What else? The name “America” has been tarnished across a world that has lost respect and trust for us. We are entangled in a deadly war begun under false pretenses. The gap between rich and poor is growing. Life is being sucked out of the middle class, and our standard of living is under attack. Job safety protections, environmental protections, retirement security protections, workers’ rights protections and overtime pay protections have been sacrificed for corporate profit protections. And workers’ fundamental right to join together to bargain with their employers as equals has been eviscerated.

When asked the baseline election-year question, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” America’s working families have to respond with a resounding “No!”

Today, America’s union movement is engaged in the largest, smartest, strongest, most united voter education and mobilization effort ever to take back America for working families.

As you’ll read in this special section, union brothers and sisters—the most effective electoral activists anywhere—are precinct walking, phone banking, leafleting, rallying and volunteering to monitor polls as never before.

Together we are a movement in action, side by side, from every union. We’re not just fighting to roll back the harm President George W. Bush has done. We’re also fighting to make real the vision of Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards for an America that once again works for working families, with good jobs here at home, health and retirement security, a thriving middle class and confidence that we will bequeath to our children a more prosperous future.

We know the fight doesn’t end on Nov. 2. But the united effort of Labor 2004 is placing this vision within reach.

And yes, we are in the fight of our lives. Nothing would be worse than waking up on Nov. 3 and wishing we had done just a little more to win for working families.

So if there is one member you haven’t yet asked to volunteer, do it now. If there’s one member household you haven’t talked with, get it done now. If there’s one union workplace you haven’t leafleted yet, make it happen. If there’s one issue of your publication that doesn’t compare Kerry and Bush on working family issues, change it now. If there’s one mailing, one letter, one speech or one phone call to members that doesn’t help educate and mobilize union voters, fix it today.

We each must do everything humanly possible—and then do a little more. Together, our solidarity can usher in a new era of hope, improved living standards, a renewed right for every worker to have a real voice at work, a stronger union movement and a stronger America.