The following is by John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. Read the full version of his column at L&M Partnership .

Many of us are pleased that the Occupy movement resonates with so many. While not everyone is prepared to join one of the hundreds of encampments that have grown around the country over the past two months, it is not uncommon for mainstream media to recognize that they are articulating widespread public discontent. From MSNBC to the New York Times to many local and online  outlets, the media recognize that dominant themes of Occupy—income inequality and the need for good jobs—have become very popular themes. 

Just read  Paul Krugman  in the New York Times every few days, and he lays it out: almost all the wealth created in the United States over the past 30 years has gone to the top 10 percent, with even more going to the top 1 percent, and yet more going to the top one-tenth of one percent. What was once dismissed as the rhetoric of “class warfare” by the mainstream is, today, impossible to avoid.

I recently reread a report that I gave to the Delegate Assembly of the union of which I served as president from 1988 to 1994. The report was given in 1993, and the theme was income inequality, a theme that still explains in graphic and direct ways the impact of bad public policy and corporate leadership.

The Occupy movement and many other individuals and organizations are demanding change, and demanding new leadership to make that change. Much of the focus is on getting Congress to act, which makes sense. It is also true that trying to change the attitudes in Congress will take time, and that solutions coming from Washington may or may not solve inequity quickly or locally. Political change must come, and soon, with deep reforms that result in tens of millions of good jobs and the rebuilding of our economy based on those good jobs.

As this needed political change occurs, the government, business, unions and other major stakeholders will need models to point to success. It is clear that such transformation will occur in a globalized world full of competition. Rebuilding today’s economy will be a different experience from the last time the nation came out of a deep economic crisis in the 1930s.

Read the rest here .