I’ve been busy working and protesting and haven’t been able to write much lately. I apologize—I know my friends and family from far away were enjoying my account of what’s going on here!
The last few weeks have been a whirlwind and a roller coaster. I don’t have time to give a full accounting, but here are some highlights.
The protests have continued all this time. Saturdays have been the most exciting, often with 70,000 to 100,000-plus protesters arriving from all over the state. Other protests have also started happening in other states’ capitals in solidarity with ours.
It’s been incredibly moving and inspiring to see the turnout, which has continued to include people from all walks of life and all political persuasions, not just teachers and liberals. Here’s a video posted just today that captures the energy (and music!) of the protests:
And here are a few more pics I’ve taken:
The police were eventually ordered to lock protesters out of the building, despite the police themselves objecting to this and reiterating that they stood with us. So after a couple weeks of occupying “Our House,” the people who’d been staying overnight were evicted along with everyone else.
The protest continued outside in the cold, and it continued to be overwhelmingly peaceful. But the Walker Administration has continued spreading misinformation about the protesters: that we’re out-of-staters, that we’re being paid by the unions; that we’re violent; that we’re unclean. These lies are picked up by Fox News and eagerly devoured by those who support Walker, who desperately want to believe that we don’t deserve to be listened to.
Once, Bill O’Reilly talked about Wisconsin while playing a loop video of violent protesters. Even though he’d said earlier in his program that the videos he was playing were from various places, the clip was clearly meant to paint a deceptive, untrue picture of us—viewers who weren’t paying close attention would be led to assume that the violence was occurring here. Soon afterward, alert watchdogs pointed out there were palm trees in the footage, and it was revealed as a clip from Sacramento, not Wisconsin.
Shortly after O’Reilly’s clip went viral, inflatable and hand-drawn “palm trees” began appearing in Wisconsinites’ protest signs, a poke at those who’re spreading false information about us.
Senate Democrats have continued living out of state, which is especially burdensome for those are older and/or rely on meds they couldn’t take with them when they fled. We’re so grateful for their efforts.
But this past week, Senate Republicans unfortunately figured out how to move the bill forward without them: they could remove its financial items so that they no longer needed a twenty-person quorum to vote on it.
Much to our shock and dismay, the Senate thus passed an amended version of the bill on Wednesday and sent it to the Assembly.
Of course, this move doesn’t make logical sense. At least, not according to the logic Walker and Republicans have been using to justify the bill: that we’re in a fiscal crisis, and that we urgently need to pass this bill to fix the state’s budget. If this is truly a “Budget Repair Bill,” then how is it still urgent to pass it with budget items removed?
But to me and my fellow protesters, their passing the bill this way has laid bare the true reason behind it. It has always been about union-busting.
On Thursday, Assembly Republicans passed the bill too, while Assembly Dems shouted “Shame!” Word spread like wildfire through Madison, and thousands of people dashed to the Capitol to join the protest. The crowd was so angry that Capitol police let them into the building for fear that they’d force their way in otherwise. Police, who were still on our side, didn’t try to remove anyone once they were in.
On Friday, Walker signed the bill into law. That’s not the end of the fight—lawsuits have already begun to stall its implementation—but it was very disheartening news all the same.
After all the energy so many thousands of people have poured into stopping the bill, we ultimately may not have succeeded. Wisconsin’s public-sector unions may indeed be dramatically undermined, and the state will suffer as a result.
Still, protests are ongoing. There was another big one yesterday, Saturday. One of the best highlights was seeing farmers show up in their tractors. I took pictures of the tractor brigade, which had trundled in from far-flung areas in a show of slow-moving, sturdy, rural solidarity. They’re below, some blurry but still worth seeing!
The day gave me reassurance. This isn’t over; we will keep fighting. It’s just a setback.
In a way, what hits home most for me today isn’t the fact that the bill passed. It’s a little article I just read about the Capitol clean-up.
One recent statement from Walker’s administration was that the protesters had done $7.5 million in damage to the Capitol, which sounded outrageous to us. How—did the sleeping bags scratch the marble? How could the signs have done damage, when they were so painstakingly hung with painter’s tape in order to protect the building? How could clean-up cost that much, when clean-up crews had been diligently organized throughout the protest?
Nevertheless, Walker’s supporters often bring up this number, since they consider the Capitol “their house” too. It has provided them with a great reason to hate us. “Those protesters have done $7.5 million in damage to the Capitol; who’s going to pay for that? More taxpayer money!”
Over time, I was almost willing to buy it. I don’t know much about the preservation of old buildings. Maybe it is more expensive to clean even miniscule marks off of a historic building, I thought. I was almost willing to reluctantly shrug this one away.
But then this morning, buried amidst other articles about the bill’s passage, I noticed a Wisconsin State Journal article entitled “State officials say $7 million cleanup of state Capitol was overstated.”
The article says:
State officials admitted Friday that they may have overstated cleanup costs related to the recent two-week state Capitol camp-out by as much as $7 million…and that actual cleanup costs could be as low as $347,500.
That’s right: overestimated by $7 million—i.e., almost the entire estimate. Another article by Politifact rates the original estimate a “Pants On Fire” lie and documents the power of this lie as it was repeated across the country.
Reading these articles made my stomach turn. If one side has to lie so much in order to garner support, I don’t see how they deserve support. It angers me that their supporters so often turn a blind eye to this kind of behavior.
I don’t know what to do with that anger, because I’m becoming friends with some of Walker’s supporters. I value these new friendships, which I hope to write more about later. But at the same time, I still feel so angry. I can’t understand how people can justify supporting someone so clearly dishonest.
How can I have genuine, respectful friendships with the supporters of someone I detest so much? I hope to keep exploring this question in this blog.
