In the fall of 2022, the NMASS Archive Project team started to organize and digitize print, photo, and video materials dating back to NMASS’s founding in 1996. The NMASS Archive is an accessible living system of categorized materials, we use for discussions and reflection to sharpen our political critique, and to provide insight from the past for our members to bring forward into ongoing campaigns.

If you are curious to see the NMASS Archive or would like to volunteer with our team, come to the workers’ center or contact us.

Here is an example of some archive work on one of NMASS’ Campaigns:
The “Ain’t I A Woman?!” Campaign was started by garment workers fighting DKNY, run by a wealthy woman, Donna Karan, who was being heralded as an icon by the mainstream feminist movement. At the same time, the garment workers making clothes for DKNY, most of whom were immigrant women of color, were forced to work 70 to 80 hours a week, without overtime and paid less than minimum wage.

Over the years women workers from many different backgrounds have participated in NMASS’s organizing, highlighting the work many women workers do both as employees and as caregivers in the home. By the 2010s, home-care workers were organizing against the 24-hour workday.

History of the “Ain’t I A Woman?!” campaign

• Early 2000s – DKNY workers’ organize against long hours in this pamphlet from our archive from 1999 and the early 2000s.
• 2010 – Zheng versus Liberty Apparel fight, where workers challenged garment manufacturer Liberty Apparel and won in U.S. Federal Courts
• 2023 – At a May Day Rally at City Hall protesting the 24-hour workday, Yasmin Silvera, a home attendant, speaks to the harm of families being torn apart as a consequence of working 24-hour shifts.