We went to a fancy labor reception at the St Regis Hotel tonight. I used to work as a union organizer for HERE and ACTWU and Edward was an executive vice president of UNITE! before he semi-retired, so it was fun to see and commiserate with old friends and comrades. Put me in mind of the days, weeks, months that I spent on union campaigns in various parts of the country, trudging house to house, dragging myself out for dawn picket lines, living out of hotel rooms. I had some very interesting conversations with people about the bill pending in Congress, the Employee Free Choice Act; the Act makes it easier for employees to organize unions without the intimidating anti-union onslaughts that employers rain down on them prior to secret ballot elections. More important, the Act would also make it a lot harder for employers to stonewall negotiating first contracts. I snapped a nice photo of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, and we managed to chat every so briefly about organizing…

Mark and Edgar gave us tickets to the inauguration!

We were happy about that; little did we (and almost everyone else!) know that inauguration tickets in the crowd of almost 2 million would prove practically meaningless. But we were glad to have them anyway, at the time!