Thank you all for being here. Thank you all for being part of that unbelievable Roll Call!
Everyone, can we give ourselves a hand? Look at this beautiful labor family!
So every year we come together at this conference, and we talk about solidarity. We talk about how important it is to stand together, to protect each other in the hard times, and grow our power as one movement.
I can’t think of a better example of that than what we announced this morning.
Which is SEIU officially rejoining the AFL-CIO as the 61st union in our Federation!
Everyone leaves Austin a little bigger, I can tell you firsthand from the barbecue. But we’re going to leave here this weekend a lot bigger. Two million new members in our AFL-CIO family.
This is a great day for the labor movement. It’s going to bring us together in so many different ways. And we’ll talk about that so much more this weekend.
But there’s a story that I wanted to share to kick things off, even before we had this news — and I think it’s even more relevant now.
In 1961 Dr. King came to speak at the AFL-CIO’s Fourth Constitutional Convention, in Miami.
And for anyone who knows their labor history, that was a big deal. This was the same year that Dr. King was becoming the national force that he was. He was guiding the Freedom Riders, and he delivered his first sermon at Riverside Church in New York.
This was only six years into the formation of the AFL-CIO as we know it today. And let’s be honest about it: There were debates, in our leadership and throughout our unions, about how involved we should be in the civil rights movement. Good-intentioned people who thought getting involved in civil rights would detract from what labor was all about.
But Dr. King accepted the invitation to our Convention. And when he got up to speak, he told a story about his trip down there.
About how it seemed like every force of nature was trying to stop him from being at that convention. His flight from the West Coast — canceled due to weather. He’d worked to find a trip through Dallas, and then Chicago, and then finally to Miami where the plane was shaking the entire trip down. He said he thanked God when it touched down on the runway.
And yet not for one second did he think of canceling.
Because he knew how important it was to be there. To show every politician, every segregationist, every powerful person in industry who benefitted from us being separate: We were together now. As a civil rights movement, as a labor movement — in the same fight.
He said: “Our needs are identical with labor's needs. Decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare — conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community.”
“And any crisis that cuts the labor movement means we all bleed.”
I was reading that this past weekend and I kept thinking how true those words are right now.
There are powerful people out there who do not want to see us together, here in Austin right now. One of them is about to be in the White House, isn’t he?
You know what they want?
They want us to believe the immigrant making minimum wage, trying to lift up his family, is the source of our problems and not the CEO who just handed himself more money than we’ll ever see in our lives.
They want us to look at people who are gay or trans in this country and say — it’s okay for them to lose their protections in our workplaces, for them to be fired because of who they are — as long as it’s not me.
They want us to say to those baristas fighting for a fair contract at Starbucks, or those hotel workers, or those nurses fighting for a better contract — good luck, you’re on your own, I already have my job and my union.
They are terrified — terrified — of what happens when we come together.
When we take a second and realize — no matter our race, our age, our religion, our orientation, our job — we’re all in the same fight. We’re all on the same picket line.
When we let those things divide us, we make it easy for those CEOs, and those billionaires, and the politicians like Donald Trump who do their bidding. We make it easy for them to keep the status quo going.
But guess what? We’re not going to let that happen, are we?
Think about what we’re showing right here this weekend, by gathering together as one movement.
Think about what we’re showing — by joining with SEIU, making us 15 million strong.
We are going to fight for each other! We’re going to grow our power together! And if you come for one of us, you come for all of us!
That’s the level of fight I’m taking into 2025! Are you all right there with me? I know you are!