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Tragedy at the Triangle Factory
1911 FIRE SPARKED THE WOMEN’S AND WORKERS’ MOVEMENTS
has remained stable and low since Feb. 14.
At UGA, for the week of Mar. 1-7, there
were 43 positive cases. Participation in sur
veillance testing at UGA decreased slightly
again this week to 1,791 surveillance tests
given for the week.
At the end of last week, 53 people in
Region E, which includes Athens, were hos
pitalized for COVID-19 out of a total of 473
patients. At just 10% of all patients, that’s
the lowest figure in months. The number of
ICU beds in use for Region E dropped to 58,
or 82% of capacity.
Deaths, a lagging indicator, have slowed,
but the virus killed five Clarke County resi
dents last week. That brings Clarke County’s
death count to 121, with an additional
seven deaths likely attributable to COVID-
19 listed by the Georgia Department of
Public Health.
However, public health officials have
warned that we’re in a race to get everyone
vaccinated before variants spread. Thus,
continued public health measures are still
recommended. The passing of the Biden
administration’s COVID-19 package last
week provides further hope that more
resources will continue to come.
In addition to the DHP website myvac-
cinegeorgia.com, public health expert
Amber Schmidtke recommended a new
website last week. Vaccinefinder.org shows
where doses are available. Piedmont
Athens Regional and pharmacies like CVS,
Kroger, Walgreens, Ingles, Publix, Walmart,
Hawthorne Drugs, Hodgson Pharmacy
and Horton’s Drug Store are also offering
appointments. [Jessica Luton]
and Mental Health
Athens-Clarke County commissioners
want more options to respond to men
tal-health crises, since in the last few years
ACC police have shot and killed several
people who seemed to be suffering from
mental-health issues. They’re considering
emulating a Eugene, OR program called
CAHOOTS that teams a social worker with
a medic, neither one armed.
A study by the ACC Police Department
found that more than a third of local jail
inmates suffered from mental health or
substance abuse problems. Among the
clients of Advantage Behavioral Health
Systems—a nonprofit that offers mental
health and substance abuse services—
more than 90% of those in the jail had
been arrested multiple times. The average
was almost 13. And they stayed in jail an
average of 22 days, compared to eight for
inmates who were not Advantage clients.
“When they go to jail, not only do they
go to jail more frequently, they’re finding it
harder to navigate the system to get bond
to get out of jail when they do go there,”
Police Chief Cleveland Spruill told commis
sioners at a Mar. 9 work session.
The department already has two teams
of Jerry B. NeSmith Behavioral Health
Co-Responders, named for the late commis
sioner who was a strong advocate for men
tal health. A third will be hired this spring,
Spruill said, and he’s requesting four more
in the county’s fiscal 2022 budget.
The co-responders—a police officer and
a mental health professional—have had a
mixed track record. They did not respond to
several shootings in the past few years that
seemed to involve mental health issues. But
that’s because they’re not available 24/7,
and often it’s not apparent from listening
to the dispatcher that a call has anything
to do with mental health, Spruill said. Last
week, a co-responder unit did help to com
municate with an armed man who had shot
himself and to convince him to let himself
be treated by emergency medical personnel.
Several commissioners said they want
some alternative to armed police respond
ing to calls involving mental health. In
some cases, the presence of an armed
officer could even exacerbate the situation,
Commissioner Melissa Link said. Commis
sioner Carol Myers suggested that, while
there’s probably some overlap between the
calls CAHOOTS and the ACC co-responders
answer, not all of them are the same.
Spruill disagreed, saying that not send
ing an armed officer could endanger peo
ple. And he emphasized that CAHOOTS
teams collaborate with police and won’t
answer some calls without an officer pres
ent. “When you call 911, when you call
the police, you’re calling because you want
the police,” he said. But he added that he’s
open to some sort of separate hotline to call
when police aren’t wanted on the scene.
Commissioner Tim Denson called
CAHOOTS “more subtle and nimble” than
co-responders but said he wanted both.
“How do we have the best policy response
in the world, honestly?” he said.
Also at the work session, commissioners
and staff discussed potential pay raises for
police, a bike lane on Barber Street, turning
a parking lot next door to the Costa Building
near City Hall into a park and potential loca
tions for “eco-stations,” where downtown
businesses can store rollcarts, rather than
leaving trash bags on the sidewalk. [BA]
GGSD Mates Progress on Accreditation
The Clarke County School District has
made progress on two of three areas under
review by accreditation agency Cognia.
In response to a complaint filed by for
mer superintendent Demond Means alleg
ing interference by school board members,
Cognia (then known as AdvancED) started
an investigation in January 2020. That
investigation cited three areas where CCSD
needs improvement: (1) establishing and
adhering to policies, (2) following a code of
ethics and functioning within defined roles
and responsibilities, and (3) implementing
effective processes and procedures in sup
port of teaching and learning. On the first
two points, Cognia upgraded CCSD from
“initiating” to “improving” and from “insuf
ficient” to “initiating,” respectively. The
third remains rated “initiating.” The district
remains on probation with its accreditation
under review.
“Our number-one priority is to have the
Clarke County School District restored to
full Accredited Status,” board President
LaKeisha Gantt said in a news release.
“Although these findings show we are
moving in the right direction, we recognize
there remains important work to be done
by our Board.”
The full Cognia update is available at
clarke.kl2.ga.us/domain/2326.
In other CCSD news, next month the
board will return to holding meetings
in-person. The board had planned to
meet in person at its Mar. 11 meeting,
but decided to meet virtually, based on
legal advice, because the board had not
announced the change at its Mar. 4 work
session. The public cannot attend the Apr.
15 regular board meeting in person. [BA] ©
By Ed Tant news@flagpole.com
It is fitting that Women’s History Month
is observed in March. The commemoration
traces its roots back to the celebration of
the first International Women’s Day in
Europe on Mar. 8,1911.
Just days after that observance, a tragic
event in New York City would leave an
indelible mark on the history of women and
the American labor movement. On Mar.
25,1911 a fire at the
Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory—a sweatshop
in New York—claimed
the lives of 146 work
ers, almost all of them
immigrant women.
To this day, 110 years
later, the event known
as the Triangle Fire
still is remembered as a dark day in the
history of this nation and a reminder of the
struggle and sacrifice of the women and
men who fought for better wages and work
ing conditions in America.
Owners of the Triangle factory locked
the doors of the sweatshop to keep workers
in and labor organizers
out—a decision that
led to tragedy when,
according to Doris
Weatherford’s American
Women’s History, the
fire began when one of
the factory’s few male
employees accidentally
dropped a burning
match near oil cans,
which ignited fabric
in the locked sewing
room. Dozens of people
were burned alive, or
died leaping from fac
tory windows or plum
meting down elevator
shafts when fire depart
ment ladders proved
too short to reach the
workers on the building’s upper floors.
One of the workers who did survive
was Rose Freedman, who remembered the
living nightmare of the infamous fire until
the day she died at the age of 107 in 2001,
nine decades after the tragedy was forever
seared into her memory
and into America’s his
tory. “The executives,
with a couple of steps,
could have opened the
doors,” Freedman told
producers of a PBS docu
mentary on the fire that
aired in 2000, “but they thought they were
better than the working people.”
Just under 18 when the fire broke out in
her workplace, Freedman dedicated the rest
of her long life to the causes of women’s
rights, workplace safety and equality for
women. She was a working-class heroine
who, for all her long life, was proud that
she refused to be bribed by bosses who
tried to pay her to lie that company execu
tives had not locked the women inside the
sweatshop.
The owners of the Triangle factory
were acquitted of manslaughter charges,
and three years after the fire, a civil suit
on behalf of the dead and injured workers
brought paltry payments of $75 each to
nearly two dozen families who had lost
loved ones in the 1911 fire.
The labor movement found more mar
tyrs in Alabama on Apr. 8,1911, when 128
prison inmates forced
to work as miners in
the state’s notorious
“convict leasing” sys
tem were killed in an
explosion. Memories
of the Triangle trag
edy were fresh in the
minds of millions of
Americans when the
mining accident happened, but since the
forced laborers were African Americans
serving jail time, there was little sympathy
for their plight in Alabama or across the
rest of white America.
Industrial accidents continued to bloody
American workplaces after the tragedies in
New York and Alabama. According to his
torian Howard Zinn, in 1914 some 35,000
American workers died on the job, and
another 700,000 were injured. The labor
movement exposed and fought against such
grim statistics, but the carnage continued
throughout the 20th
Century, and it con
tinues today in unsafe
workplaces in the United
States and around the
world. In 1991—80
years after the Triangle
fire—25 workers at a
North Carolina poultry processing plant
died in a fire in their locked workplace. The
plant’s owner was jailed for involuntary
manslaughter. More recently, 1,100 workers
were killed in 2013 in an accident at a fac
tory in Bangladesh that made clothing for
corporate giants like Walmart and The Gap.
More than a century after the Triangle
Fire, the sad words of Freedman still echo
down the corridors of history: “That’s the
biggest mistake—that a person doesn’t
count much when he hasn’t got money.” ©
The executives, with a
couple of steps, could
have opened the doors, but
they thought they were better
than the working people.
That’s the biggest
mistake—that a
person doesn’t count much
when he hasn’t got money.
MARCH 17, 2021 | FLAGPOLE.COM 5
BROWN BROTHERS