02.17.11
An ‘Egypt’ moment in the US
School districts around Wisconsin canceled classes Thursday as state lawmakers were prepared to pass a momentous bill that would strip government workers of nearly all collective bargaining rights.
The proposal from Republican Gov. Scott Walker has drawn thousands of teachers, students and other demonstrators to the Capitol in protest. The nation’s most aggressive anti-union proposal has been speeding through the Legislature since Walker introduced it a week ago.
Madison schools canceled classes for a second day as teachers prepared spend another day at the Capitol. Dozens of other school districts followed suit Thursday and closed, including La Crosse, Racine, Beaver Dam, Mosinee, Watertown and Stoughton.
The Legislature’s budget committee passed Walker’s bill on a partisan vote just before midnight.
Class war to destroy labor for the benefit of the wealthy, in Wisconsin. And lots and lots of people won’t take it lying down.
And most people could not help but notice the President has been lukewarm on it, much more equivocal that his voice of support for Egyptian protesters.
Whenever your host tested Fox News it was spending all its time portraying the middle class protesters in Wisconsin as public enemies.
DD grew up in a neighborhood in Pennsylvania where all Pine Grove Area school district’s teachers lived. The neighbors on both sides worked at the school.
Even if Wisconsin’s poor man’s Hosni Mubarak from the GOP gets his budget rammed through and strips them of their rights, they can still bring things to a halt by staging a teach-out. An immediate closing of Wisconsin public schools, or at least many of them, would be something to behold.
You can’t sic the National Guard on teachers. You can’t replace them and you can’t threaten them all with jail or mass firings unless prepared to collapse the school system. They have the power of a big collective.
Perhaps it is a moment when the GOP oversteps.
In Britain, there is now a solid anti-austerity protest movement called UK Uncut, aimed at pushing back against the government and big business tax avoidance, which has become a plague in that country.
Wisconsin public workers could lead the way in the US in their drawing of and holding the line. The powerful will need to be threatened by group actions they can’t change through decree.