The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) in recent days hit two big milestones: The AFL-CIO constituency group celebrated its 20th anniversary and launched APALA's Young Leaders Council.  

Marvin Bing, a member of the AFL-CIO Special Committee on Labor-Community Partnerships, sends us this report on a meeting of AFL-CIO constituency groups in Phoenix.

AFL-CIO constituency groups kicked off the “We Are One Moving America Forward” symposium late last week with a series of great speeches by William Lucy, Ben Jealous, George Gresham, Danny Ortega and Judith Browne-Dianis. A resounding theme: “We can’t let the 1 percent trick us into believing we are different—We are the 99 percent, we are one and if we don’t work together on issues that bring us together, we will fall together.” We are the people who fight for working families, we are the people who fight to protect our students, children, seniors and families. We are the labor movement and together with the community we are unbeatable.

Asian Americans constitute the fasting-growing racial segment of the U.S. population, according to a new report by the Asian America Center for Advancing Justice (AACAJ), but are under-represented among voters. In “Community of Contrasts: Asian Americans in the United States” (PDF), AACAJ notes that only 55 percent of Asian Americas who are eligible to register to vote have done so, and of those who have, 86 percent cast ballots.

Jenny Ho, a labor economist with AFSCME and secretary-treasurer for the D.C. Chapter of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), sends us this report from her experience in Ohio mobilizing residents

The forces against workers’ rights are powerful. Super-rich global conglomerates and a web of very well-funded conservative think tanks are currently fueling GOP-led attacks against working families across the nation, shamelessly lobbying for union-busting and corporate tax cuts in a campaign that even Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has admitted has little to do with budget deficits. Yet America’s workers have shown time and again that workers, united, have prevailed in the most daunting battles. More than ever, the union movement must build solidarity. We must pull together all the stakeholders of the American Dream.