Two days later, someone from the New York office did call. He told me to pick up a rental car at the Tucson airport and drive the three hundred miles across the state of Arizona to Lake Havasu City. Now, he said. Right now. A laundry there had caught fire, and the workers had walked out. They were standing on the sidewalk in front of the factory.

When I got there six or so hours later, three other organizers had already arrived, from Phoenix and California. The factory was still smoking. An iron had caught fire, which happens regularly in industrial laundries, where machinery is often poorly maintained. The manager told the workers to keep working—to continue operating washers and presses and folding machines, even as the smoke grew thick around them. He stood between them and the door when they tried to leave, but one of the workers dipped below his outstretched arm and made it to the door, and the other workers, nearly one hundred of them, followed her. When they got outside, one of the workers said she had a cousin who worked in a union laundry in Las Vegas. She walked the few blocks home, called her cousin to get the union’s number, then she called UNITE through its 1-800 hotline.