Clara lemlich shavelson biography of barack obama

Shavelson continued her activism into her final years, organizing the orderlies at her nursing home. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - This exhibit site includes original sources and information pertaining to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, an industrial fire that occurred in New York City in that took the lives of people in 18 minutes.

This pivotal moment in history led to the transformation of the labor code of New York State and to the adoption of fire safety measures that served as a model for the whole country. This site includes:. Cornell University Library. Shattuck, Sim Shattuck, Shari —. Shavelson, Melville — Shaver, Dorothy — Shaver, Helen ? Shaver, Phillip Robert. Shaver, Richard S harpe Shavers, Charlie actually, Charles James.

Shavers, Cheryl 19? Shavick, Nancy Shavit, David —. Shaw Harold Watkins. Shaw real name, ShukotoffArnold. Shaw Commission. Shaw Industries. Shaw Industries, Inc. She earned money for books by sewing buttonholes on shirts and writing letters in Yiddish for illiterate mothers to send to their children in America. A young neighbor also lent her political pamphlets that introduced her to revolutionary ideas.

When the Lemlichs immigrated to New York City inyear-old Clara found work in a garment shop. The male workers who dominated the union resisted her efforts, but Lemlich warned them that their union would never get off the ground until they included women. Between thirty and forty thousand young women garment workers—predominantly Jewish immigrants—walked off their jobs over the next few weeks.

It was a bitter, only partially successful strike, but it changed the labor movement by proving the effectiveness of women as union members. Blacklisted from the industry and at odds with the conservative leadership of the ILGWU, Lemlich devoted herself to the campaign for women's suffrage. Like her colleagues Rose Schneiderman and Pauline NewmanLemlich portrayed women's suffrage as necessary for the improvement of working women's lives, both inside and outside the workplace.

The manufacturer has a vote; the bosses have votes; the foremen have votes, the inspectors have votes. The working girl has no vote. When she asks to have a building in which she must work made clean and safe, the officials do not have to listen. When she asks not to work such long hours, they do not have to listen. That is why the working woman now says that she must have the vote.

Lemlich, like Newman and Schneiderman, also had strong personal and political differences with the upper and middle class women who led the suffrage movement. Mary Beard fired Lemlich, for reasons that are not entirely clear, less than a year after hiring her to campaign for suffrage in Yet while the League admitted only working class women to membership, it was dependent on non-working class women for support and, in deference to its supporters' wishes, affiliated with the National American Woman Suffrage Association — the organization to which it saw itself as an alternative — rather than with the Socialist Party Women's Committee.

Other activists, such as Pauline Newman, worked under the aegis of the Socialist Party, which supported suffrage even though many in the leadership considered it a distraction from the more urgent business of class struggle. Lemlich married Joe Shavelson in Moving to the solidly working-class neighborhood of East New Yorkthen later to Brighton Beachshe did not return to work, other than on an occasional part-time basis, for the next thirty years.

Instead she devoted herself to raising a family and organizing housewives. Others had organized in this area before Lemlich: Jewish housewives in New York had boycotted kosher butchers to protest high prices in the first decade of the twentieth century and the Brooklyn Tenants Union led rent strikes and fought evictions. After joining the Communist Partywhich largely disdained the notion of consumer organizing, Lemlich and Kate Gitlow, mother of Benjamin Gitlowattempted to organize a union of housewives that would address not only consumers' issues, but housing and education as well.

The United Council of Working Class Housewives also raised clara lemlich shavelson biography of barack obama and organized relief for strikers in Passaic, New Jersey during the bitter strike. The organization recruited among CP members, but did not identify the Council with the CP or press non-Party members of the Council to join the party as well.

The United Council of UCWW led a widespread boycott of butcher shops to protest high meat prices inusing the militant tactics of flying squadrons of picketers that shut down more than 4, butcher shops in New York City. The Party withdrew support for the councils and discontinued publications aimed at women, however, in Lemlich continued to be active in the PWC, however, and was a local leader in it after it affiliated with the International Worker's Order in the s.

The Councils organized even broader boycotts to protest high prices in andbefore accusations of Communist Party dominance destroyed it in the early s. Lemlich continued her activities as part of the Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women's Clubswhich raised funds for Red Mogen David, protested nuclear weapons, campaigned for ratification of the United Nations ' Convention on Genocide, opposed the War in Vietnam, and forged alliances with Sojourners for Truthan African-American women's civil rights organization.

Lemlich was also active in Unemployed Councils activities and in founding the Emma Lazarus Council, which supported tenant rights. The Emma Lazarus Council declared in that no one would be evicted in Brighton Beach for inability to pay rent, then backed that up by rallying supporters to prevent evictions and returning tenants' furniture to their apartments in those cases in which authorities attempted to effect eviction.