A Labor Day Message from the Virginia Beach Democratic Committee

Solidarity Is a Verb.

To the union members and labor leaders who organize and advocate for working people, to working families across our community, and to everyone whose work keeps Virginia Beach and Hampton Roads moving:

This Labor Day, the Virginia Beach Democratic Committee proudly stands with you.

We celebrate the working people who built this country and the labor movement that organized to make workplaces safer, wages fairer, families more secure, and opportunity more widely shared. Those gains were not simply given. Working people stood together, organized, negotiated, advocated, and acted.

What they achieved reached far beyond union halls and the workers who first fought for it. The eight-hour workday, weekends, workplace safety protections, fairer wages, retirement security, and the fundamental principle that working people deserve a voice in the conditions under which they work have strengthened American life for generations.

That history carries an important lesson for all of us: solidarity is not simply something we say. It is something we practice.

Solidarity begins with respecting the dignity of work. It means recognizing that the people who teach and support our children in our public schools, serve our neighbors and keep our city running, build and repair our ships, protect our communities, care for our families, move goods through our ports, serve our country, build our neighborhoods, and keep our economy moving deserve dignity, security, opportunity, and a meaningful voice in their future.

It also means showing up for one another.

VBDC believes a strong Virginia Beach requires strong working families, good jobs, quality public schools, safe workplaces, economic opportunity, and the freedom of workers to organize and advocate for themselves. Our community is stronger when prosperity is broadly shared and when the people whose labor helps create that prosperity have a meaningful seat at the table.

These are not simply Labor Day sentiments. They are commitments.

So today, we offer more than our thanks. We offer our respect and our continued solidarity with the working people and organized labor movement of Virginia Beach and Hampton Roads. We value the relationships we have built with labor and look forward to continuing the work we share in strengthening our community.

Generations before us organized, stood together, and worked to leave something better for the people who followed.

That remains our responsibility today.

In solidarity,

Sean Monteiro

Chair

Virginia Beach Democratic Committee

Working People Built America. Together, We Keep Building