"I REALLY WASN'T an instigator. When we all got together to talk, something we had not previously done, we became collectively aware of just what our role in the process would be. It was exciting to see this awareness click through office discussion."
Lisa moved on to her next job: clerical work at MIT's notorious I-labs, home of MIRU and other military research projects. Old friends at MIT knew of Lisa's radical activities and so Naval intelligence and FBI men at the I-labs were especially concerned about her. While working at the I-labs. Lisa took part in the 1969 November Action, an antiwar demonstration at MIT. She received a slashed eye, cracked spine and all the other radical medals of honor for her activities. After the November Action, Lisa was carefully "watched". "It was like a siege or an armed camp," Lisa said.
During this time, Lisa and two other antiwar activists had been speaking at local high schools about the war. One morning a high school in Tewksbury, the group was met by a host of policemen. Despite the protests of the 250-member student body, Lisa and her companions were told to leave. They refused, got roughed up and were carted off to jail. The group was referred to in the papers as the "Tewksbury Trio" at a time when similar number combinations were making headlines elsewhere.
It was time for a vacation and Lisa was given a week's leave from the I-labs. This is Lisa's idea of a vacation. A couple of her friends had decided to go to Nova Scotia where a strike of fisherman and cannery workers was beginning. The fishermen had had an orientation meeting and decided to set up a picket line. The next day, Lisa, three women, and a dog manned the picket line. Within an hour word spread like lightning through the town and women and children left their homes and joined the line. So did the Canadian Mounties. End of strike.
Lisa came back to Cambridge and severed ties officially with MIT and the I-labs. "They weren't particularly sad to see me go. I was the enemy in their midst," she said.
SOME OF THE professors Lisa had known in the I-labs had one more project they wanted to help her with: G.L.I. or Get Lisa In. In to Radcliffe that is. They had been pushing Lisa to return to college for some time and they thought Radcliffe could cope with a Lisa.
As it turned out, Radcliffe coped fine with Lisa but she was still not too hot on college.
While Lisa spent hardly a week at class, she did manage to help organize Harvard Clerical Workers. Lisa did not take any of her finals during the Fall and didn't bother to register in the Spring. Lisa had nothing particular against Radcliffe. She just "happened" to get involved with the efforts at 1199 and devoted 24 hours a day to that.
There are two major problems in organizing the unorganized, according to Lisa. First, the workers are constantly aware of the disfavor with which their supervisors view their union activities. While they might want to support the union's activities, they know it will not place them in the good graces of those who control their wages.
In addition, some of the workers, particularly the women, do not take their jobs that seriously since they are only a secondary source of income. Some of the secretaries who work for the top-level administrators in the hospitals identify with their status and therefore scorn the union.
ALTHOUGH LISA hardly borrows the social theorists vocabulary to describe job conditions, she said that what she had learned about social stratification during her brief stay at college applied perfectly to conditions in the hospitals. Management uses race, class, and hierarchy to divide workers, Lisa explained. "Class and departmental separation encourages an in-grown community and suspicions between workers in different classes," she said. And Lisa does not think this is a natural divisiveness that the workers choose for comfort. She said that many of the Spanish workers want to work with English-speaking workers so that they can learn the language.
In the New England Baptist Hospital, the workers sit at different tables according to their jobs. Lisa said that supervisors often questioned workers who switched tables. The different color uniforms workers wear help the supervisor keep an eye on who's mixing with whom.
A second obstacle is the confusion caused by the competing dual unions. When the Boston Hospital Workers Organizing Committee entered 1199 territory in October 1972, a jurisdictional fight began. The Boston organizers were trying to affiliate workers with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Barnes and other 1199 staff members had to explain to the workers the threat SEIU posed to their union's efforts.
Some people consider working with unions a sell-out since it implies an acceptance of the wage system and is incompatible with workers control and reform movements. Lisa disagrees. "To work for revolutionary socialism is to bypass too many steps and to leave people with too many doubts," Lisa said. "A lot of people have ideals but have few ideas of how to get there."
Lisa considers herself a Marxist--"but I'm not quite sure what brand." In addition, she does not consider revolutionary ideals incompatible with the labor movement. "People like George Meany really don't represent most workers or most trade union officials."
UNIONIZING SERVICE employees offers opportunities other unionizing efforts don't. Lisa attributes this to the close community of interests that the hospital aides share with the patients. This is true especially at Boston City Hospital where most of the workers come from the community, Lisa explained. Because service employees can't increase their productivity and they feel the inflation squeeze the tightest, they are potentially more radical than commodity producers.
Some organizers capitalize on this. Lisa told of her disconcerting involvement with two workers from the Progressive Labor party. The workers interrupted a union meeting and requested that the organizer, Lisa, hand the leadership of the meeting over to the workers. Lisa agreed. Within an hour the workers from PL were spouting party doctrine and had taken complete control of the meeting, which angered many of the other workers.
Lisa is receptive to criticism and has no hard feelings against the PL faction. "The hospital workers are hostile to the PL people--not because they disagree with their goals, but the way they come across turns many workers off," she explained.
The strike at Mass Rehab is still in its crucial stage and Lisa doubts she will return to college in the near future. It is the specifics of organizing that frustrate Lisa and not the choices she has to make about her own future. The more immediate exigencies of external situations seem to grip her and therefore decisions about her education keeps getting postponed.
"After all, social theory is real important, and I firmly believe in mixing theory and practice, but, well, right now it just doesn't seem to fit into my plans. There's always something else I have to do."