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"What's Disgusting? Union Busting!" Chant Wisconsin Crowds That Swell to 30,000; Key GOP Legislators Waver
"I have never been prouder of our movement than I am at this moment," shouted Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt, as he surveyed the crowds of union members and their supporters that surged around the state Capitol and into the streets of Madison Wednesday, literally closing the downtown as tens of thousands of Wisconsinites protested their Republican governor’s attempt to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights.
Where Tuesday’s mid-day protests drew crowds estimated at 12,000 to 15,000, Wednesday's mid-day rally drew 30,000, according to estimates by organizers. Madison Police Chief Noble Wray, a veteran of 27 years on the city’s force, said he had has never see a protest of this size at the Capitol – and he noted that, while crowd estimates usually just measure those outside, this time the inside of the sprawling state Capitol was “packed.”
On Wednesday night, an estimated 20,000 teachers and their supporters rallied outside the Capitol and then marched into the building, filling the rotunda, stairways and hallways. Chants of "What's disgusting? Union busting!" shook the building as legislators met in committee rooms late into the night.
Protestors to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to eliminate collective bargaining rights for many state workers demonstrate in at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis., Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2011. (AP Photo/Andy Manis) The country was starting to take notice, as broadcast and cable-news satellite trucks rolled into town. The images they captured were stunning, as peaceful crowds filled vast stretches of the square that surrounds the seat of state government.
Republican legislators -- who had been poised to pass the governor’s plan Thursday, and might yet do so – were clearly paying attention. Two GOP senators broke with the governor, at least to some extent. Dale Schultz from rural southeastern Wisconsin and Van Wanggaard from the traditional manufacturing center of Racine, proposed an alternative bill that would allow limit bargaining rights for public employees on wages, pensions and health care for the next two years but allow them to continue to bargain on other issues.
While that’s hardly an attractive prospect to state workers – as it would also require them to make significantly higher pension and health-care contributions – the measure rejects the most draconian component’s of the governor’s plan. Other Republicans resisted the proposal, however, offering only minor amendments to the governor's plan.
If Schultz and Wanggaard actually vote "no" Thursday, when the measure is to be taken up, just one more Republican senator would have to join them in order to block the bill.
That the first real movement by Republicans came after Wednesday’s rally was hardly surprising, as few state capital’s have seen the sort of mobilization that occurred at mid-day, and that is likely to reoccur at nightfall as teachers from across the state are expected to pour into the city for a rally and candlelight vigil.
In some senses, Wednesday’s remarkable rally began Tuesday evening, when Madison Teachers Inc., the local education union, announced that teachers would leave their classrooms to spend the day lobbying legislators to “Kill the Bill” that has been proposed by newly-elected Republican Governor Scott Walker.
The teachers showed up en masse in downtown Madison Wednesday morning.
And then something remarkable happened.
Instead of taking the day off, their students gathered at schools on the west and east sides of Madison and marched miles along the city’s main thoroughfares to join the largest mass demonstration the city has seen in decades – perhaps since the great protests of the Vietnam War era.
Thousands of high school students arrived at the Capital Square, coming from opposite directions, chanting: “We support our teachers! We support public education!”
Thousands of University of Wisconsin students joined them, decked out in the school’s red-and-white colors.
Buses rolled in from every corner of the state, from Racine and Kenosha in the southeast to Green Bay in the northeast, from La Crosse on the Mississippi River to Milwaukee on Lake Michigan.
Buses and cars arrived from Illinois and Minnesota and as far away as Kansas, as teachers and public employees from those states showed up at what American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union president Gerald McEntee says is “ground zero “in the struggle for labor rights in America.
The moms and dads of the elementary school kids came, and the kids, carrying hand-lettered signs:
“I love my teacher!”
“Scott Walker needs to go back to school!”
“Scott Walker needs a time out!”
And, “We are Wisconsin!
“I’ve been here since the 1960s, I’ve seen great demonstrations,” said former Mayor Paul Soglin, a proud former student radical who was nominated for a new term in Tuesday’s local primary election. “This is different. This is everyone – everyone turning out.”
Everyone except the governor, who high-tailed it out of town, launching a tour of outlying communities in hopes of drumming up support for his bill. Most of the support Walker was getting was coming from national conservative political groups, such as the Club for Growth, which have long hoped to break public-employee unions. But the governor held firm, saying after a day of unprecedented protests – in Madison and small towns and cities across the state – that he still wanted to pass his bill. He’s got strong support in the overwhelmingly Republican Assembly. But he cannot afford to lose one more Republican state senator. And the unions and their backers are determined to find that one Republican who is smart enough and honest enough to recognize that the governor's assault of public employees is an assault on Wisconsin itself.
The state's largest teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council has called on its 98,000 members to come to rally in their hometowns and then come to the Capitol. "All citizens of Wisconsin should come to Madison!" reads the call. Tens of thousands will come. The state, county and municipal employees will come. The nurses will come. The small business owners will come. The parents and students will come. They will ask the question: "What's disgusting?" And they will answer with a roar: "Union busting!"
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114 Comments so far
Show AllUnlike Missouri, the working class pro-union spirit among the Wisconsinites does not fade quietly. I sincerely hope that the protests in WI will be a national wake up call as we need to unionize the entire working class in both the public and private sectors.
jennifer: right on sister right on
this is important stuff in wi - let's hope it is the first wave of a tsunami
for the life of me i still can't understand how the new peasants of amerika, landless, homeless and uninsured continue to abide this fascist wave of robber banskters like the boys at goldman sachs.
its them or us and if we lose in wi then we have to deal with even more shit - a deeper and wider cesspool that has festered while we watched tv and rang up credit cards buying junk from china
there's a mighty judgement coming and we need to become the judges not the judged cause its works out better for us one of those ways
guess which one.........
From what I read in history and assess from people's various feedback, it was all about the money in crushing the new peasants. To "reduce the costs" of crushing newer generations of peasants, methods of ill-conditioning were tested so that they could stifle themselves and save the wealthy elite plenty of money. The worst thing about it was that this would result in Main Street being divided and fighting itself while Wall $treet would laugh its ways to the bank and get their economic "sensation" watching Main Street fight itself until it was done bleeding.
P.S.: State Senator in Missouri, Jane Cunningham is proposing to DO AWAY WITH CHILD LABOR LAWS and I am NOT KIDDING.
http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/02/14/missouri-senator-wants-to-eliminate-child-labor-laws-really/
..
amen!
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Fight to the very end! Fight to the death! Never give up. Don't let these thieves get away with this. And make sure that all the legislators who for this theft pay and pay and pay. Don't let'em push you into the gas chamber. Push back and destroy them! Make this the turning point in the class war, for all Americans and for everybody everywhere! Fight, fight, fight and destroy them!
Gosh, you need not be a middle eastern Arab to stand up to despots and demand your rights.
Damn right! Fight these filthy monsters and destroy them!
I just love that the folks who have needed to get in the street are finally there. Maybe now the middle class has had a wake up call to the shenanigans of big business supported politics. Maybe now they will realize, as they had their decent paychecks, had decent access to health care, had their house payment this month, that 50% of American haven't near that, and now they know how the rest of us feel when the bastards take their stuff. I welcome them happily to the fold, and they need to know that we are in their fighting for them, too, as we expect them to fight for the rest of us, fight against the huge whorporate machine, and 'get it' that the governments' bedfellow, MIC, is their enemy too, as well as Wall St's , the bankers, & the politicians' lying cheating whoring ways have to go.
I'm so happy to see you people in the streets.
Stonepig, I too applaud my school co-workers wake up call. They have been perfectly content to work beside me in the same buildings for the last 7 years while they enjoy health insurance benefits(none for "support staff") and a much better retirement package. Why? because the two tier benefits packages saved them property taxes. I mostly agree with the teachers in this struggle; I want to elevate all workers to decent wages and benefits. I agree that most teachers are paid less than private sector workers with comparable education and all parties agreed they'd be "compensated" through higher job security and benefits packages. I too am glad to see them wake up and join their students' parents in the trenches for workers' right to organize and collective bargain. I agree it's about time they understood where their students' families have been struggling in their stead for the past 3 decades. Most of the teachers in our school are good-hearted but insulated, until now. They have had a good slap in the face and Walker is going to rue the day he started this fight. The parents are rightfully blaming Walker for messing up their childcare arrangements for the past 3 days and he's crazy if he thinks the teachers aren't going to wildcat strike. I guess he forgot what started in Hortonville, WI back in the '60's. The local EMT and firefighters are in solidarity and I call on the police agencies at all levels of government of the state to join in support of the other state workers. It is only enlightened self-interest, as Walker will come after you next.
Comment on my comment: I have since come across reports that police/first responders/firefighters from various jurisdictions and the state level are there in solidarity at the protests as well. They know its a ruse to divide and conquer.
Russ Feingold! Please step up to the mic!
Would someone please get Paul Soglin on the line!
Good news in America for a change!
Are people finally seeing that the corporate politicos (Repugnants and Dims alike) are ruining this country?
Tunisia- Egypt- Wisconsin... the people will rise up against the fascist oppressors !
AMEN
From your mouth to G~d's ears.
True-but in California, the state is essentially bankrupt, as are many counties, cities and towns. There is the not insignificant matter of the 25 billion dollar deficit. Californians are at last going to have to face up to the underlying reality: you get what you pay for. We're about to find out what the people of this state are made of.Hint: not much. An oil excise tax, while a good idea, would be small potatoes.How about repealing prop 13, or at least amending the part that affects commercial property? How about abolishing the whole of the 2/3 majority legislation, not just past of it? How about a Constitutional Convention? Fat chance. Anyway, I'm glad Brown is Guv, and that the Guvernator is looking for a job in the movies again.
It interesting to note that in Oil and Gas Rich Texas, the State Deficit is higher on a per capita basis then that of California.
It's higher in New York on a per capita basis. But New Yorkers are smarter.Maybe. Anyway, Jerry Brown is a good governor to present Cal. with stark choices: he's a grown-up, and he doesn't care about what his political future looks like.He has a Jesuit education, he's rigorous, and he will piss off a lot of people. If they don't like it, the people can get off their butts and get rid of him, but trust me, they won't. Maybe California should cede itself back to Spain-but wait-they wouldn't have us.
Its interesting to note that the Governator's last budget bill and Jerry Brown's are very, very similar, so similar in fact that they are indistinguishable. Cut education, public parks, and infrastructure, no new taxes. Jerry Brown being good for CA is the equivalent of a guillotine being good for trimming fingernails. It would be nice if people who went around judging people's intellect had a clue about the concept of artificial scarcity. The states aren't broke they were robbed by bankers. Get it together. We shouldn't be talking about budget deficits, we should be fighting the oligarchy for our money back.
Yes, we were robbed. Absolutely.
The oligarchs successfully eliminated their obligation to pay their fair share for the common weal. But, we shouldn't have to "fight" the oligarchy for our money. We should TAX them.
As for CA, an example that government by referendum has its problems.
Good luck with that. Maybe we should hold Meg upside down and shake her. That would help a little. Californians are going to have decide what they want. Do they want decent schools, good public services, decent infrastructure? The question has to be posed dramatically. If the answer is yes, then they will have to pay for these things. That means a combination of cuts and raising taxes. It's not complicated. Having lived here for a while, I'm beginning to think that Californians really don't give a rat's ass about those things.I hope I'm wrong. We shall see. Re: artificial scarcity, that's a concept that's been around for a while, and a good one. There is no absolute lack of money in California-on the contrary, there's plenty in the hands of the wealthy. The problem is getting it out of their hands and back into the public realm. Baring a revolution or another economic collapse, I don't see that happening any time soon. Jerry Brown is good for California because he is forcing us to make a basic decision about how we want to ,live in this state, and what we value. I hope we make the right choice, but I'm afraid we won't, until the consequences of his draconian budget cuts start to effect everybody. That's you and me, buddy
Abolishing the 2/3 "majority" (actually minority control) legislation, and then restoring upper income taxes to what Ronald Reagan set them to in 1967(?), and that Pete Wilson cut in half in 1996.
That's a start.
RE: What's the difference? In Wisconsin, a right wing Republican Tea Party governor is doing these things--but in California, they are being done by so-called "progressive" Democrats...
Critical point!!! Many of our current woes are a direct consequence of laws passed under Democratic control. The attack on the working poor (welfare "reform"), attacks on the working class (NAFTA) and the financial crash (ongoing) of 2008 (due significantly to the repeal (de-regulation) of the Depression era "Glass-Steagal" Act) all occurred under Bill Clinton. Obama is going after the democratic strongholds of public education and Social Security. American working people have NO REPRESENTATION in the halls of power in this country. It's time to wake up!
Thanks, Tom, for your last paragraph. That is a point that can't be made too often. As has been noted before, Clinton was the best Republican the Democrats ever had. Obama's looking pretty good too.
Thanks, Visiting Prof, for exposing the lies of both major political parties.
It's encouraging and heartening to see Wisconsin teachers and supporters give some meaning to that dictum that both political parties love to mouth, "Education is important!"
Former Iowa Democratic Governor Chet Culver fired over 4000 teachers, aides, school nurses, and custodians a year ago. At one time, he'd been a high school teacher in Des Moines, and I'm sure in his campaign stops he declared, "Education is important!" Must not have been that important, since he couldn't find the revenue to pay for it.
Culver did gladly send Iowa National Guard troops to Afghanistan; he found plenty of revenue for those thousands of troops to travel around the globe.
Wisconsin's a great place. Madison's a great town in which to make this stand.
"On, Wisconsin!"
Bill in Dubuque
..
Unfortunately, Wisconsin has a Republican Governor and a Republican-controlled legislature because many working class and low-income voters acted out of ignorance and stupidity and voted Republican. Why any middle-class or lower person would EVER vote Republican is absolutely beyond my comprehension.
Now, these voters are getting what they voted for.
Jim Shea
I completely agree with your sentiments.
Where were these crowds when the polls were open? Why weren't the children lining the streets on election day?
And where were the union people when MY job, and the jobs of millions of others, were permanently moved to India and China?
I applaud what's going on, but for C's sake, where have these crowds been for the last few years while the country has been rotting from inside?
Maybe it had to come to this: Obama and the Dems didn't fight for working people, either, but the Dems and the people didn't say a word when Obama froze federal pay. Rahm said people had no where to go. If the protests spread on causes from workers' pay to the war to civil liberties, then Obama and the Dems will have "nowhere to go."
They can crap or get off the pot.
Yeah- reminds me of the free-lance garbage collector I saw a few years ago. His ramshackle Toyota pick-up was plastered with Bush/Cheney stickers and American flags.I guess he considered himself to be an entrepreneur, on his way to becoming a millionaire. He was about sixty, I guess.
You are blinded by partisanship. Mr Shea.
Swing voters in WI went Republican because Obama has made it clear that he is an enemy of the people and a friend of the banksters and militarists.
Too bad their is no real 3rd party alternative in our rigged system, but let me tel you one thing, the Democrats are by no means friends of the people. Both parties serve the financial oligarchy and the National Security State.
Your partisan rant ignores this reality.
So what you saying is: they voted against their own interests to make a point, which is pretty stupid, or they voted against their own interests, period, which is even stupider. Of course the Democrats are no friends of the people. And, yes, there is no third party. I'd like to see proportional representation and a parliamentary system, but we won't get those either.
Lokk I didn't vote Republican, I voted Green, but dumping on the "stupidity" of workers voting Republican is like mastrubation, it feels good but it produces nothing.
It takes more effort to actually determine why workers vote Repub. The Obama healthcare bill's taxation of employer provided insurance is the leading reason that many workers voted Republican, and it defintely palyed a role in Scott Brown's election in Mass.
It's only slihjtly less stupid for workers to vote for a Democratic Party that consistently sells them out.
I've heard this kind of progressive moaning for years and frankly I think it is a result of willful ignorance as to what issues truly matter to working class people,
It's heartening to see state governors, including the Scott Walker of Wisconsin and New York Democrat Andrew Cuomo, finally standing up to these union goons who have been holding up the citizenry for years. Finally, now that non-governmental union workers comprise only about 7% of the workforce, the political tables have begun to turn and the unions are headed for the dustbin of history.
Regarding the anti-union rant: the union members I know are hard-working, caring people and your comment is insulting (which, of course, is the far-right's grade school strategy for most everything). Go back to drooling in front of Faux News. Hope you enjoyed your troll break. The degree of ignorance in your comment speaks volumes and you might want to look at history again without referring to the far-right, revisionist version where Robber Barons and such are heroic.
Blech (the sound of hocking phlegm from the throat)- thus speaketh again the (brown) Eye of Horace. Go back to sucking on the toes of dick cheney.
You are dead wrong Horace.
It's the Tea Party that's headed to the dustbin.
It's one thing to shout hateful and destructive slogans in the right wing echo chamber, but now that you fanatics are actually trying to implement your extremist ideas, it is becoming obvious that most people oppose your lunacy and will fight your fascist progarm tooth and nail.
Truly astounding that a human being can be so out of touch with historical facts that they could believe this nonsense. You must dream of living in a feudalistic caste society. Go back to the Blaze Horace, you'll be welcomed to the insane asylum with open arms.
Union goons? Are you kidding?! School teachers with picket signs are not goons! Not even nearly! Unions created the middle class; but robber-baron conservative billionaires, and their political toadies, are out to destroy the unions, and with them, the middle class. Remove the middle class, and the broad distribution of wealth that goes with it, and you effectively destroy democracy. The robber-barons want to replace the current economy with a plantation economy, and turn the current republic into a banana republic. You, me, and everyone will be worse off, unless you're one of the favored few.
One of the great moments in history was Ronald Reagan's busting the air traffic controllers' union. What a bunch of boobs they were.
The Air Traffic Controllers were, in fact, boobs, because they did not have to strike to get what they wanted. All they had to do was "work to rule." That would have crippled the nation's air traffic, and there would have been nothing Reagan could have done about it. Unfortunately, they gave Reagan the opportunity to pretend he was John Wayne, and he took it. The country has been going to hell ever since.
Yes sheepherder,
It really was a watershed event wasn't it? The firing of the Air Traffic Controllers declared open season on organized labor. Suddenly, all of us were being assailed by Korporate Judges, the Media, even our dim-witted neighbors for being Union members.
We have never recovered from that event. Now less than six percent of the US work force is unionized I read somewhere, our contracts are routinely violated and re-interpreted, our pensions raided, our bodies bound into slave schedules where sick leave and vacation use is severely frowned upon. In fact, many places use of these benefits means forfeiture of advancement.
The only things that secured our prospects were provisions enshrined in Federal Labor Law. But to get that to flower into a good contract required: Legally permitted JOB ACTIONS (slowdowns) to be bravely enacted by the employee groups.
A Union may be a damaging thing at a small company, I'm not sure. But it is an absolutely essential part of efficiency and fairness at every Fortune 500 Monstrosity.
TJ
Unions are the keystone of a modern civilization. they empower the working individual through the strength of numbers, and therefore provide a counterweight to the power of money. Oh, and by the way, Reagan was a boob.
See what happens when you elect corporate prostitutes to office!
Lessons from Egypt apply here
Excellent article from NY Times today about an intellectual who has been writing about non violent protests for 40 years. His book "From Dictatorship to Democracy" played a role in the organized effort in Egypt to get rid of the dictator.
That these handbooks can be useful here in good old USA shows how far we have moved to totalitarianism.
First they came for ACORN, then they came for teachers, then they came for unionized state employees, and so on. You know the drill. Actually Reagan accelerated union busting and democrats have not championed the issue.
Here is the NY Times article link
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Here is the free down load of "From Dictatorship to Democracy"
http://www.aeinstein.org/...
My dear Real Americans,
Perhaps Wisconsin is the door to a true democracy and the thugs at Wall Street, Insurance companies, Military Industrial Complex, et al will leave the country to the "People, by the people..." We can lead the world revolution for human rights and peace now!! All thugs remove yourselves...
Amen, Awomen.
They make way too much money on dupes like Horace to simply walk away. I love what is happening in Wisconsin and what has already happened in the Middle East. But the thugs won't just walk away. There are too many Horaces of two digit IQs with guns. Egypt is a civilized place, where populist revolutions can happen without guns. This country is not civilized. We can gather, we can drive them back, but they will not simply walk away.