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Wisconsin union protests larger than any Tea party rally
03.14.2011
10:25 pm
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Via The Raw Story:

Police estimated that more than 100,000 people flooded the streets around the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison Saturday, making the turnout larger than any of the fledgling Tea Party’s rallies. The largest turnout for a Tea Party rally is the estimated crowd of 60,000 to 70,000 people who marked in Washington, D.C. during the group’s September 12, 2009 demonstration.

The 2009 Tea Party rally’s crowd size is also notable for the controversy that surrounded it. ABC News published a piece claiming conservative activists had told them that 1 million to 1.5 million people turned out at the rally, when the corrected number was only a fraction of that size.

Below, an amazing time lapse document of events in Madison. Comprised of 2940 photos of protesters on the square.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.14.2011
10:25 pm
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Live from the class war in Madison, Wisconsin!
03.12.2011
03:26 pm
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Live video feeds from the pro-labor protests in Madison, Wisconsin. Want to see history being made? Tune in, this is the most important development in American life in many decades. If you don’t understand why, you need to educate yourself and pay more attention. You can support the effort to fire Gov. Scott Walker and his Republican cronies by contributing to the official PCCC Wisconsin Recall campaign via ActBlue. Even if you can only give $3, every little bit helps.

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.12.2011
03:26 pm
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“MOVE YOUR MONEY!” Union firefighters shut down Wisconsin bank that supported Republicans/Walker
03.12.2011
02:41 pm
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Firefighters know that sometimes you have to fight fire with fire and they’re taking steps to make sure that the obscene fatcats who run Wisconsin’s Marshall & Ilsley Corp (a bank holding company) understand exactly what’s at stake in labor’s fight against an increasingly backed-against-the-wall Scott Walker and the Republicans: The survival of their own incomes. There’s no question about it, they’ve got these assholes by the balls. Why should the working people of Wisconsin entrust their hard-earned savings to the very people who are helping screw them over? Here’s more from Daily Kos:

What these pictures show are six hundred ordinary citizens descending on the M&I branch near the Wisconsin Capitol after learning of their purchase of the gubernatorial election last November. Two firefighters with old school ideas about saving had over $600,000 between the two of them and they demanded cashier’s checks on the spot.

Not everyone has the purchase price of a couple of homes sitting in the bank, but if the 60% of Wisconsin that’s sick to death of Scott Walker’s behavior simply go close their accounts the bank will crash and they’ll have stripped him of the funds he needs to fight the recall next January.

 
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M&I closed for the rest of the day, obviously hoping to avoid a run on their bank. As if that will ultimately matter! The power is—clearly—NOT in the hands of the elite this time, is it? In a sense, it never was. It’s about time the man on the street realized that.

This is a brilliant tactical move. I hope this hand is played for everything it’s worth! More from Dane101.com

When the firefighters arrived at the Capitol this morning they started the chant “MOVE YOUR MONEY!” Firefighters Local 311 President Joe Conway told the audience they should move their money out of M&I Bank. The bank was one of the leading contributors to the Walker campaign due to contributions by current and former executives and board members. Detailed contributions are available via the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. In a statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last month the bank said “Individual employees may choose, at their own discretion and based on their political beliefs, to make contributions to political campaigns.”

Following speeches by Conway and Wisconsin Professional Firefighters Association Mahlon Mitchell, the firefighters marched to the M&I Bank across the street and picketed the bank and withdrew $192,00. Video of the firefighters arriving this morning and part of Conway’s speech is posted below.

M&I Bank received $1.7 billion in bailout money via President George W. Bush’s Troubled Assets Relief Program. The bank was acquired by the Bank of Montreal in December of 2010 for $4.1 billion in stock.

 

 
Wanna get even angrier? Read more about Marshall & IlsleyI: This Bank Executive Took TARP Money, Never Paid It Back, And Now He’ll Get $18 Million If He’s Fired (Business Insider)

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.12.2011
02:41 pm
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Democracy trampled: Watch the working man in Wisconsin get screwed over in real time
03.11.2011
08:10 pm
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Boy, considering what this is—and how utterly appalling it is—not all that many views so far. Watch in horror as decades of hard-fought labor gains are done away with within a matter of minutes by some over-reaching Republican bastards politicians in Wisconsin… Did anyone actually see any of this on TV? I didn’t.
 

 
Thank you Chris Musgrave!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.11.2011
08:10 pm
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Real road sign in Wisconsin?
03.11.2011
05:49 pm
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Contribute now to the official PCCC Wisconsin Recall campaign!

After ignoring the public and voting to attack working families, Wisconsin’s Republican state senators need to be punished. We are mobilizing volunteers and preparing new TV, radio, and online ads that urge the recall of vulnerable Republican senators—can you chip in $3 to our recall fund?

Via Mike Hudack

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.11.2011
05:49 pm
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Stephen King takes a stand against the class war in America
03.10.2011
04:27 pm
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Millionaire author Stephen King (who came from humble beginnings) on the Tea party, union-busting Republican weenies and why rich people like him should pay at least half of their income in taxes. Taped on March 8th at the “Awake the State” rally in Sarasota, Florida.

“And remember, when these people talk to you about it, if you like your weekend, thank a union guy. If you like a 40-hour week, thank a union guy. If you like a day’s honest pay for a day’s honest work, thank a union guy!”

Good on Stephen King. He’s a stand-up guy and a good American.
 

 
Via Cynical-C

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.10.2011
04:27 pm
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Should there be a General Strike?
03.10.2011
02:57 pm
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There’s been a lot of talk today of how there should be a general strike to support the public unions of Wisconsin. I was raised in a union family, my father worked at the telephone company and was a member of the C.W.A. (Communications Workers of America). I’ve been a member of two unions myself, first the UFCW (I worked in a grocery store as a teen) and later I was briefly a member of IATSE in my early twenties.  None of this, of course, qualifies me to be able to offer meaningful advice on what the unions should do next, and I wouldn’t deign to try, but last night as I watched the live feed from the Wisconsin capitol building (which I was glued to for hours last night, I couldn’t take my eyes off it) I listened to the words a gentleman who did have some sage advice to offer.

I don’t know who he was, but when the interviewer asked him if he had plans to sleep in the capital that night, he said that he was thinking about it, but that he had to get up really early to do TV and radio interviews. He was super articulate and knew the history of the labor movement in America, cold. He could cite facts, figures, dates, court cases, going back over 100 years. He was an expert’s expert on the topic. Again, I have no idea who he was, but his intelligence was very impressive to me, his calm was comforting, and his logic compelling. He was probably a spokesperson for one of the unions, but until I see his face again, that’s all I can say. He had brown hair and a mustache and was in his mid-50s.

The gist of what he said, though, was that a general strike NOW was probably a very bad strategic move, at least at this still beginning stage of the game. His reasoning was as follows:

1) It was too early to be threatening a general strike because once it had occurred, if the Republicans didn’t budge—and since Walker sees himself as Reagan Jr. that seems likely as shit—the unions will have played their big card. General strikes have been historically difficult to maintain in America. He said he didn’t expect that the fight had dug in hard enough to keep it going. Yet.

He felt it was better to ratchet it up slowly, keep applying the same sorts of pressure that the crowds had been applying throughout the conflict with Republicans, begin the recall efforts targeting the weakest GOP members of the state assembly immediately and to not let anger cause any unpleasant media images that would be to the Republican advantage in a propaganda war.

2) His second reason was that the endgame of this entire episode is much more likely to be decided in a courtroom than via any other method.

Food for thought. I’m not saying he’s right, but before I heard the man speak I’d have been hellbent on seeing a general strike. And he didn’t say it was a bad idea or that a general strike wouldn’t wouldn’t ultimately be necessary, but that it wasn’t necessary YET. 

Above all he advocated keeping cool heads and he’s absolutely right about that.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.10.2011
02:57 pm
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“Fox News Lies!”: Correcting the record

 
Not that they have any credibility to begin with, but the Fox News coverage of Wisconsin has been particularly dishonest.

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.10.2011
01:32 pm
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Michael Moore to Rachel Maddow on Wisconsin: ‘This Is War’
03.10.2011
11:46 am
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On her Wednesday show, Rachel Maddow and filmmaker Michael Moore both agreed that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and the state’s Republicans will lose what Moore called a “class war” being waged against the working class.

The two were reacting to Wednesday’s sudden passage of a measure in the Wisconsin Senate to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights—something only accomplished through an unheard-of parliamentary maneuver.

Before bringing Moore on, Maddow said that the Wisconsin Republicans had awoken a “dragon.” And she sent a message to the Democrats as well. “When people who have to work for a living are directly attacked…they fight back,” she said. “And they are expecting the Democratic Party to stand with them.”

Moore then came on the show. He told people to go to Madison right away. “This is war,” he said. “This is a class war.”

He also expressed optimism about the outcome of the Wisconsin fight. “Everything has turned in favor of the working people,” he said.

Maddow said that the “political brittleness” of what Walker and other Republicans were attempting was working against them.“All it takes is some political pushback against that and it collapses,” she said.

Moore then echoed the speech he gave in Madison last weekend, which drew widespread attention.

“Wisconsin’s not broke,” he said. “America isn’t broke. The money’s just not in the people’s hands. It’s in the hands of the rich, the people who committed these crimes and got away with it.” He held up a pair of handcuffs and looked at the camera.

“I’d like anybody who works on Wall Street, anybody who works for the banks, just take a look at this,” he said. “This is what’s coming. This is what’s coming for you. Because the people are going to demand justice, they’re going to demand that your ass is in jail.”

 

 
Via HuffPo

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.10.2011
11:46 am
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LIVE video feed from the Wisconsin class war
03.09.2011
10:27 pm
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History in the making!  You make us all proud!

Anne Habel, a steward with AFSCME Local 171, said Wednesday’s action will further inflame the unions, which have staged daily protests since Walker introduced his budget repair bill in mid-February. “Every time something happens, people become more militant,” Habel said.”

Ted Lewis, a union representative for Rock Valley Education Professionals, led protesters in a cheer referring to the effort to recall the governor, in office for just two tumultuous months.

“Scott you don’t remember me,” Lewis chanted, “but I can recall you.”

As Wisconsin goes, so goes the nation.
 

Watch live streaming video from theuptake at livestream.com

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.09.2011
10:27 pm
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