This Wisconsin Moment is a historic opportunity to come together and shift the national focus back to creating jobs and building middle-class living standards, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today.

Speaking to the Campaign for America’s Future Summit on Jobs and America’s Future in Washington, D.C., Trumka said the “corruption of democracy” in Wisconsin presents a challenge and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for progressives:

As progressives it is our job to transform the outrage and make this moment a movement to ensure that this corruption in the Midwest does not stand.

In your lifetime have you ever seen this much solidarity, this much excitement, this much activism? And we have the immense responsibility to keep the fire lit and spark real change for America.

He also lambasted corporate CEOS and their politician puppets who use economic insecurity to divide people. CEOs misread the November 2010 election results, Trumka said.

They didn’t want to hear that we were demanding good jobs—big bold solutions to put America back to work. Instead they heard desperation and a willingness among working people to turn on one another—and they saw it as the green light to come after us in an unprecedented coordinated attack.

And now they’re seeing what backlash really looks like.

This is our time, he said:

… it’s time for progressives like us to earn our paychecks. It is our job to channel this Midwest uprising, this populist outcry into the large-scale creation of good jobs that can resuscitate America’s middle class, America’s people and our economy.