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to relate to you. The fight was over him. The question was: was he engaging in anti-Semitic practices against teachers, removing Jewish schoolteachers? Our school system has been very heavily Jewish. At one time it was very heavily Irish. Our civil service takes that role. The cops are very heavily Irish. Sanitation is very heavily Italian. The school system is very heavily Jewish. The Puerto Ricans wanted to move the Jews out, not through attrition, not through working their way up through the civil service but just removing them. Jews don't like to be removed anymore than anybody else. So they fought back, and the big fight was basically the union, the UFT, against Fuentes. On that issue I sided with the UFT. Part of that school district is in my Congressional district. Anyway I tried to make peace between the UFT and the Puerto Rican community by meeting with Dora Colazzo Levy -- she's Puerto Rican. Her husband is obviously Jewish. I'd never met him. I assume he is.

She came to my house; she's a district leader -- with some other Puerto Ricans at my invitation. I said, “Listen, I could try” -- because I had already had a meeting with the UFT and had proposed to them that I try to mediate the dispute, and they had said, “Sure” -- “somehow or other to mediate this, to work out something, but it will never happen so long as Fuentes is the person that it's all revolving about. I don't think that the UFT would oppose a Puerto Rican majority on that board that's elected now in local elections, but they're never going to give up