Congress is in town for a little more than a week.

Time is running out for more than 2 million Americans who can’t find work and are relying on emergency unemployment coverage. They’ll lose their lifeline in January if Congress fails to act. And without action in 2012, that number will rise to at least 6 million.*

That’s why we're asking you to act today to share stories of unemployed workers and help us make the case for extending unemployment without cuts or pre-conditions that hurt the 99%.

Go to the AFL-CIO Unemployment Stories website, find stories from unemployed workers and share them.

If you use Twitter, click here.

Members of Congress keep getting confronted with the stories of unemployed workers, and it's making a difference. The question is no longer whether our leaders will do anything for America's jobless—it looks like they'll do something. But we're not out of the woods yet. Obstructionists continue to play partisan games with unemployment benefits.

Watch video footage, find stories—and spread the word here.

Use Twitter? Click here.

Last Thursday—from Wall Street to Main Street to Capitol Hill—we took action for America’s jobless workers. Our most massive mobilization was in Washington, D.C., where more than 2,000 jobless workers and clergy gathered for a prayer vigil on Capitol Hill.

We're keeping that pressure up, pushing out stories to members of Congress and forcing them to pay attention. Our pressure is working—some in Congress who weren't even talking about extending unemployment before now are claiming they are willing to consider extending unemployment coverage, but only with massive cuts as a “compromise.”

But we need to push for a clean, full extension of jobless aid, because it's the right thing to do. As Christine Owens of the National Employment Law Project says, "Long-term unemployed workers are not lazy slackers who choose an unemployment check over a paycheck. They are millions of men and women—family, friends and neighbors, many of whom have worked for years—whose lives and livelihoods have been chewed up and spit out by the nation’s worst economy in 80 years. With the number of officially unemployed job seekers still outnumbering job openings by more than four-to-one, it’s no wonder so many long-term unemployed workers cannot find work: there simply are not enough jobs."

Watch video footage, find stories—and spread the word here. Use Twitter? Click here.

America’s communities are relying on every penny of benefits—and every penny in cuts shrinks the economy and destroys jobs.

We need obstructionists in Congress to be confronted with these stories and know it's unacceptable to cut benefits for jobless workers, cut pay for public employees, cut preventive health services, reduce premium assistance for low- and middle-income individuals buying health insurance, and raise premiums for many Medicare beneficiaries. It's time to stop picking on the 99% and make the 1% pay its fair share.

Click here to watch video footage, find stories—and spread the word. And if you use Twitter, click here.

Thanks for all the work you do.

In Solidarity,

Manny Herrmann
Online Mobilization Coordinator, AFL-CIO

* Based on cut-off estimates contained in the National Employment Law Project's briefing paper, "Hanging On By a Thread."