When the 45 AFL-CIO Union Summer 2011 interns are asked what they did for their summer vacation, they won’t have any stories about lounging on the beach or backpacking through Europe. But the will tell about making a real difference in people’s lives and about how much that involvement has contributed to their sense of social justice.

The five interns who worked in Charlotte, N.C., can show the video they created showing how they began building a community coalition from scratch, including a creative and funny segment showing how they had to crisscross the city trying to track down the president of the local NAACP.

The Milwaukee contingent will be able to describe how they helped recall two Republicans who support Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union agenda and how they had to deal with being cursed at and followed by people who opposed their efforts.

After spending nine weeks working with union and community groups across the nation, the Union Summer interns returned to the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., today to report on what they had accomplished and learned. The interns spent one week at the AFL-CIO for orientation before fanning out to work with local central labor councils and local unions in eight cities on organizing, research and community outreach projects.  The internships end Aug. 19. They say learned, among other things, that helping workers form a union is not easy and they learned a lot about themselves.

Jasmine Nazarett, a 2011 graduate of Florida International University, spent the summer seeing a side of her hometown Miami that she had not known before. Working first with the United Teachers of Dade, an affiliate of AFT, and then UNITE HERE, she sometimes spent 12-hour days visiting workers at home trying to interest them in joining a union.

“It’s not what I expected,” she says.

You can’t let things get to you. I had people hang up on me. I was told I was going to Hell for supporting a union. You have to have a tough skin, keep your vision and go where you have to be.

 There’s not one way to organize, and she says she learned a lot depends on who you’re talking to: 

You can’t talk to teachers the same way you talk to housekeepers or talk to women the same way you talk to men. I feel lucky to have had the chance to work on these campaigns.  

Even though the work was hard, Nyssa Towsley, a student at the University of Minnesota, said her internship in Minneapolis has made her reconsider her plans for the future. Instead of heading off to law school when she graduates next year, Towsley says she wants to be a union organizer.

 I’d love to stick with [organizing]. I want to keep doing it.

She says her efforts to help child care providers and city workers form unions with AFSCME  taught her alot.

I was not very familiar with unions before. I knew what unions were for, but I learned the structure of a union, how to make house calls and get cards signed.

This year’s class of Union Summer interns was the most diverse ever. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of the interns are female and nearly two-thirds (65 percent) are people of color. The other cities where interns worked this summer included Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Portland, Ore., and New Orleans. 

Twelve of the interns in Miami and Los Angeles were DREAMers, students who would benefit from the DREAM Act. If enacted, the bill would provide undocumented young people a pathway to legal residency through higher education or service in the military.