I learned parts of this story at my own grandmother’s knee – she inspired the character of 12-year-old Blanche.
With a view of the intricacies of the political battle and the burning romance between the organizers, Blanche emerges as EGF’s loyal protégé and a front row witness to history.
REBELS and ROSES
In today’s Lawrence, firebrand MIGDALIA RIVAS (36) takes care of other people’s old folks (including the now centenarian Blanche) for little pay and appreciation. She’s hellbent on making her own way, because beggars can never be chosers. Salsa and meringue may have replaced polkas and fados on the playlist, but the rickety gazebo in the town square will still provide a stage for “the good fight.”
For three months, the strikers invented crazy tactics with bottomless passion to win one of the biggest labor victories in U. S. history – a 54-hour week and an end to child labor. The Bread and Roses Strike (“Yes, we fight for bread, but we fight for roses too!”) was led by the beautiful Irish orator ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN (20) and her volatile lover CARLO TRESCA (35) and its lessons reverberate to this day.
Based on Real Events
Over the coldest winter on record in 1912, thousands of immigrant textile workers of Lawrence, MA first threw wooden clogs into the loom gears and poured out of the textile mills like a defiant river of rebellion.