Some 3,000 netroots activists are headed to Providence, R.I., for the start of the annual Netroots Nation 2012 conference, where progressives of all stripes—with a big showing from the union movement—will share online and offline strategies for mobilizing at the local and national levels. The June 7-10 event features such blockbuster speakers as Rebuild the Dream co-founder Van Jones and NAACP President Benjamin Jealous and an economic keynote highlighted by Pulitzer Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

WI

Wisconsin "forced the governor to answer for his efforts to divide the state and punish hard-working people" in today's recall election," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said tonight following predictions Gov. Scott Walker (R) would retain his seat.

That wailing siren you hear this Memorial Day is a national security alert set off by the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. Their investigation into counterfeit electronic “uncovered overwhelming evidence of large numbers of counterfeit parts making their way into critical defense systems....And, it found overwhelming evidence that companies in China are the primary source of counterfeit parts.”

Nations should create jobs and stimulate growth, not cut back government spending with ruthless "austerity" measures if they want to successfully get out of the economic crisis, said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka during a meeting of global leaders.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s claim that he shares credit for the auto industry’s recovery is “almost laughable,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing tonight at 9 p.m. EDT and showing again throughout the weekend (check it out here).

When Republican candidates ask Americans if they’re better off than they were four years ago when President Obama was elected, here’s what working people will be thinking about, according to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: Former President George W. Bush lost U.S. jobs during a good economy. Obama has created jobs during the disastrous economy he inherited.

Trumka, questioned on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program this morning by Peter Wallsten of The Washington Post and Melanie Trottman of the Wall Street Journal, challenged viewers to imagine how improved the economy could be today if Republicans in Congress had worked with Obama on job creation rather than pursuing their stated top priority of making him a one-term president.

In a televised panel discussion yesterday, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka handily put Mitt Romney’s economic polices into perspective: stale and failed.

Countering comments by Romney economic adviser Vin Weber that corporate taxes need to be lowered and deregulation pushed forward, Trumka noted that George W. Bush followed that same prescription with the result that after his eight years as president,

there were fewer jobs in America when he left office then when he came into office. If those were such a great prescription, why did they almost destroy the economy?

“That was the turning point for a lot of actors," said actor Susan Sarandon to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka about the national commercial actors strike 12 years ago. "It wasn’t until we felt threatened that we realized the importance of our union.”

In a casual moment in a midtown Manhattan hotel Friday evening, Sarandon, a longtime member of SAG-AFTRA, and Trumka spoke at length before she introduced him to a gathering held by Local 1 of the American Federation of School Administrators.

A banner for Atlas Media Corp. fluttered in a light breeze above 36th Street in Manhattan. In this morning's sunlight on the sidewalk below, nearly 100 nonfiction TV writers and producers, members of the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), waved signs and chanted, demanding health care benefits and better treatment.

Then they staged a footrace, complete with numbered bibs and a finish line held on one end by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, that was dubbed a “Race to the Top” to end the “race to the bottom” at Atlas—a company named for the right-wing polemical novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

Yesterday, 40 members of the National Taxi Workers Alliance (NTWA) and taxi workers from San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia cheered, chanted and waved signs outside the Midtown Operating Corp. garage in Long Island City, N.Y. Their messages: “Lower the Lease!” and “Stop the Greed!” In the midst of the drivers were AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and NTWA Executive Director Bhairavi Desai, who hollered into the bullhorn, “We’re your union! Taxi drivers unite!” The NTWA has held 50 such marches in the past four months to protest crippling fees that guarantee profits for owners of taxicabs and medallions and a tough existence for drivers.