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day. Fifty-six days, it's an interminable kind of thing. So I'm giving it to you from a different level.

I guess what I'm pushing to understand or to try to identify is whether anything that you feel that you did then contributed to the problems which would emerge later on in terms of the structure of the union.

No, no, not then. Not then. Then it was a very small union, very hectic and living from day to day in struggle, in battle. Just incredible. You just couldn't stop. You were in a constant war there all the time, organizing workers, talking to workers, convincing workers to a position, to follow it, and at the same time trying to do all the other things. See, there are a lot of crazy stories here. I'm just thinking of one in Beth El, yes, a member of the board of trustees, a member of the board of trustees, he's a progressive, a left-winger, giving to all kinds of left causes, the Guardian, etc. We find out about him. So Elliot and I start meeting with him with another guy who is now dead, a fundraiser for Beth El, Dave Shapiro. Because Dave knew him. Our strategy is to get him to resign from the board of trustees over this issue and to make a big stink about it. We bring him on slowly and slowly, and we're developing the statement and preparing the press release, etc., and finally he's agreed. Everything is all ready. At the last minute he says to us, “Do you think that they will take my name off the pavilion if I withdraw from the board?” Theodore Shapiro, that's his name. Because he was also a trustee at Brandeis, and my daughter was applying for Brandeis at that time -- when I told him my daughter was applying, he says, “She's going to get into Brandeis, no question about that. We need people like you.” But that's the kind of things that you have that's crazy. But again I say that it's different levels. The level I am most familiar with is not in the trenches, although I would see the people and hear the stories, but those are the things that are not my beat, so to speak.

See, the thing is, the success of 1199 in organizing hospital workers here, elsewhere, and around the country depended upon coordination of all the levels, of putting everything together--civil rights, press, media, and the workers. These are perfect illustrations. The best example is Charleston, because it was 113 days.

Which we should get to in about six months.

We had 113 days, and then you're making it a national issue while the workers are in the trenches, and you're getting everything all tumbled up.