ever eat? Dunkin' Donuts. And do you know why? That's right, because their donuts suck. Puffy oversweet yeasty things, or mushy, oversweet cake. Or so I recall. It's been years years since I've put one in my mouth. My wife says their coffee is still good, but we'll have to trust her there, because I'd never event get coffee at a Dunkin' Donuts because I might accidentally order a donut while I was there. And that would be bad.
     You know where I go every time I'm in the vicinity, as if drawn in by a tractor beam, because their donuts are just the best? That's right, one of the three Huck Finn Restaurants on the Southwest Side.
     Sunday morning, we drove a young Southern cousin to Midway, so she could fly to New Orleans and deliver a chemical engineering paper. (Betcha didn't know I had a Southern cousin, eh? Well I do. A senior at Alabama. Roll Tide!)
     We had to leave at 6:15 a.m. to get there, and my wife happily volunteered to go with me. Again why? Because she is a wonderful person? A sweet and supportive wife? Certainly true.
    But that's not the reason she went. 
    Again Huck Finn's. Because while I certainly could bring donuts back, and have, she wanted to try out the full breakfast. Frankly, I'd be happy with a couple donuts, but I am flexible, particularly when it comes to ordering more food. Sure honey!
     So we went, dropped the cousin off, slid over to the Huck's at 67th and Pulaski, the place just starting to fill up, with older couples and kids still in their St. Patrick's Day gear, a lady cop at the counter and various salt-of-the-earth Chicago types in watch caps and Teamsters jackets, all reading the Sun-Times. 
    My wife and I shared an excellent spinach and mozzarella omelet and has browns and big fluffy pancakes and bacon and cup after cup of good hot coffee that kept coming because it's the kind of place that keeps the coffee coming. You never have to ask; it's just there. 
     After, we ordered a dozen donuts to go, mostly the old-fashioned, crispy on the outside, glorious on the inside, the variety that first drew us to Huck Finn's. A dozen's too many for two people, but they freeze well, and Edie bestowed a pair on her sister and brother-in-law, just to let them share in the wonder. (We do that kind of thing. Last week her brother delivered a pair of Victor Lezza cannoli and a pound of cookies from Elmhurst, because you really can't go to Elmhurst and not swing by Victor Lezza. It would be wrong. And then once you have some, it's selfish not to share). 
    Rarity is a blessing. I'm glad Huck Finn's is way the heck on the Southwest Side. It would be dangerous in Northbrook, and eventually might even lose its charm. The way Krispy Kreme was once exotic and special and hard-to-find, a purely Southern thing. Then one opened in New York City and in a flash they were everywhere and there was never any point to eat one because they were available in every supermarket and the mystery was gone. Scarcity is discipline for those of us who don't have any.

Questions

     "Where's a good place to eat around here?" I asked Ed, the man at the front desk of La Reserve, a charming 1850s bed and breakfast off Rittenhouse Square. He took a pad of Post-It notes and jotted "Marathon, corner 19th & Spruce St." 
     "Take a left then a right," he said.
     A nice old section of Philadelphia, four-story brick townhouses, one after another, grand pianos spied in warmly-lit living rooms. Spires. Oval windows.
     The restaurant was at the corner, where it was supposed to be. A well-dressed older man came by walking his dog. 
     "Excuse me," I said. "Is that a good restaurant?"
     "Yes," he said. 
    "Thank you," I said, and crossed the street and went in, feeling his eyes on me, as if he were shocked that there wasn't a second part, maybe the scruffy guy in the leather coat and cap hitting him up for money. 
     The dining room was dim, and so I took my seat at the brighter bar, spread the book review on its concrete surface. A hip place. Directly across from me was the name of the bar, "MARATHON" in big white letters.
     "Do you carry non-alcoholic beer?"
     "No, we don't," she said. "How about an Arnold Palmer?"
     "Sure, thanks."
     She fussed behind the bar. I put in a plug for actually stocking non-alcoholic beer: St. Pauli Girl. Beck's. 
    "It's quite good nowadays," I said.
     "We're out of lemonade, which is too bad, because it's good lemonade."
     "Water is fine." 
     I looked at the specials, the menu.
     "Can I have a dinner salad, and the pork chop?"
     "Vinaigrette all right?" 
      "Vinaigrette is fine."
     I gazed at the name of the bar a bit more. She strayed into my zone of the bar.
    "So," I said, "'Marathon. Is that the battle, the plain, the race, the song..." There is a Jacques Brel song called "Marathon"—"...or..." a thought occurring to me as I spoke, "...the gas station?"
     She looked at me.
    "I don't know. I never thought to ask."
    That sincerely surprised me, and I spoke without thinking.
     "How long have you worked here?
    "Six years."
    Had I had insulted her, by pointing out her lack of curiosity? It felt that way. That hadn't been my intention. I was just curious, not as common a sentiment as could be wished. I turned my attention back to my newspaper. How could you work there for six years and not wonder?
     The pork chop was very good—seared on the grill and drenched, I had failed to notice when ordering, in a bourbon reduction sauce, which to be honest was like a phone call from a former friend. Hey, remember me? Yes, great to hear from you, we must have lunch one of these days. Grilled Brussels sprouts, mashed sweet potatoes.  I read my paper, sipped my water with determination, and tipped well, by way of apology.

Race to the bottom: voters puzzled by primary slugfest

     "Who should I vote for? JB, Kennedy, Biss? No one impressed me at the WBEZ debate."
     I blinked at the question. Messages firehose at me all the time—on Facebook, Twitter and email, now a distant third, nearly occupying the tenuous position that letters written in blunt pencil on blue lined notebook paper once held.
     But this was coming in over iPhone Messenger, from somebody with my phone number. In the next line, he ID'ed himself. My old college roommate. Ah. 
     As a professional journalist, I couldn't summarize the 2018 primary election more eloquently than he did in 16 words. Then again, he was a political science major. Months of increasingly wild accusations, millions and millions spent on grim, black-and-white TV commercials and what are we left with? A sulfurous smell hanging in the air and three not-so-appealing choices. I'm not certain which of these guys to vote for and I've had long conversations with each. 
     The opening question is telling. It assumes, as I do above, that the only election of interest is the Democratic primary. That's true. (I was tempted to tease my friend with, "Aren't you a Republican by now?" But that seemed cruel). Compared to the Democratic slugfest, the Republican primary has been a muted sideshow. Or make that, freak show, starring Jeanne Ives in a tent off the midway, a lady tattooed head-to-toe with vile and shameful appeals to the bottom rung of the Republican Party, using every racist code in the book short of semaphore flag: Immigrants are murderers. Transgender people are predators.
     Who can blame anybody for tuning out this Punch and Judy show? I prefer to experience the election as a civilian, primarily through the relentless TV and radio commercials. Pritzker scored points early by swinging hard for Obamacare enrollment, his money stepping in for the delinquent Trump administration firing back at Trump's immigration slanders.The idea of a rebel stronghold in Illinois, based on emergent state power and the bottomless Pritzker fortune, is something I could get behind.

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