Michael Bader, DMH, AlterNet

During his 15 years as president of the Service Employees International Union, Andy Stern was a controversial figure. He suffered his share of criticism from inside and outside the union. There was, however, no disputing his success in making SEIU the largest and fastest growing union in the country and a powerful political machine that was instrumental in electing President Obama and getting the Affordable Care Act passed.

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness. —Albert Schweitzer

Loneliness is a political issue—at least, it should be. Loneliness and isolation are killing us. Lest you think this is metaphoric, the statistics are chilling. In a study funded by the National Science Foundation and reported in the American Sociological Review, researchers from Duke University and the University of Arizona conducted 1,500 face-to-face interviews with a random sample of American adults and found that one quarter of the respondents admitted that they had no one with whom they could talk about their personal troubles or successes. If you excluded family members, this number increased to a little over 50%.