Over-reaching by a novice Republican governor triggers uprising in Wisconsin

Photo courtesy of CWA1101.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

I  called a friend in Madison this evening to get a firsthand report on the uprising by public employees against Republican Gov. Walker’s attempt to deprive them of their bargaining rights. My friend proudly reported that her daughter and her grandson are participating in the protest marches to support Madison’s teachers, police officers, firefighters and other public workers.

In turn I was pleased to tell my friend that along with 75,000 others, I signed a letter of solidarity today with the workers of Wisconsin. We’re trying to reach 125,000 by Monday. You can sign the letter here.

Robert Kuttner, co-founder and co-editor of the American Prospect, gets what’s happening in Madison, and he explains how “organized labor is all about protecting the middle class in general.”

In his article titled “Wisconsin’s Tunisia Moment,” Kuttner writes:

As events in Egypt showed, you never know what will set off mass protest.

Here at home, over-reaching by a novice Republican governor of Wisconsin has finally triggered the protest marches that have been eerily missing during the more than three years of an economic crisis that has savaged the middle and bottom and rewarded the top.

It's not as if we lack a politics of class. As mega-investor Warren Buffett famously said, there is plenty of class warfare in America, but the billionaire class is winning.

This economic crisis, after all, was brought on by excesses on Wall Street. Yet with the rest of the economy still mired in high unemployment and fiscal crises of public services, Wall Street was first to be bailed out, the first to return to exorbitant profitability, and the last to be held accountable.

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