Thread by @BoldProgressive

Hey, y'all! Take a quick listen to this story of Frances Perkins. It's about power, and it's about what we can do together.

"Let me take you back to that day of the fire. A woman was visiting friends who lived in a townhouse behind me when the fire broke out." #WarrenNYC

"She hurried into the street, joining the crowds as they ran across this park and headed to the Triangle Factory. When she got there, she watched. Watched as women on the ledge begged for help. Watched as they held each other. Watched as they jumped to their deaths."

"The woman watching was Frances Perkins. She was thirty years old and already a workers’ rights activist, but that day set change in motion."

"A week later, the women’s trade unions organized a funeral march, and half a million people showed up to march down Fifth Avenue, right behind me. Half a million people in 1911."

"It wasn’t their first march, but this time was different. While the women of the trade unions kept pushing from the outside, Frances pushed from the inside. She understood that those women died because of the greed of their bosses and the corruption of their elected officials. "

"So she went up to Albany, ready to fight. She worked to create a commission investigating factory conditions, and then she served as its lead investigator. Remember, this was years before women could even vote, let alone play major roles in government."

"But Frances had a plan. She and her fellow activists fought for fire safety, of course—and they got it. Next time you do a fire drill at school or work or you see a plainly-marked fire exit at work, think of Frances & the Triangle women, b/c they’re reason the laws changed."

"But they didn’t stop with fire safety. With Frances working the system from the inside, the women workers organizing and applying pressure from the outside, they rewrote New York State’s labor laws from top to bottom to protect workers."

"Over time, Frances Perkins became the state’s leading expert on working conditions. Later, when Franklin Roosevelt was elected governor, he appointed her to head his Labor department in Albany."

"And, four years after that, in the depths of the Great Depression, when Roosevelt became President, he asked Frances to come to Washington to address the crisis as Secretary of Labor for the entire nation."

"Frances Perkins became the first woman in history to serve in the Cabinet. And what did she push for when she got there? Big, structural change!"

"She used the same model she and her friends had used after the Triangle Fire: she worked the political system relentlessly from the inside, while a sustained movement applied pressure from the outside."

"As Frances Perkins put it: the Triangle Fire was 'the day the New Deal was born.'"

"So, what did one woman—one very persistent woman—backed up by millions of people across this country get done? Social Security. Unemployment insurance. Abolition of child labor. Minimum wage. The right to join a union."

"Even the very existence of the weekend. Big, structural change. One woman, and millions of people to back her up. The tragic story of the Triangle factory fire is a story about power."

"A story of what happens when the rich and the powerful take control of government and use it to increase their own profits while they stick it to working people."

"But what happened in the aftermath of the fire is a different story about power—our power, about what’s possible when we all fight together as one."