On Wisconsin: After Defeat, Activists Pick New Arenas

Posted on March 12, 2011 by David S. Meyer

When a door closes, start trying the windows.  A defeat in Wisconsin has spurred a new wave of activism, and advocates have turned their attention beyond the state senate.

In the United States, when activists lose a battle in one place, they look for other arenas in which to carry on their struggle.

Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president, has offered thanks to vigorously anti-union Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker.  (I believe that Trumka is also the only person on Glenn Beck’s list of the nine greatest dangers to the Constitution who is not Jewish!)  As reported in Politico:

“We probably should have invited him here today to receive the Mobilizer of the Year Award,” Trumka said Thursday morning while speaking to the National Press Club in Washington D.C. “Wisconsin is the beginning — it’s pushing the start button” for pro-labor activism.

Of course, it’s Trumka’s job to exude optimism and outrage, but the Wisconsin campaign has given organized labor the kind of focal point and opportunity for effective activism and outreach that unions have had a hard time finding in the past half-century.

Today, Governor Walker’s opponents have mobilized the largest demonstration yet protesting his (at the moment, successful) effort to dramatically limit collective bargaining–and his policies in general.

As you recall (see here, here, here, and here, e.g.) the Democrats in the Senate had extended and expanded the debate on collective bargaining by leaving the state, denying the Republicans the quorum they needed for a budget bill.  Even as negotiations with the governor continued, the Republicans in the Senate pulled the labor provisions out of the budget bill and voted on them separately, sending the new, narrower bill to the state assembly.

Once the Senate bill was over, activists shifted their attention to the state assembly, and through vigorous demonstrations in the Capitol building, delayed assembly passage for a few hours.  When the bill was signed, activists continued to mobilize, drawing funds and attention across the nation.  They’ve continued to demonstrate (inside and outside the capitol), filed legal challenges to the new law, and fully engaged in recall campaigns for virtually every elected official eligible for recall.  (In Wisconsin, an elected official can only be recalled after a year in office.)

There’s all kinds of other stuff around the periphery.  [I was most amused by a facebook campaign to find and destroy Scott Walker’s horcruxes (need I note that this is a Harry Potter reference?):

We’ll need all the help we can get to find and destroy ALL SIX of the Governor’s horcruxes before formal recall procedures can be initiated on January 3, 2012.

Especially important will be gathering any information we can on his most valued possessions, and on places from his past that may hold a certain glamor for him, (ex: American University in D.C. where he …first met Ronald Reagan in 1985.) Also needed will be any sites from his past where he may have committed acts of unspeakable cruelty. We can infer that he’s used the Imperius Curse at least twice; he won both his Assembly and his County Exec seat in “special elections,” the first unopposed, the second after his predecessor “resigned.”

Please share any useful leads you might have. Remember not to use HIS name as it might be jinxed. (We prefer to call him “He who shall not be named……Governor”)]

Republicans have also started circulating petitions to recall the senators who left the state.  Thus far, it looks like they’re not doing as well as the Democrats in stoking activism or raising money.  David Weigel, at Slate, cites a fund raising letter from a Tea Party Express group, which suggests desperation:

Now, we must raise the money to fight back.  We must do much better than what we’ve done so far if we are going to be able to compete with the liberals and the $1.5+ million we’ve raised so far. I know so many of you have contributed already – but I need to ask you to please contribute one more time.

If the liberals can raise $1.5 million in one-weel then we must counter by raising as much money as we can to fight back.  Please make the most generous contribution you can to our campaign to Support Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican members of the State Senate.

Meanwhile, the “Fab 14” senators were given a hero’s welcome when the returned to Madison during today’s demonstration.  Madison police estimated the turnout as up to 100,000 people–more than Vietnam era demonstrations.

The Madison mobilization continued to display local passions, plus tractors, people in cow suits, and national activists and celebrities.  USA Today reports:

It drew high-profile public figures like actors Tony Shalhoub, a Green Bay native whose sister is a teacher, and Susan Sarandon, as well as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the longtime social justice activist. It drew tens of thousands of public employees and even farmers who created a “tractorcade” of farm equipment that circled the Capitol in the morning. And at its climax, it drew most of the state Senate Democrats who fled the state Feb. 17 in an unsuccessful attempt to block Walker’s bill.

Across the nation, liberal and Democratic groups are trying to tap into the moment and extend it, raising awareness, activism, and money.  They’re channeling their efforts into the recall campaigns, but hoping that the energy spreads far beyond those channels (e.g.)

Expect to see sympathy demonstrations, with labor unions at the core of the organizing, and expect to see conservative groups trying to generate some kind of grassroots response.

In the beginning, all the world was Madison…

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Investigating Religions: Congress, Muslims, and Terror

Posted on March 10, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Rep. Peter King, on alert

I’m deeply troubled by the hearings in the House of Representatives that opened today, “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.”  Initiated by Representative Peter King, a Republican from Long Island, it’s hard to ignore the not quite implicit racism inherent.

It’s not that groups or individuals willing to use violence to advance their political goals aren’t a relevant concern–for Congress or for the rest of us–but this effort seems misspecified (targeted at the Muslim community in the United States, almost all of whom, according to Rep. King, do not support terror.)

From the start, even Rep. King’s commitment to stopping terror is undermined by his own past, as a supporter of the Irish Republican Army, as the New York Times reports:

We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry,” Mr. King told a pro-I.R.A. rally on Long Island, where he was serving as Nassau County comptroller, in 1982. Three years later he declared, “If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it.”

King’s past suggests that he is more concerned with causes than tactics, which makes the hearings seem targeted much more at American Muslims more than at terror.

Even more than that, focusing on the broad and diverse communities of American Muslims is an extraordinarily inefficient way of going after terrorists.  Neither the House of Representatives nor the state of Kansas held hearings on radicalism within Christianity when the professed Christian Scott Roeder murdered Dr. George Tiller, a doctor who performed abortions, in Tiller’s church.  Of course, most Christians aren’t murderers.  But those few lunatics who murder doctors often claim Christianity.

If the idea of investigating Christianity in response seems ridiculous, why is Islam different?

And as Americans, we have a long history in which ethnic, racial, and religious groups have been scapegoated and demonized.  I would have thought that we would learn from our past, but people learn odd lessons:

In supporting King’s efforts, Ed Koch, former Congressman and Mayor of New York, compared the hearings to the investigations (and internment) of Japanese Americans during World War II:

Congressman King is now seeking to protect America and the Muslim American community.  How?  By holding hearings on whether or not the American Muslim community is becoming radicalized and giving aid and comfort to America’s enemies.

Remember, we are at war with Islamic terrorists who, according to the U.S. government, have Al-Qaeda cells at work in 62 countries.  Islamic terrorists have made it clear that they want to kill Americans – men, women, and children.  If the hearings establish that the American Muslim community, like the Japanese American community during World War II, is devoted and loyal to the U.S., wouldn’t that be of enormous assistance in protecting members of the American Muslim community from the charges that have been made against them?

Eventually, the United States apologized for investigating  and interning Japanese Americans during World War II, as we’ve discussed.  Fred Korematsu, who unsuccessfully challenged internment, saw the parallels between the wartime frenzy that put Japanese Americans in concentration camps and the post-9/11 stigmatization of American Muslims.

Protest in Times Square

Five hundred people protested against the  King hearings in Times Square, and there were other assemblies across the country.  From  Arab News.com:

Christians, Jews and Muslims gathered together in the rain to brand the hearings a witch-hunt, waved signs and chant: “Shame, Shame, Pete King!”

“Today I am a Muslim, too,” said Rabbi March Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding.  Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam who is a co-founder of Islamic community center mosque near Ground Zero, also addressed the crowd.

We really don’t have to keep repeating the mistakes of the past.

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Irvine 11 update

Posted on March 10, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Nothing’s happened, but there’s plenty of news.  Coverage continues this morning on NPR.

Recall (post here): The Irvine 11 are students who disrupted Israeli ambassador Michael Oren’s speech here at UCI.  After facing discipline on campus, they now face criminal charges from the Orange County DA.  This ill-considered prosecution has helped bring national attention to the students and their cause, vindicating what seemed like a poor protest strategy by the students.

 

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The Hidden Camera: Technology, Testimony, and Truth

Posted on March 9, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Conservative hidden camera insurgent, James O’Keefe, has notched a victory on his own checkered activist scorecard, taking down the CEO of National Public Radio, Vivian Schiller, who resigned under pressure this morning.

Pretending to be a potential donors (funneling money from the Muslim Brotherhood), O’Keefe‘s associates lunched with Ron Schiller, a vice president of development (read: fundraising) at NPR who had already announced his impending departure from public radio.  O’Keefe They said offensive things at lunch, as did Schiller, and O’Keefe got it all on video.*  Smelling a big donation, Schiller (who had nothing to do with programming) worked to win the confidence of the faux donor.  I’d guess this is at least close to standard practice for people who have the job of cultivating large donors.  (See Jack Shafer at Slate.)

James O'Keefe in pimp outfit

O’Keefe has used this approach to go after what he views as liberal orthodoxy for years now, usually targeting lower-level staff, who are more accessible and perhaps more prone to error than corporate vice presidents.  He makes outrageous claims (e.g., Lucky Charms cereal offends Irish Americans, and should be banned from the school’s dining hall), and sometimes generates sympathetic (and horrific) responses.  Along with sometime ally, anti-abortion activist Lila Rose, he’s gone after Planned Parenthood.  Dressed as a 1970s vision of a pimp, he helped take down ACORN.  Dressed as a telephone repairman, he attempted to tap Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu’s phones, and was sentenced to small fine and three years of probation.

Seeking stupidity and hypocrisy is terribly easy.  You can shoot hundreds of hours of tape, and leave everything other than that on the cutting room floor, broadcasting the most offensive moments.  And conservatives have no monopoly on the tactic, or on using subterfuge to get opponents to behave foolishly.  Just recently, Ian Murphy, of The Beast, posed as billionaire David Koch in a prank phone call to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.  Walker was sufficiently solicitous of the faux conservative donor to provide ample material for a damaging tape (transcript here).

Even easier, interview activists at a demonstration on camera, and edit down to the foolish, misinformed, or sarcastic.

But, activists have always worked to document and expose the evils of their opponents.  In the very long campaign for abolition, the narratives of former slaves were a powerful asset for people who wanted to end slavery.  Their experience belied whatever claims supporters of slavery made about their beneficence.  Sojourner Truth’s testimony made it harder for people to ignore slavery.

For more than a hundred years, at least, journalists and writers have lived lives on the edge to document injustice.  George Orwell (Down and Out in Paris and London) and Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) are among the better writers who went undercover to live–and write about–the difficulties of those on the bottom of our social ladder.

Fiction may be even more powerful in spreading ideas and insurgency.  Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (about slavery) and Upton Sinclair’s expose of meat-packing in Chicago, The Jungle, reached far larger audiences than any actual story.  The tortured prose of libertarian novelist, Ayn Rand, continues to attract readers–presumably on the appeal of her ideas.  Conservative activists have just recently produced a film of the first half of her novel, Atlas Shrugged.

The technological development of small recorders and cameras has made the expose more accessible.  It’s been a favorite tactic of environmentalists and animal rights activists, documenting whaling, animal experimentation, or slaughterhouses (Sinclair’s subject), and producing images far more accessible to a contemporary broad audience than even a well-written novel.  The web transmits the images quickly and indiscriminately.  (PETA.tv is a good place to see a samples.)

The prevalence of cheap video cameras–on almost every cell phone–means that it’s no longer paranoid to think that you might be on camera, and to worry that a moment’s comment might be broadcast globally and stored forever on the web.  I’m not sure this will help make the world more just–or more pleasant.

And, as audiences–and citizens–we’re left with the task of judging the integrity of the videographer, and whether the practice on camera is exceptional or business-as-usual–and which is worse.

* O’Keefe himself was not present at the lunch.  Corrected March 10, 2011.

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It’s not just protest (Madison)

Posted on March 8, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Although those dramatic demonstrations, like the ones we saw in Madison, capture the imagination, by themselves, they won’t change a policy or a government.  Protest signals, supports, and coerces.  Changes in politics and policy depend upon how a broad range of people not protesting respond to those who are out in the streets.

In response to my last post on Madison, about a week ago, olderwoman writes that the Wisconsin 14 (Democratic senators staging a quorum filibuster) would not have fled the capital and the state without the support of a growing protest movement.  She’s right, of course, and has been filing great first-hand reports and analysis on the Wisconsin stand-off on her blog, sociological confessions.  The point is that the demonstrators are responding to, and affecting, the more usual politics in the state.

Governor Scott Walker’s opponents have won a few important victories since I last posted on Madison.  Notably, Governor Walker wanted to clear the capital building of the demonstrators, but the police were slow to do so–and then a Dane County judge ruled that the protesters–like all citizens of Wisconsin–were entitled access to the building.

If you’re following the battle in Wisconsin, you can add the bureaucracy and the judiciary to your scorecard, which should already include the Wisconsin legislature, Governor Walker, organized labor, and the Koch brothers (and their affiliated organizations).

Governor Walker also released his full budget, which featured large cuts in spending and services.  He explicitly challenged the absent senators to return and do their jobs (lose votes), while announcing cuts in spending for poor people (particularly spending for health care), benefit cuts for public workers, and large cuts to public education from K-university.

Predictably, this has strengthened the resolve of the Democrats in the legislature and the demonstrators in the streets (and in the capitol building).  It’s very clear that the conflict isn’t just about workers’ benefits or the budget; Governor Walker is trying to deliver a very different vision of governance in Wisconsin.  To underscore this points, the unions, and the Democratic senators, have offered to sign off on all the financial concessions (which are substantial) in exchange for preserving collective bargaining.  Walker has repeatedly rejected such a bargain.  He has also repeated his intent to order layoffs of public workers if his bill is not passed.

Wisconsin is really a swing state, and the resistant Democrats are likely representing their constituencies as faithfully as the Republicans ready to pass Walker’s budget (maybe moreso, because these are the ones who survived electoral campaigns in a very bad year for Democrats).

Republicans and Democrats have both commenced gathering signatures to recall legislators who aren’t voting the way they want.  Walker, who has been governor for far less than a year, isn’t yet eligible for recall, but many Republican senators, on whose votes he depends, are.  Thus far, reports suggest that the Democrats, supported by organized labor, are doing better at gathering signatures, and a few Republican senators have suggested an openness to compromise.  Today, Republican state senator Rob Cowles (who could be recalled) emphasized the need to compromise (Green Bay Press Gazette):

“You have to be flexible because some way, some how there will be an amendment modifying the collective bargaining,” he said. “It’s an incredible situation (the Democrats leaving) that none of us ever thought would happen. So negotiations on this are critical to move past this and move on to the budget, which also has a number of dilemmas.”

Cowles lamented that collective bargaining has dominated the conversation in Madison and across the state, casting a black cloud over reforms in the 2011-2013 budget bill that seek to balance the state’s $3.6 billion deficit without raiding funds, raising taxes, massive borrowing or questionable accounting practices.

The 14 senators can’t stay away forever. And the demonstrators who have been sleeping out in capitol and continuing to assemble on weekends, can’t maintain their numbers indefinitely.  Their success will be dependent upon activating and supporting allies who are carrying their cause indoors.

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More on the Phelps Family (Not much, I hope)

Posted on March 3, 2011 by David S. Meyer

At Slate, David Weigel reports that Michael Moore lampooned the Phelps Family and the Westboro Church nearly fifteen years ago, posting a video.  He also notes that Sarah Palin is angry about the Court’s decision, and has attacked it on Twitter.

I’ve drunk enough of the Bill of Rights free speech Kool-Aid to think that the Court decision was exactly right, that depending upon government to regulate hateful and heinous speech is far worse than our, imperfect, alternative.

The question then is figuring out how to stop being played by a tiny group that understands both its legal rights and our discomfort.

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The Phelps Family and the Supreme Court

Posted on March 2, 2011 by David S. Meyer

The Supreme Court ruled today that vicious anti-gay rhetoric, deployed at unrelated events, was Constitutionally protected (8-1, Justice Alito dissenting).

The tiny Westboro church, comprised mostly of Pastor Fred Phelps and his family, pickets military funerals and other public occasions, trying to project their view of God’s judgments about homosexuality to anyone whose attention they can get.  They’ve been doing this for nearly a decade.  The Court, affirming the decision of an appellate court, set aside a jury verdict awarded to the father of a marine whose funeral was picketed–at a distance.

Through provocative language deployed in inappropriate settings, the Phelps family has been hugely successful in generating a great deal of attention for themselves and their beliefs.

Opponents of the Phelps family need to think about whether counterprotests or neglect represent the best strategy in response.  Ignoring them won’t make them go away, but attacking them projects the conflict–and the Phelps message–to a broader audience.

You can read a profile of Fred Phelps at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s site.

We’ve covered some of their events:

at Elizabeth Edwards’s funeral;

about the argument, made by Margie Phelps, Fred’s daughter, in the Supreme Court; and about the strategy in general.

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Beck & Piven III

Posted on March 1, 2011 by David S. Meyer

NPR’s All Things Considered has come to the Beck/Piven saga, a story we discussed  a while back [see (II) and (I)].  Maybe this is getting to the tale late; on the other hand, once crazy provocative charges reach a few crazy provoked people, the story can continue for a long time.

You’ll recall that Glenn Beck identified Frances Fox Piven as one of the 9 people who most threatened the Constitution of the United States.  A couple of those dangerous people are dead (Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays); eight of them are Jewish.  Oddly, this last fact hasn’t gotten much explicit attention.

A small slice of Beck’s audience has taken to making their own threats against those threatening people.  Active (and alive!) with easy-to-find contact information, Piven has received hundreds of appalling e-missives, some of them pretty scary.  And we all know it takes only one crazy person to do a lot of damage.

Beck’s charges focused on a willful misrepresentation of an article Piven (and her husband, Richard Cloward) published 40 plus years ago:  “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty,” originally published in The Nation on May 2, 1966.

Beck’s rhetoric is inflammatory, irresponsible, and ill-informed.

Unfortunately, much of the coverage has ignored the real politics Piven has pursued, sometimes effectively, over the past half-century.  The NPR story painted Piven as an obscure, old, and frail academic, and portrayed the 1966 article as an effort to organize welfare recipients in an effort to streamline the administration of welfare.

That’s not the way I see Frances Piven, and it’s not the way I read that old article, which explained:

A series of welfare drives in large cities would, we believe, impel action on a new federal program to distribute income, eliminating the present public welfare system and alleviating the abject poverty which it perpetrates. Widespread campaigns to register the eligible poor for welfare aid, and to help existing recipients obtain their full benefits, would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments. These disruptions would generate severe political strains, and deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: the remaining white middle class, the white working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor. To avoid a further weakening of that historic coalition, a national Democratic administration would be constrained to advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas. By the internal disruption of local bureaucratic practices, by the furor over public welfare poverty, and by the collapse of current financing arrangements, powerful forces can be generated for major economic reforms at the national level.

In seeking to emphasize how distorted Beck’s views are, the reporter flattened most of the politics and presence out of a consequential person and an important set of arguments–that extend well beyond that 1966 article.

But a little bit of the real Frances Fox Piven peeked out at the end of the piece, trying to redirect attention away from the crazy commentator to a crooked (and more consequential) political economy.  About Beck’s invective, Piven said:

It’s a lunatic story, but it’s a story that nevertheless is clear. You can get your hands around it. This woman is somehow responsible for the upsetting changes in your small town where the factory closed down. I don’t blame them for being upset. It is upsetting. But I blame Glenn Beck for telling them a factually untrue, crazy story about why those changes occurred.

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Beyond Madison: Who’s Watching? Who’s Talking? Who’s Doing?

Posted on February 27, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Watch the crowd in a fight.

That’s an old insight in the social sciences, stated pretty clearly by E. E. Schattschneider in The Semi-Sovereign People fifty years ago.

The point: The losers in any political struggle have an interest in bringing new people into the battle, mobilizing reinforcements or appealing to superior authorities.  Those who are winning have every interest in keeping the conflict from spreading.  (As the oldest of three children, it was easy for me to understand this; it’s the baby of the family who’s most likely to call for mom to intervene.)  Protest is one tactic for getting outside attention and turning audiences into activists.

The unfolding Wisconsin story illustrates the importance of capturing and activating audiences.  Governor Walker had the votes in the state legislature to push through almost anything he wanted, and what he wanted, among other things, was to cripple the unions representing public employees.  Democrats in the state senate, facing a sudden vote on largely unknown legislation, took the best shot they had in stopping Governor Walker by denying the majority the quorum needed for taking a vote.  They’re still in Illinois.

Maybe Governor Walker or a few of the Republican senators will reconsider.  More important, however, is that by taking off for Illinois,  the senators gave their allies both attention and time to make their case.

This is outrageous, of course, and the people who are most outraged are those who want the spotlight on the issue to go away.  (The National Republican party is heavily invested in the issues–and the personalities–in Wisconsin.)  Republicans in the state senate, and then across the country, have attacked the absent senators.  According to numerous Republican governors, the state senators are derelict in their duty, and that duty is to go back to Madison and lose.  Nikki Haley, in South Carolina, calls the missing senators, “cowardly.” New Jersey’s Chris Christie announced that he trusts Governor Walker to do what’s best for Wisconsin.  And Arizona Governor Jan Brewer described the Democratic senators as “despicable,” for preventing the majority from passing the bill.

But the Democrats in the state senate took their politics outdoors, where they might win, and where, even if they don’t win, others could see them and join them.  And their supporters have come through, big time, with large demonstrations in the Capitol.  The unions most directly affected have found allies in other unions that were exempted, protected by the police and led in marches by the firefighters.  They also found allies across Wisconsin (and particularly in Madison) who had other gripes with Governor Walker and his budget plans.  They’ve been demonstrating, sleeping in the state capitol building, and spreading the word.

[Here’s David Weigel’s report on the camp-out.  Here’s a professor’s participant/observer report on the demonstrations in Madison.]

Supporters outside Wisconsin have rallied to support the demonstrators’ cause.  Ian’s Pizza in Madison has shut down its normal operations and is only making and delivering pizzas donated (from around the world) to the protesters; restaurants up and down State Street have been donating food to the demonstrators.

Moveon.org has sponsored sympathy demonstrations across the United States, including demonstrations in every state capital, and the AFL-CIO has joined in.  Organizers asked demonstrators to wear red and white, badger colors, to show their support to the protesters in Wisconsin.   (Here’s the New York Times report; here’s one from CBS News.)  The rallies are going to vary in size and tone; some have been met by Tea Party counterdemonstrators.

Sympathy rally in California

At this point, however, the most important point is that the political battle has extended far beyond the Wisconsin legislature, and whatever happens in Madison will play out far beyond the borders of Wisconsin.

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On Wisconsin and beyond

Posted on February 23, 2011 by David S. Meyer

The protests in Madison are just the start of a larger struggle about budgets and labor across the United States.

I’m on the Joy Cardin show on Wisconsin Public Radio, talking about the protests in Madison.  (I got to tell the bagpipes joke.)

It’s about more than collective bargaining in Wisconsin, and the longer the demonstrations go on, the more debate we’ll see on other aspects of Governor Walker’s budget-balancing strategy.  Here’s a hint from an activist in Wisconsin:

But there is a lot of other stuff in the bill that is being completely ignored. It would give the governor the right to kill off Medicaid — a coalition is trying to bring up that issue, but isn’t making it out of the din. Another part of the bill that isn’t being contested is the right of the Governor to sell off state property without taking competitive bids or gaining the approval of the Public Works Commission. And, of course, with so much under attack, nobody is even considering the possibility of improving social services for the most destitute. This year’s deficit could be made up at $32 per adult in the state — it just isn’t that big. But the Republicans are busy cutting revenue via cutting various business taxes.

Clearly, it’s about something bigger than any state’s budget.  Governor Chris Christie says that this is a class struggle: “There can no longer be two classes of citizens: those that receive rich retirement and health benefits, and those that pay for them” (from Politico).  Governor Christie’s solution is to cut retirement and health benefits, forcing the norm downward and playing a politics of resentment.

Democratic state legislators in Indiana have fled to Illinois, where they’ve promised to stay until Governor Mitch Daniels agrees to withdraw a bill limiting union dues.  (Illinois is a big state, but maybe they’ll see the Wisconsin state senators there.)

Union-organized protests have spread to Ohio, where Governor John Kasich is pushing similar restrictions on public unions. The New York Times reports:

Several thousand pro-union protesters filled a main hall of the state courthouse in Columbus and gathered in a large crowd outside, chanting “Kill the bill,” waving signs and playing drums and bagpipes. There were no official estimates, but the numbers appeared to be smaller than those in Madison last week. One Democratic state legislator put the figure at 15,000.

(You may remember the “kill the bill” chant from Tea Party protests against health care reform.)

And in Wisconsin, union activists are planning a general strike in the event that Governor Walker signs the anti-union bill.  From the Wisconsin State Journal:

The 97-union South Central Federation of Labor of Wisconsin is laying groundwork for a general strike if Gov. Scott Walker succeeds in enacting legislation that would strip most bargaining rights from most public employee unions.

Federation president Jim Cavanaugh said Tuesday that he couldn’t predict how many unions might take part in a strike, but opposition to Walker has grown rapidly.

“Two weeks ago who would have thought there would have been 70,000 people on the Capitol Square demonstrating on behalf of worker rights?” Cavanaugh said. “We have had an awful lot of statements of support from around the country.”

Whatever happens in Wisconsin, the battles over state budgets have engaged a larger debate about organized labor in the public sector that won’t disappear quickly.  Recognizing what’s at stake, the unions are making serious commitments to take their case public.  And the rest of us are going to be pushed to take sides.  (This is how protest works!)  Here’s Pete Seeger’s version.


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