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.
Scott, really, being elected to office in a democracy does not mean you get to impose rule; it means you are given the chance to govern - not just your Koch brother donors, not just the meanest part of the political culture, but governance of all the state.
Your job, especially in tough times, is not to appeal to personal grandiosity, proclaim yourself Reaganesque; it is to build bridges, bring people together at the table to figure out how we work together to solve big problems without hurting the most vulnerable among us even more than the times and the politics of the day harm them.
You want to be a leader? Quit ripping this community to shreds! Negotiations and compromise are the hallmarks of good governance. Without that, you are only a bully, merely stubborn. Those are characteristics of stalemate and bitterness, which will lead us nowhere.
This guy could set the politics of our state back many, many years. Don't fall for it. We need to pull together now. Without that, this state is headed towards a very difficult future.
Really, now the Gov is threatening to send layoff notices next week if the Senate Democrats don't bend, blink, become submissive and subservient to his agenda. This is democracy? To threaten workers with unemployment as retaliation for not getting his way on the budget bill? Then he'll say, "see, you made me do it."
Problem is, a lot of people will believe him. A lot of people watch Fox News and listen to Charlie Sykes and Rush Limbaugh. It's sad because this is all a charade, a feint - "Hey, look over there," while over here they are tearing to shreds the livelihoods of millions of US Americans, and thousands and thousands of Wisconsinites.
Why not use public workers as pawns in this struggle? Demonize them first, of course, that helps the cause. Then turn on them as if they are not educating our kids, plowing our streets, providing health care for the poor, picking up the garbage, taking care of our state parks, staffing offices where we go for state services of all kinds, etc., etc.
Hey, you can contract out that work to the private sector!!! Low wages, no benefits, lots of turnover, lots of abuse - but, hey, we'll save a few bucks and then we can lower taxes for the rich and for corporations even more!! Good deal for the Koch brothers (this link takes you to an article every Wisconsin resident ought to read) and the Club for Growth.
Rachel Maddow did a great job of exposing Walker's woeful incompetence in the matter of privatizing public workers when he was Milwaukee County Executive (see video below). His attempt wasn't even legal. Cost the strapped county hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now the guy is governor.We see what we have in store.
This guy is becoming really destructive. He is ripping people apart, driving wedges among struggling working people, unemployed, and underemployed. He's got a cushy job. He's got the backing of the Koch brothers and Fox News. So what has he got to lose? What did Sarah Palin have to lose, or Michelle Bachman? They both became millionaires whether or not they ever win another elective office.
The right takes care of its own.
Now the question is - will we Wisconsinites take care of the people who work for us? But more, much more - will we refuse to be divided, private sector workers v. public sector workers, unemployed v. those with jobs, folks with health insurance v. those without? Instead of trying to take rights and well-being away from one group of workers, will we come together instead to restore those rights in the private sector? Instead of seeking to lower the floor for wages and working conditions, will we struggle to have the floor raised for all workers?
Bosses have always tried to control workers by strategies of divide and conquer. The Club for Growth ads on TV are doing exactly that - and we have to stop being duped by or ignorant about what is really going on. These guys, Walker and Senate Republicans, are the bosses trying to divide and conquer so that they can give our state's resources and tax money to the corporations that contribute to their campaigns. The community of those 'hard-working taxpayers' that Walker keeps talking about, as if this is what he really cares about, has to come together now across all those lines that seemingly divide. The quality of life in our state and nation is not being eroded by public sector workers. It is being eroded by the corporatization of government, by the ecological wreckage of our biosphere and atmosphere, by the takeover of our democracy by the power of corporate money.
There are other ways to balance the budget - like returning tax rates on wealth and on large corporations to where they once were - before Reagan, before the assault on the middle class, before the assault on worker rights and dignity, on government services and the public sector, on public education. One thing about this nation - though never perfect and always marred by inequality and injustice, it did create a very broad base for quality of life and democratic rights for a vast majority of its population. It ain't public workers that have eroded that. Nope, it is not them.
I promise you, this road on which Walker wants to take this state will not end well for the vast majority of us. There is more at stake here than a balanced budget.
Did you see NBC Nightly News last night (the 15th)? I want to put this story (see below) in the context of our current Wisconsin political situation. In recent years, we have seen more and more companies and politicians gut the welfare and rights of workers. In a time of high unemployment and weakened unions, it has made business sense to do this - to increase profit margins by lowering the costs of labor. With the economy weakened by recession and unemployed folks desperate for any job they can get - especially as unemployment benefits run out - leverage for salaried workers has plummeted.
A sad reality of the global economy is that wages have been stagnant or even on the decrease in the past couple of decades while corporate profits are up, bonuses for executives of financial institutions have reached record levels, the stock market is roaring back from the lows of 2008, and the gap between rich and poor in this country has widened, now one of the highest in the world.
Great time for the powers-that-be to wage a divide-and-conquer campaign against organized labor, even now pitting struggling private sector workers against public sector workers - as if workers don't have much more in common with each other than they do with their bosses. But people are scared and labor solidarity is probably not high on the list of priorities for frightened people who don't really understand what is happening to them and why.
It's an old tactic, and an effective one, until workers begin to realize once again that only as a collective do they have any bargaining rights against corporate bosses or libertarian, anti-government, anti-tax politicians.
Now get ready for the next big whammy - which is what this story is about. Just at a time when politicians are bent on balancing budgets on the backs of the most vulnerable of our community, we are about to be clobbered with sharply rising prices for what we eat, what we wear, and how we get around.
The cultural discourse on this looming crisis is barely to be heard. No one wants to prepare us for this. No one really wants to talk about it much. Because there is only one way to deal with a crisis like this - for the wealthy to pay more, much more, in taxes to support the needs of those who are being dumped into the margins of the economy, or left out altogether.
