SEIU Executive Vice President Gerry Hudson has long dedicated himself to the cause of organized labor, such as nursing home employees like his own mother. Last week, he joined several panelists at Georgetown's Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor to discuss how the current labor movement fits within the progressive movement and the importance of refocusing our work in the Obama era.

"It's essential for workers to have a voice on the job and in politics in order for us to achieve the goals of racial equality and other issues," said Hudson in his opening remarks. "We really have to see ourselves as partners with a whole set of progressive forces out there, where we are speaking for them and they are speaking for us, in order to build this new labor movement."

Click here to watch C-SPAN's footage of the forum and Hudson's introspective banter with author Barbara Ehrenreich and Washington editor of The Nation magazine Chris Hayes.