As I made the 10-minute walk up W. Johnson Street from the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus toward the Capitol on Tuesday, it never occurred to me that anyone outside of the state would know or care what was going on.
I was headed to participate in a rally in opposition to new Republican Governor Scott Walker's deceptively named "budget repair bill," with the intention of meeting up with some of my fellow teaching assistants. In a nutshell, Walker's bill purports to close a budget deficit by eliminating the collective bargaining rights of all state employees (except police and fire fighter unions), including UW graduate student teaching assistants, while requiring annual union certification.
I couldn't help but view the proposed legislation through two of my own lenses: as a UW grad student and teaching assistant, and as someone intensely interested in politics who occasionally relates his thoughts in this space.
As a student and teacher, Walker's plan seemed idiotic, even beyond left-right ideological disagreements. Walker was elected based on his campaign stressing his business sense, but the legislation is bad business. The UW is one of the state's largest employers, and, beyond that, one of its most successful operations, taking in, as many of the faculty members of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication noted in a letter opposing the bill, three times more money in federal grants and other out-of-state revenue than the state invests each year (the UW is second only to Johns Hopkins in obtaining federal research grant money). Walker's plan would kill the golden goose. Those grants don't come in abstractly, but rather are earned by top professors doing cutting-edge research (one professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where I study and teach, regularly brings in more than a million dollars a year in such grants). Losing these top professors means losing money. Losing the top grad students means losing top professors and losing money. By attacking grad student benefits, Walker makes the UW a less attractive option. As the SJMC professors wrote, it took 150 years to build up UW's reputation, but it would take less than a decade to destroy it.
Walker claims to be a businessman, so he must realize that in any industry, if you don't provide the standard compensation package, you won't get the top people in the field.
(And this is just a business analysis. It doesn't take into account the lack of morality in taking away the collective bargaining rights of teaching assistants, who make so little in salary they qualify for food stamps if they are unable to supplement their incomes.)
What I didn't realize on my way to the rally was the national implications of the Wisconsin protests. I admit that in my head, as I walked toward the Capitol, I expected to see a lot of students, teaching assistants, teachers and soccer moms. I really thought that, given the fact that Walker was elected by a healthy margin just three months ago, the protesters would represent a fairly small demographic of individuals who probably didn't vote for Walker in November.
Upon reaching the Capitol, I was shocked to see that the crowd was nothing like I had imagined. For starters, the Square was packed like I've never seen it before (even on the most beautiful summer day for the weekly Saturday farmers' market). The idea that I would be able to find my colleagues became instantly laughable (and, in fact, I never ran into a single person I knew). There were clearly students sprinkled throughout the crowd, but the vast majority seemed to be working-class and middle-class people: taxi drivers, construction workers, maintenance workers, prison guards etc. Honestly, they looked like the kind of people that, in my mind, probably supported Walker in November.
Then I saw members of the police union marching around the Square, and, later, a seemingly endless parade of firefighters went by, all expressing solidarity with the workers at the Capitol even though their collective bargaining rights were not at risk. When the crowd applauded, I got chills.
It was the appearance of the firefighters, in their matching shirts, that really triggered something in my head. This protest was way bigger than I had imagined.
What it showed is that everyday people had realized something that political junkies have known all along: The Republicans that surged to power in November are completely full of it. They campaigned on jobs and the deficit, unfairly (and often untruthfully) putting blame at the feet of the Obama administration, but the GOP agenda of the last month has amounted to a traditional far-right wish list, with jobs and deficits not even passing concerns.
In Washington, John Boehner's priorities have been to repeal health care (which the GAO scored as deficit reducing legislation) and preserve tax cuts for the wealthy (again, increasing the deficit), as well as to redefine rape and restrict abortions.
And things are no different in Wisconsin. Walker's "budget repair bill" isn't about deficits in Wisconsin. In fact, a nonpartisan commission found that the deficits are not severe and do not require any kind of austerity action. And what is the main cause of the current budget shortfall? Walker's own tax cuts. In other words, the new governor created this "problem," and now, conveniently, he is offering a solution.
Only, his solution has nothing to do with the alleged problem. Instead, it's an attack on state employee unions. Walker is using the concocted budget issue as a smokescreen to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of unions, a long-time item on the right-wing wish list. He is trying to eliminate five decades of collective bargaining rights in one week.
And it's not just liberals like me who are upset. According to a recent poll, less than 32 percent of Wisconsin respondents support Walker's union-busting, with more than two-thirds saying he has overreached.
So the battle going on in Wisconsin is part of a larger war. It is about Republicans across the country trying to use voter anger at the economy to institute out-of-the-mainstream, far-right policies by pretending they are related to jobs or deficits (like the insane argument that tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent of Americans will somehow translate to significant job growth). The battle may be in Madison now, but I hope it serves as a wake-up call to Americans around the country to see what the Republicans are trying to do, namely using the pain of the nation's workers to justify policies that hurt most Americans but please the party's true constituents, big corporations and the wealthy.
Taking away the collective bargaining rights of teachers and nurses doesn't help the average citizen, but it sure does make CEOs happy.
I played only a tiny role in the protests. Two hours after reaching the Capitol, my growing flu symptoms got the best of me, and I headed back to campus. I have been in bed trying to recover ever since, leaving the harder fights in the Capitol -- the all-night vigils, the marathon public hearings, the sit-ins, etc. -- to my committed and steadfast colleagues, to whom I am eternally grateful and for whom I have unmatched respect and admiration.
What has gone on in Madison the last week has been truly inspiring, as people from all walks of life have made personal sacrifices to exercise their democratic rights to oppose capricious actions by the governor that are not in the best interests of the state.
And I take pride in knowing that their fight isn't just for the UW, Madison or Wisconsin. In the end, they're fighting a local battle in a national war the Republican party is waging against the average American. I hope that history notes the protests in Madison as a turning point, the moment American citizens began pushing back against right-wing attacks.
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"Its about firefighters negotiating new equipment. Its about policeman negotiating for safer streets. Its about teachers negotiating for smaller class size!"
(no screening questions)
http://walker.wi.gov/section.asp?linkid=1714&locid=177
In 1999 he took the lead in passing a ... bill that ended the practice of taking time off prisoners' sentences for good behavior
As part of his campaign platform, Walker proposed cutting state employee wages and benefits and rolling back 2009 state tax increases on small businesses, capital gains, and income for top earners.
Critics said that Walker's proposals would only help the wealthy and that cutting the salaries of public employees would adversely affect state services...
As a candidate, Walker indicated he would refuse an $800 million dollar award from the federal Department of Transportation to build a high speed railroad line from Madison to Milwaukee because he believed it would cost the state $7.5 million per year to operate and would not be profitable. The award was later rescinded and split among other states.
Walker opposes abortion in all circumstances, including in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. He supports sexual abstinence education in the public schools, and opposes state supported clinical services that provide birth control to teens under the age of 18 without parental consent. He also supports the right of pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives on the religious or moral grounds. He opposes stem cell research using human embryos.
(Source: Wikipedia)
In fact I envision setting up small cities, where all the workers were provided housing, food (minimum nutrition, if any, for minimal cost), and supplies (also minimal quality necessary to cover the body), and just enough entertainment (only happy movies) to keep their minds occupied. And they will never, ever need to go outside the city for anything. The rest of us needn't ever see them, or be worried about their living conditions. Like they do in China. So we'll be compeititive. The mantra of the corporation.
However, in all seriousness, I see nothing wrong with letting people of any age work if they want, are capable, are paid and treated fairly, and not kept from school. I would have loved to have a job, however small, when I was a kid.
I wonder how many of these people voted for Walker before realizing that he was a wolf in sheep's clothing - that he intended to union bust and take what little is left to America's middle class and throw away their collective bargaining rights. I wonder how many Dems stayed home from voting because they thought it didn't make a difference.
well.... it did. welcome to reality!
If the big corporations gave back just a small percentage of the tax breaks they get we could easily afford good teachers and quality nurses. Like it or not you get what you pay for and nothing else.
Don't make no difference, no how. What is actually happening here is teaching them over educated, liberal snobs a lesson. That is, to deliver a comeuppance. They need that, and Walker believes he is just the man to do it. Just because he may have to fudge the truth just a little bit in order to slide it by the sheep, it's all good.
Besides, them liberals and union supporters are all athiests anyway.
FF
F&F! :)
Cost me three days of work, which, since I do not get sick pay, is going to hurt my next check.
I sure hope Gov. Walker caves before it gets ugly...
Wisconsin "protestors" (wherever you're from): pay cuts or unemployment? Welcome to the real world; sometimes we have to pay for what we want. Temper tantrums won't pay the bills (union due$$$ might).
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/wisconsin-gov-walker-ginned-up-budget-shortfall-to-undercut-worker-rights.php
I asked a mod on another forum about it one day and he said that they can't leave the thread a lot of the time because once one post is removed then the replies no longer make sense and they have to try for continuity.
It probably works the same way here.
When will everyone wake up and realize paying taxes is needed in a society, and that it is ones' duty to pay your honest share of the country's expenses. One may work to change and reduce the expenses but in the meantime one should not shy away from paying ones' share.
All across America people are starting to see the real, ugly face of the corporate and wealth serving Republicans. Their deficit outcry is merley a mask they wear while they try to rob the working class people of whatever they have left. They were all about jobs to get elected: please name something they have done to this end. In Ms. Bachmann's video the other day when she was asked about priorities, JOBS wasn't one of them.
The Republicans should be the ones "WILLING" to have a raise in taxes on the wealthy, since it is they that have benefited most by living in America. I say, "SHAME on the REPUBLICAN'S" !
Since Reagan's "trickle down" disservice to the country, every Republican President has persued lower taxes, while at the same time increasing spending. Now we see THEIR results, the rich got richer and the country; a huge deficit!
I hope their continual greed continues to fuel their imminent self-destruction.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/wisconsin-gov-walker-ginned-up-budget-shortfall-to-undercut-worker-rights.php
Got to repay the Koch Bros who helped put him in office
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/02/wisconsin-scott-walker-koch-brothers
Thank you for pointing out what Walker's doing to the university. My son applied for grad school there in chemistry. He's been accepted in Syracuse, NY. They flew him from AZ to NY for the interview. They recognize talent. Wisconsin's loss. They're cutting their own throats.