Ode to Alida de Jong | We are unbroken

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we working women and girls

we seamstresses

we Jewish socialists, We proletarians, we who were born in basements

we in too dark studios, in too hot factories

we during twelve-hour shifts

we alone among the mustaches

with a dress sewn by our colleagues

we alone among ladies with calluses on our thumbs and a seamstress' neck

we for whom struggle is not charity

we who went on strike in the Jewish quarter

we saleswomen at the Bijenkorf

we are unbroken.

girls! we cry out. don't be fooled. don't be frightened. they can't fire us all. day and night, our cry is heard not in the studios alone, but through the streets of the neighborhood. they hang out of their houses to listen. we call, be in solidarity, be in solidarity, be in solidarity."

we make clothes. what is for sale, what is worn, a rag, a work coat and a fashionable top hat and gown. we cut patterns. we stitched the hems. before a body breathed life into them, they lay limp and flat under our machines. we made room in the fabric for you. he who digs in the ragman's cart, or stores at Metz. he wears what our feet made on the pedals. what our fingers lead along the needles."

girls, they want us small. bosses want female docility. a cuddly proletariat. assimilation. not hearing us and not seeing us. stealing only the fruits of our labor. always an ounce more. hoping we didn't notice. that we will be home later and with lighter purses. tame they want us. worn out they want us. tucked away in basements. make your way, we call out. now all. don't be invisible and be one."

attempts have been made to break us. means to this end have been deployed (list not complete) 

• propaganda. down with the red, long-lived order. which determines that the daughters of unemployed diamond cutters must live in basements.
• lack of resources for education, notwithstanding our heads to think. 
• lack of resources.  
• strike breakers. 
• crafty executives. 
• mutual strife on the left. 
• men who didn't give us the word. 
• anti-Semitism. 
• the toothlessness of Western social democracy in the face of encroaching 
• national socialism
• the silent fascism of the majority
• hydrogen cyanide.

girls. women. despite what we did, despite the waves that carried us, despite not giving way. despite the Dutch Trade Union Confederation, despite Social Democratic Workers Party, despite not fearing, despite the February Strike, despite not fleeing, not hiding, despite Alida, despite us, it was stopped and after her that life never came back.

July 6, 1943: we are unbroken.

we working women and girls

we seamstresses. 

we languishing in sweatshops with no emergency exits. 

we textile workers under the rubble. 

we saleswomen at the bijenkorf

we proletarians born in basements

we during 12-hour shifts

we who work and can't buy anything

we who get poorer every year

we for whom struggle is not charity

we biting the enemy's palm

we are unbroken.