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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

Foner:

And those notes were then turned over to the writers. They were Eve Merriam, Micki Grant, Ossie Davis, Alan Menken, who has since become the big Academy-winning Award Winner for his Disney --

Q:

Some of this may have been covered in the earlier oral histories.

Foner:

Okay. At any rate, we would try very hard to book it into places, hospitals, where we were organizing, say, the professionals or the nurses, and in some cases the management said, “No deal,” but in some cases they said okay. When the workers came to it and saw it and that all the material so accurately reflects what they do and what they think, and done so professionally, that they helped them in joining the union.

Let me end with a simple story. We did this performance in Washington, one performance at the Department of Labor, and in the audience were representatives from all the major unions in Washington. The show went on, was very well received, was covered by the media, and I remember that one reporter from The Wall Street Journal, Joanne Lublin, who also covered labor, reviewed it and said, “This is a wonderful show, and the only problem is that you can't see it unless you're a hospital worker because it only plays in hospitals.” But she said, “If you want my advice, if it ever comes to your town, get sick, break a leg, it's worth it.”

[END OF SESSION]





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