i am arlene holt-baker.n behalf of the secretary treasury here, we want to welcome all of you to the house of labor this morning. [applause] we are so excited for those of you that are in the room. as you know, this is also being a web cast, we are on c-span. we absolutely thank all of those who are participating. this has been an historic week in washington, d.c., in many ways. as we all know, the unveiling of the martin luther king, jr. memorial has been postponed. the eastern seaboard is in the path of hurricane irene. natural disasters, brothers and sisters, we cannot control. but it is the man-made disasters, that we have the power to change their direction if we so choose. we are reminded on this day of that march on washington 48 years ago when dr. martin luther king, jr. moved our people and our nation to embrace his dream of america, and a dream that he it and -- a dream that he shared. [applause] when we began talking about coasting aid jobs and justice symposium during this week, we knew that we w

i am arlene holt-baker, vice president here at the afl-cio. on behalf of richard trumka, he will hear from later, and the secretary-treasurer here, we want to welcome all of you to the house of labor this morning. [applause] of course, we're so excited for those of you better in the room. as you know, this is also on the webcast. we're on c-span, so we absolutely thank all of those or participating by way of webcast. this has been an historic week in washington, d.c., in many ways. as we all know, the unveiling of the martin luther king memorial had been postponed as the eastern seaboard is in the path of hurricane irene. natural disasters, brothers and sisters, we cannot control. but it is the man-made disasters, ones we will talk about today, that we have the power to change their direction if we so choose. we are reminded on this day of that march on washington 48 years ago, when dr. martin luther king, jr., moved our people and our nation to embrace his dream of america, a dream that he and the march's originator, the legendary african-ame