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everybody's got some contacts. I have lots of them all over the place. So we're building to a situation where we reach a point where we say, “Unless there is --” We sent a letter to the management for a meeting. We figure, listen, we debated it all out at Montefiore, they ought to agree to it now.

We've got to finish.

We can stop here.

Stop here, okay.

We'll come to this very point next time.

You make a note of where we are.

It's easy to remember. You're right before the strike of the seven hospitals. [tape interruption]

That business of, “I want to join the union from Montefiore was the thing. That was the thing.”

In your own experience, what an opportunity.

It was like walking on air, you know. The other thing that happened, we hadd been in the movement, we knew about racism. We really knew. I remember going with a worker who worked at Knickerbocker Hospital, Mary something. I forget her name. She had three kids. She was an active person. I said, “I want to be able to write something, and I want to know more. Could I come to your home?”

She ducked me for a long time. Finally, she said, “Okay, you can come.” I could tell that she had cleaned up everything. It was a very small place there, and the kids were all--but when we came into contact with black workers and Hispanic workers and saw how they lived and what they made and their problems, it shocked us. It shocked us more than it shocked anybody else, because we were not prepared for it. This in turn gave us a fantastic shot in the arm. It gave everybody -- the Van Arsdales and the others on the outside, we would show them and have them talk to them. Dan Wakefield covered it for The Nation. “Victims of Charity.” I remember the article he wrote. Dan wrote a wonderful piece in Dissent magazine at the conclusion of the '59 strike on the thing. But, see, a lot of people were emotionally moved by this thing.