If workers are overworked, or companies hire temps at low wages, this fundamentally comes down to the quality of life for a person. It's bigger than wages. They should be able to spend time with their families. And if they're single, they should be able to have fun and not spend every day of their life working 12 to 15 hours a day and never get a chance to take care of their well-being. To me, that's part of living a good life.

When you have mega-corporations that have record profits, but they don't want to share even a little bit of that with their workers, we are actually putting our communities at peril.

In America, the 1 percent and the 10 percent are doing just fine, but the people who are bearing the brunt of this economy are the ones who suffer.

We need groups like the Women's March reminding elected officials that they have a responsibility to create pathways of opportunity, and if - and when - they aren't doing that, everyday people are going to put a little "extra" on their ordinary and extraordinary things will happen. At this moment, the not-so-quiet voices rumbling across the country and the world are saying we absolutely and unequivocally deserve better.

I'm always amazed to hear my more conservative colleagues talking about how they care about life. They're pro-life, but when it comes down to safe work environments that allow for unions, being able to pay for child care, having family leave - they don't care about any of that. That's where I argue that they're not pro-life, they're pro-birth.

Labor unions have a long history of benefitting all workers, even those who are not members of unions, because everyone's wages go up. If we don't increase membership - and membership in labor unions is going down because of the attacks against organized labor - it's something every single American, whether they're officially in a union or not, should be concerned about. It's a spiral. It's a weakening of the middle class and our economy can't sustain that.

I stand for all people even if it causes me political heartburn - and I'm going to do that no matter what my future holds.