Are you a professional pillow fighter, or a 95 low-cost time travel agent, or maybe real estate sales on Mars is your profession? It doesn't matter. Whatever it is you do, however complex or intricate, Monday.com can help you organize, work a straight, and make it more efficient. Monday.com is the one centralized platform for everything work-related. And with Monday.com, work is just easier. Monday.com, for whatever you run, go to Monday.com to learn more. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. ShopPay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer cards going abandoned and more sales going to Ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit Shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. Welcome to the new Books Network. Hello, I'm Rob Snyder for the New Books Network and the Gotham Center for New York City History. I'm talking with Robert Polner, co-author with Michael Tubherty of an Irish Passion for Justice, the life of rebel New York attorney Paula Dwyer, published by Cornell University Press. Dwyer was born in Ireland but immigrated to the United States and thrived in New York City. From the 1930s to the 1990s, he was a fierce and enduring presence in courtrooms, on picket lines and in contests for elected office. He was forever the advocate of the downtrodden and marginalized. He fought for Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland and for workers, radicals, Jews and African Americans in the USA. He was a strong opponent to the Vietnam War. With his shock of white hair and bushy eyebrows, Dwyer was widely recognized in politics and in the media. His workers reformed Democrat, transformed the Democratic Party and his advocacy for peace and justice in Northern Ireland, or fruit in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 that ended decades of conflict. Until now, however, there has been no biography of this happy warrior for social justice. That problem has been remedied with an Irish Passion for Justice. A well-researched book that locates Dwyer in some of the defining causes of Irish and American life and the turbulent politics of New York City. Welcome, Rob. Thank you so much, Rob, for having me on. It's really a privilege and I'm a big admirer of your work. So it's an added pleasure to talk to you today. Well, thank you. Thank you. Growing up in Western Ireland, what did Dwyer absorb from his parents that went on to shape his life? Right. Well, as you noted, he came from Ireland. He grew up during after World War I, born in 1907. It was a rural hamlet in the west of Ireland, County Mayo. And his parents were school teachers. He was one of the youngest of 10 children. He absorbed his father's battles as the head of the little schoolhouse that he attended with the Catholic priest who had it. It's hard to imagine today, but he had enormous power over the life of the people who lived in Beholder. That was the town, the little town, and, and over the school. And, and, and he put, it was not a good boss employee relationship. His father kind of must have railed against, against his boss in the house. He was, he came across to young Paul as a tyrannical figure. And in a way, as, as the clerics were an arm of the British state, which had misruled Ireland for, you know, for decades and centuries. That's part of the nationalist feeling that Paul grew up, grew up in. So he, he, that sort of rebel streak that you see in New York from him, this, this questioning of authority and his insistence on staying, in a sense, to the left throughout all the changes that go on in the 20th century. And the kind of conservatizing forces that his peers and countrymen in New York and in diaspora often reflect, he stayed to the left. He, and I think part of that didn't fact come from growing up with, with these, with this father who, who struggled against the, the whole of canon, just to keep his job and keep his dignity. He absorbed as a young man, of course, at the same time, Rob, the, he, Paul is coming of age during the war of independence in Ireland, and his family is an anti free state family. This is a tradition that said that refused compromise with the British government during this very turbulent period. And Paul, and in order to gain independence for Ireland once and for all, not every Irishman felt that way, obviously there was a huge split leading to a civil war. Up in this atmosphere of sort of dread and suspicion, and violence, the, the British famously organized a, what we're known as the black and Tans group, security force, police force based on their call that by the Irish, because of the kind of makeshift uniforms they were the color of the uniforms. And they, Paul did not experience violence directly nor did his family but his brothers got caught up in the war of independence were fighting the black and Tans the black and Tans were, were committing depredations all throughout the countryside. And that feeling of being completely marginalized in a against the state against Britain never left him. Now why do you choose to immigrate well it was a typical pathway to better economic prospects, his parents were poor basically they did very little it was typical his neighbors were farmers. And the day he left in 1925. They, he had, I think, $20 in his pockets as equivalent of $20 in his pockets, and one bag, and a green. He was willing suit that his mother got for him to keep him warm on the ship across to, to the new world. So you left because they really didn't seem a way to make a decent living and have a future in Ireland at that time is a very poor country. Again, 1925 was in the wake of the Civil War, and there was a lot of political strife. So his, his, his, one of his older brothers he had four older brothers already here in New York, who were making their way is working class immigrants Irish immigrants. Sent them a letter saying, I think you're becoming a burden on your sisters and on your mom who was widowed by that point. And, you know, they're helping to pay for your education and, and, and your upkeep and it's time for you to come. And maybe you ought to, his brother Frank said maybe I'll just leave and not even talk to them well that was not Paul's temperament. He went and talked to his mom and his mom saw him off the train was a typical scene very moving. And off you went with the light after what they sometimes called an Irish wake where his neighbors who didn't really have any money to give him. Collected $25 worth and put those in his pocket and off he went into this world he knew nothing about but his brothers were here, and they met him at the dock. And, and started to guide guided him up to an Irish rooming house which was on Columbus Avenue 103rd Street, where a couple of his brothers already lived. And the last of the brothers to to show up was would become the most famous one could talk about bill. Oh, why are the future mayor of New York. Paul initially find New York City. It was he was lonely his first year. He was discombobulating. He experienced anti Irish insults he didn't know whether to take them seriously half the time. At one point he was up for a job and, and the person interviewing said he'd have to tone down his bro. So he never went back for the second interview. But mostly he he what he had to do and which was in a way. Kind of helped him in a way was he had to go to work his brothers told him you have to go to work right away. And so he worked as a running an elevator and apartment house on Riverside drive. He said he got the job because the last guy had the same size so he could just get into his uniform the last Irish guy. But I bet at us at the Claremont horse stables. Remember this is New York in the jazz age right but this was not the jazz age of Scott Fitzgerald or that atmosphere of that Paul experience is just a typical guy just sort of making his way. But his brother bill. So he had he had a brother who was working it would be working as a fireman named Jimmy. He had another brother who was working on the docks and eventually would run a speakeasy as Jack and Frank was at the Washington produce market downtown would later become a produce. But he was a very cultural performer of on a large scale in the Imperial Valley and in California. But Paul was advised by his brother Bill who was then a former cop. And who was, you know, working his way to becoming a lawyer which was an unusual shift at the time had gone to school at nights and Bill said you don't you don't know anybody in New York I do. In fact, and plus you're small. So we got to get you going here. And I think you got to use your, your brain not your bra on which you have little, and, and Paul would would go to law school and he would go to law school at St. John's in the new law school, I think in its second year then at St. John's in downtown Brooklyn, you met a lot of Jewish students there how did that shape his life. Well, keep in mind so he in arriving in 1925. He, it's the year after the Reed Johnson Act right the 1924 immigration act that slams the lid down on the melting pot in America and New York, but he's here. Well, it takes a while for that the first administrative system to restrict immigration to get set up so he, he arrives without any, any has brothers here. He has the ability to work so he passed through in the usual way at the docks without any of hindrance. And I mean that's what millions and millions of people had done and the Irish of course were the largest and longest running immigration group in America. But the, the immigration act of 24 was I think largely a response to the Jewish immigration and the sort of native as fears about, about this quote unquote alien culture coming in and it was a Republican bill but it was widely, overwhelmingly approved in Congress because of the nativism in America and sort of stuff we hear today right from, from Republicans and supporters of Trump and from Trump himself that they were poisoning the blood of America so that was the, that was the that existed but Paul was able to get because of his timing was able to come in, but it was the beginning of the end of the Irish, huge, you know, decades long immigration stemming back from the Irish famine in the middle of the 19th century. And Paul kind of benefited from his timing. However, it was still, it was now a heavily Jewish city of new and recent immigrants from Eastern Europe. And rather than sort of retreat into his own Irish fold, which was, or, or, or, or, or, or maybe the way to put it is just enjoy the comforts of the, of what you could, and the contacts of the Irish world. That Dom had dominated the Tammany Hall, the democratic organization that was, that was so powerful, and the fire department where his brother worked and the police department where his other brother worked right. And on and on, and we're in a way that gatekeepers for immigrants into New York, but Paul found himself fascinated by the Jewish students St. John's was a largely Jewish law school for the children of, of immigrants. And he embraced them and made many friends and joined a, a kind of fledgling political club with some of them, and kind of thrived in this atmosphere of learning to become a lawyer among his Jewish friends. And of course, another way he was indebted to bill was bill bills was an associate, or, or if that's not too strong a word at the, the law firm of a Jewish man named Oscar burns steam. In, in downtown Brooklyn and Paul would eventually go on to work for for burns team become very close to the Jewish man and, and, and spend his whole life as his partner. I am struck how Paul was active in two great eras of political upheaval in the US, the 1930s and the 1960s. How do you get involved in the issues of the 1930s, especially labor. I actually think it was through Oscar that Leonard Bodine famous 1960s constitutional lawyer who Paul would work with on the Harrisburg case involving Phil there again and the new Catholic new left when they were prosecuted by the Nixon administration's justice department. Of course, of course, in the early 1970s, but his uncle was a lawyer with a Marxist theorist at the same time and he knew Oscar. All, and, and there was a case involving the leading probably most radical and respected union leader of the time been gold of the barriers union heavily Jewish for years union, and that was notable for huge strikes and clashes with police in New York. The federal government was going after using the Sherman enter trust law and Paul jumped at the chance in the in the late 30s to be on at that lawyers table representing been gold and fellow union members in that very long running case. Paul then went from there to joining and a really important organization for him. It when it comes to his interest in representing marginalized people. I mean, had been learning his craft and Brooklyn in the criminal courts. When I talk about that in the book has some of the cases where he was assigned to defend police who are accused of torturing a suspect in the basement of the station house or, or you know, various and sundry murders, one of his, one of his clients went to the electric chair. But he learned his craft in this way, and now he was interested in defending the foundational, and as it rose up trade union movement that was centered in New York. With, with unions like Ben Golds, so he joins the National Labor Lawyers Guild and LG, which at the time was also a lot heavily Jewish group or lawyers association here in New York and it was an alternative for people like with Paul's way of thinking to the American Bar Association, which was kind of corporatist, and a lily white and all male, right. And that just wasn't part of Paul's, he was more pluralistic as he got to live in a place like New York City and as I said, really kind of cotton to meeting other types of people and he was used to being around and they were, and was just enjoy and had a personality that that somehow or other, and then a curiosity that that endeared himself to people, even those who were much less left wing than he was and that was a characteristic throughout his life. One of your chapters is called Irish Zionist. What's the story behind that? Well, again, Paul, Paul, I should say he was so imprinted by the his experience growing up during the Irish War of Independence. So imprinted with that feeling of, of, of standing up for the underdog, and that's what he basically did throughout his career as a lawyer, as you said, with a bullhorn at the barricades, and as a politician. He was a Zionist. And after World War II, he was involved in efforts to help the Urgun and other militants who are fighting the British, trying to get them out of what was then called Palestine. He did this in light of the Holocaust, and the need for survivors of the Holocaust to have a place to live outside of Europe and Germany, who were desperate, and who, and the ports of course were closed or all but closed by the British in Palestine as they were by the United States here in America. But the side here, what he viewed as the underdog, which was in the, in the wake of the Holocaust, what, what, what greater underdog could there be. And he worked with, with people here in New York who were trying to get really smuggle arms, as well as middle medical aid and other resources into the, at the harbor. He had some experience at the harbor he had worked as a young man before during law school on the docks in Brooklyn. And so he, he was part of this, this group of people led by many Peter Bergson. And that was his American name Hello, who was his Israeli name, who had started earlier trying to raise funds and support in America to create a Jewish and all Jewish army to, to help the allies against them to fight the Germans. And the point was raising alarms and awareness had been raising alarms and awareness about the Holocaust and now was working with Paul, and many other many other celebrated Americans in Hollywood and politics to assist Jews. To create a Jewish state on behalf of Jews, so the, so he was a Zionist and an Irish Zionist, what he did with Peter Bergson's people was essentially help them raise money, work the phones, speak it rallies. And it was a little bit curious because he was Irish, I mean it was unusual. But the cause, what I tell young people today is that the cause of Zionism at that time was in America was, was bipartisan, and in a way nearly universal. He said Paul, Paul viewed the, the fight for Jewish homeland through the lens of the Irish Civil War. He, he said, when Irish friends said why, why do you care so much about this and he said it, it just reminded him of, of the British in Ireland. And he made it made a later statement about his early and frequent visits to the deep south, the Jim Crow south in the 1960s, when he said it's no different from being Irish against the black and Tans. I that's how I view the kind of night raids and terror inflicted on share properties and black people in the deep south and so I'm for them. It's really striking to see how he has empathetic bonds with all sorts of different kinds of people based on his Irishness. It's not inward looking at all right he reaches out. And it's, it's an important theme in his life I think all the way through. Yeah, I think it's also worth pointing out that he, he was going against the grain very often in the Irish community as, as, as there were indications as early as I think late 60s that Irish Democrats were willing to vote for a Republican to put just to put it simply. And he was just too far left, but he, he was kind of one of the, one of the remarkable things about him I think was that he, he was kind of a north star for people who were progressive, and on the left. And you certainly see that in the case of the Manhattan Democratic reform movement that he participated in. And actually was there at its founding in the late 50s with Eleanor Roosevelt and Herman Lehman. And it was hard for the, that group of people now we're talking about the early 60s who had graduated from college who included both young women and men and young women were a new feature of politics in New York. People in which Paul came up in politics was, and even to that point was, was not only about machine machines and smoke pill rooms. It was all mail. I mean, just as the fire department police department and Tammany were were mail institutions right in terms of the positions that were held positions of power. Politics was just an all mail affair and this was striking and knew that women coming out of college in the 60s, they were getting involved in local politics and state politics. I want to get back to the 60s in a second but I just wanted to ask one more question about his brother because in some ways there are study and contrast. And how would you compare them and how does one illuminate the other. Well, Paul did not have any of the crowd pleasing qualities that were that bill had in spades bill was hilarious. I was great on the stump. And just funny I read so many things that would make me laugh out loud that the bill would do in his public public appearances. And people liked him. And, but he was a, a figure of of Tammany Hall and more specifically the Brooklyn Democratic machine. He bill went from being a police officer to to a magistrate. It was interesting how I got to be in a point pointed, Madras, a magistrate. This was after Jimmy Walker, famous Irish figure in New York and mayor was was escorted out of office because of allegations of corruption. And other than Franklin Roosevelt was then the governor and was about to become president. But in that period, after that period bill became a magistrate in Brooklyn, and then a county judge who handled some big cases and then then the famously the Brooklyn district attorney, who smashed murder incorporated the crew of mostly Jewish also Italian thugs in the slums of Brownsville and Ocean Hill Brooklyn, who were murder for higher figures, working for the mob, which was kind of little understood, little little known until bill came along and sent eight or nine of them to the electric chair. And based on that, he became mayor following LaGuardia in 1946 and served was elected twice. You know, Paul, like it was quieter by nature. He was, he was, you know, he shared some of Bill's charm. But he, he was not an accommodation is. I didn't view himself as a transitional kind of political figure between which bill was between Tammany and whatever was going to come later. And he never had a cloud of scandal hanging over his head as his brother to whom he was fiercely loyal, by the way, throughout. Dead. So they were just, you know, different characters and one, the one way that Paul explained it was a bill never experienced the the war of independence. And so he didn't develop a kind of ideological framework as as Paul did. He left the year, Paul was born to go to us seminary in Spain to become a priest. And then, after a year that he realized that did not suit him at all. And he ended up as the first of the wire in New York in, in, I think. Well, I guess it was around 1910, 1909. So Paul actually meets him in New York for the first time. Found had heard sort of critical things said about him in the family because he didn't send money home is that felt largely to his other brothers, which was, which was expected of immigrants, particularly. I think the younger ones, the older ones, like Bill were sometimes more expected to just establish a beachhead for the family. So maybe that was going on. So Paul was distracted almost immediately by meeting people and make making his way ultimately in politics because that was the path right you go to you into the priesthood into politics or into the police if you were maybe the fire department if you were the three Irish. So, so the timing of Paul's arrival made them kind of different figures. And they just had very different personalities. In fact, although he's the youngest would start, would sort of take the role that you might expect of the oldest has time went on. And as not only what you might call an immigrant broker for his family so, and for everyone he met, tried to help them with an apartment or a job reference or a vice. And he just had that natural character he wasn't wasn't, he never came across as just someone who was in it for himself. So in the 50s, you know, he, he's a foe of McCarthyism. And then in the 60s, Paul or Dwyer comes roaring back into political activity in the civil rights movement in the struggle against the Vietnam War. And he's in the mix again, right. And, and yet, he runs for office, maybe nine times, basically wins only twice. What put a lid on his electoral success. Well, one thing I think about is what happened to organized labor. You know, in the wake of the Truman loyalty oaths. Truman initially opposed them but he had to sign a loyalty oath if you were in public life, or if you work for the government, of course this was just an affable to someone like Paul who was all about the First Amendment and, and, and constitutional and was well aware of the history of kind of anti foreigner stereo, you know, such as the red scares. And he was now, he understood that America was now entering into a second red scare. And there were unions, many unions had their members sign that loyalty oath, or more and more to the point here changed their soften their became less radical in the wake of World War two right where there had been a no strike pledge signed by the AFL and the CIO unions. And meanwhile the corporations that were benefited from that no strike pledge were making money hand, hand over fists right, whether it was RCA or the car makers who were who'd made tanks instead. During the war, there were unions though, one night read about as the United electrical workers that just they continued to support, for example, a national health insurance program, which didn't pass. We're still arguing about it. Many, whereas many unions really put their finger in the wind and saw it was too dangerous to, and to be, or to organize as that union did and others, or to to open their doors and open America to blacks women and Latinos. In a reactionary racist time, so getting back to Paul here. He, he was like that he, he did not change his views to suit the times, nor did he run campaigns that that sought to compromise with the state leaders of the party, of whom he was often. He might have been friendly with them, but he was suspicious of him and he didn't like the way the bosses of Tammany Hall, Ed Flynn. For example, of the Bronx treated, had treated his brother. But he was forced to leave office during the first year of his second term, amid a city hall scandal. And so Paul did not, he was kind of a cause politician, right, and he did not change his views to appeal to the voters. He said, here I am. I'm the same guy you've heard about. And I'm not going to bend with the times and that did not serve him electorally. He really was uncompromising. That's probably the word for it. He could have in when he won the, in probably won the primary for US Senate in 1968 to run it against Jacob Javits, the Republican, and went to the convention Chicago as a leading figure of the Manhattan Democratic reform movement of the 60s. The one we talked about before that was coed, and, and the left, as there as a leading anti war candidate in the country. This is in the wake of Bobby Kennedy's assassination. And he's joined forces with Eugene McCarthy, a fellow dove at that convention to challenge Hubert Humphrey as the anointed LBJ anointed candidate to run for president. Humphrey never having served run in any primaries. Paul gets elected and he could have gone to the state Democratic Party immediately and said, how do I, how do I handle this anti war issue. You know, how do I sort of step back from it from demanding an immediate ceasefire of a war he had labeled as immoral. As part of a, in Manhattan Democratic reform club on the F4 side that made that resolution I think in 1964, or even 63 may have been pretty early. So this is, is it imperial hubris, America's part smacked of British colonialism in his eyes. So he, but he didn't, he didn't go to the party leaders. I'm very tempted, but praised him for that just refused to compromise and that might have helped them perhaps win. Instead, he held fast to an anti war position, even to the point, Rob of which I think he can be faulted on personally. Like McCarthy refusing to endorse Humphrey who he who he and some of his followers in Manhattan viewed as a hack for Johnson that they refused to to throw their support to him until two days before the presidential election at Humphrey loses a Nixon wins. And many, many people on the left had already decided to throw in there a lot with Humphrey because they realized Nixon would be far worse on the war, but it was part of, you could say Paul stubborn pride. And again, his commitment to a cause and in this case to a fellow candidate McCarthy who was no longer in the race but we jumped in with. This not to not to bend, you know the other great cause in his life is Northern Ireland, and I'm struck by how he sets in motion. Crosses these relationships and events that would eventually culminate in the good Friday accords. And explain a little bit about how he did that and what that showed about him. Well, even though he was meeting Jewish people and people from all different faiths and parts of the world and in a place in a pluralistic dynamic place like Manhattan, as he kind of came up as a lawyer, working at working with Oscar Bernstein. And a firm by the way that did anti discrimination work, largely at Paul's behest. But also, you know, made a living by representing largely Irish accident victims and in towards cases right ordinary slip and falls and that kind of thing. Paul is always involved with the Irish question, the question of Ireland's future identity, and ultimately the troubles, the, the civil strife, afflicting the north of Ireland. He forms an organization, he invites some of his lawyer friends and politician friends to join it. He is constantly trying to agitate or, and into the troubles and reunification of Ireland. He is obsessed with the fact that the United, the United States has refused all these years owing to its quote unquote special relationship with Greg Britain to, to intervene or work as a broker to solve the troubles of the late 60s and 70s and 90s, even as it became brutally violent with paramilitaries on both sides Catholic and Protestant. He just doesn't let it up. He's he's making allies among Republicans like Peter King of Long Island he's making allies with Democrats like who, who, who is though represents the Bronx is sees us as an important cause and a way to kind of lift his voice in Congress I think in stature. Anyone and everyone who was interested in this clause which was not on the top of anywhere near the top of the US foreign policy agenda. He was making friends with making allies with bringing to rallies bring to the halls of Congress to knock on doors on special days, having rallies in front of the British embassy here in Manhattan. Even at one point in front of the New York Times of the bullhorn for failing to cover the assassination of the leading human rights, Catholic lawyer and in Belfast. And this is how he worked he was he was a diaspora. He took seriously his role as a figure, an Irish figure in the Irish diaspora, and he, he looked to make allies and to make a difference in Washington. And I think he did, I think he did ultimately so, along comes Bill Clinton running in the New York primary in 1992, and falls quite old at this point. And he and his son Brian and others arrange for bill to come to the Sheraton hotel in Manhattan to for a kind of scripted discussion. And then there were questions where I think given to Clinton beforehand, but their questions like, would you allow Jerry Adams, the symphane leader would been close to the IRA. And so I think it was going on a visa to visit something that no president had ever entertained seriously. And two days before the primary or so, I think it was Bill Clinton running for president says sure I would do that and here's why I would do that so that just rock ball, and a number of other would would you appoint a special envoy, which had done many parts of the world but never for our never for Northern Ireland. Yes, I believe I would. I believe that that says Bill Clinton and I believe that that that would help potentially resolve matters. And that was of course received as a slap in the face by the British government. But Bill was not only seeking to win the near primary, there's still a lot of Irish voters, but he, he actually was sincere in that and it took longer than Paul would have hoped. But he did appoint an envoy and that envoy, and, and, and, you know, when Bill enters the room at small room at the Sheraton where the debate was held, the first person he goes up to sitting in the front is in his is Paul Dwyer and shakes his hand because they'd actually talked before. And there's a sense that all had through all his years of activism. In one way or another it paved the way, you know, so what I was saying about the diaspora is you have immigrant groups that stay on the margins they don't manage to organize and use their education or their means to influence Washington. Right, that happened so we see that now, for example, just one example is the Haitian community, as Haiti is gone, they're gone a kind of failed state situation violence. The State Department is not doesn't have it. There's not an organized well organized well oiled Haitian diaspora kind of movement to influence what what shouldn't can be done in Haiti for the betterment of patients. In this case, Paul was part of a long history of diaspora involvement and in politics among the Irish right dating back years and years, but he took that to heart. He was always an organizer a coalition builder, so that you so that he wanted the Irish to move from being the people with the bullhorn standing outside the buildings, run by the British or Washington establishment, but inside. And so Bill Clinton offers an inside kind of deal that they've never had this, he was a graph, Bill Paul is a grassroots organizer. He was not part of the Irish community that was sort of maybe a little more conservative and connected. He worked with his fellow lawyers on the left to make it to make demands from the grassroots. So here was this moment, when a potential for President United States was acknowledging his point of view and those of his, of his associates small numbers of associates, and was sort of the culmination I think of decades of efforts he Paul never really dreamed of it. And in our book, in the Irish passion for justice, there's a scene, subscribe to us where they were waiting for Jerry Brown, also running for president to show up, he was late. And they're having coffee and Jimmy Bressel is there, and, you know, the Neil of doubt was another important figure in this and Brian of Dwyer Paul son. And, and, and Neil said that Paul was just like, he could have punched the ceiling, he was so excited by what he says was something who not only would deliver on his promises but actually understand understood Irish history in a way that no presidential candidate Paul had been involved in all the presidential conventions, really seem to understand and he so in picking up on what he since was a kind of intellect and an understanding and sympathy toward the Irish. He was very excited. And he deserves some credit I think I mean there are many, many people involved in bringing to fruition what became the society agreement in 1998 and settling down the horrible violence in the north of Ireland. He deserves some credit for for ushering a Democrat like Clinton along that path. One last question, so when Paula Dwyer passed, he was remembered effectively by many different kinds of people, some of them adversaries, some of them partners in causes, some of them unlikely allies from the Republican Party even what explains the affection he enjoyed from a wide range of people. And he's sincere. He had, he had a certain amount of charm, a great deal of charm. He's cared about his relationships, and he helped people. These were key facts in his, in the feelings of people who really may have disagreed with him on issues felt about him that he was just a good guy. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Rob Snyder for the new books network and the Gotham Center for New York City history at the City University of New York. I've been talking with Robert polar, co author with Michael Tubberity of an Irish passion for justice, the life of rebel New York attorney Paula Dwyer, published by Cornell University Press. Thank you. Thank you Rob. It was a pleasure. So I'm going to stop the recording now. [MUSIC PLAYING]
