The lecture, “Mourning and Activism: the case of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire,” led by Elik Elhanan, explored how collective grief can become a powerful driver of political action. While centered on the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the talk went much deeper connecting the event to broader themes of labor history in New York, Jewish immigrant organizing, and the political role of mourning. Elhanan examined how the fire, an entirely preventable tragedy that killed 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women, sparked massive public outrage and mobilization. He emphasized that what made this moment transformative was not just the scale of the tragedy, but how grief was made visible in the public sphere, how responsibility was clearly attributed to systemic failures like unsafe labor conditions and unchecked capitalism, and how this ultimately led to real institutional change, including labor protections and union recognition.

A key part of the lecture focused on how mourning itself became political. Elhanan highlighted how immigrant communities, particularly Yiddish-speaking Jewish workers, developed their own language and practices of collective mourning that challenged dominant narratives and demanded recognition. These mourning practices, especially large, silent protest processions, created a powerful, unified public response that helped translate grief into sustained activism. 

He then connected these ideas to his own work with Combatants for Peace, reflecting on how similar questions arise today: how can shared grief be mobilized into meaningful political action, and why does it sometimes fail to translate into sustained engagement? Drawing on his experience with the joint Israeli Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony, he discussed both the power and the limitations of creating spaces for shared mourning in ongoing conflict. The lecture moved between past and present, using the Triangle Factory Fire as a case study to explore larger questions about memory, visibility, responsibility, and the challenges of turning emotional response into lasting political change.