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strike settled, over, so there is no danger that this whole union will fall apart.”

It was a period when David Livingston was asked the question about 1199, at that period, when we were that weak, and he said -- I remember, he says, “How do you fix a busted Stradivarius?” Dennis in recent years has become much more involved with the labor movement because of 1199's strength and power and influence and everybody's after us to help with them, and we do, we are doing. You know, their demonstrations, you can always see the 1199 people there, the different unions, that we're on hand for everything and they come to our things. Particularly our merger with SEIU has strengthened that, too, but Dennis is now regarded as somebody who works with other unions, and people want to work with him.

One other question about an issue raised by those home-care campaigns. It sounds like there was great success in reaching out beyond the labor movement to the Catholic Church and Reverend Jackson and the civil rights movement and to Riverside Church, other denominations. Some unions feel like now that labor needs to increase its community cooperation, the mutual role with community organizations on community issues and labor issues. 1199 has done that successfully for a long time, but often sporadically in crisis situations. Is this an area where you think -- have we been successful? Is there a new approach that we could take to it? Could we deepen and make more permanent these ties?

These ties, it's difficult to do this, but these ties have to be made more permanent and lasting, and to a degree, the union through the training fund has been setting up organizational structures in different parts of the city. There's a Brooklyn headquarters where many things happen with members coming to events there. The training fund, for example, they do this big project with Pen, writers, where writers come to talk to workers, read the book. So that relationship will continue and grow.

And I think that Bread and Roses, through some of its programming, is now planning to do programming in the various boroughs to reach members. Now, when Theater in the Hospital goes around, we are reaching large numbers of members.

And non-members.

And non-members. Not only that, but when it's performed in the hospitals, and a big show like “Take Care” will reach more members than the union reaches in meetings, will spend an hour