Sometimes, lawmakers on Capitol Hill will write open letters to their colleagues to make sure everyone knows their opinion on an issue. They’re called “Dear Colleague” letters.

There’s been enough ink spilled on the possible government shutdown to go to the moon and back, but here’s the short version: Republicans in the House just forced the government to shut down because they can’t win any of the crazy things they want the American way, fair and square.

Now they’ve turned to hostage taking, and working people—the folks who need the government to work—are the hostages. Sometimes the members of the House of Representatives take a while to get a message. So we’ll break it down for them in a way they’ll understand:

Dear House Republicans:

Get a grip.

Stop the hostage taking. Don’t shut down our country.

Regards,
America’s Working People

Snark aside, this is serious. We all depend on the federal government and the people who work for us there to do critical things—from protecting our rights on the job to food safety inspections to medical research to air traffic control. If the House GOP continues to hold us hostage, they’ll do real damage to us and to our country.

We have urgent problems our nation’s leaders need to address—and the first one is that we need more jobs. A government lockout is the single worst thing politicians can do for jobs. At the very least, we should expect that Congress will stop making our economic problems worse. If you’re as angry about this as we are, we need you to take action right now.

Our country is shut down, and we need you to sign this petition we’ll deliver ASAP to Congress:

go.aflcio.org/we-are-locked-out

In Solidarity,

The Chicago Federation of Labor