Madison yesterday

Snow, cold, homemade signs, families, workers of all kinds, religious folks, drums, and Peter Yarrow singin' 'Blowin' in the Wind' one more time, free pizza from donors around the world, free Equal Exchange coffee (unless you're Scott Walker, said the sign), union members handing out hot dogs and bottles of water - never seen anything like it. A combination of festive and fierce, angry people who are so, so nice, and so polite, so happy and so enraged.

At one point during the rally, they called from the stage for a singing of the national anthem, and everyone immediately grew quiet then sang altogether. Then they went right back to "kill the bill!"

Now is the time for the thing that never seems to happen in recent decades after inspirational uprisings - the left, the union leadership, the affluent progressives, the 'liberal elites,' the Democratic politicians, the DNC, all need to get humble and relearn solidarity with working, struggling folks. Now the public sector unions need to translate all this good will into a struggle to support the rights equally of workers in the private sector who have seen their wages and benefits and collective bargaining rights and membership decimated in recent decades.

Now is the time for all these groups to start seriously addressing something that never comes up in the political discourse anymore - poverty, the plight of the now-permanently unemployed, immigrant labor without any rights - we have to start crossing all sorts of political and cultural and economic chasms if we are really serious about not handing any more of our society, our politics, our precious Wisconsin, our resources all around the country to the corporate sector.

This is a time for a great coming-together, otherwise we will continue the course of the great tearing-apart. This article in today's Journal Sentinel again describes how what Walker is doing is surfacing long simmering, bitter divides among us. If we don't find a way to bridge that gap, the rancor will only get uglier. We all feel this among our relatives, friends, neighbors. The only way to heal this is to not play our part in creation of rancor but in the coming-together. I felt the potential for this in the streets of Madison. Now it's time to plant that garden, nurture it carefully, and let it grow.

Photos: Margaret Swedish

Walker may have violated laws and ethics rules

Before retiring for the evening, just wanted to point out that the Gov may well have violated labor laws and ethics rules in the way he attempted to ram through a budget repair bill full of radical policy changes that have little to do with the budget and a lot to do with destroying state government and handing the state over to corporate interests.

Here's the story on the legal and ethical issues sent to me by one of my alert brothers:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/158824/wisconsin-governor-may-have-violated-labor-law-koch-call

Then there's Nobel laureate Paul Krugman who compares what Walker is trying to do here to Iraq in 2003. I found the comparison far more apt than I thought it would be.

"...Baghdad in 2003, when the Bush administration put Iraq under the rule of officials chosen for loyalty and political reliability rather than experience and competence."

Right.  Here's the link: Shock Doctrine, USA

Heading to Madison on Saturday with a group of faith-based folks. They are answering the call from the Wisconsin Conference of Churches. Meanwhile, the US Catholic Bishops Conference sent a letter to Archbishop Jerome Listecki supporting his defense of worker rights in the state of Wisconsin.

“You and our brother bishops in Wisconsin are offering a timely reminder of what the Church teaches on the rights and duties of workers, including the right to form and belong to unions and other associations, and the obligation to address difficult problems with respect for the rights and needs of all. As you insist, ‘hard times do not nullify the moral obligation each of us has to respect the legitimate rights of workers.’”

You can find the entire statement here: http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2011/11-038.shtml

Walker and state Repub legislators are not only losing the political battle, but they have lost the moral and ethical battle as well. They may get their legislative way in the end, but, oh, the sleeping giant that has awakened!