 Our next speaker, Larry Cohen, is the president of one of America's most important labor unions, the communication workers of America. It's the largest telecommunications union in the world. But it also represents workers in a wide range of industries, including broadcasting, cable TV, journalism, manufacturing, airlines, customer service, government service, health care, and education. Larry is one of the most effective and energetic labor leaders I've come to know in 35 years of working with labor unions. And one of his particular passions has been solidarity with the international labor movement. Even before he was elected president in 2005, he expanded alliances with CWA's counterpart unions in Latin America, Europe, and Asia. He served as president of the 2 and 1 half million member union network international telecom sector and continues to serve on the world executive board of union. And he also was the person that came up with the idea of having Louise then and made the connection with what was happening in Brazil. So I'm indebted to him in any number of ways. Thank you, Larry. Thanks for us. Since I do live here, I'm going to be really quick. So maybe we can get some conversation going. There's two more folks after me. I'll see what time it is. So I was going to do more on this, but I'm going to speed it up. That doesn't mean talk even fast as usual, but I'm going to have to do that, too. So what I wanted to talk about really here is step back and look at the context, particularly the Brazilian case. And let me first say, I think the work of SACOM is unbelievable. I mean, this is heroic work. We should all think about, would we do that work if we were in Demi Shoots? I mean, it's really brave and wonderful work you're doing. Thank you. And as Demi said at the end, what are the rights of workers? Sort of how do we document what's going on, which is a lot of what you just did for us. And we saw a contrast in Brazil. And I think Russia's this chart, available for everybody. I believe it is. It should be. So I'm not going back over it. You all should grab this chart. Because what you see in like two seconds, in fact, we should put the US down there. Because the basic kind of rights, this is down one side, is wages, vacation paid, work week, minimum wages, lunch subsidies, down to child care, leave, severance, unemployment insurance, health care, pocket sharing. And you see China, Brazil. We actually need to, we ought to add in US, and maybe send that out over email. I could have done that, didn't. But what's striking here is what happens when workers have rights, their own rights. And that's what we do for them, not what we so much document. But how do workers rise up, have a movement of their own that they control, build a political movement along with it, and then what are the results? And so when I look at Louise at Brazil, I know a little bit about Brazil, not like where I enter you, but you look at Brazil over a 25-year period. 25 years ago, people like me and Louise were locked up. People like me and Louise had no rights at all in Brazil. There was no political democracy in Brazil. Lula da Silva and others formed a PT that Louise is a part of. The party of workers, they started from scratch. Amazing journey, which, again, I'm not going through because of the minutes we have here. But they link together in Brazil the fight for jobs, the fight to end poverty, the fight for three meals, as Lula called it. But most importantly, the rights to organize your own union. As Louise's union did, mental workers in this section of Brazil over a period of many, many years. And so 25 years ago in Brazil, there basically was no bargaining rights. One of the few places, even lower bargaining rights than in the US at that time. Today in Brazil, almost 40% of workers have bargaining rights in Brazil. From near zero to 40. Link to the Workers' Party, a political movement that fought for democracy, that fought for jobs, that fought to end poverty, that fought for health care, that fought for three meals, and built a labor movement at that time from scratch at huge risk. And that's the story, not just of Lula da Silva that we all know, but of an entire movement of millions of people that continues to move on. But Debbie's really saying to us, how does that happen in China given the current situation? And it's obviously your work, and others like you, that maybe one day soon, hopefully, can help create that situation. But meanwhile, amazingly enough, even in China, what you see on this chart, or actually on the chart you put up, is at least in the Shanghai region, wages increasing, prices are also increasing now. And current projections are, this is our problem, and this is what I'm going to talk about, that in five years in the Shanghai region, wages in China will be the same as production workers in the United States. Now why is that? Because production workers in the United States haven't had a raise in 35 years. 35 years. And for production workers in the United States in those 35 years, we've gone from one third of workers, a little bit lower than Brazil today, with bargaining rights in this country, to now one out of 15 in the private sector, and plunging. Today, this minute, in Burlington, Iowa, G workers, who are members of our union, are voting on whether they can have bargaining rights at that company. We're in alliance with many unions at G8, we're the largest union. In this country, at this time, it's absolutely fine for that plant manager every single day to tell those workers, if you vote yes, I'm closing the plant. That's Luis. Could that happen to Luis in Brazil? I have my own way from Philadelphia of entering that, but the answer is no. Yeah, it's enraging. Second point, trade policy. Why is Apple producing in Brazil? Look at the chart, the wages and benefits is three or four times higher than in China. Why? Because, until two years ago, huge tariffs are slapped on every Apple product. You don't see iPhones in Brazil. Huge tariffs. It's called trade policy. I mean, they made the deal, Brazilian government made this deal, with Fox, Common Apple. They said, how much money will you invest? 10 billion dollars. How many jobs do you create? 10,000 jobs. And workers here in Brazil, Fox, Common Apple, have rights. They will have a union. They will organize. If they choose to, there'll be no interference. Now, it's not perfect. So in our watch, mine, president of the large union, here's the story of the United States, a sled ride downhill, no trade policy. We revel in Apple. The board of directors of Apple is almost all Democrats. It's not just Al Gore. The chairman, Art Levinson, all Democrats. Question for us is, how do we build a political movement that links workers' rights, economic justice, and democracy? Almost from scratch. That's what we're down to here. Virtually from scratch. Inspiration Brazil. Inspiration workers' party in Brazil. Real results. It's not just Brazil. Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, South Africa. And even Taiwan has the movement. Fox, Common is a Taiwanese company. Even in Taiwan, there is a movement for democracy and workers' rights. And it's not good there, but they're rising, not falling. They're rising, not falling. This week is what we call the 99% spring. Hopefully, most of you are signed up for spring training, it's not baseball. It's workers' rights, it's democracy, it's economic justice. 60 organizations, a few of them labor. Mostly all kinds of other groups have put this together. 60,000 people at 800 sites are signed up for the spring training. There's 10 sites in Washington, three of them are at CWA, but there's at churches, at GW, mostly this Saturday and Sunday. That's training, seven hours. It's a shorter version, some of the night ones. It's also online. There's number one about the economy and what's happened to it. So we have a common narrative. The plunge in real wages, the rise, average CEO now gets 400 times what a frontline worker gets. The collapse of the democracy, the role of the billionaires in totally controlling, virtually totally controlling, there are exceptions. Our political process, the worst Senate rules in the history of the US Senate, that's saying something. How these things fit together, the collapse of the democracy, voter suppression, no legalization path for immigrants. How the collapse of the democracy here fits with the economic justice issues of falling wages to healthcare crisis, retirement security being destroyed and most importantly from our point of view, as Debbie said it, virtually no collective bargaining rights in this country and where they exist as we all know the worst attack ever. That's part one, part two. How do you tell that story in your own words? If you're a worker or if you're one of us who maybe works in one of these organizations. How do you do it in your own words? From your heart, with passion. And part three of the training is how will we take direct action this spring against these corporations instead of moaning and groaning and writing and all those other things we all do, direct action in the streets, at the shareholders meetings, starting next week. That's what we're doing. And 100,000 people total, both online and on site will be trained in this and we will take to the streets and we will take these companies on and hopefully as occupied, as students and others did in Madison, Wisconsin a year ago, as our own workers did at Verizon who are still fighting, we have 150,000 workers in our union alone with no contracts, they're not gonna give up, they're not gonna cave into the bullshit that goes on that they get offered by corporate America. We will fight those fights as long as it takes as long as it takes. And these are all parts, whether it was the Verizon workers strike which was meant as a wake up call for two weeks or any of these other companies for our union or for other unions or more importantly for people who like these workers in Burlington, Iowa today have no real chance to ever have any rights or the T-Mobile workers and as Russ said we do a lot of global work. So at T-Mobile we formed a joint union with the biggest German union, Gerdig to say to Deutsche Telekom and the parent that just because you're in the United States doesn't mean you get to take the lowest road in the United States and fire and torture workers here to join a union. And Deutsche Telekom including T-Mobile workers right now in Germany are on a strike wave to try to keep their pay and living standards where they are or higher. And very emotional to me, they carry signs about the crushing of workers' rights at T-Mobile in the United States not just their own fight that arms thousands of them have been involved in this. Last year they all but stopped the shareholder meeting of Deutsche Telekom when a thousand Gerdig members showed up. And so Russ I think it's on the one hand most of us live here. We need to build a movement that's real not bullshit frankly. Too late to keep saying most important election ever most important election ever. We need to be saying most important time ever to build a movement for workers' rights for economic justice and for democracy. And yes, the elections make a difference and we get active in the elections but the election can no longer be an end in itself. If we didn't learn that in 2008 shame on every one of us here. We need to figure out and take inspiration from these two stories and from many other stories around the world whether in North Africa, Tunisia or wherever else that it takes a movement to change these things not just the labor movement but a political movement. And when you have a movement what the results in Brazil show us is it makes an enormous difference. You want to sell your products here in Brazil they'll be unions. You want to sell your products here in Brazil? You'll have to invest here, billions of dollars. You want to sell your products in Brazil? You'll have to hire workers who have rights who have guaranteed vacations of a month or more. I mean go down this list. Guaranteed paid childcare leave. Guaranteed paid severance. As Luis said, if you hire them and then fire them you're gonna pay. And on and on, guaranteed national healthcare. And on and on and on. And so, you know, we have a choice. We can continue to sit back and moan and groan. Apple's basically a U.S. company. It's the biggest company in the world that's rusted by market value. The main consumer market for that company is here. They do do some good things here. They do hire people in their stores. You know, produce here. When Steve Jobs was asked last year why don't you produce in the U.S. He said, in China, the workers sleep next to the factory. And you know, he was a maniac, as most people know. And so, when I want to change something little about the product, I can wake them up in the middle of the night. They will come out to come to work. They'll work 12 hours a day, six days a week. I can't do that in the United States. So why would I produce here? Well, you can't do that in Brazil either. They want to sell products in Brazil. So they have rules. And that difference is all the difference in the world. Thank you.