We launched a fun but serious action today with our partners in the progressive community to call on House Speaker John Boehner (R) to move the American Jobs Act and stop stalling while millions of America’s workers suffer without jobs.

Yesterday, President Obama was in Colorado highlighting his plan to put Americans back to work modernizing the nation’s aging schools and to make sure there are plenty of teachers to fill those schools. The plan involves $30 billion to put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work modernizing at least 35,000 schools across the country, and $35 billion to save the jobs of 280,000 teachers, police, firefighters and other first responders. American Progress puts the Republican opposition to the president’s plan in perspective.

AFT President Randi Weingarten urged President Obama to “help marshal the humanitarian aid needed to halt the advance of the apocalyptic ‘children’s famine’ spreading through Somalia and neighboring nations in the Horn of Africa.”

Nicole Gentile, a teacher with the  Cleveland Metropolitan School District and an AFT member, wrote this message to Ohio working families about the job-killing ramifications of S.B. 5, a new law that attacks the collective bargaining rights of workers seeking to maintain a middle-class living. Together with thousands of Ohioans, Gentile is working to repeal the law in the November elections.

Some good stuff in the Presidential Proclamation on Labor Day issued by President Obama today.

The right to organize and collectively bargain is a fundamental American value. Since its beginnings in our country, organized labor has raised our living standards and built our middle class. It is the reason we have a minimum wage, weekends away from work to rest and spend time with family, and basic protections in our workplaces….The principles upheld by the honorable laborers of generations past and their unions continue to fuel the growth of our economy and a strong middle class.

Next to immediate family, teachers have the most impact on people’s lives as they grow up, according to a survey by the ING Foundation.

Emmelle Israel, AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow, took part in the Save Our Schools rally this weekend and sends us this report.

Educators, students and community members from across the nation joined together July 30 for the Save Our Schools March and National Day of Action. The crowd of thousands rallied for two hours in the Washington, D.C., summer sun on the Ellipse Park, just south of the White House. After hearing from speakers such as former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education and New York University professor Diane Ravitch to actor/activist Matt Damon—whose mother was a teacher and union member—the crowd began a march around the White House. The rally united everyone under the cause of education reform, but the variety of signs and slogans on display (“We Need Teachers Not Tests,” “Equality for English Learning Students,” “Cut Corporations Not Education”) emphasized the variety of issues that need to be addressed to rebuild public education.

Laura Clawson from Working America is now at Daily Kos writing full-time about issues key to working people. Here’s her latest on the involvement of former District of Columbia Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee in limiting collective bargaining for Michigan teachers.

Education blogger At the Chalk Face has obtained an internal briefing document from Michelle Rhee’s Students First and makes clear just how extensively Students First collaborated with Michigan Republicans on four education bills targeting teachers, including one limiting collective bargaining. The 30-page PDF is available here.

Lots more great labor involvement to report at the upcoming Netroots Nation conference June 16-19 in Minneapolis, in addition to the highlights we noted a few days ago.

Jill H., a graduate student at UW-Madison, brings us this “Walkerville” update (cross-posted from Defend Wisconsin).

As the daughter of lifelong public school educators—my mother in elementary special education and my father as a high school health teacher—I wanted to be sure to visit Walkerville today to find out more about the proposed budget cuts to grades K-12 education in Gov. Scott Walker’s 2011-2013 biennial budget.