One hundred years ago today, the garment workers of New York were galvanized into action by the gruesome and unnecessary deaths of 146 workers, mostly immigrant women, at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. Many of the workers burned to death because doors were locked, while scores of others died trying to escape by leaping from the 8th, 9th and 10th floors. After the funerals, tens of thousands of working New Yorkers marched, and workers demanded change and a voice in the workplace.

Today, workers in America, especially immigrant workers, find ourselves again in need of a voice. Unionization rates are 6.9% in the private sector; disparities in wealth are greater than at any time since 1928, and corporate America has consolidated its capital and its political power.

The American Dream of the mid-20th Century was built on good jobs – on union jobs. But here in the 21st Century, more and more working people are slipping into poverty. The working poor are everywhere we turn, and Latino workers make up 59% of the working poor in California. Nearly 50% of the foreclosures in California hit hard-working Latino familiesand more than 1 in 4 of the Latino children in California are living in poverty, most of them in working families.

That’s unacceptable. Our communities need good jobs, not poverty jobs. That’s the only path to a shared and sustainable prosperity. That’s why tens of thousands of Angelenos will march together this Saturday. We will march for the kind of jobs that support families, that pay for college for our kids, that provide affordable, good healthcare and that enable families to put down roots. In short, we march to keep the American Dream alive…

…For grocery store workers at Ralph’s supermarket and other companies in Southern California. Workers are fighting to hold onto living wages in the face of a determined effort to keep pushing their wages and benefits down to Walmart, poverty levels, despite the healthy 9.2% increase in profits per share in 2010 for Ralph’s parent company, Kroger.

…For security officers, hotel workers, airport workers, and janitors who are fighting for living wages and to have a voice on the job.

…For public workers, who are coming under an intense and coordinated attack across the nation – including here in California. In Wisconsin, workers who devoted their lives to serving their neighbors saw their right to join together and have one voice at the table abrogated by a sham vote (now restrained by a judge) that we would expect from a totalitarian regime, not the nation that gave birth to modern democracy. Public workers face similar efforts to push them out of their seat at the table in Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, Indiana, and other states, including a bill proposed California. And public worker’s hard-earned retirement security plans have been blamed for causing local and state government’s fiscal crises, a blatant attempt to deflect blame from its proper target, the Wall Street insiders and bankers who crashed our economy and drove millions of Americans out of their homes and jobs.

…For home care workers, social workers, child care workers, and other caregivers who have been targeted in budget after budget, and whose ability to provide good care keeps getting whittled away.

These are the American Dreams we are marching to protect. But this isn’t our struggle alone.  That’s why we are asking all Angelenos to join us this Saturday, to send a signal to Wall Street and its political that working and middle-class families are not divided. We are united by our dreams, and we will never give up our fight to ensure that the American Dream extends to all.

By Eliseo Medina, Secretary-Treasurer, Service Employees International Union