"The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress.”

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said that in 1965, and African Americans still hear his quote ring.

A new report, Blacks in Unions: 2012, by the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Labor Research and Education, finds that black workers are 19% more likely to be in unions than non-black workers. In the nation’s 10 largest metropolitan areas, African Americans are 42% more likely than non-blacks to be in unions.

Ten of the nation’s largest banks agreed earlier this week to settle charges of foreclosure abuse with federal regulators. After the housing bubble burst, banks allegedly processed foreclosures improperly and mishandled homeowners’ applications for mortgage modifications. The resulting foreclosure crisis hurt all working families. Homes lost value, especially in communities of color that were among the hardest hit.

Arlene Holt Baker is the executive vice president of the AFL-CIO. 

In the gambling capital of the country, labor and management are putting their chips on one very safe bet: training for workers.

Yesterday, I had the unique opportunity to visit the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas, a labor-management trust. The academy is the result of a collectively bargained labor-management partnership with UNITEHERE!'s Las Vegas Culinary Workers Union Local 226, Bartenders Union Local 165 and employers, including 26 major hotels and casinos on the Las Vegas Strip.

The academy provides training for hourly workers, many of whom are immigrants, who want to enter the hotel industry. It also provides upgrade education and training for current union members looking to brush up their skills and have greater career mobility in the hospitality industry.

I’ll never forget my up-close encounter with vote suppression—and it’s the reason I’m so pleased today that a judge in Pennsylvania ordered elections officials there not to enforce a new voter ID law. That means Pennsylvanians who can’t show a photo ID when they go to the polls can still vote a regular—not a provisional—ballot.

My encounter with vote suppression was years ago, when I was a little girl and wanted a new pair of shoes. You can’t get new shoes now, my mother told me, because she had to save the money to pay her poll tax. That’s how important the right to vote was to my mother—she knew it was a sacred right that people had fought and died for and she was not about to treat it as anything less.

Earlier this year, state and federal law enforcement officials negotiated a historic legal settlement with the Big Banks that had abused the rights of homeowners during the foreclosure crisis. As part of this settlement, the Big Banks agreed to pay $2.5 billion in penalties to the states for programs to help prevent foreclosures.

Sadly, in many states these funds are now at risk of being diverted away from helping struggling homeowners.

Over the weekend, all eyes were on the Super Bowl in Indianapolis, where tens of thousands traveled to see the event and hundreds of thousands more watched it on television. But while the spotlight was on the game, workers across the city took to the streets to protest the outrages happening to working people.

Forty-nine years ago, on June 23, 1963, tens of thousands of people gathered here in Detroit, only weeks before hundreds of thousands went to Washington to march for jobs and freedom.

This is the season when many dream of a White Christmas. It is the season when the Nativity and the Menorah are both on display in the marketplace. It is the season when Feliz Navidad plays on many IPods and others gather to celebrate Kwanzaa with family and friends.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has given a voice to the 99 percent of us who have suffered at the hands of the Big Banks. In cities across the country, “Occupy” protesters have highlighted our nation’s growing economic inequality, high unemployment and the foreclosure crisis that continues to ravage our communities.  We saw another inspiring example of the 99 percent standing together in recent days in Atlanta.

This is a cross-post from Working America.

Right now in Denver, Colo., there is both a jobs and a public health crisis.