Karen Bright got on a bus a little after midnight in Syracuse, N.Y., and rolled down the East Coast for seven hours because she had a message she wanted to deliver to America.

Standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall as tens of thousands of union members and our allies in the human rights, faith and workers’ rights communities began filling up the wide banks of the Reflecting Pool, Bright said:

“It’s important that we make jobs the priority in this country and not all of the other issues that are dividing us. I think that’s the one issue that’s important to all of us.”

On an absolutely gorgeous fall afternoon Bright, a member of CSEA/AFSCME Local 1000, and all of the nearly 200,000-strong crowd at the One Nation Working Together march and rally, were a living example of what one sign seen throughout the crowd said.

“We March for Hope, Not Hate!”

Speaking to the crowd that spread from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to the World War II Memorial, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka surveyed the vast crowd of women, men, people of color and white, gay and straight, all ages and creeds and ethnicities, and told marchers that

“America is here today. America is One Nation and we signify that nation.”

Behind the voices of fear and hatred that have risen to dominate our national conversation, Trumka said, are the forces of “greed, the moneyed powers that put us in the economic mess we’re in today. And we’ve got a lot of work to do to repair the damage that greed did to our country.

“Sisters and bothers we come together today because America needs jobs. Good jobs, jobs that support families—all families. Jobs that give our young people paths of opportunity, not obstacles. Jobs that allow people to retire with dignity.”

While the Republican/Chamber of Commerce/Tea Party forces claim the mantle of small business advocates, small business owner Diana Ortiz, who introduced Trumka, said it’s the progressive principles of the union movement and One Nation that will help revive small business. The owner of a Pueblo Colorado catering company said “small business create jobs. Period.”

“We need help to create those jobs. Wall Street got help. We need help for Main Street. I believe our movement here today will help lead America to a better future.”

Not only do we have to create jobs to rebuild the economy, those jobs must be good jobs, and jobs where workers have a voice, said Communications Workers of America (CWU) President Larry Cohen. But today, workers face aggressive and intimidating anti-union campaigns from management.

“Workers’ rights have been all but crushed since Dr. Martin Luther King spoke here 47 years ago…Workers should not need courage to have a union in America. It should not be a fight. It should be a right.”

Jobs were on the minds of hundreds of the members of the Machinists UCubed network for unemployed workers. At a pre-rally gathering in an RFK stadium parking lot, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler said that One Nation was not a partisan event or political rally.

But I have to speak the truth here. What we’ve been seeing recently on Capitol Hill has been partisan—partisanship at its very worst. One party—the minority—has formed a solid bloc to fight and stop every attempt by President Obama and the Democratic leadership to create jobs…to stop outsourcing…to help unemployed workers like you…and to get America back on track.

Carlos Grcia, a member of the New York State Public Employees Federation, an AFT affiliate, said he was moved to take part in the One Nation march because the pillars of today’s event—jobs, education and immigration—“are critical for this nation’s future prosperity.”

America has got to wake up and realize without real education reform we as nation will not prosper.

As AFT President Randi Weingarten told the crowd: A good education is the foundation for everything else we seek today. Excellent public schools are the cornerstone of our democracy.

Delta flight attendants Sherry Eubanks, Simone Cerasa and Josh Zivick are fighting for a voice at work with Flight Attendants/CWA (AFA/CWA). At a young workers’ rally headed by Shuler on Freedom Plaza along Pennsylvania Ave., Eubanks said Delta was notorious for its unilateral changes in work rules. Without a contract, Eubanks said, workers have no say.

While the company claims to have an “open door” policy for worker input, Eubanks, an AFA member from her days at Northwest before the merger with Delta, said Delta management has created a climate of fear and flight attendants are afraid to speak out. She says it’s a “fake door.”

We are fighting to win representation, to have a voice with management and win a collective bargaining agreement.

Shuler told the young workers crowd:

While everyone has suffered in the economic disaster Wall Street brought us, young workers are facing outrageous odds. And I’m not talking about the problems every generation of young people has getting a foot in the door. I’m talking about long-term, structural economic problems that can lower your living standards for decades.

She congratulated the crowd being motivated and mobilized to travel to the nation’s Capitol on 10-2-10.

I hope you’ll pledge to march again on 11-2-10—to the voting booths—and take your friends. And cast your ballots for the economic patriots who believe America’s best days are ahead, not behind us. Who believe in you. Who will invest in good jobs, in your future. Who will fight for you. For us.

For more on this historic event, visit the AFL-CIO blog