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Depending on what happens in this country. This is all related, of course, to the conservative trend. Not only the conservative trend in the country but the neo-liberal. A certain group has captured the major instruments of policy -- the institutions. The democratic party is controlled by people who have very very narrow and conservative viewpoints. You hear people like Ted Kennedy moving away from that thing. You don't hear anybody talking about national health insurance anymore. We thought when Carter was elected it was on the horizon! You don't hear these things being proposed. You hear always, “I'm going to dig in on it and duplicate what they're doing.”

You know, go after the yuppies. The question about the society -- and one swallow doesn't make a summer. Listening on the radio -- I don't know if you heard NPR yesterday morning -- an editor from Sports Illustrated was describing a kind of boxing that's developed in California, that's spreading, where there are fights scheduled in the ballrooms of swanky hotels where the audience -- mostly young, urban, upwardly mobile people -- where they're serving food with wine. In the ring are two guys just punching themselves to death. You know, anything goes! It's like the Roman gladiators. He says there's Donny Osmond there, and now he hears that Sylvester Stallone is interested in getting the thing in to Philadelphia. They sell all kinds of jackets and t-shirts with the names of everything that you buy there. It's like a decadent society! That's not typical of anything, but I think that the young, you know, the new make-it young people. I don't think they have any social conscience. Why is there great interest in food? Or VCRs? Everything is happening that's not conducive to what we would like to happen. There are many negative things.

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The fact that you could prevent the administration from doing what it would love to do -- invade Nicaragua, and overthrow that government. It's up in a blind alley also. It has all kinds of problems to do that. I am very very disturbed by the potential of nuclear war. I'm just afraid the way we're going that it's going to happen.

While we're on it I just wanted to say -- you invest fifty years of your life in a social movement, and forty some odd years in the labor movement, how does it make you feel?

Obviously it doesn't make you feel great. But I don't think it was a waste. I think we achieved a great deal. I think we made things better for a lot of people. The ending is very unfortunate. I never expected or planned to end my days this way. I never expected that I would retire from 1199 the way I did. But that's a different story.