Going to Madison, Wisconsin changed my life. It brought home the reality of class struggle, which I had only read about in radical history books. Sure, people cared about politics, challenged their governments’ injustices, and were sometimes successful in making radical change in far away places like Egypt, France, and Venezuela. But here?
2011 will be remembered as a year of revolutions and resistance around the world. Only a few weeks into 2011 and there was a revolution in Tunisia, a couple weeks later another Egypt, after that, Libya. By February, the resistance of ordinary people was spreading like wildfire throughout the Arab world. U.S. backed dictatorships, that had maintained (through brutal violence and repression) domination for decades, were now being toppled by ordinary people. Contrary to all the racist mythology manufactured by corporate media and politicians about Arabs and Muslims, they showed the western world how to win real “freedom” and “democracy” through their own collective struggle.
But would events like those in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya ever happen here? Before February could even come to an end, Madison, Wisconsin – the embodiment of “middle-America” – answered that question.
What’s happened in Wisconsin isn’t very different from what’s happening in states across the country. Already six states, including Ohio and Indiana, are on the verge of passing copy cat legislation.
The federal government has accumulated a massive deficit. The source of this debt is threefold; 1) multi-trillion dollar bail out packages to keep Wall Street afloat, 2) a dramatic multi-trillion dollar increase in military spending over the past decade, and 3) a sharp reduction in taxation on corporations and the rich over the past thirty years. Instead of looking at these undeniable facts, CNN, Fox News, and the New York Times like to place the blame on too much government spending toward “entitlement programs” such as welfare and social security.
Last time I checked, it was George Bush, Barrack Obama, and congress who passed $700 billion plus annual military spending bills, not UMB professors or Boston Public School teachers. So how do they propose to fix this enormous deficit? Dramatically cut spending on government run programs, except the military of course. Since state’s federal funding is being cut dramatically and the Constitution prohibits them from running a deficit, they are required to cut anything and everything to balance their budget.
It is a sacrifice shared only by the working class and poor. Why should the rich need to suffer, especially when they’re the ones who control our so-called “democracy?” The idea that this country, or any state within it, is “broke” is a boldface lie.
This is not a shared sacrifice. Corporate America and the political elite of both parties are hoping to make working people pay for a crisis they’ve engineered. The money exists, and there’s unimaginable amounts of it. It’s just that some control it – the military, the prison system, the rich, and corporations – while others don’t.
Since the mid 1970s, corporations have seen their profits increase by over 350 percent. At the same, time wages for working people have declined when inflation is take into account. This has occurred alongside a dramatic rise in the cost of living, resulting in a sharp increase of debt spending per household. This is the first time in U.S. history that our generation is expected to have a lower standard of living then our parents generation.
There’s been a one-sided class war for the past 35 years – and we’ve been losing. Now, enter Wisconsin.
Recently elected Tea Party governor Scott Walker, with the support of the Republican dominated legislature, attempted to pass a budget bill that included dramatic cuts in education and other social services. Such cuts would result in widespread layoffs and serious reduction in wages while benefiting public sector employees. The heaviest referendum in the bill was a proposal to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of unions within the state, bringing an end to closed shop workplaces and automatically collected union dues.
In short, Walker and the Republicans were attempting to eliminate the power and rights of unions once and for all. Walker’s assault on working people generated a widespread and militant fight back, organized on a grassroots level.
In response to the bill, tens of thousands of workers, students, and unemployed people converged on the state capital and inside the building itself. This began a more than two-week long, non-stop occupation of the capitol building, involving thousands of protestors and continuous mass demonstrations in Madison and dozens of other cities and towns across the state.
In response to the uprising, fourteen Democratic state senators fled the state to block the bill from coming to a vote, bringing the legislation to a halt. All of a sudden, mainstream media in the U.S. and around the world, was forced to cover the rebellion of working people against corporate power unfolding in Wisconsin. This action confirmed that a class struggle, like the ones happening overseas, was possible right here in America. The U.S. working class has put itself back on the political map.
After two weeks, Gov. Walker ordered Wisconsin State Police to forcibly remove all the protesters and clear out the capital and put out an arrest warrant for all fourteen Democratic senators. Despite his efforts, the senators didn’t return and protests outside the capitol building continued.
Just as it appeared that Walker may be willing to negotiate on the bill, congressional Republicans called an immediate session of the senate, stripped the bill of all budgetary components, and passed the repeal of collective bargaining rights on its own since non-budgetary bills did not require a quorum (a minimum number of individuals which must be present for legislation to be passed).
Within a few hours after the bill passed on the night of Wednesday, March 9th thousands converged on Madison to demonstrate their outrage.
Over 7,000 people re-occupied the Capitol building, hundreds even occupied the House chamber Thursday morning to prevent a vote on the bill, but they were evicted by police. Despite overwhelming popular opposition to the bill, the House passed it and Walker signed it into law immediately thereafter. Democracy had been set back seventy years.
Labor unions put out a call for a final day of mass demonstration that Saturday, March 12th, which would turn our the be the largest action thus far, drawing out over 200,000 people. This is where I come in.
I was at the gym Wednesday night when I saw the breaking news on CNN “Wisconsin Senate eliminates collective bargaining.” I rushed home to watch the live feed. I watched on my computer as thousands re-occupied the capitol building and converged on the city. Working people were fighting back in a way that I had never seen in my lifetime.
Over the course of the next 24 hours, I talked to other students in the UMB branch of the Intentional Socialist Organization (ISO) and we all agreed, we had to get to Madison. We then got in touch with other ISO students at Hampshire College and UMass Amherst, reached out to some of our friends, and organized a caravan of four cars with eighteen people. We left Friday afternoon.
After an exhausting twenty hour car ride, with all our car windows decked out in paint exclaiming “TAX THE RICH” , “HONK FOR LABOR”, and “SOLIDARITY” we finally arrived in Madison. But we couldn’t get there without stopping for some breakfast. When we got some food at an I-Hop outside of Madison, the waitress asked us where we were from. When we told her we were college students from Boston coming to show our solidarity with Wisconsin labor, she turned around and announced it to the packed room. Customers and employees alike started clapping and even came up to thank us and talk to us about what was happening in their state. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
Once we got to the capitol it was already overflowing with people converging from every direction. Everywhere you went, politics plastered the city. Nearly every store front had signs reading “We Stand with Wisconsin Workers.” Posters were plastered everywhere around the city exclaiming “Kill the Bill” and “Recall Walker.” Even the sidewalks were covered in chalk with slogans of “Tax the Rich.”
Every street around the capitol building was filled with people. Every time a car drove near by they were honking to the tune of “This-is-what-democracy-looks-like!” People everywhere were spontaneously erupting into chants of “Union-Power! Union-Power!” and “Kill the Bill! Kill the Bill!” As we walked down the street to meet up with a whole contingent of other ISO folks, something immediately stood out. This struggle had brought together women and men from all walks of life; teachers and students, firefighters and nurses, steelworkers and social workers, farmers and office workers, young and old, queer and straight, black and white. Protestors had come from all across the state, and sometimes even the country. Families told us about small rural towns of 10,000 people in which 5,000 walked out of school and work to protest Walkers’ bill or to come join the actions in Madison.
It was the most diverse protest I had ever participated in, and every where we went people were talking politics. Even if we didn’t know someone, we felt united with them. There was a resilient sense that “we are all in this together,” and we were overcome with a profound feeling of solidarity.
The sentiment at the rally was clear, we may have lost this battle, but the struggle has just begun.
The major unions representing public sector workers in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Educators Association Council (WEAC) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), have already initiated a campaign to recall Gov. Walker and other Republican representatives in the coming months. After that, they hoped to have a Democratic majority that would repeal the bill.
Unfortunately, during the rebellion in Wisconsin, the union leadership made clear its willingness to accept most, if not all, of the proposed concessions and cuts to workers, as long as collective bargaining remained in place. Despite the union rank and file’sstrong sentiment for further militant action, the union leadership did not push in that direction. Instead, the union bureaucracy worked tooth and nail to prevent further action from the grassroots, calling on its members not to strike and to end the Capitol building occupation.
But, rank and file organizations, such as the No Cuts No Concessions / Kill the Whole Bill Coalition, that formed throughout the course of the struggle, continued to organize and strategize. Once the legislator reconvenes in April, the first matter of business will be passing a new budget bill that will include massive cuts and further attacks on working people. What will happen in the future, no one can predict. But what became clear on Saturday, is that the people of Wisconsin have been permanently changed – they’ve recognized and experienced their own collective power.
This has been a life changing experience for the hundreds of thousands that have been involved, and for the millions who have followed it around the country. No matter what happens next, Wisconsin and America will never be the same. Like Egypt showed Madison, struggle and resistance is contagious, and it’s already starting to spread.