iCal Import
May 24, 2012
A TALK BY NY HISTORIAN WARREN SHAW
From The Triangle To The Tiger: New York’s Garment Center In American Popular Culture, 1920-1970
Thursday, May 24, 2012 at 7:30 p.m.
East 54th Street Recreation Center
348 East 54th Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenue
A multimedia examination of a completely overlooked aspect of Popular Culture — the popular take on New York’s Garment Center during its peak years.
From the 1920s through the 1970s Seventh Avenue was the undisputed center of American garment-making. During these years the industry shook off its sweatshop roots, and owners worked tirelessly to promote an aura of glamour and confidence. From the industry’s remorseless waves of success and failure, garment workers created some of the great rhythms of the City, while the lunchtime oceans of streetside workers, models, designed and owners made up one of New York’s daily spectacles.
But in the 1960s the ground began to shift. Rising costs and other factors drove a growing share of manufacturing abroad — first to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, then to the South and West, to the Caribbean and around the world. A fatal combination of increasingly national-scale retail, heavily-promoted competition from Western companies like Levi’s, the fashion-spurning “Youthquake” or counterculture, and the aging-out of many of the old firm owners, all rang down the curtain on the Garment Center’s mid-century dominance. By the 1980s Seventh Avenue’s proud place as the foremost emblem of the City’s economy had been taken over by real estate developers — and by Wall Street.
Learn about the Golden Age of the Garment Center, and its Pop Culture artifacts — the novels, plays, songs, films, advertising and other popular imagery that tells the changing fortunes of the Garment District. By turns informative, campy, bigoted, and just plain naive, this imagery is deeply evocative of a once-vital City sector, now more a tourists’ lure than a force in New York’s life.
Admission is free, but reservations are required. Please call (212) 408-0293, or email artsculturefun@parks.nyc.gov
For further information:
http://warrenshawhistorian.com/Upcoming_Lectures.html
May 27, 2012
 Joyce Gold Tours Presents: Italian Greenwich Village
Sunday, May 27 at 1 PM
Italian priests, saints, shop-owners, politicians, and mobsters all contributed to the scene south of Washington Square.
MEET: Washington Sq. Arch, Fifth Ave. 1 block south of 8th St.
More information at http://www.joycegoldhistorytours.com/tour-schedule.html
June 12, 2012
 FIT’s MFA in Illustration program, in collaboration with the American History Department and the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, present Triangle Factory Fire: Then, Since, Now. This exhibition presents the work of 25 artists, with each piece presenting a visual interpretation of the fire, its impact, and its aftermath. Works include paintings, drawings, collage, sculpture and interactive media. More information at http://fitnyc.edu/3662.asp
image by Jennifer Merz
June 28, 2012
 WE ARE ONE:
The 1982 Chinatown Garment Strike, Thirty Years Later
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Museum of Chinese in the Americas, 215 Centre Street, New York (www.mocanyc.org)
3:00 to 5:00 PM Conducted in Cantonese Chinese
5:00 to 6:00 PM Reception
6:00 to 8:00 PM Conducted in English
Program:
3:00-5:00 PM (in Cantonese Chinese)
• Film clip from the “Digital Quilt,” by Nancy Tong
• Speakers:
–Betty Leung, Local 23-25 Chinese Communications Director (retired)
–Shui Mak Ka, Local 23-25 Education Department staff (retired)
–Wai Chee Tang, Local 23-25 Executive Board Chairperson (retired)
–Katie Quan, Associate Chair, UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education
–Po Ling Ng, Executive Director, Project Open Door
5:00-6:00 PM Reception
6:00-8:00 PM (in English)
• Film clip from the “Digital Quilt,” by Nancy Tong
• Speakers:
–June Jee, MoCA Trustee and daughter of Local 23-25 retiree
–Katie Quan, Associate Chair, UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education
–Wai Chee Tang, Local 23-25 Executive Board Chairperson (retired)
–Ed Vargas, Workers United Assistant to the President (retired)
–Rose Imperato, Coordinator, Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition
Background:
After 1965, the NYC garment industry experienced a tremendous expansion of production capacity with the influx of workers and entrepreneurs from Hong Kong and China. By 1982, there were hundreds of garment factories employing tens of thousands of workers, mostly immigrant women, in and around Canal Street in Chinatown. These workers were organized by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, enjoying benefits shared with unionized garment workers all over the region. In the early summer of 1982, with union contract negotiations blocked by a small group of Chinatown employers, the union (Local 23-25, now affiliated with Workers United/SEIU) mobilized workers to support the union contract. Two massive rallies were held in Columbus Park on June 24 and 29, bringing negotiations to a successful conclusion. Following the historic strike, Chinese immigrant workers became new leaders and activists in the union, and also promoted important grassroots activities in the community – for day care centers and senior centers, against the building of the jail in Chinatown, for broader voter registration and political activism. The 1982 strike transformed the image and activism of Chinese immigrant women workers and wrote a new page of community and labor history. Although the garment industry and union have changed, the spirit of these worker activists continues today.
More information at http://www.mocanyc.org/
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