'Unions and America fit together like...Legos'

In an L.A. Times op-ed, author Anne Lamott has written a love letter to America's unions, telling readers how Legos and figurines have helped her 2-year-old grandson understand why it's so important "to love and support the working men and women of this country."

"I love unions. I love them in the same way I love libraries and redwood groves," Lamott writes. "They are like churches: sacred. They are what make this country great."

Almost every day she takes her grandson, Jax, to the park, where a box of Lego and plastic figures turn into an imagined rally with garment workers, longshoremen, zookeepers, sailors and others, like Sidney:

"Everyone loves Sydney," Lamott writes. "He is one of those exquisitely decent, old-fashioned working-class guys who made this country great. Jax and I often build him a low platform and podium of Lego blocks from which he talks to other workers about the fight for workers' rights, telling them to never give up, and reminding them that the pendulum always swings back toward fairness and equality."

Lamott decries the attacks on workers and writes, "I guess it is a plank of the Christian right to be anti-union now. But remember, there are still a lot of us in the Christian left, and we don't feel that way." She says she and Jax, "just about went crazy" cheering the Wisconsin protests earlier this year.

"The whole world will be bombarding my grandson with messages about individual and personal success aimed at teaching him to love the almighty buck, but I want my grandchild to grow up in a family that loves labor, as I did," she writes. "And I want him to know that when workers' rights or libraries or redwood groves are threatened, it's incumbent on us to show up with our kazoos and bongos.

"Otherwise, I tell him, this country is doomed. And then I add, 'But not on our watch, right, dude?' and he claps and cheers."

Click here for Lamott's full op-ed online at the L.A. Times.