DYING FOR FAST FOOD: Twenty-Five Dead, Forty Injured
Imperial Food Products Corp., Sept. 3, 1991
Elana Levy
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| • October 10, 1991 | Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students. | |
| The Alternative Orange: Vol. 1, No. 1 (pp. 5) | ||
| • August 19, 2000 | Webpage:  . | |
| DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.3) from original. | ||
then there are the twenty-five dead because the doors were locked from the outside so they wouldn't steal any chickens. and then there are their children, of course i'm not sure that they had any children because the article in the new york times forgot to tell me that though the article in the new york times let me know that there are 24,000 people employed in the chickenprocessing industry in the state of north carolina alone. now make that twenty-three thousand ninehundred and seventy-five assuming the forty injured can work. burns hurt and do a lot of damage but of course the article in the new york times forgot to tell me how bad the other forty were hurt and if they had anybody at home to take care of them and feed them and for how long the Imperial Food Products Corporation would be paying them their wages so that they could keep putting food on their table for them and their children. perhaps not chicken for a while, or maybe they already stopped the chicken with disgust at working at imperial knowing how dangerous and how little they were paid (do you know how much they were paid to work in a "high hazard' factory? did they get hazardous duty pay, even the army does that) or maybe a lot of chicken, figuring they could add to their inhuman pay and at least their children could eat (if they have children, which, of course i don't know) and keep having gas for their stove or a place to sleep. how long will they keep paying their wages, do you think, now that they're burnt and hurt? the new york times forgot to tell me. maybe i should call imperial products and ask them how long they'll pay, and will they pay for the children of the dead (if they had children, because the new york times forgot to tell me) to go to college as their mothers or fathers (i don't know that either, i know there were twentyfive dead and forty injured and that the industry brings in one and a half billion dollars into the state of north carolina each year, more than tobacco they said) had so wished and were working so hard for. it'll be better for them. it 's worth it. it's for them, our children, the workers had said.
eighty years ago the owners of the factories were doing the same thing. isn't that amazing? in 1911 the doors didn't open at the triangle shirtwaist factory a company that fought against any union for its workers (do the workers at imperial chicken have a union? in north carolina a state where the workers have the right not to organize so that the owners have the right not to pay and the state has the right not to inspect but the workers do have a "right to work" that right hasn't been denied) and the owners of triangle shirtwaist eighty years ago had rejected any sprinklers as costing too much in the firetrap called the triangle shirtwaist factory in which one hundred forty-five women died when the doors wouldn't open eighty years ago either (the north carolina state budget can't afford more safety inspectors the state legislature said, so what that every week three people die at work in north carolina, there's no money in the budget. if we get safety inspectors there'll be no money for school books for the children, which is more important?-- by the by what is your salary, governor? and your assistants'? and that new office building you're building, how many school books and safety inspectors could that buy? or your trip to the governor's convention, would that cover my child's books and all the children's schoolbooks in hamlet, north caro1ina?)
eighty years ago in the new york city sweatshop fire in which one hundred forty-five working women died, fifty eight had crawled into the cloakroom joined now eighty years later by those who fled to the imperial freezer neither providing the shelter so desperately sought so heartlessly denied by those who paid them so little to work so hard. one week after the 1911 fire rose schneiderman, who alongside the women had tried to unionize, with one hundred forty-five tears rolling from her eyes memorialized by: "i would be a traitor to those poor burned bodies if i were to talk good fellowship. we have tried and have found you wanting. too much blood has been spilled. i know from experience it is up to the working people to save themselves and the only way is through a strong working class movement." eighty years later the same words apply.
a quarter of a million people eighty years ago attended the funeral of those just victimized. eighty years later what have we learned? how will we memorialize those victimized? how many more of the fifteen hundred uninspected highhazard shops in north carolina alone do we wait to blow up with its locked doors? after all north carolina has only 10 fulltime safety inspectors and 15,000 plants, and don't you want the children to have schoolbooks? how many have already blownup which we haven't yet memorialized?
and texas, are there any uninspected highhazard factories, let me see? or new york city? the women in the sweatshops may no longer speak italian or yiddish, perhaps vietnamese. are they any safer? do we even know how many? how many deaths do we need before we know that too many have died too many have been are being victimized ? are they too poor or too foreign or too different or too not like you so that it's easy to set them aside?
Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, the triangle sweatshop owners who fought against the unions and the sprinklers in 1911 (did workers at imperial chicken try to organize? when they complained to their imperial bosses that the machines weren't working right the bosses told them "it's just your imagination." 25 imaginary bodies? really? will the new york times investigate and report all the news the workers find fit to print?) eighty years ago the owners were tried in the courts of justice or injustice depending on which side you're on. (by the way, which side ARE you on? how do you know? what do you do?) were the owners of the triangle sweatshop guilty of manslaughter just because they locked the doors from the outside and had only one fireescape which immediately broke and found sprinklers too expensive and all had been brought to Isaac's and Max's attention many times before? were they guilty of manslaughter (not even murder?) after one hundred fortyfive women had died? were they guilty? the courts of justice should decide. the courts knew from what side their bread got the butter.
what did the courts decide? no. not guilty. so, today, eighty years later, deputy director of the state bureau of investigation of north carolina calls the fire an accident. twentyfive accidental deaths. who decided the doors of the high hazard plant which just eight years ago had a fire in the very same vat should be locked from the outside ? just an accident, says the inspector.
what will the courts of north carolina's justice system decide? twentyfive life sentences and forty intentional assaults of the first degree for the owners of the imperial chicken factory. we want this to serve as an example for the fourteenhundred ninetynine other highhazard plant owners in north carolina and the hundreds of thousands others throughout the country. don't you think that's what the verdict will be? twentyfive lives forty injuries locked from the outside doors unopenable unbeatable, the blackened footprints on the inside are still there to see. sounds fair to me.
