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?America is One Nation and We Signify that Nation?

By Mike Hall

Karen Bright got on a bus a little after midnight in Syracuse, N.Y., and rolled down the East Coast for seven hours because she had a message she wanted to deliver to America. Standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall as tens of thousands of union members and our allies in the human rights, faith and workers' rights communities began filling up the wide banks of the Reflecting Pool, Bright said: "It?s important that we make jobs the priority in this country and not all of the other issues that are dividing us. I think that?s the one issue that?s important to all of us." On an absolutely gorgeous fall afternoon Bright, a member of CSEA/AFSCME Local 1000, and all of the nearly 200,000-strong crowd at the One Nation Working Together march and rally, were a living example of what one sign seen throughout the crowd said. "We March for Hope, Not Hate!" Speaking to the crowd that spread from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to the World War II Memorial, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka surveyed the vast crowd of women, men, people of color and white, gay and straight, all ages and creeds and ethnicities, and told marchers that "America is here today. America is One Nation and we signify that nation." Behind the voices of fear and hatred that have risen to dominate out national conversation are the forces of "greed, the moneyed powers that put us in the economic mess we?re in today. And we?ve got a lot of work to do to repair the damage that greed did to our country.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on October 02, 2010 (boomark / email).