(Wisconsin protesters singing Solidarity Forever)
They’ve changed the laws in Wisconsin, but we only lose if people stop fighting. And it is a we. ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ is not just a slogan, but a statement of fact. If people stop fighting, if Walker wins, then gains that organised workers are a bit less secure, not just in the US, but anywhere where past struggles have won us anything, but the reverse is also true. Already the Wisconsin protesters have shown us that a fightback much stronger than anyone imagined is possible.
I don’t live in near an American state capital, but if you do there will be a rally at your capitol buildings at midday Thursday 12 of March, and more action to come. I’ll try and keep a little more up to date of solidarity action, and maybe even write a bit more about the fight itself, and why they’re so very important.
But I think this video explains it well enough:
(The Pickers’ Local 608 perform Billy Bragg’s There is power in a union)
Take it easy, but take it Wisconsin.
SATURDAY the 12th, please. The Wisconsin teachers are going back to their classrooms today (Thursday) and tomorrow (Friday) and coming out again for the rally on SATURDAY.
Pingback: Wisconsin Republicans vote against collective bargaining for public workers.
I listened to the music. “Down with the Governor” sounds very impressive. The song invokes factory and mine workers. But the thing to remember is that this is not a fight against a bunch of highly privileged wealthy executives to protect the wages of factory and mine workers. It’s not a fight against the Governor. It’s not his money. He works on a fixed salary (which I’ll bet is exceeded by some of the union bosses) and gets no management bonuses or stock options for keeping wages low.
No, this is a fight against the taxpayers. It’s a fight to protect wages, medical benefits and pensions that exceed what the majority of those taxpayers themselves have. And a general government worker strike (yes, you don’t mention such, but it’s been rumored and is the big weapon a union has) doesn’t shut down a factory or mine involving only those workers and those owners. It shuts down schools and cops and fire departments and the DMV. That touches everybody – again, most of whom would love to have the wages and benefits and the ability to retire at 50 or 55 – and in the case of a strike by the cops and fire departments stands a good chance of getting someone killed.
So, good luck on that. As much as the left desperately tries to gloss over or ignore this, there is a difference between a public workers’ union and a private workers’ union, and that’s about to become apparent.
I’m just wondering what took the Governor and the Wisconsin GOP so long. The strategy of taking the financial components of this bill out to reduce the needed quorum to a majority plus one has been talked about in the right blogosphere for a week. Now you know how the right felt when the ACA was pushed through the House and Senate. At least everyone got to read this bill, we didn’t have someone telling the taxpayers they’d have to pass the bill into law to know what was in it.
Your naivete is touching, Ron. How much money do you think Walker gets from highly privileged wealthy executives for his campaigns? What do you think his future economic prospects are if he makes those highly privileged wealthy executives happy?
Also, the union made the economic concessions asked of them, the Governor gave tens of millions of dollars of tax breaks to highly privileged wealthy executives and the corporations for which they work.
This is, as Maia rightly points out, an attack on all workers by highly privileged wealthy people. They are trying to limit the leverage workers have in the future, nothing less. As has been pointed out over and over, the unions conceded everything asked for in negotiations over salary and benefits. Walker is now trying to get rid of negotiating leverage for the unions – something that has nothing to do with the current budget deficit.
Public opinion in the US seems to be in favor of the unions in Wisconsin.
No, this is a fight against the taxpayers
No it’s not. It’s, perhaps, on some level, a fight against really, really stupid taxpayers who expect to get something for nothing, but not against taxpayers in general. Frankly, I’d like a list of Republican voters, because I’m pretty sure I could sell them a bridge or maybe get them to give me their bank account numbers so that I can send them the money my mother, the late queen of Lithuania, left me.
Seriously, people, you can’t get something for nothing! Not in business, not in government. If you want decent schools and good teachers, you have to pay them! This costs MONEY! Cutting taxes does NOT raise revenue, no matter what the Republicans would have you believe.
Wisconsin didn’t even have a budget problem until they elected the current set of fiscal idiots. Their budget was balanced, their pensions paid up in full. Then this brainless pratt of a governor cut taxes for no reason except to pander to particularly clueless rich people (see above). Suddenly, there’s a problem. And not even that much of a problem: he could have just dealt with the fact that there’s a recession (can we say “depression” yet?) on and run a small debt until the economy recovers.
The teachers of Wisconsin were promised a certain pension when they were hired. Taking that back is no better than the governor breaking into their bank accounts and stealing their money on the grounds that he was just taking back the wages he paid them. Forcing people to work for nothing, even in retrospect, has been illegal in the US for nearly 150 years. Walker needs to get dragged into at least the late 19th century, if he can’t manage the 20th or 21st.
Recall election. Soon. For all responsible Republicans. It’s the only way to go. I’ve made my donation. Anyone else care to?
Public opinion in the US seems to be in favor of the unions in Wisconsin.
As does public opinion in Wisconsin. Which is why the Rethugs took this to a closed session (literally kicked everyone out of the capitol in order to ram through their undemocratic and unsupported act of idiocy). Apparently, much to the disgust of the local law enforcement officials.
Heck, when even Fox News is willing to say you’re an over conservative idiot then you’re definitively an over conservative idiot. Walker and all his little friends need to be kicked out and never rehired for any position. Let them live on welfare.
I don’t see how the passage of this bill into law makes those executives happy. I can see how it makes the vast majority of the people who voted for Governor Walker and the 18 Senators and the however-many Assembly members that voted for it happy. Those are the people who are going to pay out the money it takes to make those pensions good and who use the services that the public employees provide. Those are the people who stand to benefit here, not the wealthy executives. The wealthy executives have no problem in keeping their tax burden within bounds. The taxpayers in general don’t.
I’ve heard about these tax breaks but haven’t looked into them. I’d have to look at them to see what I think, but I’ll certainly grant you that it may well be that unmerited special privileges might have been proposed in the financial portions of the original bill and that they should be condemned. Of course, since they affect revenue and expenditures they were not, in fact, part of the bill that was just passed into law So that’s a moot point and is irrelevant to a discussion on this bill.
Again – when public employees get higher wages, they do so at the expense of taxpayers, not wealthy executives. When they get to avoid the legal Ponzi scheme that is Social Security and invest the money into their own pensions instead, it’s the taxpayers that pay. When they get to retire at 50 or 55 it’s the taxpayers that support them by working until they’re 65 or 70. When they strike it’s the taxpayers that have necessary services withheld from them.
Polls show a lot of things depending on what questions are asked and what the pollsters claim they mean. We’ll see what happens in the next election cycle. Remember the example of the ACA – once the law is passed it’s difficult to repeal it if you don’t hold both houses and the executive.
It’s hard not to be depressed about the situation in Madison, but realizing that it’s being replayed in state houses all over America should be all the incentive we need to get off our butts and raise hell about this.
One more time, this isn’t about collective bargaining or budgets or teachers’ pay… it’s a nationwide strategy designed by the Koch Brothers and their corporate whores to cripple organized labor, and in doing so, to cripple the fundraising and campaign arms of the Democratic Party. If they can remove the funding and campaign workers by destroying labor, they won’t have any opposition to their polluting industries and social agenda. Simple as that.
We ignore these events at our own peril, and for decades to come.
Again – when public employees get higher wages, they do so at the expense of taxpayers, not wealthy executives.
In the same sense that when you give your employees a raise they do so at your expense. Yet employers have been known, sometimes even of their own free will and without a union pushing them, to raise wages. Why might that be?
1. Well paid employees are less likely to be disgruntled, more likely to work to their best ability, and less likely to “work to rule”.
2. Well paid employees tend to spend less time in job searches, i.e. you can keep your best employees by paying them well.
3. Some employers might even have vague feelings about the need to pay their employees a living wage and benefits that allow them to live comfortably and healthily, just because it’s the right thing to do.
4. Particularly in the case of government employers, who is more likely to resist a bribe if offered: a well paid, happy employee or one who is barely surviving on their current income and feels so screwed over by the state that they have no loyalty anyway?
If taxpayers want to act like pre-Christmas Carol Ebenezer Scrooges and underpay their employees, they’re likely to get a bunch of disgruntled employees who spend a lot of time looking for jobs in Iowa or Minnesota, don’t bother to do the least thing outside their job description, and are ready to accept the first bribe that comes their way.
Public unions and well paid state employees are protection against corruption and incompetence. Think twice before undoing that.
Dianne –
You are simply wrong on a host of facts.
Wisconsin’s current budget deficit has nothing to do with tax cuts. There are some tax breaks for businesses going forward; whether those will help or hurt the state remains to be seen. The current deficit is real and has nothing to do with the new administration. Although some irresponsible left-wing pundits have continued to make this assertion, more responsible journalists have acknowledged this, over and over.
State governments cannot just “run a small debt”; they have to balance their budgets. They can issue bonds or take out short-term debt, but those bonds have to be paid back and not via “quantitative easing” or similar fiat trickery. Kicking today’s operational budget deficit down the road simply makes next year’s problems that much worse, as California has learned to its profound sorrow. Wisconsin is, in fact, in relatively good shape as state governments go, and their pension fund is in relatively good shape. They are trying to keep it that way by making small adjustments today instead of bankrupting tomorrow.
Nobody is taking away the pension of Wisconsin’s teachers. Nobody is requiring anybody to “work for nothing”. The idea that Walker’s very modest imposition of a tiny contribution towards pension and healthcare funds is the same as stealing everything these people have is risible. To compare them with the actions of 19th century robber-baron capitalists (who did things like murdering union organizers) is similarly unserious.
If you think that the rather mild rollback of union influence in Wisconsin is worthy of this type of reaction, I fear for your stability when the much more drastic changes that other states are being forced to make – forced by fiscal reality, not by deranged Republican bloodthirstiness – start coming online.
“Wisconsin’s current budget deficit has nothing to do with tax cuts. ”
Flat. Out. Lie. He gave tax cuts to corps and wealthy friends to the tune of $140 million. Then, magically, there’s a $137 million deficeit that can only be repaired by robbing unions whos members are largely women of their collective bargaining rights.
And, even after the unions offered up exactly the concessions he wanted in order to retain their collective bargaining rights, he refused.
This has always been about union busting, screwing over women, by worthless Walkers Kochsucker.
@Squatlo –
So are you saying that without involuntary contributions of time and money from government workers, Democratic politicians don’t have enough organic support among the population to be viable?
Robert, going to cite your sources that say that Koch’s little puppet’s $140 million tax cut didn’t fuel the state’s $137 million deficit?
@Oy veh –
Walker’s tax cuts do not go into effect until July of this year. The current short-term deficit relates to past and present spending.
Politifact, which is slightly liberal in outlook but has always been extremely fair from what I can see, has an excellent collection of fact-checking on the claims being made by both sides here: http://politifact.com/wisconsin/article/2011/mar/03/fact-checking-wisconsin-budget-battle/
They have a thorough debunking of the “Walker’s cuts = the current deficit” misconception here:
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/feb/18/rachel-maddow/rachel-maddow-says-wisconsin-track-have-budget-sur/
So my post is not a “flat. out. lie.”, it is in fact completely correct and you are wrong on that issue.
Also, how is this democracy?
Relevant quote: “By preventing people from entering the capitol building Thursday morning, the police also denied entry to legislators, including at least two Democratic Assembly members — David Cullen and Elizabeth Coggs.
Mr. Cullen was turned away even after displaying his Assembly identification.”
@Dianne –
Cited above. The relevant copy from Politifact:
“The tax cuts will cost the state a projected $140 million in tax revenue — but not until the next two-year budget, from July 2011 to June 2013. The cuts are not even in effect yet, so they cannot be part of the current problem.
Here’s the bottom line:
There is fierce debate over the approach Walker took to address the short-term budget deficit. But there should be no debate on whether or not there is a shortfall. While not historically large, the shortfall in the current budget needed to be addressed in some fashion. Walker’s tax cuts will boost the size of the projected deficit in the next budget, but they’re not part of this problem and did not create it.”
@Oy veh –
One other thing. I understand your disdain for Governor Walker and, while I am on the other side of the issue, appreciate your (and others’) commitment to unions as a form of social organization. (Indeed, in the private sector, while I don’t buy the conclusions of pro-union supporters that a union workforce is a better workforce, I strongly support the right of private individuals to organize themselves as they see fit.)
Regardless of the strength of your feeling, however, I really do not appreciate – and in fact, find hateful – your use of homophobic rhetoric and anti-gay putdowns of Walker. I am sure that “Kochsucker” seems hilariously funny to the 14-year old who invented it; it does not seem hilariously funny to me. Kindly refrain from that crap when you are posting here, because it is not generally welcomed in this group of people, even when applied to people whose politics the owners of this blog find distasteful. I have no moderation power and cannot speak for any of the people who post here – but I am a member of the community and feel quite confident in asserting that my distaste for this kind of bigoted language is widely shared.
Indeed, in the private sector, while I don’t buy the conclusions of pro-union supporters that a union workforce is a better workforce, I strongly support the right of private individuals to organize themselves as they see fit.
Total anecdote, but…I live in an area where there are several retail stores with unionized labor forces and several without. The workers at the unionized stores are consistently competent and friendly. The ones at the non-unionized stores rarely seem to be able to figure out how to work the cash register and hardly seem willing to do so, even if they can. Guess which one gets most of my business? It’s probably just ideological, though, right?
The police are trying to manage a mob scene, Dianne. As they are broadly if mildly on the side of the protesters, I find it unlikely that they were trying to keep Democratic assembly members out of the chamber as a matter of policy; they were engaged in crowd control and some cop on the line got told “don’t let anybody through this door” and didn’t make the necessary jump of logic “but obviously state representatives can come in, they work here”.
Guess which one gets most of my business? It’s probably just ideological, though, right?
I have no idea and less interest. It is completely tangential to the topic at hand.
Robert is right that the Wisconsin budget was in deficit even before Walker rammed through additional tax cuts (“whether those will help or hurt the state remains to be seen.” — shamefully stupid comment, Robert, given that we are talking about state revenue. Gee, do tax cuts help or hurt state revenues?).
However, that is irrelevant to the issue at hand. The bill approved by the state senate yesterday is explicitly not about budget deficits. It is about restricting the ability of public employee unions to collectively bargain. It doesn’t have anything to do with the pay of state workers. It is purely an anti-worker bill, not a pro-tax-payers-who-want-something-for-nothing bill.
Robert,
Aren’t you banned from posting in Maia’s threads?
I have no idea and less interest. It is completely tangential to the topic at hand.
Not at all. It’s in direct response to your comment, “…I don’t buy the conclusions of pro-union supporters that a union workforce is a better workforce,” I responded with evidence, albeit anecdotal, that unionized workers are better workers. This follows naturally from the supposition that happy, well paid workers make better workers. In the ideal world, employers would recognize their own self interest and duty to their fellow beings and keep wages and benefits high without the need for unions. In the real world…
The bill approved by the state senate yesterday is explicitly not about budget deficits.
Indeed, it can’t be: they don’t have a quorum. It can only about union busting qua union busting. Recall election. Now.
Gee, do tax cuts help or hurt state revenues?
Depends on the nature of the tax cut and the level of taxation and the surrounding economic climate. If it brings IBM in with a million new workers, it’s revenue-positive.
Aren’t you banned from posting in Maia’s threads?
Not that I know of. Mandolin’s threads, yes.
So now, what happens with the 14 Wisconsin Democratic Senators who are residing in Illinois right now? The bill limiting the collective bargaining rights for public employees has passed, and the prevention of that was what they fled into Illinois for. Gov. Walker has told them that either the budget bill gets passed or people get laid off, and it seems pretty clear to me that he means it. Do they stay in Illinois? To what purpose?
If it brings IBM in with a million new workers, it’s revenue-positive.
I’m not and never have been a CEO, but if I were a CEO looking for a place with low taxes and cheap workers, I wouldn’t bother with the US at all. I’d go straight to China or maybe Korea. If I wanted educated workers who knew what they were doing and a place with a decent social system, I’d go to…Sweden. Hmm…I’m not helping Wisconsin much at all, am I? But really if the business requires well educated employees, it’s NOT going to want to be in Wisconsin right now.
Actually, Dianne, they did have a quorum. For that kind of bill. Wisconsin’s constitution requires a “50% + 1” quorum for most bills, but a higher one for bills that affect the raising of revenue or expenditures.
Because they have good reasons to do so. In fact, consider that only about what, <10% or so of private workers are unionized? And yet they mostly get raises. It seems to me your comment and the reasons that follow it are arguments for why public employee unions are unnecessary, not why they're needed. Again, I have no problems with private workers forming unions.
Perhaps. But we’re talking about union workers here, not well-paid ones of any stripe. Are you seriously going to hold that unionized public employees with the protection of convoluted dismissal procedures are less likely to “work to rule” than non-unionized employees? That’s a hot one.
Straw man. No one is proposing this. What’s being proposed is that a) their wages and benefits be brought in line with those of the people who are paying them, and b) their ability to withhold services from those people in order to pressure politicians to give away the taxpayers money to fund higher wages and benefits be limited.
Squatlo:
If teachers and cops and sanitation workers and DMV clerks want to contribute money and time to candidates they can do so without a union. What a union can do that an individual can’t is to force an individual to contribute money to a candidate they don’t favor by taking their union dues and giving it to that candidate.
Dianne, if you want to talk about people taking action to prevent democracy you might want to read Ann Althouse’s blog. She’s a lawyer living in Madison and she and her husband have been at the State capitol throughout this whole thing.
Dianne:
Nope. Wisconsin law says you have to wait until the official is a year into their term.
Oy veh:
Maia, I’m surprised you’ve let this go.
I haven’t noticed any problems with the non-union stores where I live. I suspect that there’s a bit of confirmation bias going on here, but maybe not.
One of my objections to unionizing low-skill labor is that it makes a viable full-time career out of a job that could be done just or nearly as well by a student working part-time. As a society, we lose out when people who could be doing higher-marginal-productivity work stick it out in a lower-marginal-productivity job because it pays an inflated union wage.
Dianne:
“Rethugs?” Really?
It just means that Fox News employs a leftist. I took a quick look at Sally Kohn’s blog and didn’t see any evidence that she’s anything other than a standard-issue leftist. Let me know if you find any.
You’re not really saying anything of substance here. Everyone agrees that government should spend the right amount of money. The disagreement is over what the right amount of money is. Did you know that in 1980, before the madness that is Reaganomics took hold of our country, state and local government spending was 11.8% of GDP, and that it’s now 14%? Were things really so terrible in 1980 that we couldn’t go back to that, especially in light of the fact that real per capita GDP has increased dramatically since 1980?
As for your predictions about what will come to pass if we don’t pay government employees union wages, take a look at this.
Down here in Arkansas, a “right to work state,” we went anti-union a long time ago. Maybe some of you should drive down here and see how that’s working out for us.
One of the lowest literacy levels in the nation. Lots of guns & god, though. Lots of teen pregnancy, too. No fluoride in the water — someone told Jim Bob’s cousin or someone it was a communist conspiracy, I think, so we’re all agin it — and no money for dental insurance, so plenty of my students are missing teeth (no, I am not kidding). I’m teaching at a university where 15% of our students are TAA students — here because they have been laid-off from factories that have sent their jobs overseas. Some of these were union jobs. Gone now.
We’re training (not educating, believe me) these students for jobs that will pay six or ten or maybe twelve dollars an hour. Not union jobs. Hell no.
Do you think any factories are coming here? Sometimes they’ll come and look around. But we’ve got like an 11% literacy rate in some counties. (When you’re not paying your teachers shit, what do you think happens? Yeah, the good ones, any of them who can, go to some state that will pay them decently, some state with unions. Who is left to teach but the crap teachers? Oh, yes, and the saints. How many teachers are saints?) Would you bring your factory to a state where most of the workers were illiterate?
We won’t even get into the lack of infrastructure, medical/dental facilities, decent housing, school buildings, libraries, and I could go on.
If you want to see what most of America will look like if the Republicans have their way, come on down. Start in Fort Smith and drive on down highway 61 through the Delta. I double-dog dare you.
Per report from a friend in Wisconsin, it seems that the union busting bill excludes two specific public unions: firefighters and police. Why, you might ask, are they excluded? After all, if we don’t want teachers striking or threatening to strike, how much less do we want firefighters or police officers doing the same? The critical difference is that these unions (or prominent members thereof-I’m not quite sure which) contributed to Walker’s election campaign.
So whatever the merits of Ron and Robert’s arguments against public unions, they are irrelevant to the situation in Wisconsin. Walker isn’t against public unions, he’s against public unions that don’t contribute to his campaign.
delagar:
You’re asserting a cause/effect relationship?
First – based on your comment Arkansas wasn’t always a right to work state. So tell me, what were the literacy rates and all those other things when it wasn’t a right to work state?
What are all those things like in other right to work states? How do they compare to other non-right to work states? What other factors affect things like teen pregnancy?
This is an absurd assertion.
Dianne:
Maybe because it’s harder to recruit people to risk death or dismemberment for your safety and protection. Maybe they deserve special privileges compared to a DMV clerk or trash hauler. I’ll certainly support that they should have special privileges, e.g., defined benefit pensions rather than defined contribution ones.
Delagar and Dianne, you seem to be asserting that states with public unions will attract better teachers and the students will therefore benefit. The Iowahawk link that Brandon cites directly contradicts that. BTW, Brandon, kudos to you. I had seen it and wanted to cite it here, but I couldn’t remember where I’d seen it. For the rest of you, check it out.
What it shows is that Texas, with no teacher unions, does a better job of educating students as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) that’s given to 4th and 8th graders around the country than unionized Wisconsin does. Tell me again how public teacher unions benefit the kids?
What it shows is that Texas, with no teacher unions, does a better job of educating students as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) that’s given to 4th and 8th graders around the country than unionized Wisconsin does.
Texas? Seriously, you’re citing the TEXAS educational system as an example of success?
I went to school in Texas. It wasn’t pretty. Admittedly, that was years ago, when they simply taught nothing. Now, they do teach something: how to score well on the standardized tests. Friends with kids in Texas schools report that their kids spend the day being drilled in how to take the test and learn virtually nothing else. Kids come out able to pass the test, but hating everything about school and thinking that learning is nothing more than memorization and drills. Not really an optimal outcome for a world where lifelong learning can be critical to success.
The critical difference is that these unions (or prominent members thereof-I’m not quite sure which) contributed to Walker’s election campaign.
No, they didn’t.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/wisconsin-police-and-firefighters-didnt-endorse-walker/
5 police and firefighters locals and union groups (not all of them were unions, some were just associations) endorsed Walker. 309 endorsed his opponent.
In terms of group size, the large and powerful statewide organizations endorsed his opponent. It was smaller local entities that endorsed him.
http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/feb/21/donna-brazile/donna-brazile-says-unions-supported-scott-walker-a/
You know, it’s not like this information is hard to find.
Walker’s stated reason for excluding them was that he feared disorderly behavior – for example, work walkouts and mass protests – from the disempowered unions, and couldn’t take that risk with cops and firefighters. Teachers do job walkouts, it’s one thing, cops doing it is quite another.
Not a principled position, but in light of events perhaps a prescient one.
I went to school in Texas. It wasn’t pretty. Admittedly, that was years ago, when they simply taught nothing.
I have a snarky response overload.
As I understand it, in many states it is illegal for emergency services personnel to strike. I don’t know if that’s the case already in Wisconsin.
Grace
Strikes are illegal for public-sector workers in Wisconsin.
In addition, the recently-passed bill gives the governor power to summarily fire state workers who are absent/missing for three days during a declared emergency, which certainly seems to add some teeth to the (usually pretty weak) anti-strike law(s).
Dianne:
I don’t know if it’s an example of educational success. I know it’s an example that discredits the hypothesis that teachers’ unions mean better teachers and better schools.
And yet here you are, able to read and write. So they must have taught something. Unless all those “If you can read this, thank a teacher” signs we see at teacher union rallies are in fact meaningless.
Now, they do teach something: how to score well on the standardized tests. Friends with kids in Texas schools report ….
Anecdotal.
Dianne:
People neither expect nor have proposed to get something for nothing.
See above.
No one has proposed taking back any pension benefits that have already been earned.
Reducing collective bargaining rights and requiring employees to contribute about 1/4 what private employees contribute and about 1/2 of what Federal employees contribute to health care and pensions = slavery.
Dianne, you need to make a choice. Do you want to just repeat radical leftist rhetoric or do you want to be taken seriously?
Maia: IIRC you live in New Zealand. Have you or yours been affected/threatened by a tsunami? Are you O.K.?
I’m pleased to report that the entire state of Wisconsin came out to organize and fight (in a peaceful, non-violent way, of course) today! It was an amazing wonderful rally in Madison today.
Yeah, nonviolence is great.
Stop trolling, Robert. That’s an isolated incident which does not in any way reflect upon the broader leftist/pro-union movement in general. At least, not in the way a similar threat against a left-wing politician or union leader would reflect on the broader conservative/anti-union movement.
Were that guy’s emails part of the protest that Kristen was reporting? Or were we starting a new theme within this thread?
Well, Kristen is claiming the entire state of Wisconsin for her side, so presuming the murder threat comes from a Wisconsite…
My apologies – you are correct, Robert – of course the entire state is not in agreement with me. I should have said “100,000 of us” came out to protest. The point I was hoping to make was that these have been remarkably peaceful demonstrations.
I figured as much, Kristen, I’m just tweaking Jake.
Although, just out of curiosity, what do you think the reaction would have been from the left if the peaceful Tea Party protests included things like drawing dead-body outlines of Obama?
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2058601,00.html
There would have been an entirely different reaction, not without reason. The prominent media voices right now are right wing voices and many of those voices use violent rhetoric regularly. There are no prominent left wing voices of whom I’m aware that use violent rhetoric on a regular (or even occasional) basis.
The prominent left(ish) wing media voices that I’ve heard have made fun of things like a protester comparing Walker to Hitler. I don’t remember the Junkie doing that to any Tea Party protester.
But I don’t do a lot of listening to commentators from either wing, so my observations may not jibe with the reality.
Right. When your side does it, it doesn’t count. Because your side is peaceful, which you can prove by the fact that your side never does it.
Robert, I didn’t click on the link but I’m assuming it was something offensive.
These protests were a great teaching experience for me and my children. Although 99.9% of the signs and chants were peaceful, appropriate and non-violent, there was that .01% that was not. We had many conversations about how it is never ever OK to:
1) compare anyone to Hitler unless he/she is engaging in genocide
2) indicate a desire to kill or harm anyone, no matter how much we disagree with them
You are going to have to trust me that 99.9% of the chants and signs complied with those rules. And the ones that didn’t provided a valuable teaching-moment for me. I think we are always going to have extreme people on both sides. My tactic is to ignore them, if possible.
I was very surprised at how non-violent these protests were. I expected more inappropriate signs/chants/actions than we had.
Yes, Robert. That’s exactly what I said. Your rephrasing is perfect.