Mar
Sister Cities
A Report Back from the Rebellion in Madison
By the Madison-Arcatao Sister City Project
The last weeks here in Madison have been a unique experience for us. Last November we had an election in which a conservative named Scott Walker became the governor of Wisconsin. Even before he took office on Jan. 4, he began implementing an agenda that favored the rich rather than taking into account us common citizens, with the idea of enriching the corporations that represent the interests of the wealthy.
We have seen a conservative business attack that aims to privatize the entire social sector. Neoliberal programs, such as were imposed on you and other countries, have come home to roost, to privatize social sectors and quash unions here in the US.
Among his conservative policies, one of Walker’s most reactionary was a proposal to take away the rights of public sector unions to engage in collective bargaining. His justification was that there was a big hole in the budget, but it was a hole that Walker himself had just created with his policies of lowering taxes for the corporations and the people with the most resources, and taking those resources away from those who needed them the most. He tried to set public sector workers against private sector workers, arguing that public workers should not have benefits and pensions that normal private sector workers do not have. But behind the scenes he was pushing legislation that takes resources away from the majority of us and give them to the rich.
February 14, Valentine’s Day, a group of university students came to the governor’s office with a Valentine’s Day card. From this small start, we the people began to gather in the Capitol building to protest the governor’s policies. Soon we reached the point where groups of us spent days and nights inside the Capitol building. We organized food and medical attention, and we even received financial support from all parts of the world.
In order to stop the attack against our rights, 14 Democratic senators left for the state of Illinois so there would not be a quorum here and the budget could not be passed. Finally, in an illegal and extra-constitutional move, the Republicans voted in favor of the bill without the necessary quorum. Within a few hours, thousands of people converged on the Capitol in opposition to the Republican actions.After a number of weeks, with ever growing demonstrations, on March 12 more than 150,000 people rallied at the Capitol in opposition to the Republican policies. In other words, we had the equivalent of more than half the population of Madison out in the streets standing up for the rights of the working class.
When all is said and done, we did lose the smaller battle because the Republicans were able to take away the collective bargaining rights of public sector workers. But because of this crisis and confrontation we have witnessed an unprecedented change of political consciousness that spread throughout civil society, not only here in Wisconsin, but throughout the country. We are seeing the birth of a new movement in which different sectors that had never united before are coming together to change the political landscape of our society. Our sister community Arcatao would be proud of us.
Now we will see if we can proceed forward on this path that we have started down these last several weeks. Our group, MASCP, was very active in the protests inside and outside the Capitol building. We have decided to start a campaign to divest from M & I Bank, a key financial supporter of Governor Walker. We pulled our closed our group's bank account at the bank and protested in front of the bank on March 24th and we will continue to work on encouraging others to do the same at a statewide level. As the former Chilean president Salvador Allende said, "history is ours and we the people make it".
