You can help “Stamp Out Hunger” this weekend by joining with the Letter Carriers (NALC) in the largest one-day food drive in the nation. NALC asks that you collect canned goods and dry food, such as tuna, canned meat, soups, pasta, rice and cereal, and leave them in a bag or box by your mailbox on Saturday, May 14. Your letter carriers will pick them up as they deliver your mail. NALC members will deliver the goods to local food banks, pantries and shelters to help needy families in 10,000 cities and towns in all 50 states and U.S. jurisdictions.

The attempts to blame the nation’s economic mess on teachers, firefighters, nurses and other public employees provide a great opportunity for working people to regain the American Dream, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said this week.

Thousands of Michigan workers, students, seniors and others are heading for the state capitol in Lansing today for a massive rally against Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) proposed budget that cuts $900 million from education, taxes pensions, raises taxes for low-income families and slashes vital services–all while, cutting business taxes by $1.7 billion.

Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) Executive Director Lowell Peterson describes how the WGAE model offers workers both a militant union and a professional association.

Recent ideologically driven attacks on collective bargaining have inspired a national conversation about the role of organized labor in 21st century America. The headlines have focused on teachers and other public employees, on whether it is unseemly for people who work for the government to assert any rights on the job. But the same hard-right forces that want to wipe out public-sector unions oppose the very idea that employees can band together to advance their own interests. There are so many ways to rebut the shrill complaints about organized labor—so many good things unions have done for the average American over the course of decades. But perhaps this is a good opportunity for us to take stock of ourselves, to examine where we are today and what we might need to do to remain relevant in the future.

Contrary to recurring predictions of the demise the American labor movement, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told a Wayne State University audience in Detroit yesterday that the ”labor movement has a rich and vibrant future.”

Barb Kucera, editor at www.workdayminnesota.org, sends us this from Minneapolis.

Chanting “We Are One,” thousands gathered at the Cathedral of St. Paul Monday evening, then marched to the state Capitol to show their support for worker rights and a strong middle class.

Across the nation and around the world today–and throughout the week–working people are saying, We Are One with workers whose rights and middle-class jobs are under attack in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere by Republican governors and legislators. They are also honoring the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. He was gunned down fighting for the same rights for Memphis, Tenn., sanitation workers.

Around the nation today and this week union members, civil rights, community and faith activists are saying, “We are One” with working people in Wisconsin and dozens of other states where well-funded, right-wing corporate politicians are trying to take away workers’ right. As Domestic Workers United founder Ai-Jen Poo says in this new video:

If we don’t have a strong labor movement we don’t have a voice for justice.

AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow Jennifer Angarita contributed to this report.

Today, on what would have been César Chávez’s 84th birthday, students, workers and immigrants joined together to pay tribute to the legacy of Chávez.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s assault on workers’ freedom to bargain has spurred more workers to consider joining a union.  In response to a surge of interest on the part of non-union sheet metal workers across Wisconsin, the Sheet Metal Workers’ (SMWIA) launched a new campaign this week to make Wisconsin Open for Workers again.