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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

Foner:

So Moberg says, “Yes. The OpEd editor used to be on the staff of In These Times.” So I ask for her name. Her name is Lee Aitkin. So I call Lee Aitkin, and I suggest an OpEd piece. She says, “Gee, that's a good idea.” I said, “You know, Newsday's been covering it.” She said, “Yes, yes, I've been following it.” She says, “That's a good idea. Who should write it?” She said, “Is there an historian around here, or an important person?” I said, “Well Raskin already did it for the Times, and Stanley Aronowitz had that interview in the piece that Alex Reed did in which he predicted a strike in the hospitals.” So I didn't want Stanley Aronowitz. So I said, “I'll tell you. There's one person who's very well versed on this. He's not in New York, but he's written in Dissent on this. His name is Leon Fink. If you want to see what he's written, look at the current issue of Dissent.” She says, “I'll do that.” The next thing you know Leon calls and says, “Hey, they asked me to write an OpEd piece for [Newsday].” Then when his piece appears, it appears on the Friday before Labor Day, with Raskin and Fink. Raskin's writing on the decline of the labor movement and Fink's writing about 1199. So, you know, that's the kind of thing.

So where are we now? The election, certain things happened that are of interest that I'll tell you about now. For example, the corruption angle on the grand jury. We had known about that months ago. We could never get the story in. But in going back into court, Save Our Union attorneys, in attempting to get more financial records, the attorney for 1199 gets up and says to the judge, “We can't give you that record.” “Why?” “Because it's with the grand jury.” We know that anyway. I hear that, they called me up. Okay. So Larry Bivens, he runs with the grand jury. The Times. I can't get the Times to do it. That day, it was being handled by my good friend the health guy, Ron Sullivan, whose strategy is, “Anything that I can do to avoid work, I do.” So Ron Sullivan says, “Well, it's not an actual fact that there's a grand jury investigation.” I said “Look Ron. I'm going to go over it slowly with you.” I wasn't being nasty with him, I said, “Look. The judge has said this.” “That's not enough for me. That's not enough.” So I called our attorney, and I said, “Look, I want you to dictate to your secretary a memo to Sam Roberts, in which you say that today in court Judge So-and-So, in the course of our request for information, stated that to the grand jury.” I couldn't get him to move on it. But, the Daily News picked it up, so that you have more of that stuff.

Now that stuff is valuable for members, but that's during the campaign. That's not after the election -- that's during the campaign. We have instant reproduction facilities. First of all, by this time we have people in every hospital. Dennis starts the network going with calls. You call Sam Smith, and say “Sam Smith, pick up this paper and





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