“If I Am Only For Myself”: Lessons from the Labor Movement

Every evening at camp, after a lively dinner and ear-bursting chants, everyone would quiet down to hear the announcement telling us where our evening activity would be. All the younger kids hoped to be sent to the pool in swimsuits, and the older kids knew that going to the porch of the big house meant a trip outside camp, ideally to Dairy Queen. However, no matter where my age group was told to go, I knew to expect a fun, light-hearted activity to end another perfect day at camp. 

The night I heard the head of programming announce that, we should prepare ourselves for a “more serious topic,” I immediately turned to my friends to complain. When the topic was introduced, I thought to myself: “Who cares about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire? We should be having a Bar Mitzvah party for the goats or singing blind karaoke!” Despite my initial indifference towards the program, I came home after camp and did a little more research about the subject. I found out that Jewish women were hugely affected by the fire and played a significant role in the labor movement around that time. I wondered why, throughout the hour-long program, at my Jewish, smash-the-patriarchy summer camp, we completely glossed over the fact that the majority of the 146 workers who died in the fire were Jewish immigrant women. 

The story is as follows: On March 25, 1911, in New York City, five hundred workers, most of whom were recently immigrated Jewish women between the ages of 16 and 23, were working inside the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory when the building caught fire. While workers on the eighth and tenth floors were able to escape, many of those working on the ninth floor were trapped. Some managed to make it out using the fire escape before it collapsed. Some tried jumping out of windows but were killed on impact, and many were stuck inside the burning building. The exact cause of the fire is still unknown, but the effects of it were worsened by disregarded safety measures: the escape exits were locked by the employers to prevent spontaneous walkouts and union organizers from entering secretly. A couple of years prior, in 1909, this same factory was the site of one of the most consequential strikes of the labor movement of the 20th century.

The Uprising of 20,000 was an eleven-week strike organized by more than 20,000 Yiddish-speaking immigrants in response to low wages, long hours, sexual harassment, and, ironically, workplace safety within New York’s shirtwaist industry. Estimates say that nearly 30,000 workers participated during the eleven weeks of the strike, 90% being Jewish and 70% being women. The strike ended on February 15, 1910, with only some of the workers’ demands being met, but it laid the groundwork for many important events to come. 85% of all shirtwaist makers became a part of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union by the end of the strike. Plus, the strike allowed conservative workers to see the value of women as proper union activists, convincing them of women’s importance in unions and the labor movement.

After learning about the importance of Jewish women in the labor movement, I felt a greater connection to the movement, being a Jewish woman myself. And this was followed by an intense feeling of guilt.

Did I really only start to care once I realized workers’ rights were an issue dealt with by “my people?” Do I really require a personal connection to an issue in order to feel an obligation to the cause? I’ve read comments online from people who think that way, and those are the last people I want to share a pattern of thinking with. 

For example, students at my high school staged a walkout in protest of ICE in the middle of January. I navigated to the comments of the social media post covering the story, and instead of finding messages of encouragement and praise, I read comments saying that as a school majority of Black students, the fight against ICE’s aggression and corruption is “not our problem.” The commenter was clearly oblivious to the fact that anyone can be affected by ICE’s aggressive and unconstitutional strategies. But even more concerning, they also seemed oblivious to the idea of… empathizing? It was as if they had forgotten that anyone can—and should—care about any issue, whether it affects them or not.

From my perspective, the instinct to only care when an issue starts to affect you or connect to you directly is one of the world’s worst ailments. As much as empathy can be a natural response, so can be the urge to care about something more when it affects you or communities you identify with. These two instincts can and should coexist: as Rabbi Hillel put it, “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I?” It’s perfectly human to care more when something affects you directly, and we shouldn’t ignore that instinct. However, to be human is to have a connection and an obligation not just to people like you, but to all of humanity.