Session: 123456789101112131415161718192021222324         Page 542543544545546547548549550551552553554555556557558559560561562563564565566567568 of 592

I got to know Dennis better in the period when we were campaigning to get the labor board to permit us to have an election. Because we were constrained from an election, Doris was the president, and we wanted to overturn the situation, the labor board would order an election, and we were trying to put pressure on the labor board to do that. One of the things that was done is that we would go to Washington, Dennis and others, to try to speak to congressmen and senators, and before that, Dennis got a job working in a hospital when Doris threw him out.

He especially took jobs where he would wheel people from department to department so that he could speak to the workers, and every time, at fifty-nine days, Doris would call, and he would be fired, and he'd move to another -- otherwise he'd have union membership.

Just short of the sixty-day probation period.

Right. And he moved to different places, and then he decided that he would work full time on this campaign, but stay with it, and then we became very close. He would call me every day, what we were doing, what he should do, what I would do, and we'd call again at the end of the day to see if he'd done it or not. In that way, we became a lot closer in things that involved calling me to see if we could get Abe Raskin to do an editorial tomorrow, and we got Raskin to doing an Op Ed column on this whole issue of democracy, and he thought that that was a miracle.

In the New York Times.

Yes. And then we continued to work that way, and then I worked with him on the telephone all the time. I remember I was on the West Coast -- I may have told you this story, about his call about Ossie taping his speech and the question of the throwing the election, Dave White.

I think that's in your oral history.

That's in there. Okay. Dennis went to get the interview with Dave White on tape.

Yes, that's in there.

That's in there. But then when Dennis was elected, he was always calling for advice, and I was trying to see to it that the media would begin to recognize this guy.

This is after '89, when the second strike was --