Thread by @NNUBonnie

To truly honor #IWD2023 and its goals, we must revisit the story of International Working Women's Day, of thousands of fed-up workers boiling over into the streets of New York.

Today, we celebrate what we've accomplished and make an honest assessment of what oppresses us. (1/11)

The RNs of @NationalNurses have a reputation for being outspoken, for being militant, and for being unafraid to strike when necessary.

So we feel a real kinship with the working women who led a history-changing strike that gave rise to #InternationalWomensDay. (2/11)

The earliest known "Women's Day" celebrations were held in New York City in March 1910 to celebrate garment workers.

Over the course of a two-month strike in 1909, these working women changed the course of history and U.S. labor for the better. (3/11) teenvogue.com/story/internat…

While no movement is perfectly embodied by a single leader, Yiddish-speaking immigrant Clara Lemlich was instrumental to the uprising as a leader with the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). (4/11) pbs.org/wgbh/americane…

The two-month strike Lemlich helped organize in 1909 was dubbed the "Uprising of the 20,000," bringing thousands into the streets in a general strike to demand safer conditions for garment workers, a massive workforce largely composed of working-class Jewish immigrants. (5/11)

The next year, the first National Women’s Day was organized by the Socialist Party of America.

Groups across the United States and Europe followed suit, uplifting working women and elevating the day to its international status. (6/11)

After years as a registered nurse in the labor movement, I see so much of our profession's story reflected in the garment workers' story because we, too, have demanded and won better conditions through sustained militant collective action like strikes. (7/11)

Like the garment workers, RNs continue to challenge money-driven health care corporations and take action to demand safer conditions in our workplaces, fighting for:

✊🏽 #SafeStaffing,
✊🏽 #WorkplaceViolence prevention plans, and
✊🏽 Better conditions for our patients! (8/11)

Lawmakers and executives would do well to heed the lessons of International Working Women’s Day and its history, to be guided by the leadership of working women taking action, not by profits, politics, or preventable tragedy. (9/11)

We need leaders who will listen to and meet the demands of working women, especially when we warn them about the life-or-death stakes of problems in our workplaces, whether they're hospitals, schools, factories, or offices. (10/11)

The roots of today's celebration come from the labor movement, and we all enjoy the fruits of the labor behind it.

Let us celebrate the working women the world over as we remember that the fight that birthed this day isn't over as long as we keep fighting it every day! (11/11)