Throughout the history of planet Earth, there has always been oppressed people. Sometimes these people remain oppressed, but then there are the times when a force appears that allows these people to overcome this oppression. This force is agency. Gaining agency is usually a gradual process and a lot of the time their are always bumbs and hitches along the road, but it usually starts with a few people coming together and that grows until it reaches hundreds maybe thousands of people, and then usually there is an event, everything comes to a culmination, and then… BOOM… it all explodes.
This week in class we saw this happen in different situations. We looked deeply into the case of the Triangle Waist Company factory fire. This tragic event was the ignition that allowed for a change that helped oppressed workers, especially women workers. However, the gaining of agency started long before that. Women realized the position they were in at the jobs they were working. They were basically slaves to their job, and they were treated as such. The year before the fire there was a strike against factories like the Triangle Waist Company. Like I said before, gaining agency to overcome oppression is gradual. The women on strike were gaining traction, and when J.P Morgan’s daughter joined their cause, it gained even more speed. However, they hit some bumbs. The women were trying to create unions, but Ms. Morgan would take no part in that, so she left the cause. This led to a stall in the coming change, but on March 25, 1911 everything changed. The Triangle Waist Company was engulfed in fire, women burned, women jumped, women died. 146 to be exact. This is the event that spurred people into action. It is sad that it took for women to be set ablaze for conditions to change, but, as can be seen in history over and over again, this, unfortunately, is usually what it takes.
I think it takes something tragic, something so big, so important that can’t be avoided because people don’t really feel a responsibility or an attachment to what’s happening. They may hear what’s going on, but they don’t really feel compelled to do anything. However, seeing women and young girls jumping from a building is so great, so emotionally charged of an event that the problems could no longer be ignored. We can see something like this in today’s society. Beyonce’s formation video shows that a message has to be big enough and strong enough to break through people’s apathy. Beyonce has gained weight as a media figure throughout her career, so she already has millions of fans around the world and people who adore her. There are also many people who are upset about the killings of black people by police officers, something that Beyonce’s video expressed. Her video helped aid the Black Lives Matter movement. There was already steam behind Black Lives Matter, but having Beyonce (whose help in some ways parallels that of Anne Morgan) behind the cause gives the movement a bigger push, and it gets the message to millions of people because they follow her. This is one of the reasons why the video has come under so much attack lately. I believe that people can see what can happen and the changes that may occur by having such a big public figure backing a cause like Black Lives Matter.
The way to gain agency is by getting your message out there and making sure people care about it. They have to care enough to act not simply shake their heads and say “What’s happening is terrible.” Gaining agency is a process. It takes strong people to come together and say that something they see happening is wrong and then try to change it. They also have to get momentum going, get their message to other people in hopes that someone like Anne Morgan or Beyonce will take up their cause and aid them in spreading the word. Hopefully they will put enough passion into regular citizens to make them be active participants in getting things changed, so that way it won’t come down to a tragic and horrific event that finally gets laws passed. Oppressed people gain agency by not sitting idle. They are like the women who went on strike, they are like the people in the Black Lives Matter movement. They make change by no longer sitting down and rolling with the punches. They realize things need to change and they try to make these changes occur, and they realize if they want a change everybody else has to want it too
In the end, gaining agency is simply having the courage to take action and making sure to bring people together to see that changes occur.
– February 25, 2016
