As the bipartisan Gang of Eight continues to draft comprehensive, commonsense immigration policy legislation, thousands of activists, families and supporters of all ages and nationalities flooded the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday for the “April 10: The Time Is Now” rally for immigration policy reform with a road map to citizenship.

The AFL-CIO today announced a far-reaching, multi-partner campaign to register voters, ensure they can cast their ballots without intimidation and follow through to make sure those votes are counted. Speaking at a press conference here in Washington, D.C., AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker said this campaign represents the union movement’s most aggressive push ever because:

the attacks we are seeing on the right to vote are unprecedented.

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.

More than 200 marchers—including college students from as far away as Idaho—yesterday carried on the Selma to Montgomery march in Alabama, where activists in the labor, civil rights and faith communities on Sunday began a five-day journey. 

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

Tens of thousands of labor and civil rights activists on Saturday marched from the New York offices of Koch Industries, whose owners have supported restrictive voting legislation modeled by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing think tank funded by brothers David and Charles Koch. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who took part in the event, put it this way:

You can’t accomplish anything if you’re not prepared to fight.

Voting rights are human rights. To bring that point home, a coalition of labor, civil rights and community organizations will celebrate Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, with a Stand for Freedom march and rally, beginning at the Manhattan headquarters of Koch Industries, and ending at the United Nations’ Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.

The AFL-CIO, NAACP, the Brave New Foundation and several other groups are urging U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to enforce the Voting Rights Act to stop the discriminatory voter suppression laws the right-wing billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have pushed and financed in dozens of states. The Koch Brothers are major funders of ALEC.

J.W. Cleary, 55, says he has spent most of his adult life “with a union card in one hand and an NAACP card in the other.”

“Unions and the NAACP go hand-in-hand,” says the Paducah, Ky., United Steelworkers (USWA) member and longtime local NAACP president. “The NAACP fights for equality. In a union, everybody is equal.”

Faith communities across the nation will stand alongside working people, civil rights groups, students and immigrants on the days around April 4 to tell hard-working families under attack that “We Are One.”

Attendees and participants at the 42nd NAACP Image Awards this weekend will showcase their support of American workers and families. NAACP officials will wear red, white and blue ribbons to show that they stand in solidarity with workers struggling to maintain collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and dozens of other states.