Estimates of yesterday's crowd have ranged from 70,000 to 120,000, but everyone I spoke to who'd been to the protest on previous days said it was by far the largest crowd yet. (AP Photo.)
My favorite sign (if not the most astute political commentary) of the day was held by a hangdog-sort of fellow in a brown coat: "I'm a huge a--hole, too. Can I be governor next?" (AP Photo)
Second to 100,000 voices singing the national anthem, the second most moving moment of the day came at an SEIU rally in the Inn at the Park, when JoCasta Zamarripa (representing Milwaukee's 8th Assembly District) broke down while recounting the manner in which she was prevented from casting a vote in the seconds-long voting process at 1 a.m Friday morning, after 60 straight hours of "debate" on the Budget Repair Bill in the State Assembly. Zamarripa and her colleagues had gone practically without sleep for three days, proposed 86 amendments (all of them cast aside by the Republican majority), and stood in heroic solidarity with Wisconsin workers, and she and the 24 other Democrats who missed the brief opportunity to vote should be given the opportunity to make their "NO" votes part of the official record. (This is not Ms. Zamarripa, just to clarify. This is Ms. Liberty, silenced and wearing mittens.)
Later in the day, she was blindfolded. (A lot of signs, by the way, really depended on how you pronounced the name "Koch," but all of them to great effect.)
In a crowd filled with teachers, it was fun to watch as a portly middle-aged woman approached a man whose sign read "We took down Nixon" -- spelled with a swastika in place of the X, by the way -- "and we'll take down these motherf-ckers, too!" (Elision mine.) "I don't think it's constructive to use that kind of language," she told the man. "If you don't like it, look away," said the man, who was clearly mad as hell and not taking it anymore. They went on talking for several minutes, peacefully and amicably.
The line to get into the capital rotunda stretched out of the one set of doors they were allowing to remain open, around about a third of the capital, and then out to the street.
When Jimi Hendrix played over the loudspeakers, one old hippy in a puffy blue coat asked us to take his picture while he absolutely shredded on air guitar. While Peter Yarrow played "Blowin' In the Wind" a little later, the sixties vibe was only diminished by winter coats, a complete lack of freedom dancing, and inadequate drugs. It would have been pretty easy to find cholesterol pills and serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors, but LSD was scarce, man, scarce.
Mr. Walker, you're dealing with a class of people who have not only read George Orwell, but know to correctly source their placards.
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I would stress here that it was REALLY cold on Saturday, and still all these people came out, and stayed out, for HOURS.
A big thank you, by the way, to Grampa Jim and Grandma Cathy who offered to watch our kids for the day so that we could go stand with our fellow citizens in Madison. It does indeed take a village to raise a child, and I hope those villages will be able to retain the level of public service that any state or local municipality needs in order to assure the health, safety, and education of its villagers. Solidarity, grandfolks!
One last picture, provided by Prescott, as a shout out to my late and lamented hero.
"And so now I'd like to say - people can change anything they want to. And that means everything in the world. People are running about following their little tracks - I am one of them. But we've all got to stop just following our own little mouse trail. People can do anything - this is something that I'm beginning to learn. People are out there doing bad things to each other. That's because they've been dehumanised. It's time to take the humanity back into the center of the ring and follow that for a time. Greed, it ain't going anywhere. They should have that in a big billboard across Times Square. Without people you're nothing. That's my spiel." -- Joe Strummer, 1952-2002
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2 comments:
Good report Brian. I was there in spirit. Makes me really mad that we have to keep fighting these fights over and over in slightly disguised form. I just wish the voters had cared more about finding out the real Walker story before the election than they did about following the Packers...and that they continue to care enough to see that the Citizens United decision by the Supremes gets fixed. There, in essence, is the real culprit -- greed money. Making the world safe for total greed.
My dad was also unable to vote.
He was, in fact, next in line to speak, and the R running the session had just assured him that he would be able to speak. (In case their ability to directly lie to someone's face was in doubt.)
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