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It Sure Looks Like Rural Wisconsin’s for Recall
I wasn’t expecting the reception I got on Saturday in the small southwest Wisconsin town near our family’s cabin. I walked both sides of a long residential street, taking petitions door-to-door for people to sign in support of recalling Gov. Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch.
In my first three houses, eight people signed. A wife apologized for making me wait, but took the petitions into another room because her husband wanted to sign.
A grandmother and her daughter stopped cleaning out toys from their house long enough to sign. “Do you know how hard his policies are on us?” the daughter asked. “And he’s tried to do even more damage than he’s done!”
Four people moving out of a house interrupted their move to sign. “Walker’s policies are costing me $200 a month,” one of them said. “You bet I’ll sign.”
I had expected a few hostile responses. And about a fifth of the people I asked did decline to sign, though most were cordial. But there were some surprises. The elderly couple with the “We support our troops” sign on their door stopped cutting up their Thanksgiving turkey for a Sunday gathering of the clan to wash their hands and sign. “What he’s done to health care and education is just wrong.”
Several people expressed concern about the Walker administration’s efforts to stifle voting and fair democratic practice.
Three hunters turned their truck and trailer around and pulled up to where I stood on the sidewalk. I explained that I was with the Recall Walker campaign. “It’s why we turned around,” the driver said. He had already signed, but his father wanted the chance. First, he checked to see that I had a campaign volunteer badge. “Some people pretending to be with the campaign are destroying petitions,” he said.
While his father signed, I told him about the woman losing $200 a month. He held up four fingers. “For me, it’s four hundred a month.” He’s a prison guard, and the cut in health care and retirement benefits is hitting his paycheck hard.
I believe that the Recall Walker campaign leaders significantly underestimated discontent in rural areas. When the Iowa County office opened up to train volunteers several days ago, over 100 people showed up. And in five days, they have gathered well over 50 percent of the total signatures they expected to gather in that county in the entire two months of the process.
An office volunteer recounted having a senior couple come in, seeming uncomfortable as they approached the counter. The wife said to her husband, “I don’t like to do this, but it’s got to be done.” Yes, he agreed, “It’s got to be done.” They were Republicans, they said, and it was difficult to abandon the party, but the state’s well-being was more important than party.
It was drizzling much of the afternoon as I walked, and many people invited me in. Probably the visit that I remember most was the elderly lady on oxygen, who apologized as she struggled to write, but was adamant that she wanted to sign. “How did Walker ever get elected?” she asked. “Didn’t people see what he did to Milwaukee County?”
My Saturday afternoon walk in one small town taught me that many more people care about this recall than I had imagined. And it’s not confined to Madison and cities. If southwestern Wisconsin is any example, people in many parts of rural Wisconsin are informed, they understand the issues, and they are deeply distressed by Walker’s policies.
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50 Comments so far
Show AllThis is very impressive. Rural Wisconsin has a reputation of being quite right wing - isnt that where a lot of these "militias" have their camps and shooting ranges? I don't want to get hopes up too much, but there may be sea-change underway.
Now, when I can get this kind of response to a Green Party Candidates ballot petition in my conservative suburb, I will know that times are a' changin.
Most militia stuff happens in North WI, Michigan UP and Minnesota.
You both left out West Pa. a haven for right wing and/or hate groups... as shown on the map produced by Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Center. Heck, they probably have private militia training camps out in some thick forest groves. Odd that PDJ from Pittsburgh doesn't know this?
He generally referenced "rural" Wisconsin, so I kept my reply to that general region. As the item notes, Walker's cuts have impacted his erstwhile supporters as many predicted, and time has worked its magic. But Walker is only a small fry. The groups needing eviction are the whole Obama administration and most of congress. And of course, the entire MIC needs to be dismantled--MIC also includes the Money Power. None of those groups will cede power willingly, so it must be wrenched from them; and unfortunately, non-violent protest isn't equiped to "wrench" anything from anyone, thus its ultimate drawback. The people in power, both overt and covert, have killed many to gain power--an important fact not to be ignored--and have demonstrated they will continue to kill to remain in power. The situation is quite similar to the Red vs. White Russian Civil War. Prior to the rise of the National Security State, it might have been possible to civilly remove Neoliberalcons like Obama and Bush, but I see that as no longer possible unless at least 150 Million US citizens mass and march to remove them all. And Siouxrose, lets not kid ourselves; it will take at least that many acting in concert to avoid the mass killing that would otherwise certainly occur.
Karlof, I can't remember if it was GW North or someone else from CD who kept telling me that I should read, "The Chalice and the Blade." I just began the book and it blows my mind how much the author, Riane Eisler sounds like me. The only difference is that what I term "Mars rules" she calls "the dominator society." She explains that this warrior emphasis is found in many lands and cultures, and it's less equated with capitalism than with societies that have placed everything into masculine hands, their designs hierarchical.
I will be quoting from this book in future discussions here... however, what's relevant to your comment is that young people who are active in the OWS/global movements sense the need for a more egalitarian society. Until the patriarchal roots of power abuse are fully exposed and understood, discussions stuck on economics or elections featuring A team or B team are just the same manure being turned over. Something else IS brewing and it has its roots in ancient societies.
DOLL: Morris Dees' organization used to publish a map with dots showing where all the hate groups congregated. My area of North Florida is one, but so is West Pa. I wonder if a group that PJD is part of got busted... that would explain his less than savory opinion of Mr. Dees.
Siouxrose, some personal background I don't think I've ever disclosed in my many writings here. I view life/existence/god/matter as one in the same, which is a Gnostic idea. At some future point in time, some aspect of you and I will be combined, just as we will with a whole universe of other matter. Life is thus a singularity composed of many beings/organic substances, and no matter the species, that being will only live once and thus its life is priceless to it. You know the Caduceus, the ring of Life, the idea that all becomes all--that Everything comes forth and returns to the Earth. Now, as an historian, I know well the current nature of humanity, its Barbarian state, and how it became thus. And given the nature of those holding power, they will have no compunction when it comes to killing as many as needed to retain power. Recent history is filled with mostly men doing just that--coveting wealth and power, which ensures their becoming Barbarians and thus becoming threats to all. How to eradicate it--the lust for wealth and power--if not through culture. And that would segue into my hypothesis about our dysfunctional culture, which I know you've read.
Mitakuye Oyasin
Lakota for "all my relations"
Loosely interpreted as "everything is connected."
Thank you Smallbear. I chose to describe it as a Gnostic idea, but as you demonstrate it is close to universal as it is also native to those who first settled the Western Hemisphrere, Buddhist, Taoist, and Vedic.
Siouxrose,
Pittsburgh is about as blue as you can get. There have been very few Republicans elected here - and none as mayor - in my lifetime and I'm 72. I don't know about Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Center, but they also don't seem to know much about us.
As for the general thread, I truly hope that they get so many signatures that the powers that be and the Republican party cannot steal this election too. Yes, election fraud is a very real problem and yes, it is only in favor of the Republicans. It is not bipartisan.
Doll,
You must live in the city limits. When I moved from Bloomfield to Brentwood, which borders Pittsburgh to the south, the change was stark. I don't even bother gathering Green party ballot signatures outside the city limits; all I get is hostile and distrustful reactions. But, just the same, most Pittsburgh Democrats are not exactly "progressive". I witnessed first hand the openly admitted housing-discrimination of the racist Bloomfield Italians.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is a discredited donation mill on the model of Mother Teresa. I hope nobody here send them any money.
The KKK was used as as a coal boss's tool for for terrorizing the Catholic and Orthodox east European miners who were organizing the mines of Indiana(PA) and Cambria Counties in the 1920's. The tactic failed but a few small chapters lingered until the 1960's in some of the Protestant parts. There is no recent right wing militancy in W Pa. that I know of.
http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=39277
But, like most parts of rural USA, western PA is quite conservative and quite racist. Rural Pennsylvania does not "have blacks" like the rural south (probably not a single black farmer in all of Pa), so their views are entirely colored by the 6 O'clock news stories from distressed neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. The landowner at one of our hang gliding sites once said that he would never go to Kennywood (a nice traditional amusement park in Pittsburgh) because of the mere presence of black people there.
Discredited by whom? The advocates of the Protocols of Zion or the Aryan Brotherhood? Morris Dees set precedents by filing CIVIL suits for hate crimes, as the burden of proof is less in those instances than in prosecuting criminal suits. He did a LOT in the way of countering the moves of disgusting, hate-oriented groups. The fines leveraged against them crippled their attempts at recruiting more angry, violent, lost souls. So when you state that his organization is discredited, I'd like to see some documentation. You have the oddest priorities for a so-called Progressive.
I've seen others in this forum attempt to decimate the reputations of authors and persons of distinction that I quote because they don't want to believe in anything that departs from their own narrow prejudices. And their indictments are equally specious.
" I've seen others in this forum attempt to decimate the reputations of authors and persons of distinction that I quote because they don't want to believe in anything that departs from their own narrow prejudices. And their indictments are equally specious. "
I would suggest that more than a few are canis lupus dressed in the attire of ovis aries.
The Southern Poverty Law Center chases the last, often fictional, remnants of the KKK, Neo Nazi's and other no longer significant kooks, pursuant to collecting enormous sums of money from all those junk-mailings. They do absolutely nothing to address the far more serious structural racism and classism that is built into the capitalist system.
Their whole problem is distilled in their "Teach Tolerance" stuff. Tolerance? I "tolerate" a lot of things - mosquitos, shivering in winter, sweating in summer... The down-trodden do not want "tolerance" they want power and equality.
The SPLC tracks and, when possible, builds cases that result in procescutions against anybody who promotes and/or commits racial hatred and violence and oppresses civil rights, regardless of who they are and what group they belong to. You are way off base, buster.
Tell that to the Jewish people and black people who deal with the KKK and the neo-nazis today, they will have other news to report to you. Fictional? No longer significant? You don't understand the first thing about these horrible freaks. They are like a disease that will always come back if you don't KEEP THEM DOWN. Turn your back, say they're no longer a threat, and they will gather, organize, march, burn, lynch and murder en masse as they are capable. They are the lowest of our society and until we educate ourselves up and out of that swamp completely, the swamp monsters have to be controlled.
"Discredited" by the Right Wing. In the same manner that they have "discredited" NPR, PBS, Planned Parenthood and ACORN (may it rest in peace). Usually, any organization or individual the nutjobs go after must be doing something right that scares the wits out of them and causes them to lash out with such hatred and vindictiveness. The Southern Poverty Law Center being the perfect example of why. And maybe because they target the KKK and a number of the right wingers moonlight with white robes on.
Montana, Ohio, and Idaho.
The revolt in Madison started right after Egypt's.
I recall the People occupied the Capital Building for a while too.
http://www.zeitgeistyreport.com/articles/2011/02/18/new-revolution-erupts-in-madison-wisconsin-egypt-was-so-last-week/
Perhaps this is anecdotal evidence that the effect and reach of the propaganda put out by the right wing noise machine has plateaued, and may even begin to be declining. Or this may be confirmation that once their former conservative golden boy starts to mess with their benefits, people's politics changes pretty damn quick.
Yes. Reality is a great teacher.
I think it is the latter. That is why I keep saying give them rope. Let them do their own hanging. We can't win a propaganda war. The 1% have that all tied up but when reality hits the fan, the 99% win the reality check.
I do too.
Progressives lose the propaganda war when they forget the first rule of rhetoric: those whom control the language of the debate have the advantage. Ever since the reign of Grandpa Caligula (Reagan), the 'establishment left' has cravenly let the corporate propagandists do so, thus loosing the ideological noise war. We must heed the lesson of history and adopt the attitude of the clandestine press of Nazi-occupied Europe: speak the truth about those who would oppress our fellow citizens & ourselves, and our reach is greater than any occupation or collaborationist press organ can ever hope to achieve.
Nate: I think it's more about dollars and cents.
Gloria Steinem's excellent essay on the way advertisers control what magazines print says it all. The same thing extends to universities. They can't antagonize their donors, just as congress people who must spend a fortune on their elections, can hardly afford to anger (or offend) their most generous patrons.
A system that runs on money means that it is MONEY that has the loudest voice. Nor does it help that the deregulation mania saw to it that most media outlets fell into private hands, "coincidentally" the very ones with a strong interest in controlling content and thus the manufacture of consent.
YOU are the one buying into a right wing narrative in placing the blame on the Left for supposedly not having the wisdom, insight, or expertise to straategically frame the debate. Let me tell you something, whoever gets the microphone shapes and frames the debate... or conversation. Do you think Rush Limbaugh was really that talented? Do you think millions dug that bloated flea bag from the get-go... or is it a little thing like instant celebrity, the fact of his ubiquitous voice presence, that managed to win advocates in the same way that lies repeated, are believed, or that advertising images repeated, tend to get sales.
Let's look at what's really going on here. You're a smart guy... expand your frame on this.
Good for Wisconsin but beware of Carl roves, the kochs, fox news etc. Are still out there buying the politicians, Grover Norquist is threatening any republican to pray to him or loose their next election. The republicans have to keep protecting the one percent or loose their jobs.
A story of engaged huntsmen making U-turns, the wiping off of turkey juices, and the laying down of toys in inter-generational resistance to wield the mighty pen, points to the true value of Occupy: unity in diversity. Conversation, essential voice, has long been and is being stifled; the powers that be pushing their policies of consumptive distopia down our proverbial throats. I prefer my proverbs straight up with a chaser of documentation, thank you very much. Which the good people of Wisconsin have valorized.
Our capacity to engage socio-political jujitsu with the wiggly-fingered hypnosis of placation founded on paternalistic (no slur on REAL dads) BS is and will be occurring from the nitty-gritty local concerns. These are the millions of tiny seeds that make democracy - and they are most notably on the increase in both coherence and frequency.
Occupy is and has already pointed to the beginning, is the beginning and need not be any 'hoped for' culmination. Hope has been defined as aspiration sans agency. Perhaps that was the intended message of the Obama administration.
I would respectfully submit that this Thanksgiving transcends -perhaps for the first time - the wiggly-fingered hypnosis of the crass exceptionalism of exclusionary writing of a history for profit by vested interests, and dawns with a consciousness that our differences are our strength and beauty in diversity. We have the eternal possibility of transcending the lock-step and emerging in informed, dignified, sustainable solidarity, in contrast to numbingly divided and singularized under exploitative practices of the 1% as never before.
Wisconsin - I blow you an immense kiss and embrace of gratitude that could never be big enough!
"unity in diversity"
This is the crux of the biscuit and the strength of the Wisconsin mindset.
I inhabit southern Wisconsin and work takes me to many of the local towns; small, medium and Madison. Recall signs are everywhere. People set up card tables by busy roads and in front of their homes to gather signatures. The revulsion towards Walker is overwhelming. Barring shenanigans, Walker is history.
The next step is to keep spreading the truth. Media has steered many into a trap. Occupy has opened slumbering eyes and moldering minds, but not all. The fake two party system still carries the day and fake flags wave on.
.
"unity in diversity"
This is the strength of the people of the United States, the 99%.
I'll go Biblical in my translation of your post: "What they have sown, so shall they reap". The modern translation would be: "Republican overreach causes enormous blowback". It's really important that all posters here send Letters to the Editor of the local paper that points out in a sincere easy-to read manner, the damage that Republican policies do to the readers personally and to the Nation as a whole. I was pleasantly surprised when a man who I thought had a really conservative outlook, quietly told me that he and a number of people that he knew looked forward to seeing my "Letters" and liked what they saw. Start writing the "Letters"
Good Work, People of Wisconsin!! Your courage and willingness to stand up to the
tyranny in your state has set an example for lots of Americans, as evidenced by all of those who are 'occupying' and peacefully protesting all over the country.
I wait with eager anticipation for the day that Walker, your scumbag of a Gov, has to leave Madison in disgrace. May the same fate await all of the scumbags in every state capital!
Thanks to Margaret Krome for a great Thanksgiving Day gift! I don't care if corrupt election officials and Diebild adjustable voting machines taint the final count, (ask Florida, Ohio, and New Mexico about that phenomena) the fact that so many people are volunteering to solicit signatures and so many more are signing the petitions is encouraging.
An impudent snot like Walker deserves no less than to be put through the necessity to defend his impudence before the electorate to whom he is accountable. On Wisconsin, on Wisconsin, on to victory!!
It has been remarkably easy to gather signatures here in Waupaca County, where the last Democrat elected to any office was in 1896. Even when we ask for ID. We were hesitant at first because we don't believe you should need to produce it to participate in our democracy but after several incidents of petition destruction and other postings of strategy to fill petitions with fake information, we decided we would ask. So far haven't had anyone turn away or get upset about it. It won't be Fitzwalkerstan much longer.
The Brad Blog reports about people getting death threats and open plotting on Facebook to defraud petitions, which is a felony in WI. And it also reports on the huge success of the recall petition drive to-date, http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8939#more-8939
People of Wisconsin:
You OWN your Capitol building, your office space that Scott Walker now
occupies, and your constitutional office of Governor.
If you -- the majority of citizens of Wisconsin -- don't approve of the present
occupant of the governor's office and his agenda: " ... it is their [your] right,
it is their [your] duty, to throw off such government ... " or such a governor.
This is true REGARDLESS of whether or not a new-chosen governor may
(will?) be as bad as the present governor. The question now is about Scott
Walker, the individual man. Does HE deserve to be governor any longer?
If not, then put him out! It is simply a decision about justice for Scott Walker.
Give Herr Walker his walking papers!
Some are sure to post that: It was only a bunch of "damn democrats" who
occupied the Wisconsin Capitol. So -- as they will say -- seeing as how
the democrats are just as bad (actually worse) than the republicans, and in
order to get back at the democrats, Wisconsin should keep Scott Walker
and his confederates as governor, and as governor's supporters. That's
what the reactionaries will say. I say: Wisconsin, take the Declaration of
Independence to heart. Do your duty.
This is amazing Margaret. It shows what America is really like. No like it's framed on Fox News
This gives me so much hope for the rest of the country!
I do believe the country is waking up. Still, Fox News is the most watched news channel, and as the report says, their viewers are less informed than people who don't watch news. Of course they won't find out because they get all their "news" from Fox. We're headed for interesting times.
When those people are in their car they are listening to Rush Limbaugh. Interesting is an understatement! I am not an Obama lover but, I refuse to get consumed with spending my time doing the work for the lying bastards from the right. Bachman, Palin for president, would be a no brainer, period.
If Ohio voters can "recall" Issue 2 here in a landslide (nearly 83 counties out of 88) which was an assault on union rights and public workers then Wisconsin voters can do the same to Gov. Scott Walker. It has been widely noted that Gov. Walker and our Gov. Kasich here frequently call each other. I wonder what advice Gov. Kasich gave to Gov. Walker on Nov. 9th, the day after the election when he saw how much he misjudged the voters of Ohio? I hope he gave him lots of tips since he thought he knew it all. I doubt either one of them "get it" since they both live in the rich "fantasy land."
To all you Wisconsin readers I hope you will volunteer like I did. I am a public worker but do not belong to a union at this time but did in my former job for 28 years. I worked the phone banks and went house to house encouraging people to vote NO on Issue 2. It felt so good to talk to people who realized what Gov. Kasich was trying to do was not right. Throw out Gov. Walker in a landslide vote!
I certainly do wish Wisconsinites all the luck in getting rid of Walker, however, he was swept into office via crooked GOP controlled e-voting, the same way Prosser was installed on their state Supreme Court, and getting rid of him with a recall election using this same e-voting apparatus will be nearly impossible.
Paper ballots, hand counts, and instant runoff -- this is the way corporate owned puppets like Walker can be kept out of state office.
You make good points and I always insist on a paper ballot. Walker and other Republicans at the national level were elected because of the frustration and anger at the gutless caving time after time of the Obama crowd. Those millions who had voted in Obama in 2008 sat out the 2010 elections and that allowed the Republicans to elect too many people who would have been buried in a 2008 type election. Those same Republicans then made the mistake of thinking Gawd was on their side and they had been elected becuse of their brilliant policies. They were elected by default!
Democrats make the mistake of thinking the electronic voting machines are rigged to elect the Republicans. The Republicans work hard to keep people from voting by declaring that lot's of fraud is going on. Voting fraud is almost non-existant as compared to the past. In Wisconsin, the people know about the attempts at voter fraud and when just a few of these weasels are caught, that should put an end to it.
Great article. I wish someone could post a daily signature count for these petitions.
Good for the recall. My only question is, who is in place to replace Walker?
For those of you commenting about the "right wing" and the "gun nuts" and speculating on where they might be hiding out: here is a sure-fire test. Look to see where there is no logging taking place. Trees can only be logged where there has been no firearms usage, the reason being that modern high-speed bandsaws use a "thin-kerf" band blade to saw more rapidly and to minimize waste. When such a blade strikes an embedded slug it typically shatters with catastrophic results, a threat to both the machine and the personnel. When the loonies are out there spraying the woods with their automatic-weapons fire, the trees get laden with metal. Just lovely.
We have had the same experience in two rural towns in West Central WI. We set up shop in the parks and put out some signs (2 days each). We intend to do the same next week in an adjoining town.
We have not gone door to door yet. Some would ask how long we would be there as they wanted to bring the hubby or wife or mom or day to us later in the day.
I have to admit I was surprised by the number of deer hunters that stopped to sign (many more just drove by).
We had a few middle fingers tossed at us and a few shouts but they were a small percentage.
Oh, I wanted to add.
We had a large diversity of folks stop by-farmers, retired, workers, some out of work, moms and dads with babies in the back seat, male, female, young, old and in-between.
It was lovely.
Throw Walker out with the rest of the trash. It's something which has to be done on a regular basis.
Hopefully, the people of Wisconsin are not going to vote Walker back in just the way they did with the other Republican shills who were recalled and then voted right back in. All in all, this is very encouraging and it sends a very clear sign to the shills in the rest of the country who are trying to follow in Dictator Walker's footsteps. Now, if only the good people of Arizona and Minnesota did the same thing with their wanna be Nazis, the rest of them would think twice (if they're capable of thought) before pulling any such stunts. I bet the Kock bros. are not happy about this at all. They almost pulled it off.
The petition drive is, in reality, where the rubber meets the road. No matter who buys politicians, when the affects of what they do to people start to affect enough and the people begin to see the pattern in what is happening, things will change, one way or another. Only are we, as individuals, capable of undermining our resolve and distroying our power. Stick together and keep the pressure on, bad news to those in charge travels fast, damage control even faster, but when push comes to shove, and even that doesn't work, things will improve. The most agregious violators of public trust will be pushed out or jailed. The promise that once was America will return and we all will see light at the end of the tunnel once again! Keep the faith people! We will get through this and we will be better for the effort!