From Working in These Times of Feb 9, 2016-
“On Bill and Hillary Clinton’s First Date in 1971, They Crossed a Picket Line”
by Zach Schwartz-Weinstein
According to the above article, Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton, young law students at Yale, were members of the student’s Committee for Local 35 and their signatures were on a statement of support for the union a week before the strike.
Nevertheless, Hillary recalled her first date with Bill in 1971:
We both had wanted to see a Mark Rothko exhibit at the Yale Art Gallery but, because of a labor dispute, some of the university's buildings, including the museum, were closed. As Bill and I walked by, he decided he could get us in if we offered to pick up the litter that had accumulated in the gallery's courtyard. Watching him talk our way in was the first time I saw his persuasiveness in action. We had the entire museum to ourselves. We wandered through the galleries talking about Rothko and twentieth-century art. I admit to being surprised at his interest in and knowledge of subjects that seemed, at first, unusual for a Viking from Arkansas. We ended up in the museum's courtyard, where I sat in the large lap of Henry Moore's sculpture Drape Seated Woman while we talked until dark
What a romantic first date! Scabbing on the blue collar workers who cared for their campus!
The article further states:
The relationship between Rodham and Clinton, two instrumental figures in the decoupling of the Democratic Party from the priorities of the mainstream labor movement, thus began with the crossing of a picket line….
Rodham and Clinton were offering themselves as replacement labor, blunting, if only temporarily, the effects of the strike on the university. The two law students then bartered their litter pickup, which was, in essence, scab labor (or maybe just the promise thereof) into access to a struck building.
Read the full article here: inthesetimes.com/…
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