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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

are calling, how do they buy these, and we get distributors who take our videos and distribute them.

Q:

Now, in the '91 campaign, you also built an alliance with Reverend James Forbes of Riverside Church.

Foner:

James Forbes at Riverside was a very decent guy. He worked with us on that and gave us the use of his church for a rally. Forbes is someone we've known for many years in contract with civil rights issues.

There's one other thing I want to mention on home care, the use of art. Through Marshall Arisman, who is the dean of the graduate division at the School of Visual Arts, who had contributed an original work to Images of Labor, I knew him, and I raised with him once, “Marshall, your graduate students, would any of them be interested in taking assignments for 1199 News, where their work would be shown on an issue that we would be interested in?” He said yes, and he brought Robert Felker to me.

Q:

F-E-L-K-E-R?

Foner:

F-E-L-K-E-R, a young guy who didn't come from New York, but reacted immediately and got so involved that he spent maybe several weeks going to the home of one health-care worker, spending the day with her, going on the subway, and painting this, and it became a major feature in 1199 News. Then there were reproductions of it, and some of the originals are in the office of the Home Care Division.

Q:

And some were used in the video.

Foner:

In the video, too, yes. Now, that continued with other artists on other subjects. For example, just the other day, one of the artists, I forget her name, who is now very successful, Lynn Pauley, she did a thing for the 1199 News, and she's now a very successful commercial artist. She sent me a note with one of her cards just saying that she wanted to say hello. I talked to her. She's going to do an original work of art for us as part of the SEIU's 2002 calendar.

Q:

Going back to getting Robert Felker's drawings, paintings, during that '91 campaign, what did you see as the value of that for the campaign itself?

Foner:

Its value was primarily for the worker. For example, not only home-care workers reacted to it, but other workers who see the magazine. As you well know, we experimented with many, many ways of making our magazine a publication that would be readable.





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