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Glorious Rallies in Madison, Ground Zero of the Fight Back
What glory it is to be in Madison, Wisconsin, this week, where the people of this state have risen up in revolt against the Neanderthal Republicans who are trying to bust public sector unions and inflict massive harm on their workers.
It’s not about balancing a budget. It’s about destroying unions as a political and economic force. That’s why the bill says every public sector union would have to recertify every year, and why it says that no employer could deduct union dues from paychecks. Neither of those things has anything to do with saving a dime of Wisconsin taxpayer money.
This is ground zero in the fight back, and Wisconsinites are engaging in the closest thing to a general strike that I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.
This is what democracy looks like. One sign said, “This Is Our Tahrir Square.”
I interviewed protestors on Wednesday when the crowd swelled to 30,000. One woman was wearing a “Kick Me, I’m a State Worker” sign. But she declined to give her name. “I’m afraid I’d get fired,” she said.
Another woman named Mary Batt, who works for the Department of Justice, said, “I’m here for people who can’t be for fear they’d be retaliated against.”
I spoke with Allie Riefke, 17, of Mt. Horeb High School, who took off school to come to the rally. She held a sign that read, “Save Our teachers. And My Mom.” Her mom works as a guidance counselor at another school, and she couldn’t come to the rally “because she’d get into trouble.”
Allie said her mom is “going to lose $5,000 if they pass this bill.” She added: “That’s braces for my little brother. It’s not fair.”
She’s right. It isn’t fair.
And that’s why so many Wisconsinites are out in the street nonviolently but militantly fighting for their rights this week.
23 Comments so far
Show Allfromthe article:
~ Allie said her mom is “going to lose $5,000 if they pass this bill.” She added: “That’s braces for my little brother. It’s not fair.”
She’s right. It isn’t fair. ~
given the state of our planet, I find these kind of articles, and this kind of thinking, suicidal...
we have caused enormous environmental issues, we are committing horrific atrocities to innocents in other lands via remote control weaponry, and we're doing it all while our personal freedoms are being stripped from us by our own government, but, in our daily lives, we remain fixed upon whether or not we can get braces as the example of life's fairness...
who cares?
do you even know what is happening around here?
stop petitioning others to make your life better...take your life back from them...remove them from their position of authority over your life...
braces?
your little brother needs a viable planet and personal freedom way more than braces, sweetie...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...unanimous, planetwide rejection of the modern world...
Beautiful.
Condescending and sexist, sweetie. While you're waiting for your Mayan rapture, it looks like the real movement is starting without you.
"planetwide rejection of the modern world"; surest way to genocide. A crime against humanity. You advocate for the agenda of the planet's unlawful owner/rulers. THEY want a massive die-off of "the useless eaters" as they so insultingly put it, to reduce the few hundred million survivors to slavery. Excellent plan of action...not!
Insightful comment.
It serves the agenda of the rulers and the owners to say that the problem is too many people and not enough resources. Yet we see that idea posted on several threads here every day.
That is simply awful. How can you claim to support a "unanimous, planetwide rejection of the modern world" and speak so strongly from the old? Your contempt for working class people reveals your hypocrisy.
"stop petitioning others to make your life better...take your life back from them...remove them from their position of authority over your life." Um... I believe that's what unions are trying to do. "Braces" is a distraction. They aren't demonstrating for braces, braces just personify the type of everyday benefits that we, as a people, used to take for granted.
I was just on his site. It's amazing how many people hate this man by all the negative comments to his columns. It's depressing.
It's great that this is the closest thing to a general strike that Matthew Rothschild has ever seen, but the article states its own caveats: "Im afraid I'd get fired", " can't be here for fear of retaliation", and "couldn't come ... because she'd get in trouble." I don't think this attitude was very much in evidence in Tahrir Square last week. If we're this afraid now, imagine how much the management class can ratchet up their threats. We'd better learn applied courage damned soon, not just have it in theory.
Let's not blame the working class people.
The people in Egypt had "this attitude" for generations before they massed and overcame fear. People have good reasons for being fearful of unemployment, retaliation, and homelessness, and solidarity is the only remedy. Yet you work against solidarity with your demeaning and derogatory comments about working class people.
"the people of [Wisconsin] have risen up in revolt against the Neanderthal Republicans who are trying to bust public sector unions and inflict massive harm on their workers."
Some Neanderthal specimens (e.g. the "Old Man" of La Chapelle-aux-Saints) show that the Neanderthals took care of group members who could not survive by themselves.[1] So Matthew Rothschild has in fact insulted the Neanderthals.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#Specimens
When we lose our fear, we loose our chains. Until then, slaves we remain.
I do not think that the employee afraid of being fired was cowardly or irrational at all. She was familiar with the system and needed her job. There is power in numbers. Demonizing the poor worker for not throwing herself on her sword is mean and distracting from the 30,000 people who stood up for the common good. Lay off bullying individual women. And yes, the people with common sense finally stood up against the Koch brothers orchestrating the fall of the middle class.
The angry old social security, and medicare Tea party pensioners being manipulated needed another viewpoint. They got it. Lets keep it up.
Very good.
"The angry old social security, and medicare Tea party pensioners being manipulated needed another viewpoint. They got it. Lets keep it up."
Good observation.
Terrific article. The people in Madison have every right to be proud of what they're doing, and I am glad Matthew R. is there to report on it.
What' going on is clearly union-busting, the iron heel of one-sided class war. We can't tolerate this, and we need the union movement to throw a lot of forces and a lot of money into the fightback. And we need this on a national level...
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
THE HUMAN UNION---HU ARE YOU.
Membership---Everybody is already in it. Call your Chamber of Commerce to opt out.
Rejoin at any time.
Dues---Pay it forward with solidarity, common sense and good will.
Leadership---Apache nantan, talk it up, see what happens.
Tactics---Peaceful, Speaking Truth to Power, Resist, Occupy, Produce.
Goals---Fair pay, Fair play, Justice under the Law, Benefits to the Seventh Generation. No War.
One Planet, One People.
IF NOT NOW---WHEN?
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The state of Wisconsin and the federal government could solve many of their financial problems if they would fairly tax the very rich. Calculate how much could be gained for education and social services alone if 50% (and that's mild) of all earnings over $300,000 were automatically turned over to either or both governments for those worthy causes. The rich should promote such an idea, as they will suffer when the deprived in the U.S. wake up and react the way they have in Egypt. - George Beres
Until, of course, the rich and the very rich move out to another state, as has been happening in the high-tax states--California, New York, New Jersey. Any wonder why the American Southwest is gaining population from Anglos and the Northeast and Midwest is losing them?
Just as with Mubarak, they can run but they can't hide. Even if they do succeed in absconding with the purloined loot, at least the ongoing theft will be arrested.
The percentage of Anglos is shrinking, not growing in the Southwest. "Shrinking" is what has you worked up, isn't it?
"a general strike"
A sledgehammer on das kapitalist parasites. Parasites on the backs of the people.
I didn't follow the Wisconsin gubernatorial election last time, but I'd be willing to bet Scott Walker didn't run on a platform of dumping on public employees unions. Wisconsin is a big union state, which is why the GOP is launching its anti-union war there -- if they can succeed in WI, it'll be easy to repeat this ugly process elsewhere. But it seems the forces of corporatism uber alles are failing -- they apparently never imagined how much blowback Walker's draconian union-busting antics would cause. Republican House 'Budget Czar' Paul Ryan quipped, "It's like Cairo moved to Madison these days," but he didn't fully understand the truth of what he said. Just like the Egyptian people, the protestors in Madison are trying to get a monster off their backs; a tyrant who wants to reduce them to peonage in order to reward the wealthy.
The only question now should be: Will the disgraceful Scott Walker wait for impeachment or a recall, or simply resign?
As great as the Wisconsin protest is, the same legislators who thought that destroying the right to collective bargain are still there for the rest of their terms. A legislator once told me that this bill could still be passed as long as the Wisconsin legislature is in session. Another Common Dreams article outlined a protest in Texas which stalled passage of a similar bill was successfully passed quietly 3-4 months later. You must have some people watching every bill. It could get inserted into any unrelated legislation at the last few minutes of the session. If they 30,000 think that it is over, they are wrong. Progressives need to care as deeply as the conservatives. The good thing is that the progressives are not being manipulated by hot button issues into passivity disguised as morality or patriotism in order to get this anti worker agenda carried out.
I think also that "das Kapital parasites" needs to be den Kapital parasites. Tweet if I'm wrong.
These are tough times. We must make sure that others make sacrifices.