Moreover, she was willing to talk about the method as a method. You and Alma clearly have a strong bond, she said. She trusts you. Which, she went on to explain, is the only purpose of the questionnaire, or “pink sheet,” as HERE’s system of gaining these personal stories from workers and then recording and sharing them among staff is called. The question set that apparently helps to evoke the stories had at one point been printed on pink paper. The sheets were no longer pink—at least not the ones I saw—but the questions and the method remained the same.

In theory, the pink sheet is a process for building bonds with workers, for gaining their trust in a way that is teachable and reproducible, so that organizers can be trained how to do it. She said that she imagined that I had gained your trust by sharing with you things about my life and then listening while you confided in me in return. That’s all it is, she said, and then described with great solemnity that HERE, under the guidance of its director, has figured out how to train organizers to identify and tell their most important and compelling personal story so that workers will open up to them and share their own most important personal stories. We record them in a database, she said, so that we remember them, and, yes, so we can share them with each other, so that when a campaign gets hard, we know what motivates each worker, and we can push them through their fear.