Thank you all for being here and for supporting the Union Sportsmen’s Alliance. I want to give a quick thanks to Jorge Ramirez, Tom Villanova and Mike Kerrigan for your friendship and support of USA.

I can’t tell you how proud I am of the growth and strength of this organization, or how close it is to the fundamental mission of the labor movement in America today.

This year we celebrate the first five years of the Union Sportsmen’s Alliance, and USA has launched a major initiative for the next five -- to rebuild America’s great state parks. This initiative puts USA in an absolutely critical position to do even more important work for the general public—on top of the wildlife habitat improvement and other work that Boots on the Ground has already done.

I’ve said this before, and it bears repeating: It’s not a mystery that big national organizations like labor unions experience what I’ll kindly call a “credibility gap” when it comes to our relationships with our members. But the Union Sportsmen’s Alliance helps close that gap. In USA, we come together as union members, as people who love and enjoy the outdoors. We get to reconnect to one another. We get to enjoy one another and the bounty of this land. We get to share some of the things we value most.

And it really is a beautiful thing, because it’s a pleasure. It’s fun. And that is important, brothers and sisters—because we know how to fight when we have to, but we can’t fight all the time. And for those of us in USA, nothing restores us better than that walk in the woods, or the field, or by the lake. There’s nothing like going hunting or fishing, breathing in that fresh, crisp air under a broad sky, feeling the thrill of that sudden tug on the line.

Truly, our unionism and our conservationism reinforce each other. It’s about what we value. And we know that union members live and breathe by our values. Unionism and conservationism both are passed from one generation to the next, from parents to children. That’s how my values were passed on to me. And I passed those things onto my son.

And USA helps continue that tradition. I urge all of you to do everything you can to be part of this organization’s next great challenge. For my part, I will do the same.

I’ll end by acknowledging the great work of USA director Fred Myers and his excellent staff. In only five short years, this team has built a national organization with 60,000 members and a successful television show and magazine. This year, USA’s shoots will raise more than a million dollars, and now we’re doing conservation dinners, too. How about that?

This team couldn’t have done it alone. All of us together made the first five years possible, and we’ll do the same for the next five. Let’s give USA a big round of applause.

Thank you. God bless you.