History Repeats Itself

Women, Fires and Jobs. Perhaps the most dramatic point so far from this morning's panel on "Partnerships for the Well-being of Women" came from Barbara Shailor of the AFL-CIO.

Shailor compared the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911, in which so many women were trapped and killed, to another fire nearly a century later in a toy factory in Bangkok. Some 200 women were killed in the toy factory fire.

The implicit message: progress is made through activism, in this case labor activism. And the real issues, the truly fundamental issues, don't change that much over the centuries.