More than 50 countries around the globe bought PIZZA!

http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/2428/andy_kroll_cairo_in_wisconsin/

February 28, 2011

By Andy Kroll
In partnership with TomDispatch.com.

Andy Kroll.jpg.jpgThe call reportedly arrived from Cairo. Pizza for the protesters, the voice said. It was Saturday, February 20th, and by then Ian’s Pizza on State Street in Madison, Wisconsin, was overwhelmed. One employee had been assigned the sole task of answering the phone and taking down orders. And in they came, from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, from Morocco, Haiti, Turkey, Belgium, Uganda, China, New Zealand, and even a research station in Antarctica. More than 50 countries around the globe. Ian’s couldn’t make pizza fast enough, and the generosity of distant strangers with credit cards was paying for it all.

Those pizzas, of course, were heading for the Wisconsin state capitol, an elegant domed structure at the heart of this Midwestern college town. For nearly two weeks, tens of thousands of raucous, sleepless, grizzled, energized protesters have called the stately capitol building their home. As the police moved in to clear it out on Sunday afternoon, it was still the pulsing heart of the largest labor protest in my lifetime, the focal point of rallies and concerts against a politically-charged piece of legislation proposed by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a hard-right Republican. That bill, officially known as the Special Session Senate Bill 11, would, among other things, eliminate collective bargaining rights for most of the state’s public-sector unions, in effect eviscerating the unions themselves.

“Kill the bill!” the protesters chant en masse, day after day, while the drums pound and cowbells clang. “What’s disgusting? Union busting!”

One World, One Pain

The spark for Wisconsin’s protests came on February 11th. That was the day the Associated Press published a brief story quoting Walker as saying he would call in the National Guard to crack down on unruly workers upset that their bargaining rights were being stripped away. Labor and other left-leaning groups seized on Walker’s incendiary threat, and within a week there were close to 70,000 protesters filling the streets of Madison.

FULL story at link.

were the outside agitators Scottie was talking about.