The march originated at the Greater Bethel AME Church in Overtown, a historically black neighborhood, met with members of Occupy Miami, camped out in what they call Peace City, and arrived at the downtown building of Bank of America.

“What we’re doing here is taking the audience of Occupy, we have over 13,000 fans on Facebook, to put all that energy into the groups that understand Miami, and have been working for years, and help validate their struggles and breath new life into their issues and causes,” Occupy Miami’s Bruce Wayne told The Florida Independent. “It is not just us, but us in conjunction with other activists.”

According to a press release issued by the Miami Workers Center:

Inspired by the Occupy Movement, and a call of the 99% to reclaim the U.S. economy from corporations and big banks Miami residents and community organizations will march from one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city to a downtown branch of Bank of America to close their accounts and call out the bank on new fees, and its foreclosure practices.

Marchers included Miami residents, members of Occupy Miami, the Miami Workers Center, Florida New Majority, 1Miami, Service Employees International Union, UNITE/HERE union and Awake Miami.

Rosana Araujo, a Miami resident and activist, told the Independent that Occupy Miami represents students, young people fighting for education at lower costs, “but it does not represent the working class. Here they are not fighting for housing, for undocumented immigrants; it is a middle-class movement.”

Hashim Yeomans-Benford, lead organizer of the Miami Workers Center, told the Independent that people in the U.S. and Miami are waking up, and that while big banks like Bank of America, which created the recession, are getting bailed out, people are suffering, losing their homes and looking for jobs.

“Miami Workers Center is very excited about this movement,” Yeomans-Benford said. “Today is part of a statewide day of action called Awake the State, so Awake Miami is part of Awake the State, today you have Florida Immigrant Coalition, Power U and unions like SEIU, the AFL, UNITE/HERE and Occupy Miami, and you have here the opportunity to build a broad progressive front to demand real change and real accountability.”

Jay Mehta — the lead organizer of UNITE/HERE, a union that represents more than 4,000 workers in South Florida — told the Independent that banks like Bank of America have sponsored anti-union meetings “to cut public pensions, to cut public benefits and break unions.”

“We’re telling everybody today that you have to close your Bank of America accounts and go to community banks and credit unions,” Mehta added.

“We are already drawing up a coalition, working together in events,” Mehta said, “there are many local issues that haven’t been tackled in a long time, and the Occupy Miami movement is giving other unions, other organizations of  like-minded principles, the opportunity to bridge the gap for people to work together. We might have academics, hotel workers, firefighters, but all of us understand that we are part of the 99 percent, and that we can build, and work together.”

South Florida Jobs for Justice, together with local labor unions, held a press conference this morning announcing their support for Occupy Miami.

Occupy Miami, a local group protesting in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement, is currently occupying government center in Miami. The group held a rally this Saturday that drew more than 1,000 supporters.

Kit Rafferty, executive director of South Florida Jobs with Justice, tells The Florida Independent that, together with multiple labor unions, the group is supporting the occupiers and their “right to peacefully assemble and to build power for the 99 percent.”

South Florida Jobs With Justice is a “is a membership network” with affiliates that “includes small and minority businesses, community service groups and labor unions,” the group’s website says.

Rafferty says that the AFL-CIO, SEIU and the painters union, to name a few, are standing behind the protesters. She says that even the president of the national chapter of the AFL-CIO has expressed his support for the group.

“There is huge disparity in this town,” Rafferty says, describing a city where extreme poverty exists side by side with extreme wealth. ”Anything we can do to support them, we will do,” she says.

Rafferty says that labor unions are fighting for fairness and working families, just like the occupiers, and that at least six different unions were represented at Saturday’s rally.

“We are really happy that we are seeing people committed to change,” she says.

“I’m well aware of the legal parameters that are available, but that doesn’t dictate policy. But I have a general counsel. I have the Attorney General. I don’t need a legislative show to trot this out,” Dayton told MPR.

Republican legislative leaders are planning hearings on the issue this week. Dayton told reporters that he’s still receiving legal advice regarding his authority to issue this sort of executive order, although governors of other states have ordered similar actions in the past.

Republican House Speaker Kurt Zellers and Majority Leader Matt Dean sent Dayton a letter last week questioning if the governor had authority in this area. “Any unionization of these independent businesses runs contrary to easing [Minnesota families' financial burdens]. Increased cost would lead to decreases availability, exactly the opposite of what we both want for Minnesota families.”

Rep. Mary Franson, R-Alexandria, t0ld the Star Tribune that she’s worried the unionization of child-care workers would mean “propaganda,” like craft projects using macaroni noodles to spell out “tax the rich.”

A report by non-partisan House staff last week said the issue of the governor’s authority was cloudy, but that it’s likely that the state’s Bureau of Mediation Services, which typically oversees unionization efforts, doesn’t have jurisdiction over the workers, who are independent contractors.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) say they’ve obtained signed cards supporting the union from close to a majority of the 11,000 home child-care workers since organizing began in 2005.

The unions initially requested that Dayton issue an order recognizing the union, which Dayton denied. He told the Star Tribune that he’d “rather there be an election than have [unionization] imposed on child-care workers and providers.”

Officials hope to gather a crowd of “100-plus Minnesotans angry over the lack of good jobs, corporate political influence and continual budget cuts,” said the group, which describes itself as “a coalition of labor, community and faith organizations that are fighting for an economy that works for all of us.”

“Wells Fargo Political Action Committee and executives have funded politicians like U.S. Reps. Paulsen, Kline, and Bachmann who are pushing radical budget cuts that will kill the jobs of teachers, nurses, and others,” the release said. “While bankers enjoy taxpayer bailouts and record profits, Wells Fargo has cut jobs in Minnesota while funding the politicians who aren’t doing anything about our crummy economy.”

The march at South 6th St. and Marquette Ave. also will feature puppets, a march and a pie-eating contest.

The demonstration isn’t the first time Wells Fargo has been in hot water with a labor group. The Service Employees International Union Local 284 has, on multiple occasions,urged Wells Fargo and Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank to not charge interest on loans sought by Minnesota public schools forced to borrow as a result of the state’s nearly-monthlong government shutdown.

Brian Elliott, Executive Director of the SEIU Minnesota State Council, said the group has yet to receive a response from either group on its most recent request.

The Detroit News reports that the UAW Local 6000, the Service Employees International Union Local 517M, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 25, the Michigan Corrections Organization, and the Michigan State Employees Association plan to bargain as one unit.

Under the change, the unions would bargain jointly on economic issues but maintain separate contracts and continue to bargain separately on noneconomic issues.

Contracts that spell out economic issues for the unions don’t expire until Sept. 30, 2012. But the administration wants to open existing contracts to find $145 million in employee savings during the fiscal year that begins a year earlier. Negotiations between the Office of State Employer and the UAW started July 26.

Earlier this year, the same unions teamed up to issue a report on ways the state could save money. The report focused on reducing the number of managers and cutting the cost of state contracts with private companies.

Snyder has demanded $95 million in concessions from corrections workers.

The benefit plan was approved by the Michigan Civil Service Commission in January.

Republicans, led by Sen. Rick Jones (R-Grand Ledge), have criticized the plan as being too expensive at a time when the state is facing a nearly $2 billion budget deficit.

Grand Rapids Republican Mark Jansen chairs the committee and introduced the resolution, which was approved on a party line vote of 4 in favor and 2 against. Democratic Sens. Rebekah Warren (D-Ann Arbor) and Coleman Young, Jr. (D-Detroit) opposed the measure.

Opponents argued the resolution to eliminate the benefit program was about financial management of the state, not about social issues.

“Some people will say this is a social issue,” said Jan Winters, who runs the Office of the State Employer. “This is about cost… We don’t have the funds to cover a benefit that could be in the tens of millions of dollars.”

The total projected cost of the unmarried partner benefit is approximately .003 percent (three one-thousandths of a percent) of this year’s estimated deficit.

Winters delivered a letter to the committee from Gov. Rick Snyder saying, “I urge the legislature…[to] reject the extension of health care benefits to the unrelated live-in companions of state employees and their dependents,” Snyder wrote in his letter.

Winters said in January the program was estimated to cost $6 million, but Wednesday, said because the program was so broadly written, the program was expected to cost the state $8 million in the first year. The program is slated to go into effect Oct. 1, the beginning of the state’s new fiscal year. It would be available to an estimated 22,000 members of the United Auto Workers Local 6000 and the Service Employees International Union Local 517M, as well as 13,700 non-union employees.

Benefits such as this are considered cash income by the IRS and the state treasury, and are taxed as such. Winters said she was unsure if the cost offsets from the increased tax revenues from the benefit extension was included in the estimates, but she said the increased tax liability for the state as an employer was factored into the cost. Employers pay a portion of employment taxes.

Under the state constitution, lawmakers can override a decision by the Michigan Civil Service Commission. The Commission determines the pay schedules and benefits for employees of the state. But in order for the legislature to overrule a decision by the commission, two-thirds of both chambers must vote to do so 60 calendar days after the recommendation is submitted as part of the budget proposal by the governor’s office.

The resolution is expected to have no issues passing in the Senate, where the GOP has a super majority. But it will face an uphill climb in the House, where the GOP is the majority but need to get 74 votes to pass the resolution. The GOP majority is 63 Republicans to 47 Democrats. That means the GOP will have to peel away 11 Democrats to garner the necessary two-thirds majority to overrule the MSCS decision.

If the legislature approves the resolution with the required two-thirds vote, it will be the first time such a move has occurred in the state.

Democrats challenged the resolution and the attacks on the plan during the hearing. Young challenged the constitutionality of the resolution, while Warren raised questions as to whether this was an appropriate business decision.

“If we’re going to run it like a business, why not run it like other businesses in the state?” Warren asked Winters in the hearing.

At least one union official has questioned the move. Ray Holman, legislative liaison for UAW 6000, says he is confused as to why the legislature is undertaking the action. He tells the Lansing State Journal that the issue should be dealt with at the bargaining table — not in the legislature.

Advocates in favor of the plan expressed concern about committee’s action and the resolution.

Emily Dievendorf, policy director for Equality Michigan, a statewide organization which advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, issued the following statement following the hearing Wednesday morning:

Representative Warren raised valid concerns with today’s challenge to the Michigan Civil Service Commission decision. As she stated, Snyder’s foundation for his proposal to turn Michigan around is rooted in his claim that we need to run Michigan like a business. The fact is that more than half of Fortune 500 companies consider it a priority to offer Other Eligible Individual benefit programs to their employees. Successful, growing businesses consider their bottom line and in doing so don’t deny their employees the support they need to have a healthy stable household because social instability equates to economic liability.

Unfortunately, Jan Winters, Director of the Office of State Employer, could not address this contradiction in Michigan’s approach to our economic revival, nor could she explain where the new inflated cost estimate for the extension of benefits came from. It is a convenient oversight in her presentation that all figures being released to defend the reversal of the Civil Service Commission’s decision are worst case scenario estimates that assume everyone eligible for the benefits would take advantage of them. We know that the actual likely participation rate is below 2 percent. Furthermore, support for the MCSC’s decision reversal ignores the reality that not providing health benefits is always more expensive than providing benefits and would suck money out of the budget that Michigan doesn’t have.

The issue has drawn the attention of national LGBT groups.

“Providing employment benefits, including health insurance, to the adult partners of state employees is an issue of fundamental fairness,” said Sarah Warbelow, state legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign which is a national group advocating for LGBT rights based in Washington D.C. “It is critical for employees to provide for the best possible future for their families, and if Michigan fails to provide equal benefits, the state risks losing a notable segment of its committed, talented workforce. The Legislature must make Michigan more competitive to retain and attract workers, and ultimately private industry as well.”

In response, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) plans to announce a $2 million election turnout push in Pennsylvania that will consist of mailings, phone-banking and canvassing. Along with the American Federation of Teachers, the SEIU is also supporting an ad in Illinois that goes after GOP Senate candidate Mark Kirk for his ties to George W. Bush. “Let’s go back in time: George Bush was president and Mark Kirk was his yes man,” the narrator says. “What did we get? The worst recession in 50 years.”

The latest labor push represents an emerging trend separating left- and right-leaning groups in this election cycle, in which labor and environmental groups have devoted substantial funds to on-the-ground organizing and canvassing efforts while conservative groups like American Crossroads have devoted nearly all their money to broadcast advertisements. The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein argues that while it might not be enough to stanch a GOP wave of money, these ground game efforts could very well prove more effective than your average ad:

In-person contact tends to be a much stronger way to persuade voters than television ads. And while the AFL-CIO is limited to talking to union members, an allied group, Working America, has the leeway to make election pitches to non-union laborers. An official with the group says they’ve knocked on “at least 700,000 doors in 13 cities and 9 states across the country” to date.

Democrats pining their electoral hopes on a fine-tuned ground game shouldn’t necessarily hold their breath. In 2006, Republican leadership made the same exact pitch as massive Democratic spending helped fulfill the narrative of massive election losses. But among top members of the Democratic Party, the hope is that direct persuasion can be an antidote not just to the massive deficit the party faces on the airwaves but also to the enthusiasm advantage held by conservatives heading into the election.

“We can make up that enthusiasm gap because we have a far better field operation than they do. And it is funded,” said a senior Democratic lawmaker. “The resources being spent outside the [Republican] party are being spent on the wrong thing… if their cavalry came in a month ago, we would have had a much harder time digging out of it.”

Attendees of the mass rally head for the Lincoln Memorial on Oct. 2. (Jesse Zwick/TWI)

Members of the Socialist Party lined the tree-shaded walkway that guided tens of thousands of self-dubbed progressives and union members of all stripes to the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Passing out a newspaper with the headline, “Tax The Rich, End The Wars,” one eager party member beseeched the passers-by. “You can’t disagree with this,” he kept saying.

[Congress1] “Get your ‘End The War’ sign. Good for the next war,” yelled a good-natured peace activist who stood nearby. Code Pink, the group for antiwar women, and a sizable contingent of D.C. Statehood activists tabled not far away.

But the majority of the marchers, attending alongside their local union or progressive group members, moved steadily on in order to get a good spot on the National Mall and remind the nation that liberalism, as a concept, was not dead. It’s just been hibernating.

Indeed, the main focus of yesterday’s gathering, called One Nation Working Together and sponsored by nearly 500 progressive organizations, was jobs, and how the government should do more to promote them. This was evidenced by the thousands of signs and t-shirts that promoted the event’s main theme — “Jobs, Justice, and Education” — as well as its heavily unionized supporters.

“We bailed out the banks and the insurance companies. Now it’s time to bail out the American people,” urged the Rev. Al Sharpton, who drew some of the loudest cheers of the afternoon.

“I hope they look at the mall, because this is what America looks like,” he added. “Not one color or one gender.”

Sharpton’s remark about the diversity of the crowd, whose ranks included teamsters, electrical workers, teachers, auto workers, peace activists, and immigration reformers of all colors, rang true. But it may have also been an implicit dig against the tea party movement, whose rally the event was designed, in part, to rival.

Most signs stuck to bland, nonpartisan one-word cries like “Together,” “Forward,” or “Jobs,” but a few got at the nature of the rivalry as well. “I Want My Country Forward, Not Back,” read one of them, subtly challenging a common tea party trope. “Tea Parties are for Little Girls and their Imaginary Friends,” read another, less subtle one-liner.

But the largely broad, noncontroversial themes touted by the event succeeded in allowing the many progressive groups who signed on to join forces and put on a show of force the likes of which have been seldom seen since President Obama took office in 2008.

“We’re just so excited that all the progressives are working together because we notice a lot of times progressives each have their own little cause, but this time we’re all in it,” gushed Alice Hoffman, from the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers Local Three.

As to the main demand — jobs — attendees from all the groups agreed the country needed far more, but they posed a wide variety of responses about how to get them.

“We really believe that the people are hurting because the money is going to the wrong place,” noted Jane Dugdale of Mainline Peace Action, a group in suburban Philadelphia. “The military is being used to build an empire around the world that is breaking and bankrupting our country.”

“The jobs, the jobs, the jobs, the jobs,” said Michael Bartlett of the New York Teachers Union in response to what the most important issue for Obama should be. “It’s as simple as that. 90 percent of the old jobs have left here and we’ve become a service economy, but we still have to encourage [companies] to employ more people instead of laying off more people.”

“We have to start building up America again,” agreed Helen Lugo of the United Auto Workers, who’d travelled along with her local union by bus from Georgia. “We need to start exporting and stop importing,” she noted. “Something’s got to be equalized over here.”

The slashing of state and local social and educational services also ranked high on attendees’ list of grievances.

“Most of my childhood friends died over some dumb stuff, it’s like we all on some slum stuff, whatever happened to that we shall overcome stuff?” rapped Black Ice, a poet who provided entertainment between speakers. “What’s a young boy to do when he want to do right but there’s a lock on the right door? When he has the heart of a soldier and the aggression of a prize fighter but no one’s taught him what to fight for?”

Beyond putting pressure on the federal government for more jobs and services, however, the event was designed to encourage turnout for the 2010 midterm elections during a year that many Democrats have fretted about a lack of voter enthusiasm coming from their side of the political spectrum.

“2008 was not the end but the beginning,” urged Rev. Sharpton. “When I was in school we had midterm exams…. Well, we’ve got four weeks until the midterm exam and we’ve all got to go home and hit that pavement, knock on doors, and get ready for it.”

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka sounded a similar appeal to union workers and progressive groups at the event as well. “Promise you won’t let anyone quiet us or turn us against each other. Promise to make your voices heard for jobs, justice, and education today — and on election day,” he urged the crowd. “Our best days are ahead, not behind us, and we will fight for them, and we won’t let anyone stand in our way.”

Attendees at the event yesterday appeared to get the message, but whether it translates into ramped up voter turnout for Democrats in November remains an open question.

“I think we will still support Obama, but he has to understand the plight of the ordinary man on the street,” noted Bartlett. “We realize that [doing more] is a difficult proposition for him, but he must also realize that we’re the same group who helped him get elected, so he can’t forget Main Street.”

The ads will be played in cities with heavy Latino populations and competitive House or Senate races. The idea is to encourage Latino voters, who broadly support immigration reform, to turn up at the polls in November and vote for Democrats. The Service Employees International Union, Mi Familia Vota Civic Participation Campaign, and America’s Voice teamed up to fund the ads.

No Senate Republicans have come forward to support immigration reform, and the party voted last week to filibuster the defense authorization bill that was set to include the DREAM Act as an amendment. The act would have helped some illegal immigrant students and military service members who entered the U.S. as children gain legal status.

“Last week, the same Republicans who have rallied their support behind Arizona’s ‘papers please’ law made a clear choice to crush the dreams of tens of thousands of high-achieving immigrant youth,” SEIU Secretary Treasurer Eliseo Medina said in a press release. “Today, it is critical that our community understands who is on their side and what is at stake if we do not hold our elected leaders accountable in November.”

Some Republican candidates have attempted to win over Latino voters, but so far have failed to gain major traction. Experts — even from the right — have argued the GOP’s current immigration rhetoric has done serious damage to its reputation among the growing Latino population.

Brewer’s campaign wanted to turn the tables on unions by using their usual protest messages against them. The protests included “Shame on UFCW/SEIU” signs because unions often use “Shame on” signs to protest companies that hire non-union workers.

The UCFW decided Thursday to call off its boycott, the Phoenix Business Journal reported:

“I hope Ms. Brewer joins the call to ‘tone it down’ and help create solutions for both border security and immigration reform,” said UFCW Local 99 President Jim McLaughlin. ”It is now time for calm, reasoned discussion that can move forward to first secure our borders, while designing a workable, humane plan to finally reform our nation’s immigration laws,” said McLaughlin.

The UFCW boycott was one of many economy-wounding boycotts in protest of SB 1070. The Service Employees International Union plans to continue its boycott of the state, and the Brewer campaign said it would turn its protest attentions toward them next.