Activities Mark Culmination of Summer of Service   

Today, to honor those who lost their lives in the September 11 terrorist attacks, working families across the country are participating in community service and remembrance events. The events, which cap a "summer of service" as called for by President Obama, are culminating as the AFL-CIO begins its 26th constitutional convention in Pittsburgh just 80 miles from Shanksville, where United flight 93 went down eight years ago.  

From Anchorage, Alaska to Peoria, Illinois, to Nashville, Tennessee, working people are  organizing food drives, blood drives and other service events.  AFL-CIO central labor councils have conducted over 300 community-based service projects across the country throughout the summer. "Six hundred union members were among those killed on September 11," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. "There isn't a better way to honor their lives and the lives lost by so many others than by continuing to support our communities and strengthening the neighborhoods they called home." 

In Las Vegas, the AFL-CIO Community Service agency of the Nevada AFL-CIO is offering assistance to the city's disadvantaged elderly seeking low-cost prescription drugs.  In another example, close to 200 volunteers from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the Philadelphia Council of the AFL-CIO gathered enough school supplies to fill an entire school bus.  The donated supplies were donated to children living in Philadelphia homeless shelters.  And today at Ground Zero, the New York State AFL-CIO and Central Labor Council will join together to press for immediate passage of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act (HR. 847/S.1334). 

Local labor groups from across the country have also conducted activities to help the growing number of unemployed Americans in San Francisco, Dallas, and dozens of other communities.

Contact: Zoe Bridges-Curry (202) 637-5018