Report from Wisconsin: This is What Democracy Looks Like

Report from Wisconsin: This is What Democracy Looks Like

by Tula Connell, Feb 26, 2011

This is a ground report from Wiscsonsin by Harvey J. Kaye, crossposted from New Deal 2.0. Kaye is the Rosenberg Professor of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and the author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America. A member of the National Writers Union/UAW, he is currently writing The Four Freedoms and the Promise of America. Follow him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HarveyJKaye.

JUSTICE — GOVERNMENT — LEGISLATION — LIBERTY. Choose the order in which to recite them. Those are themes of the four murals that adorn the Capitol Rotunda in Madison, Wisconsin and surround the throngs of citizens who have gathered for many days now to protest and, we hope, block passage of the anti-labor, indeed, anti-democratic Budget Repair Bill proposed by Governor Scott Walker. It’s a bill that not only slashes public workers’ incomes, but also strips them/us of their/our democratic rights to bargain collectively.

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Moving with others into the Rotunda area, beneath the great dome, I could not help but look up and around, and what I saw and heard made me tearful, joyfully so: throngs of people, the four murals above, the many signs that read “Beam Scotty Up,” “Scott Walker is a Weasel, Not a Badger,” “Forward! Never Backwards!,” “The People Own this BLDG, the Kochs Own Walker,” “I’m Sorry if My Rights are an Inconvenience for You,” and “Stop the Class War Against Workers!,” and the banners of diverse Wisconsin unions.

At the center of it all was the “People’s Microphone” (smartly managed by a group of young people whom I assumed were members of UW-Madison’s Graduate Assistants Union). There, one-by-one, people young and old spoke: students, Wisconsin unionists, and labor delegations from around the USA. Teenagers spoke in support of their teachers and parents. Workers of every trade decried the Republicans’ so-called Budget Repair Bill and the corruption of democracy by billionaires such as the Koch Brothers; recounted how their own parents and grandparents struggled to organize unions and secure their democratic rights; and declared their determination. Folks from New York, Florida, Michigan, and points west registered their own unions’ solidarity with Wisconsin.

Each little speech garnered rousing cheers — and regularly everyone broke into “Kill the bill!” But just as regularly, and just as enthusiastically and tunefully, we all sang out with “This is what Democracy looks like!” accompanied by young drummers beating out the rhythm on large white plastic containers.

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