Charles Dickens' opening lines to "A Tale of Two Cities" is often quoted - and I'm going to quote it again, because my Sisters and Brothers, these are truly the best of times and the worst of times.

In the 400 years since our people arrived in America, we've shed the shackles of slavery and climbed the heights of America's promise.

Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act, we've seized that right and we have elected African-American leaders at every level of government.

Great California leaders like Representative Barbara Lee in Congress, Mayor Ron Dellums in Oakland and, of course, Barack Obama in the White House - people our children and grandchildren can look up to and say, "They look like me! I can be anything when I grow up."

In the fifty-five years since Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama and in the fifty years since four African American students sat down at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, we've won the right to sit down and stand up anywhere we please.

Yes, we have come a long, long way and it is in many ways the best of times.

We enjoy opportunities that our grandparents could only dream of.

But at the same time, we know the suffering of African-Americans continues in this country, especially in today's economic crisis.

As Dr. King asked in 1968, "What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can't afford a hamburger?"

Today's economic crisis is hurting everyone, but so many African-Americans and the communities we live in were suffering long before this Great recession even began and are suffering even more now.

Far too many people today can't afford that hamburger or much of anything else.

Since this is Black History Month, I'll take our history lesson a little further.

Forty-seven years ago, A. Philip Randolph told some 300,000 people assembled for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom that they were, quote, "the advance guard of a massive moral revolution for jobs and freedom...."

Sisters and Brothers, I am here today to invite you to join me in following that advance guard and to continue fighting the moral revolution for jobs and freedom.  Because so much has been given to us-through the blood, sweat and tears of our foremothers and forefathers-much is expected from us.  It is our turn to fight...to continue the struggle.

Today more than ever, we understand that without jobs and an economy that works for all of us, Civil Rights is an empty promise.

And without good jobs, there is no real freedom.

As a people, not one day in our history on this continent has been free of struggle.

And year after year, generation after generation, we have shown that when we struggle together, we win.

Together as a people and together as Trade Unionists.

Our struggle today is the same as it always has been - the fight for economic justice.

And right now, that means we must fight for jobs.

Since this recession began, America has lost eight million jobs at a time when we needed to add two million jobs just to keep up with population growth.  That means we are 10 million jobs in the hole.  Everyone is suffering.

Nationally, the unemployment rate is ten-percent, not including the millions of workers who have given up looking for jobs or are working part time because they can't find full-time work.

Here in California, it's twelve-point-four-percent.

But Among African Americans, sixteen-point-two-percent are unemployed and almost half of our young people are jobless.

Since America's recovery from the Great Depression, Union Jobs have opened the doors to the middle class for millions of African-Americans.

Still today, we are more likely than any other group to be Union Members - thirteen-point-nine percent of African-Americans belong to Unions, compared with twelve-point-one-percent of white workers.

African-Americans have more to gain from Union Membership than others.  We earn twenty-eight-percent more than black non-Union workers and are far more likely to have the good benefits that help us raise families.

But a generation of wrong-headed economic policy guided by corporate greed has been slamming shut those doors to the middle class.  Manufacturing jobs have been exported, shuttering the factories that meant family-supporting paychecks and thriving communities.  Job loss and the right-wing mantra that government can do no good have left our states and cities in budget disasters that cost teachers and firefighters and police their jobs.  Deregulation allowed the banks to prey on our neighborhoods with subprime lending schemes.  Non-stop attacks on Unions have made it harder for working people to form unions and bargain for a better life and in just the past year, our unions lost 771,000 members - mostly because their jobs disappeared.  Corporate obsession with the bottom line at the expense of people has cost us our Health Care and retirement security, as well as jobs.

All the progress we have made in this country is at stake and we are not about to allow it to be lost.

But we are not about to leave our children less promise than we inherited.

I don't think I need to convince you to fight.  I think it's in your blood and in your soul.  Maybe the question is how to fight - how to fight for good jobs now.  That we can help you with.

We need each and every one of you to wholeheartedly engage in five major efforts, starting right now.  That means writing Congress, calling Congress, meeting with Congress and joining us in the streets to jumpstart that moral revolution.

First, President Obama and Congress must invest in a new and major initiative to create jobs - millions of jobs.

Despite what Republican obstructionists and their talk-show mouthpieces are saying, government investment in jobs works.  Last year's recovery package has brought twenty-two-billion dollars in grants, loans and contracts to California - from saving police officer jobs here in Oakland to sustaining mass transit and para-transit jobs and services in Alameda County, creating and saving more than twenty-thousand education jobs and training and placing dislocated workers and at-risk young adults into jobs in California's emerging Green Economy.

President Obama's proposed budget would do even more.  It includes six-point-three-billion dollars for schools, students and teachers; six-point-one-billion dollars to fix and expand roads, highways, airports, and water and sewer infrastructure; three-point-nine-billion dollars in new funding for Pell Grants to help families pay for college and tax cuts for twelve-point-six-million families.

These are the kinds of change we need - but on a much, much larger scale.

The AFL-CIO is calling on Congress and the White House to invest in new jobs measures to extend the unemployment, health insurance and food aid lifeline for jobless workers, to fix our crumbling infrastructure of schools, roads and energy, water and communications systems, to increase aid to state and local governments to maintain vital services and jobs, to put people to work doing work that needs to be done in our communities, from cleaning up abandoned buildings to helping seniors get to the grocery store, and to put leftover bank bailout funds to work for Main Street by hiring community banks to lend job-creating money to small- and medium-size businesses.

And right now, that means we must fight for jobs and we need to demand that Wall Street pay the tab for creating the jobs they destroyed

Second, as I said earlier, we have to make sure these aren't just any jobs, but that they're good jobs.

Remember, our ancestors had plenty of work as slaves.

We have to create jobs that support our families and provide all the Health Care and education opportunities our children must have.

And the best way to make a job a good job is with a Union.

So we have to keep fighting to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the Employee Free Choice Act's demise are very much exaggerated.

It's plenty alive, and I believe we will pass it this year, so every worker has the benefit that we have to use our collective voice on the job to win better wages, benefits and better working conditions.

Third is passing Health Care Reform.

Right now, we can fix what's wrong with the bill the Senate passed, especially the tax on Middle-Class Health Care Benefits, and come up with Health Care Reform that will cover the uninsured, lower our costs and stop the most obscene practices of the health insurance industry.

We can do that, if you fight with us.

Fourth, we have to be the fuel that propels Congress and the White House to act in our best interest.

You may remember hearing about a visit A. Philip Randolph paid to President Franklin Roosevelt, who asked Randolph what he thought of the state of our country, and our brother told him he spoke truth to power.  And here's what President Roosevelt replied: "You know, Mr. Randolph, I've heard everything you've said tonight, and I couldn't agree with you more.  I agree with everything that you've said, including my capacity to be able to right many of these wrongs and to use my power and the bully pulpit.  But I would ask one thing of you, Mr. Randolph, and that is go out and make me do it."

Our job now is to go out and make our President and Congress do it.

We've got to remind Republicans that they were not elected to represent Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and the radical Tea Party crowd.  They were elected to represent the people.

Too many of our Democratic leaders, people we phone-banked and canvassed for and donated to, need to get the same reminder.  We have to be a constant reminder - a constant thorn in their side - a constant conscience.

The fifth thing I call on you to take on is building your Union and the Labor Movement.

When I look into your faces, I see a lot of people who look like me - and I don't mean race - I mean age.  I'd like to come back to be with you a year from now and see an equal number of young workers right beside you.  No one needs Unions more than young workers, a third of them can't even afford to live on their own and are living in their parents' basements and spare rooms.

They don't dislike Unions, they just don't know enough about us and how a Union can make a difference in their lives.  Even the young people who are in our Unions may not be taking on the active roles that will prepare them to be our next generation of Union Leaders.

You can help change that.

Tell the young people you know why Unions are important, especially to people of color.  That young woman or young man working next to you on the shop floor or in the office, wherever you work - invite him or her to come with you to the next Union meeting - invite him or her to join CBTU.  We need their energy, their fresh ideas and their leadership like never before.

And let me mention another way to build the spirit of your Union: Take a look at what our Unions are doing today to help our brothers and sisters in Haiti.  We're the search-and-rescue teams, the nurses, we're raising tens of thousands of dollars for food and medicine and shelter, we're helping workers and their Unions on the ground, we're opening our hearts and our doors to the U.S. families of Haitians who have survived and who have lost their lives in the earthquake.

The five things I have asked you to join me in are huge undertakings, but not to big for us to do - together.

I was in Atlanta recently, observing the King Holiday at a prayer breakfast.  The Reverend C.T. Vivian was there, and he said something that really stuck with me.  If you're not willing to sacrifice, to fight, to struggle, he said, you are just along for the ride, and you're not even worth the ride.

Now, I know everyone in this room is worth the ride.  I know everyone here is ready to answer the call and to keep fighting, keep struggling, keep marching for jobs and freedom.  And that is just what we are called to do.

Thank you.