EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Tens of Thousands Rally in Wisconsin for Labor Rights and Democracy
A year ago, when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed into law his plan to undermine collective bargaining rights for state, county and municipal employees and public school teachers, the prediction from the governor and his allies was that the mass movement to oppose Walker’s anti-labor agenda would fade.
Thousands gathered in Madison Saturday for a "Reclaim Wisconsin March" and rally. (Photo: Gary Porter)
The governor and his allies were wrong.
As the state prepares for a recall election that could remove Walker from the governorship—along with his lieutenant governor and four Republican state senators—tens of thousands of union activists and their supporters rallied once more Saturday at the state Capitol in Madison.
It was an epic turnout, estimated by Governor Walker’s Department of Administration at 35,000 and by organizers at closer to 60,000.
Whatever the actual number, there was no question that the crowd filling the great square around the Capiol was the largest to gather since the mass mobilizations of February and March, 2011. The protests of last year drew the attention of the nation—and the world—and helped to encourage pushbacks against anti-labor legislation in Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Arizona and other states. They featured an ongoing peaceful occupation of the state Capitol that served as one of many inspirations for the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The resilience of the Wisconsin movement has few precedents in recent American labor history.
“They didn’t think we could sustain it,” said Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt. “Not only have we sustained it. We’ve gotten stronger.”
Neuenfeldt was referring to the movement that submitted more than one million signatures to recall Governor Walker (46 percent of the electorate in the last gubernatorial election), 840,000 signatures to recall Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch and another 100,000 signatures to recall key Republican senators.
“Look at what a difference a year makes,” declared Mary Kay Henry, the president of the Service Employees International Union, who marveled at the size of Saturday’s crowd of union members, farmers, small business owners, students and retirees that surrounded the Capitol. “Governor Walker and the Koch Brothers started something last year, but they’re not going to like how it ends. When it ends there is going to be a pro–middle class governor and lieutenant governor—and a pro-worker majority in the Senate.”
What Walker started was an assault on more than fifty years of commitment by Wisconsin leaders, Democrats and Republicans, to protect the rights of workers and their unions.
On Saturday, as tens of thousands of Wisconsinites marched in remembrance of the uprising against Walker’s agenda, there was much talk about the upcoming recall election — and that was important.
But it was equally important that the issue focus remained on renewing the state’s collective bargaining law. There was a recognition that the Wisconsin fight has never been, and can never be, about partisan politics alone. Not when basic rights are at stake.
Collective bargaining is a part of Wisconsin history, an example of this state’s “forward” progressive values.
“I was around in 1959 when Wisconsin became the first state in the United States, the first state in the Union, to adopt a law to permit public employees to collectively bargain,” explains the senior member of the state Legislature, Senator Fred Risser, D-Madison. “Back then, Wisconsin was known as a progressive, innovative state.”
Risser’s serious about renewing Wisconsin’s reputation as a progressive, innovative state, And he has joined with a much younger legislator, state Representative Mark Pocan, D-Madison, to propose legislation that would fully restore collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin.
Pocan says this is a first-order-of-business necessity.
“For half a century, we have had good working conditions with our employees because of the collective bargaining law,” explains Pocan.
Governor Walker’s attacks on collective bargaining rights have created chaos, dissension and a sense of crisis that has stalled innovation and economic growth in Wisconsin.
Saturday’s rally served as a reminder that there is broad recognition among Wisconsinites that restoring collective bargaining rights is the place to begin renewing a tradition of cooperation, efficiency and good government to a state that has long recognized that labor rights are human rights.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
25 Comments so far
Show AllWho's headline is this? The Nation's? CD's?
The article states the range of crowd estimate, to be from 35,000 to 60,000, with the latter being likely the closer number, given by the organizers.
Given that a plural of ten thousand, could be 20,000, such a headline diminishes the impact of the story. And we get this from so called "left" media.
MSM, has done this little trick for years, as a way to tamp down any growing excitement of a movement of "the people", and really CD, or The Nation, is it so hard to just bloody give us a headline like…
Rally in Wisconsin for Labor Rights and Democracy, estimated to be up to 60,000.
Completely different impact, and accurate.
Or:
"Up to 60,000 Rally in Wisconsin for Labor Rights and Democracy"
Looks like Wisconsin has regained its momentum. Great news!
RE: ...labor rights are human rights.
Absolutely right.
You will probably find the following words offensive.
If, as I strongly suspect, the great majority of the people who have stood up in opposition to the blatant corruption of Walker and Co. in Wisconsin
turn around and vote for democrats in the U.S. Congress and in the White House, then they are wasting their energy
BECAUSE
the reason that most, if not all, of the states are attacking socially beneficial programs (collective bargaining, public education, state parks,....whatever) is because the the funding is being removed from the public and being given to the private interests nationally. This is deliberately being done by the democrats, republicans, and libertarians.
This robbery includes the use of warmongering, "bailouts", offshoring of tax money, attacking Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,... whatever means necessary - ALL of it connected to the singular agenda which unites the corporate owned parties in the Washington Wall Street church of sadistic greed.
So, rising up against one of the cogs in the machine is useless if you do not also try to shut down the whole grisly Free Market Machine.
Anyone who feels proud of getting rid of Walker and then turns around and supports a democrat, republican, or libertarian for any national office,
is a delusional, short-sighted fool.
Wisconsin is a very small manifestation of the workings of the machine.
"Anyone who feels proud of getting rid of Walker and then turns around and supports a democrat, republican, or libertarian for any national office, is a delusional, short-sighted fool."
.
I agree. Mary Kay Henry, the president of the SEIUis quoted by Nichols as saying "there is going to be a pro–middle class governor and lieutenant governor—and a pro-worker majority in the Senate.”
.
A few months ago Mary Kay Henry released a statement endorsing Obama in 2012, claiming that O is "a leader willing to fight for the needs of the 99 percent, and stand with hard working families to say that the world's wealthiest corporations must pay their fair share ... President Obama is looking to turn things around, but he needs support from all of us to be heard over his wealthy opponents ... From now until Election Day we need to dedicate ourselves to the goal of returning President Obama to the White House."
.
The SEIU is one of the biggest unions in the country ... executives of several other major unions have come out with very similar statements of support for Obama ... claiming that he is a warrior for the middle class.
.
Is it cognitive dissonance or something more mendacious?
We need a progressive 3rd party candidate. Check out voterocky.org.
We also need progressive union leaders, not affiliated with either political party. Vote the current union leaders out and replace them with rank-and-file union members.
The Nation speaks to and for a definite social and political milieu: ex-leftists, ex-Stalinists, ex-reformers, who are consistent in only one thing—their lack of genuine political independence from the American establishment. There is about the magazine the stench of cynicism, cowardice and unseriousness.
The publication's masthead proudly proclaims "since 1865." In fact, the Nation has a deplorable history. It was founded as a bourgeois publication, the voice of American liberalism. The publication was deeply hostile to the emergence of the socialist labor movement, denounced the Paris Commune and advocated the execution of the Haymarket anarchists. From 1881 to 1918 the magazine vegetated as an insert or a weekly supplement to the New York Evening Post, its "progressivism" exhausting itself in the Woodrow Wilson administration.
Like American liberalism as a whole, the Nation was thoroughly unprepared for the Great Depression, and, lacking an independent program of its own, clung for dear life in the 1930s to the Communist Party and the Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR. Under the editorship of Freda Kirchwey, the Nation infamously defended the Moscow Trials and the innumerable crimes of Stalinism, declaring in August 1936: "There can be no doubt that dictatorship in Russia is dying and that a new democracy is slowly being born."
The magazine will never live down the role it played in the 1930s and the Nation's most enduring claim to fame will be that it generated this characterization of its role by Leon Trotsky ("The Priests of Half-Truth," 1938): "Their philosophy reflects their own world. By their social nature they are intellectual semi-bourgeois. They feed upon half-thoughts and half-feelings. They wish to cure society by half-measures. Regarding the historical process as too unstable a phenomenon, they refuse to engage themselves more than fifty percent. Thus, these people, living by half-truths, that is to say, the worst sort of falsehood, have become a genuine brake upon truly progressive, i.e., revolutionary thought."
And, one might add, it has only been downhill since Trotsky's characterization seven decades ago!--David Walsh
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/apr2009/pers-a02.shtml
Interesting history lesson. Saddest thing to me is the "alliance" that Democracy Now has apparently struck with the Nation ... John Nichols has practically become a regular on DN in recent months, and occasionally Katrina Vandem Shill herself is on for an interview, or just a few quick words. I even recall hearing Vandem Shill's husband on DN recently ... a professor at NYU ... as well as other people affiliated with the Nation.
.
Former DN corsespondents Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous are now both writers for the Nation magazine ... though I have to give Scahill credit, he is no friend of the democrats and the Obama administration, which, without question, makes him an odd fit for the d-crat lovin' Nation.
.
The whole thing just feels bizarre ...
Ouch! Talk about harsh and cynical. Given the current state of the American "left" (mostly a state of mind), some folks sure do like to beat up on John Nichols and The Nation (insert "insufficiently leftist person/publication" here).
What we (the left) need today is a broad coalition, a "unity of the left" organization akin to the old (pre-1917) Socialist Party that can unite people to put forward an anti-capitalist, anti-empire vision that ordinary Americans can relate to. Fighting the old battles over SP vs. CP vs. Trotskyists, or Old Left vs. New Left, or CP vs. "new Communists" vs. SD or DSA or SP or SWP, ad nauseum, is pointless.
Sometimes The Nation and its writers are right, and sometimes they're wrong; sometimes more insightful, sometimes less. Deal with it. It's easy to be correct if you never test your ideas against reality. We're up against the Empire, globalization, a crumbling economy at home, a war on workers and public employees, neo-liberal Democrats in addition to outright pro-business Republicans. The odds against left success in the US are ridiculously long anyway; unless we call a halt to the circular firing squad, I fear for the future even more.
What exactly do you mean when you talk about creating "unity of the left" and that some of us should "halt the circular firing squad"?
.
Are you saying we should just shut our insufficiently grateful mouths and vote for Obama and the democratz in 2012? Is that your idea of "unity"?
I must not adequately understand what you're trying to covey. Do you think a vote for Romney or Santorum or some 'write in' candidate show more "unity?" Do you need me to provide you a dictionary definition of "unity?" Since you have the word in quotes, it seems maybe you aren't understanding something.
You're right ... I guess I don't understand how voting for a corporatist neo-liberal right wing trojan horse like Barack Obama would fill me up with a sense of "unity." Unity with what exactly ... with Wall Street? After all O has taken more wall street money than any other candidate in history ... he loaded up his administration with more Wall Street insiders than any other in history. Interestingly enough, according to Mother Jones magazine O has even received more than $80,000 from senior executives at Bain Capital in recent years... and that's apart from the $1.2 million they have given the DNC. That's some "unity" for you ... unity with Romney's vulture capital company.
.
Maybe I'd get a warm and reassuring feeling of "unity" while watching O continuously rape the constitution and suspend my civil liberties? It just makes me feel so comforted knowing that O can imprison and assassinate american citizens (even children!) with impunity ... and without judicial process too! Cuz as Nixon established "when the president does something that means it is not illegal." It almost makes me feel giddy with "unity" to think that Obama has taken that doctrine to new heights and set new precedents for future presidents to follow. Not even Bush claimed that he had the legal authority to assassinate american citizens (let alone children...) But hey, credit where it's due Obama is truly a modern executive ... he doesn't discriminate when it comes to killing. Citizen? Foreigner? Adult? Child? Combatant? Civilian? Anyone can be the target of a drone strike! These are exciting times.
.
I'm starting to feel a little "unity" bubbling up in the cockles of my heart right now!
this is heartening to say the least...good for Wisconsin...they should be proud of their accomplishments over this last year!
I totally agree with in SolCal - this is the time for broad coalition building not sectarian hairsplitting. Despite the Occupy Movement and mounting resistance, the neo-liberal agenda is gaining momentum. Currently, in British Columbia the most right wing provincial government in Canada has launched a brutual attack on the teachers' union - against free collective bargaining and the very existence of public education and public sector unions. They are clearly using the same playbook at Walker and the Koch brothers in Wisconsin and across the US. I would only add that the climate crisis adds an even greater immediacy to the necessity to turn the tide against the corporate monster.
Amazingly I see three voices of reason in a row in the CD comment column. SoCal, kmdyson and dgrey Bravo! A hearty second.
If we don't hang togeather we will surely hang seperately.
Dear Mr and Mr Koch:
To quote Jim Morrison: They got the guns, but we got the numbers...
Franciszek,it's always about "purity" or "circular firing squads" when someone doesn't have a compelling argument.Hey Brad,when you use the word "we" do you have a frog in your pocket or does it and "unity of the left" refer to BO and the Obamabots?If it does,you should recall that BO did NOTHING help the Wisconsin demonstrators last year.Shortly thereafter,BO went on a phony bus tour that(of course)did not include Wisconsin.Don't you remember,Brad?
Greater Minneapolis/St Paul is where all US unions began and with a rough fight that woldn't quit. Floyd Olson, the governor at the time as well as Franklin D Roosevelt were quite helpful. The governor especially let it be known when he had to call out the national guard he would put the big shot execuitves behind bars when they got out of line and did just that. That's how the fight for unions started in a positive direction. Good governor and good president-- 1934!
The Doors" "Five To One!" Now the words might "They got the bucks/but we got the numbers/gonna make it/'cause we're taking over. . ." But now we got 'em 99 to one per cent. Much better than the old five to one advantage!
The Doors" "Five To One!" Now the words might be "They got the bucks/but we got the numbers/gonna make it/'cause we're taking over. . ." But now we got 'em 99 to one per cent. Much better than the old five to one advantage!
"Greater Minneapolis/St Paul is where all US unions began and with a rough fight that woldn't quit."
Excuse me? Chicago 1886? The Knights of Labor before that. Others before them.
The textile factory workers in Lowell Massachusetts in the 1830s?
How about every Federal Employee start ramping up the protests about how our leaders are shafting us while the rich get richer and we get phony pay freezes and gasoline over $4.00 per gallon..
Keep the mail and letters and phone calls rolling until the elections.
Like Jeff fox worthy says, if your a redneck, your probably a republican.