"Enough is enough."

That's what Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said in a statement about why Wisconsin Senate Republicans on Wednesday evening carved the anti-union provisions out of the state's now-infamous Budget Repair Bill and quickly passed them, 18-1. There was no debate and not a single Senate Democrat was present; some observers say less than the legally required notice was given. The bill is widely expected to pass the Assembly on Thursday, then be signed into law by Governor Scott Walker.

"Enough is enough" also describes the sentiment on the other side of the debate. Following the vote, protesters streamed by the thousands into the capitol building they've been largely excluded from over the past several days, many of them chanting "This is not democracy."

The 14 Senate Democrats, of course, were in Illinois, where they've been for the last weeks in an effort to prevent the quorum needed to bring the Budget Repair Bill to a vote. But since a simple majority is needed for non-fiscal bills, Republicans decided to split the bill and move quickly on the anti-union items.

Opponents of the bill are pointing to a number of irregularities in the way it was passed:

• Governor Walker has maintained for weeks that the anti-union provisions in the bill were not a form of union-busting—that instead they were necessary for addressing the state's fiscal problems. Protesters now say that stripping out the budget sections in order to pass the collective bargaining restrictions makes it obvious that the bill is, indeed, about busting unions. (Also undermining the credibility of Walker's argument: business-friendly tax breaks that Walker called a special session to pass in January will nearly double the current deficit). “To pass this the way they did—without 20 senators—is to say that it has no fiscal effect,” Democratic Senator Timothy Cullen told the The New York Times. “It’s admitting that this is simply to destroy public unions.”
  
• The haste with which the Republicans passed the bill through committee and on the Senate floor has also sparked cries of foul play. The state's open meetings law requires a minimum of two hours' notice in emergencies and 24 hours under normal circumstances) before meetings begin. At this point, it's unclear just how much warning was offered before the votes started, but they were certainly characterized by speed rather than deliberation. Talking Points Media reports that the conference committee that passed the bill met for less than five minutes, despite the efforts of Peter Barca, a Democratic member of the Wisconsin Assembly, who called the vote illegal under Wisconsin's open meeting law and attempted to add amendments to the bill. The vote on the Senate floor took less than a half hour. Chris Larson, a Democratic Senator who says he began racing toward Madison as soon as he heard the vote would be called, told Democracy Now! "They didn’t give us a chance. They didn’t give the public a chance to do anything about it."

Wisconsin: First Stop in an American Uprising?
protests in Wisconsin show that poor and middle class Americans are ready to push back against the policies that hurt them most. Madison may be only the beginning.

So what happens next? Immediately after the bill was passed, thousands of protesters demanded entrance and surged into the capitol building. After more than two weeks of round-the-clock protests, they had been restricted from the building itself since last Sunday. On Wednesday night, though, protesters were again unfurling sleeping bags and preparing to preparing to spend the night.

Meanwhile, rumors were circulating of plans for a general strike, either in Wisconsin or nation-wide. Some of the protesters in the capitol chanted their support for the idea. Michael Moore called for a nationwide walk-out of high school students, to begin at 2 pm local time. Momentum is also building around the movement to recall the eight senators who supported the bill and are eligible to be recalled. Protests are also spreading to other states where anti-union laws are being proposed or passed.

And Wisconsin protesters are affirming—in protest signs, on Twitter and Facebook, and in interviews—that the passage of the bill doesn't mean they consider this fight to be over. In fact, many see the way the bill was passed as nearly as antagonizing as its contents: "Nothing says democracy like voting with no notice, preventing the public from observing, and locking the doors of the capitol," Wisconsinite Michael Mirer tweeted.

Though the protests are undoubtedly entering a new phase, they're likely far from over. "The jig is now up," Barca said. "The fraud on the people of Wisconsin is now clear."

Brooke Jarvis wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions for a just and sustainable world. Brooke is YES! Magazine's web editor.

Interested?

• The Middle Class Needs to Stick Together
  Firefighters weren't directly included in the anti-union bill that sparked the protests in Wisconsin. Lieutenant Mahlon Mitchell on why they're taking to the streets, anyway.
  
• Why Every American Should Care About Wisconsin
  The debate in Wisconsin doesn't just apply to union members and public workers.
• We Are Wisconsin
  Video: Meet the people making history in Wisconsin.
• Bigger than Unions, Bigger than Wisconsin
  How Americans across professions, religions, and states are uniting in opposition to Wisconsin's anti-union bill—and cultivating a movement that reaches far beyond the state border.
  

When Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker announced his Budget Repair Bill on February 11, Lieutenant Mahlon Mitchell had been president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin for just short of a month. The bill, which eliminates collective bargaining rights (as well as many other rights and benefits) for nearly all of the state’s public employees, specifically excluded the firefighers’ union.

But Mitchell and the firefighters he represents say they feel just as involved as if their own rights had been on the chopping block. Firefighters have been a visible presence throughout the historic protests happening in Madison over the past three weeks; a fellow protester reports that, “in the large rotunda rallies, no other group draws such raucous cheers as the firefighters.” Firefighters and law enforcement (also excluded from the bill) have offered to share in the bill’s pay reductions (already agreed to by other union) in order to retain collective bargaining rights for all public employees and to prevent the lay-offs that Governor Walker has threatened.

Mitchell—the youngest and first African American president of the PFFW—represents 57 local departments and nearly 3,000 firefighters across the state. I spoke to him about why he and his fellow firefighters think Wisconsin's fight for workers' rights is their fight, too.

Robert Mellinger: How did you get involved in the firefighters’ union?

Mahlon Mitchell: I got hired here in the Madison fire department when I was nineteen years old. I've always wanted to be a fire fighter, even as a young kid. My older brother is a firefighter in Rockford, Illinois; my younger brother is a firefighter in St. Paul, Minnesota. So it's kind of in our blood, you could say. I've been here in the Madison fire department for fourteen years now.

I'd only been president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin about a month or so, and suddenly all this stuff goes on [laughs]. So I am definitely getting baptism by fire, as they say.

Robert Mellinger: Firefighters weren’t included in the unions targeted by the Budget Repair Bill. So why did you get involved?

Mahlon Mitchell: We could have just sat on our hands and done nothing; the police officers could have, too—they weren’t included in the bill, either. But, personally, I truly believe personally in solidarity—I always have. I know a lot of people just pay it lip service and a lot of people think it’s a cliché, but I truly believe that "an injury to one is an injury to all."

Being involved in the community is what I love about being in the fire department. It's helping people everyday. People who call you, who call 9-1-1, it's usually on the worst day of their life. But we're there to help ease the pain and give some type of helping hand to people in need.

And the union does the same. A union basically speaks up for the voiceless and the people who can't speak up for themselves. That's what unions do. A lot of people say that unions have passed their time, but I think they’re still important so that there’s somebody to speak up for the middle class.

Robert Mellinger: Why do you say that these protests are about the middle class, instead of just unions?

Mahlon Mitchell: This is also about the rights of all workers. Especially in these times, I think that we in the middle class need to stick together and look after each other’s rights. The last thing we want is a decline in what’s available to people in the middle class. That’s not good for anybody. It’s not good for the economy, it’s not good for jobs.

We Are Wisconsin


In this beautiful video, filmmakers Finn Ryan and David Nevala introduce you to the people making history in Wisconsin.

The ability to sit down at the table with your employer and talk about hours, wages, and working conditions is not a fiscal matter. All these workers want is a seat at the table—to be able to talk to their employer about their working conditions and hours. It just makes sense.

Look at union salaries—we’re solidly middle class. And Wisconsin is a hardworking, blue-collar state. You don't become a fire fighter or a teacher or a police officer to be rich. You don't do it because you want to be wealthy. You do it because it's a job that helps you take care of your family, helps you to have a better life for yourself, and also to give back to your community.

Robert Mellinger: What’s it been like to be in the crowds of protesters in Madison over the last few weeks? What’s the atmosphere been like?

Mahlon Mitchell: I have never seen energy quite like this in anything I've done in my life. Even during one-day events, I haven’t seen it, and this event has been going on for weeks. The energy is unbelievable. And it's just not stopping. I thought it would wane, especially from my members since we're carved out of the bill, for now. But we still have guys coming. I just got a call from firefighters from Florida that want to come up and march with us. I’ve heard from guys in L.A. who want to come up and march with us, from New York and Chicago. It’s amazing how much enthusiasm there is and how many people want to come and lend a helping hand.

It’s harder now to get access to the capitol; they’ve sort of locked it down on us. But firefighters are still saying, "Well, we'll march around the capital." So the energy keeps going.

Of course, rallies are great, but when you're speaking at a rally, you're speaking to the people who generally agree with you. You also have to go out and speak with people who don't necessarily agree with you, to make sure the people hear what's actually going on.

Robert Mellinger: What do you think the lasting impact of these protests will be?

Mahlon Mitchell: The biggest impact for the unions will be the way this has brought us together. Years ago, you wouldn't see firefighters working right alongside police officers working right alongside the carpenters working right alongside the sheet metal workers and the plumbers and the SEIUs. It's really brought together the leaders of the unions, but also the members—the people that go to work everyday and just want to get a decent paycheck and take care of their families. They're out in droves now. If there is one good thing about this bill, it's that it has brought middle class workers together, made our unions stronger and our relationships closer.

Robby Mellinger interviewed Mahlon Mitchell for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions for a just and sustainable world. Robert is a YES! Magazine editorial intern.

Interested?

• Wisconsin: The First Stop in an American Uprising?
  Protests in Wisconsin show that poor and middle class Americans are ready to push back against the policies and cuts that hurt them most. Madison may be only the beginning.
• Why Every American Should Care About Wisconsin
  The debate in Wisconsin doesn't just apply to union members and public workers—it applies to every American who cares about our fundamental rights as citizens.
• How Wisconsin Could Turn Austerity into Prosperity: Own a Bank
  An answer to state budget woes that doesn't need to involve sacrificing workers' rights.
• Wisconsin: Solidarity Among Workers … And Football Players
  As Wisconsin's public workers fight to keep their wages and bargaining rights, they're joined by others involved in a labor struggle: their Super Bowl champion neighbors.
  

—Cartoon in the Houston Chronicle

There's an alternative to Wisconsin's budget deficit that doesn't involve taking away workers' rights.

Photo by David Hoefler.

As states struggle to meet their budgets, public pensions are on the chopping block, but they needn’t be. States can keep their pension funds intact while leveraging them into many times their worth in loans, just as Wall Street banks do. They can do this by forming their own public banks, following the lead of North Dakota—a state that currently has a budget surplus.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, whose recently proposed bill to gut benefits, wages, and bargaining rights for unionized public workers inspired weeks of protests in Madison, has justified the move as necessary for balancing the state's budget. But is it?

After three weeks of demonstrations in Wisconsin, protesters report no plans to back down. Fourteen Wisconsin Democratic lawmakers—who left the state so that a quorum to vote on the bill could not be reached—said Friday that they are not deterred by threats of possible arrest and of 1,500 layoffs if they don't return to work. President Obama has charged Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker with attempting to bust the unions. But Walker’s defense is:

“We're broke. Like nearly every state across the country, we don't have any more money."

Broke Unless You Count the $67 Billion Pension Fund . . .

That’s what he says, but according to Wisconsin’s 2010 CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report) [pdf], the state has $67 billion in pension and other employee benefit trust funds, invested mainly in stocks and debt securities drawing a modest return.

A recent study by the Pew Center for the States showed that Wisconsin’s pension fund is almost fully funded, meaning it can meet its commitments for years to come without drawing on outside sources. It requires a contribution of only $645 million annually to meet pension payouts. Zach Carter, writing in the Huffington Post, notes that the pension program could save another $195 million annually just by cutting out its Wall Street investment managers and managing the funds in-house.

The governor is evidently eying the state’s pension fund, not because the state cannot afford the pension program, but because he sees it as a potential source of revenue for programs that are not fully funded. This tactic, however, is not going down well with state employees.

North Dakota: Banking on the Locals
Video: David Brancaccio visits a bank that is invested in its community.

Fortunately, there is another alternative. Wisconsin could draw down the fund by the small amount needed to meet pension obligations, and put the bulk of the remaining money to work creating jobs, helping local businesses, and increasing tax revenues for the state. It could do this by forming its own bank, following the lead of North Dakota, the only state to have its own bank—and the only state to escape the credit crisis.

This could be done without spending the pension fund money or lending it. The funds would just be shifted from one form of investment to another (equity in a bank). When a bank makes a loan, neither the bank’s own capital nor its customers’ demand deposits are actually lent to borrowers. As observed on the Dallas Federal Reserve’s website, “Banks actually create money when they lend it.” They simply extend accounting-entry bank credit, which is extinguished when the loan is repaid. Creating this sort of credit-money is a privilege available only to banks—but states can tap into that privilege by owning a bank.

How North Dakota Escaped the Credit Crunch

The state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND) has allowed North Dakota to maintain its economic sovereignty, a conservative states-rights ideal. The BND was established in 1919 in response to a wave of farm foreclosures by out-of-state Wall Street banks. Today, the state not only has no debt, but it recently boasted its largest-ever budget surplus. The BND helps to fund not only local government but local businesses and local banks, by partnering with the banks to provide the funds to support small business lending.

The BND is also a boon to the state treasury, having contributed over $300 million to state coffers in the past decade, a notable achievement for a state with a population less than one-tenth the size of Los Angeles County. In 2008, the BND returned a 26 percent dividend to the state. In comparison, California’s public pension funds are down more than $100 billion—that’s billion with a “b”—or close to half the funds’ holdings, following the Wall Street debacle of 2008. It was, in fact, the 2008 bank collapse rather than overpaid public employees that caused the crisis that shrank state revenues and prompted the budget cuts in the first place.

Seven States Are Now Considering Setting Up Public Banks

Faced with federal inaction and growing local budget crises, an increasing number of states are exploring the possibility of setting up their own state-owned banks, following the North Dakota model. On January 11, 2011, a bill to establish a state-owned bank was introduced in the Oregon State legislature; on January 13, a similar bill was introduced in Washington State; on January 20, a bill for a state bank was filed in Massachusetts (following a 2010 bill that had lapsed); and on February 4, a bill was introduced in the Maryland legislature for a feasibility study looking into the possibilities. They join Illinois, Virginia, and Hawaii, which introduced similar bills in 2010, bringing the total number of states with such bills to seven.

Why All Americans Should Care About Wisconsin

If Governor Walker wanted to explore this possibility for his state, he could drop in on the Center for State Innovation (CSI), which is located down the street in his capital city of Madison, Wisconsin. The CSI has done detailed cost/benefit analyses of the Oregon and Washington state bank initiatives, which show substantial projected benefits based on the BND precedent. See reports here and here.

For Washington State, with an economy not much larger than Wisconsin’s, the CSI report estimates that after an initial start-up period, establishing a state-owned bank would create new or retained jobs of between 7,400 and 10,700 a year at small businesses alone, while at the same time returning a profit to the state.

A Bank of Wisconsin Could Generate “Bank Credit” Many Times the Size of the Budget Deficit

Economists looking at the CSI reports have called their conclusions conservative. The CSI made its projections without relying on state pension funds for bank capital, although it acknowledged that this could be a potential source of capitalization.

If the Bank of Wisconsin were to use state pension funds, it could have a capitalization of more than $57 billion—nearly as large as that of Goldman Sachs. At an 8 percent capital requirement, $8 in capital can support $100 in loans, or a potential lending capacity of over $500 billion. The bank would need deposits to clear the checks, but the credit-generating potential could still be huge.

Banks can create all the bank credit they want, limited only by (a) the availability of creditworthy borrowers, (b) the lending limits imposed by bank capital requirements, and (c) the availability of “liquidity” to clear outgoing checks. Liquidity can be acquired either from the deposits of the bank’s own customers or by borrowing from other banks or the money market. If borrowed, the cost of funds is a factor; but at today’s very low Fed funds rate of 0.2 percent, that cost is minimal. Again, however, only banks can tap into these very low rates. States are reduced to borrowing at about 5 percent—unless they own their own banks, or, better yet, unless they are banks. The BND is set up as “North Dakota doing business as the Bank of North Dakota.”

That means that technically, all of North Dakota’s assets are the assets of the bank. The BND also has its deposit needs covered. It has a massive deposit base, since all of the state’s revenues are deposited in the bank by law. The bank also takes other deposits, but the bulk of its deposits are government funds. The BND is careful not to compete with local banks for consumer deposits, which account for less than 2 percent of the total. The BND reports that it has deposits of $2.7 billion and outstanding loans of $2.6 billion. With a population of 647,000, that works out to about $4,000 per capita in deposits, backing roughly the same amount in loans.

Wisconsin has a population that is nine times the size of North Dakota’s. Other factors being equal, Wisconsin might be able to amass over $24 billion in deposits and generate an equivalent sum in loans—over six times the deficit complained of by the state’s governor. That lending capacity could be used for many purposes, depending on the will of the legislature and state law. Possibilities include (a) partnering with local banks, as in the North Dakota model, strengthening their capital bases to allow credit to flow to small businesses and homeowners, where it is sorely needed today; (b) funding infrastructure virtually interest-free (since the state would own the bank and would get back any interest paid out); and (c) refinancing state deficits nearly interest-free.

Why Give Wisconsin’s Enormous Credit-generating Power Away?

The budget woes of Wisconsin and other states were caused not by overspending on employee benefits, but by a credit crisis on Wall Street. The “cure” is to get credit flowing again in the local economy, and this can be done by using state assets to capitalize state-owned banks.

Against the modest cost of establishing a publicly owned bank, state legislators need to weigh the much greater costs of the alternatives—slashing essential public services, laying off workers, raising taxes on constituents who are already over-taxed, and selling off public assets. Given the cost of continuing business as usual, states can hardly afford not to consider the public bank option. When state and local governments invest their capital in out-of-state money center banks and deposit their revenues there, they are giving their enormous credit-generating power away to Wall Street.

Ellen Brown wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Ellen is an attorney and the author of eleven books, including Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. Her websites are webofdebt.com and ellenbrown.com. 

Interested?

• Visit PublicBankingInstitute.org for more information on the movement for publicly-owned banks.
• Wisconsin: First Stop in an American Uprising?
  Protests in Wisconsin show that poor and middle class Americans are ready to push back against the policies and cuts that hurt them most. Madison may be only the beginning.
  
• Whose Bank? Public Investment, Not Private Debt
  The public bank concept is gaining ground on the state level, attracting proponents across the political spectrum.
• 7 Ways to Transform Banking
  Each of us can help build a resilient financial system that will serve real people in real communities.

After two weeks of protests in Wisconsin, we are now watching demonstrations spread across the country. Over the weekend, the online advocacy group MoveOn.org helped mobilize tens of thousands of people, who marched in all 50 state capitals in support of Wisconsin workers. Demonstrators are speaking out against attacks by Republican governors in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan and their own states.

It is entirely appropriate that protests should spread, because recent events in Wisconsin are only a window into what is happening in states scattered across the country. It is important that we understand the scope of this debate. This is a discussion that has impact on all Americans, not just union members. One point should be clear: This is not a story of public employees trying to feed at the trough. It is a story about whether or not governors can take away fundamental workers' rights.

Everyone in this country is entitled to their opinion about politics and public policy. Every governor is free to propose policies that he or she feels are in the public interest, even if others might disagree with those actions. But they must follow the rule of law.

In this case, newly elected Republican governors can certainly negotiate contracts with public employees. But there is a lawful process for such negotiation. It involves sitting down at a bargaining table, talking through disagreements, and coming to a mutual agreement. Instead of engaging in this process, governors like Wisconsin's Scott Walker want to unilaterally take away people's rights, while claiming that they are doing something entirely different. He and others like him are using budget issues as a subterfuge for their power grab. That is not acceptable. And it is why they have stirred the passions of so many.

Bigger Than Unions,
Bigger Than Wisconsin
How Americans across professions, religions, and states are uniting in opposition to Wisconsin's anti-union bill—and cultivating a movement that reaches far beyond the state border.

Many people may not see collectively bargaining as relevant to problems in their own work lives. You might think, I don't need a union because I'm a professional. Even if this is the case, you are nevertheless affected by a growing imbalance of power in today's workplaces.

There was a time in America when employers couldn't unilaterally decide to take away health care or pensions. Workers had some say in deciding to accept less in wages in order to hold on to their families' health care coverage. Yet in recent decades, we've moved toward a situation where there are little or no counterbalances to the whims of employers. America's once-strong middle class has dwindled as a result.

Whether any of us happen to be union or non-union, we need to get back to the day when people had a say in negotiating the terms of their employment. In the past, public employees opted to prioritize their health care and retirement over other forms of compensation. They should still have a right to believe their employers will abide by the legitimate contracts they previously negotiated. They have the right, in other words, to be treated just as any of us would expect to be treated when we've come to an agreement with an employer regarding our livelihoods.

It is important to understand that this is not a question of tightening belts to cope with a moment of economic crisis. Public employees in Wisconsin and beyond have been very clear that they are willing to bear their share of common sacrifice in tough times. But they are not willing to give up the basic rights to associate, to belong to a union, or to organize collectively.

This is something that should matter for all Americans. Because if our rights related to association and collective bargaining can simply be denied, taken away as part of an executive initiative disguised as being about something else, then other rights are also at risk. We avoid restricting freedom of speech in our country because we recognize that encroachments on our freedoms create a slippery slope. One violation of basic rights leads to another. If we don't stand up now against abuses of power on the part of state executives, the safety of our dearest liberties could be called into question.

Wisconsin: The First Stop in An American Uprising?

Our ability to freely associate and form organizations to advance whatever political and economic interests we might have is one of the things that makes this country great. It is something that Alexis de Tocqueville admired about American democracy when he wrote his renowned observations about our political system in the early nineteenth century.

We abandon this democratic tradition at our peril. A politics that condemns public employees for being greedy because they insist on maintaining their rights is profoundly dishonest and dangerous.

The fact that we have elections in this country is not enough to safeguard our democracy. If we allow rights to be restricted, under the auspices of a twisted interpretation of the rule of law, we follow a treacherous path that has historically led the way to tyranny.

Those outside of Wisconsin who have joined in solidarity protests, and those speaking out against assaults by their own governors on middle-class employees understand that this issue impacts us all. Our rights are too precious to be sacrificed without a fight.

Amy Dean is co-author, with David Reynolds, of A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement. She worked for nearly two decades in the labor movement and now works to develop new and innovative organizing strategies for social change organizations in progressive, labor, and faith communities. You can follow Amy on Twitter at @amybdean, or she can be reached via the Web site, www.amybdean.com. Amy wrote this article for The Huffington Post.

Interested?

• Time to Reclaim the American Dream
  Van Jones: Why Wisconsin gives the movement for “hope and change” a second chance—and what you can do about it.
  
• We Are Wisconsin
  Video: Meet the people making history in Wisconsin.

Click here to watch the US Uncut photo essay.

Inspired by the British movement against corporate tax dodgers, the new grassroots group US Uncut held protests around the country on February 26, most of them in front of Bank of America branches. Why? The bank paid no income taxes in 2009 and 2010. US Uncut is calling out large corporations that find loopholes or use offshore tax havens to evade paying taxes in the country where they do business. If corporations paid up, activists point out, many of the deep cuts in social services happening at the state and federal level wouldn't be necessary.

More and more people are noticing a correlation between multi-billion dollar budget deficits and multi-billion dollar tax evasions. On Saturday, US Uncut protests popped up in 50 cities across the United States, and some—like in Washington, D.C.—even shut branches down for the day. February 26 was the kickoff day of action for US Uncut, but more protests are already scheduled for the coming months. 

Visit the US Uncut website to find out more.

Photos by Merton Gaudette, Eliud Martinez, Xavier Gomez, Mary Henley, Todd Wade, Jonathan Cox, Brighton, Suzanne O'Keefe, Valarie Cooley, and Kevin Carroll.

Interested?

• "Do You Pay Your Taxes? Bank of America Doesn't." :: The latest from a growing international movement to make corporate tax dodgers pay ... so public services don't have to.
• The UK's Progressive Tea Party :: Imagine a parallel universe where the Great Crash of 2008 inspired ordinary people to take on corporate tax evaders. The name of this parallel universe is Britain.
• Wisconsin: The First Stop in an American Uprising? :: protests in Wisconsin show that poor and middle class Americans are ready to push back against the policies and cuts that hurt them most. Madison may be only the beginning.

On Monday afternoon, the Capitol Police in Madison, Wisconsin refused to enforce an order to clear the Capitol building of hundreds of peaceful protesters who have been occupying the site to protest Governor Scott Walker's plan to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of public employees.

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviews State Rep. Kelda Helen Roys (D), who spent Sunday night in the Capitol building with other protesters. Roys describes what happened at four o'clock on Monday afternoon when the government gave the order to clear the protesters from the building:

And after several hours of the same sorts of scenes that we’ve been seeing all week—singing, chanting, drumming, speechifying—the Capitol police captain, Chief Tubbs, made an announcement, and he said that the protesters that had remained in the building, they were being orderly and responsible and peaceful and there was no reason to eject them from the Capitol.

Holding the Capitol



Video: What happened inside the Wisconsin capitol when protesters were told they'd have to leave.

Police attempted to clear the building of protesters on Sunday night, but they relented when the protesters refused to leave, allowing them to stay another night. On Monday, the police decided not to eject protesters already inside, but no additional activists would be allowed in. The governor plans to deliver his budget address on Tuesday afternoon. Walker is expected to call for spending cuts that could exceed $1 billion dollars.

Gov. Walker has threatened mass public sector layoffs if the Democratic senators do not return from Illinois by March 1. However, the Uptake.com reports that one of the absent legislators, state Sen. Jon Erpenbach, claims Walker is not telling the truth. Erpenbach says the unions have already agreed to come up with the money the governor needs to balance the budget, and therefore, he has no need to lay anyone off to bridge the gap.

Wisconsin 101

Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive describes the epic scale of the Wisconsin protests:

This is the largest sustained rally for the rights of public sector workers that this country has seen in decades — perhaps ever.

The crowds at the state Capitol have swelled from 10,000-65,000 during the first week all the way up to 100,000 on Feb. 26. Hundreds of people occupied the Capitol building with a sit-in and sleep-in for days on end, and total strangers from around the world ordered pizzas for them.

In case you're still wondering what all of this means, Andy Kroll, Nick Baumann, and Siddhartha Mahanta of Mother Jones have joined forces to bring you this "Wisconsin 1o1" primer.

The Republicans in the Wisconsin House passed a bill that would take away collective bargaining rights for public sector unions, restrict their ability to collect dues, and force them to undergo yearly recertification votes. But the bill cannot become law until the state Senate also passes it. Currently, 14 Democratic state senators are hiding out in Illinois to deprive the Republican majority of the quorum they need to vote on the bill. However, as Kroll notes, if only one Democrat breaks faith and returns to Madison, the Republicans will be able to pass the bill.

Nationwide solidarity

Jamilah King of Colorlines.com brings us a photo essay on the solidarity rallies held around the country over the weekend in support of the Wisconsin protesters. From San Francisco to Salt Lake City to Atlanta to New York, people took to the streets in support of the right of workers to organize. Also at Colorlines.com, historian Michael Honey draws parallels between the situation in Wisconsin and Dr. Martin Luther King's last crusade. Shortly before his assassination, King stood with the sanitation workers of Memphis to demand collective bargaining rights and the power to collect union dues.

George Warner of Campus Progress profiles some young activists who took to the streets of Washington, D.C. to express their solidarity with the Wisconsin protesters. About 1,500 people came out to a rally in support of the protesters on Saturday.

Anonymous strikes again

In a bizarre twist, a loosely organized coalition of anarchic hackers known as "Anonymous" attacked websites linked to Koch Industries on Sunday, Jessica Pieklo reports for Care2.com. The Koch brothers are among Gov. Walker's most generous benefactors. The hackers launched a distributed denial of service attack on the website of the Koch-funded conservative group Americans for Prosperity.

In addition to generous contributions to Gov. Walker's campaign, the Koch brothers gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which in turn paid for millions of dollars worth of ads against Walker's opponent in 2010. Walker is evidently very grateful to Koch. Last week, a writer for a Buffalo-based website got Walker on the phone by pretending to be David Koch.

Don't look now, but...

Meanwhile, in Indiana, the state assembly reconvened on Monday to find most of the 40 Democratic members had decamped for Illinois. The legislators are apparently taking a page from the Wisconsin playbook. Indiana's Republican governor is trying to pass legislation that would make permanent a ban on collective bargaining by public sector workers and the Democratic legislators are seeking to deny him the 2/3rds quorum required to vote on the bill.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets, of which YES! Magazine is a member.

Interested?

• Bigger than Unions, Bigger than Wisconsin
  How Americans across professions, religions, and states are uniting in opposition to Wisconsin's anti-union bill—and cultivating a movement that reaches far beyond the state border.
  
• Wisconsin: First Stop in an American Uprising?
  It took a while, but protests in Wisconsin show that poor and middle class Americans are ready to push back against the policies and cuts that hurt them most. Madison may be only the beginning.
  
• We Are Wisconsin
  Video: Meet the people making history in Wisconsin.
  

In 2009 and 2010, according to their SEC K-10 report, filed on Friday, Bank of America paid no income taxes. Meanwhile, the federal government and many state governments, facing large budget shortfalls, are cutting services and benefits that help the poor and middle class. For many people, that just doesn’t add up.

On Saturday, many of those people took to the streets in cities across the country to protest corporate tax dodging. In more than 50 cities, those protests focused on Bank of America.

Local activists protested inside and outside of Bank of America branches, conducting teach-ins about corporate tax avoidance and theatrical “bail-ins.” They stopped passers-by to ask, “Do you pay your taxes? Bank of America doesn’t.”

In Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, protests forced the early closure of major bank branches. The San Fransico protesters presented bank tellers with fake checks, made out from Bank of America to “The United States of America, c/o Tax-Paying Citizens.”

US Uncut: How To
Do Your Own Bail-In
Advice from UK Uncut: Bringing an Uncut protest to your town is easy.

This effort, called US Uncut, has been inspired by UK Uncut, which formed in response to drastic spending cuts—the deepest in 60 years—being proposed in Britain. Tens of thousands of English activists have targeted corporations that have paid no or very low corporate income taxes, largely thanks to elaborate use of overseas tax havens and other tax loopholes, pointing out that the cuts would be unnecessary if only the corporations would pay up.

As in England and across the Middle East, the decentralized protest movement now underway in the United States is organized largely through the Internet, including Facebook, Twitter, and the US Uncut website.

These protests are putting a spotlight on the shadowy world of overseas corporate tax havens. Many U.S. corporations shift their earnings around, reporting losses in the United States while reporting profits in tax havens like the Cayman Islands, where they pay little or no taxes.

Nicholas Shaxson, author of the forthcoming book Treasure Islands, writes that tax havens are a major mechanism through which “wealthy and powerful elites take the benefits from society without paying for them.”

Congressional budget officials estimate that over $100 billion a year is lost because of such tax loopholes. That would go a long way toward closing state deficits—according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the combined budget gaps in U.S. states is between $102 billion and $148 billion.

Wisconsin: The First Stop in an American Uprising?

Protests against corporate tax dodging could be one of the ways that the spark of the Wisconsin workers’ rights protests could spread widely. While not every state has a reckless anti-union governor like Scott Walker or the union solidarity to push back, the whole country is facing serious budget cuts.

The U.S. movement officially started two weeks ago in Jackson, Mississippi, where 23-year old Carl Gibson, in between working three part-time jobs, organized a website and the first group. Within days, other groups were being formed in dozens of cities across the United States and Canada.

“Why has the knee-jerk reaction for our politicians been first and foremost budget cuts to critical social services? They tell us that no other options are on the table, yet cracking down on corporate tax avoidance has received little, if any attention,” said George Taghi, an organizer for the Washington, D.C., Uncut action.

What’s Next?

• There will be another wave of protests, focusing on other tax-dodging corporations with high profiles and retail outlets. You can organize a local demonstration and coordinate it through the US Uncut web site or on Facebook.
• The newly fledged groups are planning to make April 15, tax day, a day of national demonstrations calling attention to corporate tax dodging—and its effect on budgets.
• Small and U.S.-rooted businesses, competing with tax dodgers on on an unlevel playing field, are fighting back, organizing their voices under the banner Business and Investors Against Tax Haven Abuse. Businesses of any size can get involved by visiting their website.

Chuck Collins wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Chuck is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies where he directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good.

Interested?

• The UK's Progressive Tea Party
  Read the article that inspired US Uncut.
  
• Dear Glenn Beck: It's Not Conspiracy, It's Courage
  Glenn Beck thinks the spread of anti-corporate protests is a little too convenient. But this is what happens when ordinary people discover their power.
• Bigger Than Unions, Bigger Than Wisconsin
  How Americans across professions, religions, and states are uniting in opposition to Wisconsin's anti-union bill—and cultivating a movement that reaches far beyond the state border.

On Sunday, after two weeks of round-the-clock presence in the Wisconsin state capitol, it was announced that the pro-workers' rights protesters who have taken up residence there would have to leave the building. Inside the capitol, protesters debated what to do. Many decided they weren't willing to leave. This video shows what happened.

Video by MadisonTAA

Interested?

• Bigger than Unions, Bigger than Wisconsin
  How Americans across professions, religions, and states are uniting in opposition to Wisconsin's anti-union bill—and cultivating a movement that reaches far beyond the state border.
  
• We Are Wisconsin
  Video: Meet the people making history in Wisconsin.
• More Power Than We Know
  Interview with activist Tim DeChristopher, facing 10 years in prison for an act of nonviolent civil disobedience: "When we make commitment to be powerful agents of change, we make it true."
  

Just before 3:00 a.m. yesterday, while helping myself from a massive pile of donated groceries in the Wisconsin state capitol, I met Taylor Tengwall. He is a junior at UW-Superior with no previous ties to the labor movement—or any movement, for that matter. “I’ve never done anything like this in my life,” he told me.

He first showed up in Madison over a week ago with some friends, expecting to leave two days later. But Tengwall says he was so moved by what he saw, he told his friends to go home without him.

“It’s been the most moving, paradigm-altering experience in my life,” he says, appearing totally energized despite the late hour. “I came here so outraged and angry. So many people did. And they’ve formed something so peaceful and so meaningful.” He’s realized, he says, that “we have power.”

From Firefighters to Faith Leaders: A Movement of Solidarity

Public sector workers and union members stand to lose the most from the passage of the Budget Repair Bill, the proposed Wisconsin law that would essentially strip unions of their collective bargaining rights. And union members and leadership were certainly key to the early organization of the protests. But it doesn’t take more than a few hours in Madison talking to protesters and listening to Wisconsinites’ testimony to realize that this is a movement that’s gone far beyond union members.

An amazing, organic array of students, white-collar workers, religious leaders, unionized workers not covered by the bill, and average citizens have all amassed together in Madison. And they’ve inspired rallies around the country, as non-union supporters have joined with union workers to stand in solidarity with Wisconsin or to stand up against similar proposals in their own states.

Most media has focused on the massive crowds packing the capitol’s rotunda and the streets outside. With tens of thousands of people taking part, those scenes have been impressive to witness in person. But on the third floor of the capitol, a much quieter, more reserved scene has unfolded. Democratic lawmakers have held round-the-clock hearings on the bill, hearing from state residents, one by one, about how the bill would affect them. The majority are not union members, but rather Wisconsinites of all stripes.

Many of them are students. Jessica Weber, an undergraduate student studying education at UW-Platteville, sat down at the microphone in front of a packed room. She has wanted to be a teacher since she was a child, she explained. But the Walker bill has made her “scared.”

“It’s like a slap in my face,” Weber said. “Wisconsin has never made me feel this way before; I'm sad that there are people who have the power to do this."

Analyse Dickinson, a UW-Madison student originally from Michigan, took the mic next. She was worried about the bill's potential to create a phenomenon her home state experiences: "brain drain," the loss of educated people to states with better jobs and working conditions. More importantly, she said, the bill would reorient the state's priorities away from average people and towards the rich.

"It will show Wisconsin to be a state where corporations are more important than workers," she said. Her opposition "is about respecting the rights of those who can't afford to buy power."

That opposition is shared by religious leaders throughout the state and country. Madison-area rabbis released a joint statement Wednesday condemning the bill, saying, "As rabbis this an affront to our values—the Jewish mandate to protect workers, as well as the poor and needy among us. It is an affront to our deep value for education, for supporting women's rights, and for creating sustainable communities. And it is an affront to our belief that these issues should be debated openly and fairly under public scrutiny."

Progressive faith leaders like Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., have come out against the bill, of course, but so have other local faith leaders not known for backing labor causes. Religious leaders in Wisconsin and Illinois even offered safe haven for the 14 Democratic state senators who fled the state to prevent the bill’s passage. Kim Bobo, executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, changed the old protest chant to say, “Tell me what religion looks like. / This is what religion looks like.”

We Are Wisconsin
Video: Meet the people making history in Wisconsin.

Unionized workers whose rights aren’t on the line have been some of the most vocal participants. Some of the only public workers who will not lose collective bargaining rights with the bill are police officers and firefighters. (Both unions endorsed Walker for governor). So the prominent participation of firefighters and police throughout the protests has been somewhat surprising.

It shouldn’t be, they say. "We just couldn't stand by and let this happen to our brothers and sisters," Mahlon Mitchell, State President of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin told the Huffington Post. "We are firefighters, we respond to emergencies... We are responding to an emergency of the middle class."

In the large rotunda rallies, no other group draws such raucous cheers as the firefighters.

“It’s powerful,” says Alex Hanna, a sociology grad student at UW-Madison and the president of the Teachers Assistants Association. “Everyone knows they’re here to show solidarity. It really says a lot about the sense of camaraderie this whole movement has produced.”

We’re Not in Wisconsin Anymore

Over the last week, solidarity rallies have spread rapidly far beyond Wisconsin. In large cities like New York and Chicago, as well as small ones like Juneau, Ala., and Helena, Mon., citizens have demonstrated or are planning demonstrations to show their support for the workers of Wisconsin. On Saturday, MoveOn.org is helping to coordinate similar demonstrations in the capitols of all 50 states. A USA Today/Gallup poll found that 61 percent of Americans oppose attacks on collective bargaining such as the one in the Wisconsin bill.

But not all of the demonstrations are about simply supporting Wisconsin; in many states, workers are defending themselves from similar attacks on their benefits or bargaining rights. The Washington Post cites hotspots in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and California. In Trenton, New Jersey, AFLCIO president told demonstrators, “What happens in Wisconsin affects every man, woman, and child in America. Nothing less than the fate of our middle class is at stake.”

Wisconsin: The First Stop in an American Uprising?

In Columbus, Ohio, where thousands protested an anti-union bill, state troopers locked the citizens out of the state’s capitol for fear of a Madison-style occupation. Indiana state senators have taken a page from Wisconsin senators and have fled their state in protest of an anti-union bill there (the state senate leader has declared the Right to Work provision of the bill “dead”).

On Saturday, students and union supporters will rally in Topeka, Kansas—unlike Madison, a city not known for a long history of labor fights and solidarity. Ben Jefferies, an economics student at Kansas University, is one of the Wisconsin supporters organizing the protest.

“A strong union movement was and still is essential to the creation of that middle class,” Jefferies said. “It is truly cultural amnesia that people have forgotten that fact.” He’s particularly concerned about the Wisconsin bill because he’s seen the effect of similar legislation passed in his home state.

“Kansas, as a right to work state, has already lost much of the legal framework which allowed unions of public or private sector workers to become strong,” he said. “The fundamental issue with this bill is that it strips workers of the legal standing to collectively bargain, eroding a key component of workplace democracy. If we let that happen in one place, it will likely spread to others. It's important to show strong support for workers rights now before those that oppose workers rights gain any more momentum.”

Micah Uetricht wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Micah is a staff writer for CampusProgress.org and GapersBlock.com, and a frequent contributor to In These Times. He lives in Chicago. Follow him on Twitter for updates from Wisconsin this weekend.

Interested?

• "This is a Peaceful Protest"
  Video: What's it like in the Wisconsin capitol?
• Dear Glenn Beck: It's Not Conspiracy, It's Courage
  Glenn Beck thinks the spread of protests is a little too convenient. But this is what happens when ordinary people discover their power.
  
• Wisconsin: Solidarity Among Workers ... And Football Players
  As Wisconsin's public workers fight to keep their wages and bargaining rights, they're joined by others involved in a labor struggle: their Super Bowl champion neighbors.
  

Glenn Beck has made a startling discovery. People are working together to make change!

Beck used my recent article, “Wisconsin: First Step in an American Uprising?” as a backdrop during his Wednesday show on Fox News, where he talked in dark, hushed tones about the spread of the UK Uncut movement to the United States. “A coincidence?” he asked. Is it a coincidence that citizens of both countries are holding protests in multiple locations on February 26?

Hardly! Organizers of US Uncut have made no secret of the fact that they were inspired by the British upstart group. UK Uncut started when 12 people meeting at a London pub decided they were fed up waiting for “someone to do something” about the fact that, in response to budget shortfalls caused by the financial crisis, the government was planning drastic cuts to public services while big businesses were raking in record profits. “Why don’t we just start?” they wondered. “If we do it, maybe everybody will stop asking why it isn’t happening and join in.”

They sat down in front of a retail outlet of a major cell phone company that was $6 billion behind in its taxes. If that company paid up, they argued, all those cuts—to libraries, schools, health benefits, pensions—wouldn’t be needed. The protests spread, eventually shutting down retail stores and banks across the country.

Unlike the Tea Party movement that Beck likes so well, they didn’t have billionaire money behind them. The oil tycoon Koch brothers didn’t bankroll a front group to train and fund them and give them talking points. No, UK Uncut is made up of ordinary people, using social media to coordinate their actions, getting their voice heard in spite of being off the message that the Murdoch media would like us to hear. When news of their success spread to the U.S.—primarily via an article in The Nation by British columnist Johann Hari (reposted here)—Americans with the same concerns were quick to take up the idea, and dozens of decentralized US Uncut groups quickly formed.

Now, MoveOn.org and Van Jones are teaming up in a call for rallies on the same day to protect the American Dream. And the United States Student Association and Jobs with Justice are collaborating (there's that word again!) on a call to defend public benefits.

These sorts of collaborations are not new, and they're not secret. If Beck had been reading YES! Magazine, for example, he would have seen hundreds of examples of groups that form from the bottom up, that work for the benefit of ordinary people, and that collaborate in lots of creative ways. 

Which we think is a good thing. That collaboration is urgently needed at a time when the power balance in the United States is leaning dangerously toward large corporations and Wall Street banks. Because these institutions are formed to increase the wealth of those who already have it, any other goal we might have for our communities, our families, and our future easily gets pushed aside.

Video still from Fox News' Glenn Beck Show

It’s very clear what happens when corporate power and the fixation on short-term profits get too strong. Taxes on corporations and the wealthy get cut, and so money for infrastructure goes away, and our roads, bridges, schools, and universities decline. The pay and benefits of ordinary workers get cut, and they can no longer afford homes, education for their children, or health care. Environmental protection is put on the back burner or simply gutted, and our mountaintops are blown apart (including sites that could be ideal for wind farms that could supply energy for centuries to come). The climate crisis disrupts agriculture, causes floods and droughts, and brings extreme weather events, yet corporations prevent action. Our local economies are sapped of their strength, and regulation that could prevent some of the worst abuses goes away. That leaves us vulnerable to the sort of global economic meltdown that happened in 2008, and that continues to undermine economies everywhere. And the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling is just the latest in a cascading series of events that adds still more power to the corporate side of the scale.

This lopsided power makes the events in Wisconsin (and now Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, and many other states) all the more important. Ordinary people still have power, but only when we talk together and work together.

We Are Wisconsin
Video: Meet the people making history in Wisconsin.

Beck would like to shift the conversation to one of conspiracies and fear—frankly, I’m not not sure what he’s so afraid of, but it seems to be a rotating list that includes communists, the United Nations, and Muslims. Oh, and our president.

But in Wisconsin, firefighters, teachers, nurses, sanitation workers, and students are rediscovering courage. Look at their faces, and you see fatigue, but also joy. No longer isolated and afraid, standing up for what they believe in, and, yes, collaborating, these people know they have power. And so do the rest of us.

How to get involved:

US Uncut actions targeting Bank of America and others will happen in more than 50 American cities on February 26. Here's where you can find the one near to you, or organize a new action.

Van Jones and MoveOn.org are organizing a February 26 “Rally to Save the American Dream” at noon at state capitals and major cities around the country. Wear Wisconsin colors, red and white.

Student Labor Action Project, a collaboration of United States Student Association and Jobs with Justice, is calling for a national day of action to defend the public sector on March 2nd.

Sarah van Gelder is co-founder and executive editor of YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions.

Interested?

• The First Stop in an American Uprising?
  The article that caught Glenn Beck's attention.
• People, Power, and Public Spaces
  What the privatization of public spaces has to do with our likelihood of taking to the streets.
• Signs of the Times
  In Madison, Wisconsin, a workers' uprising is resulting in some clever slogans.
  

We Are Wisconsin from Finn Ryan on Vimeo.

What convinces tens of thousands of people—including those whose rights aren't directly on the line—to take to the streets and to occupy their state capitol around the clock? What's it like to be in such a gathering? In this beautiful video, filmmakers Finn Ryan and David Nevala introduce you to the people of Wisconsin.

• "I love my job, I want to be with my students, but I'm also here for the future of Wisconsin. I'm a single mom. If this bill passes, I will lose my house [...] It's a large percentage of my take-home pay. I started crying in the grocery store because I have the money now, but I won't very soon."
• "We're grateful that firefighters were exempt from this bill. however, we still collectively bargain and the basic principle of the union is that we stand together—and that's what we're here to do."
• "I've seen nothing but peace, I've seen nothing but people getting along—responsible adults, people that are friends, that are family. I hear people making this out to be something that's angry, violent. And I've seen none of that. As a police officer [on duty at the capitol] and as a citizen walking out here, I've seen none of that."
  

Finn Ryan and David Nevala are media producers based in Madison, Wisconsin.

© 2011 Finn Ryan and David Nevala

Interested?

• Wisconsin: First Stop in an American Uprising?
  It took a while, but protests in Wisconsin show that poor and middle class Americans are ready to push back against the policies and cuts that hurt them most. Madison may be only the beginning.
• People, Power, and Public Spaces
  What the privatization of public spaces has to do with our likelihood of taking to the streets.
  
• Signs of the Times
  The best signs and slogans of the Wisconsin protests.
  

The influence of the new digital commons in democratic uprisings from Tunisia to Egypt to Bahrain has been chronicled at length in news reports from the Middle East, with Facebook, Twitter and other social media winning praise as dictator-busters.

But the importance of a much older form of commons in these revolts has earned scant attention—the public spaces where citizens rally to voice their discontent, show their power and ultimately articulate a new vision for their homelands. To celebrate their victory over the Mubarak regime, for example, protesters in Cairo jubilantly returned to Tahrir Square, where the revolution was born, to pick up trash.

It’s the same story all over the Middle East. In Libya’s capital city of Tripoli, people express their aspirations and face bloody reprisals in Tripoli’s Green Square and Martyr’s Square. In Bahrain, they boldly march in Pearl Square in the capital city of Manama. In Yemen, protests have taken place in public spaces near the university in Sanaa, which students renamed Tahrir Square. Kept out of the central Revolution Square in Tehran by the repressive government, Iranian dissidents gather in Valiasr Square and Vanak Sqaure.

Last week in Tunisia, the name of the main square in Tunis was changed to honor Mohammad Bouazizi, an unlicensed street vendor whose suicide in December in response to government harassment sparked the revolution that toppled the regime of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

The course of recent history was rewritten by events happening in Prague’s Wenceslas Square as dissidents ousted an oppressive regime in December 1989. Those protests were inspired in part by events in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square that seized the world’s imagination earlier that year when democracy activists unsuccessfully challenged the power of China’s dictatorship.

The state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, where thousands of workers now protest the governor’s fierce attacks on collective bargaining rights, represents another case of a public commons becoming a staging ground for political resistance. The capitol, which sits right in the heart of downtown Madison, was named by Project for Public Spaces as one of the great public spaces of the world. “This is truly the town square that early Americans imagined as the crux of democracy,” the PPS website explains.

The people rallying behind public sector union workers at the Capitol are actually protected by the Wisconsin state constitution, which forbids the legislature from denying public access to the building when it is in session. (State law does permit capitol groundskeepers to clear the building in an emergency, presumably on orders of the governor—but those groundskeepers are also presumably members of the same union the governor wants to crush.)

Reclaim Your Streets: How to Create Safe and Social Pedestrian Plazas

This all shows that the exercise of democracy depends upon having a literal commons where people can gather as citizens—a square, Main Street, park, or other public space that is open to all. An alarming trend in American life is the privatization of our public realm. As corporate-run shopping malls replaced downtowns and main streets as the center of action, we lost some of our public voice. You can’t organize a rally, hand out flyers, or circulate a petition in a shopping mall without the permission of the management, which will almost certainly say no because they don’t want to distract shoppers’ attention from the merchandise. That’s why you see few benches or other gathering spots inside malls. The result is that our ability to even discuss the issues of the day (or any other subject) with our fellow citizens is limited.

Of course, public spaces enrich our lives in many ways beyond protests. Local commons become the sites of celebrations, festivals, art events, memorial services, and other expressions of community.

The moment when I first became aware of the importance of public spaces was when the Minnesota Twins won their first ever World Series in 1987. I did not have tickets to the game, but gathered hopefully with thousands of others outside the stadium in Minneapolis to share in the joy of the victory. When the Twins won the game, thousands more poured out of the ballpark into the streets and we all marched to…where? Minneapolis has no downtown square or landmark gathering place so we milled around the streets for a while—an unsatisfying way to celebrate a World Series championship. If it had been the Red Sox, everyone would have headed for the Boston Common (site of protests and public gatherings for three centuries, from a 200-person protest of food shortages in 1713 to a 100,000-strong march against the Vietnam War in 1969). We weren’t so lucky.

I’ve often wondered if this lack of a central commons in Minneapolis and most other American communities somehow inhibits our civic expression. With no place to voice our views as citizens, do we become more passive about what happens to our country and our future? I don’t know the answer, but I imagine Hosni Mubarak wishes he had built a shopping mall in Tahrir Square.

Jay Walljasper adapted this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Jay is a contributing editor of National Geographic Traveler, Senior Fellow at Project for Public Spaces, and co-editor of OnTheCommons.org. Editor of Utne Reader magazine for 15 years, he is the author of All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons and The Great Neighborhood Book.

Interested?

• 51 Ways to Spark a Commons Revolution
  Poster: What you can do, alone and with others, to share life.
• All That We Share
  Welcome to a new kind of movement—one that reshapes how we think about ownership and cooperation.
  
• Wisconsin: First Stop in an American Uprising?
  It took a while, but protests in Wisconsin show that poor and middle class Americans are ready to push back against the policies and cuts that hurt them most. Madison may be only the beginning.
  

In the past 24 months, those of us who longed for positive change have gone from hope to heartbreak. But hope is returning to America—at last—thanks largely to the courageous stand of the heroes and heroines of Wisconsin.

Reinvigorated by the idealism and fighting spirit on display right now in America's heartland, the movement for "hope and change" has a rare, second chance. It can renew itself and become again a national force with which to be reckoned.

Over the next hours and days, all who love this country need to do everything possible to spread the "spirit of Madison" to all 50 states. This does not mean we need to occupy 50 state capitol buildings; things elsewhere are not yet that dire. But this weekend, the best of America should rally on the steps of every statehouse in the union.

Moveon.org and others have issued just this kind of call to action; everyone should prioritize responding and turning out in large numbers.

On Saturday, the powers-that-be (in both parties) should see a rainbow force coming together: organized workers, business leaders, veterans, students and youth, faith leaders, civil rights fighters, women's rights champions, immigrant rights defenders, LGBTQ stalwarts, environmentalists, academics, artists, celebrities, community activists, elected officials and more—all standing up for what's right.

Defending—and Defining—the American Dream

And we should announce that our renewed movement is more than just a mobilization to back unions or oppose illegitimate power grabs (as important as those agenda items are). Something more vital is at stake: our country needs a national movement to defend the American Dream itself. And the fight in Wisconsin creates the opportunity to build one.

After all, it is the American Dream that the GOP's "slash and burn" agenda is killing off. We need a movement dedicated to renewing the idea that hard work pays in our country; that you can make it if you try; that America remains a land committed to dignity, justice and opportunity for all. Right now, this very idea is on the GOP chopping block. And we must rescue it now—or risk losing it forever.

America will not make it through this crisis healthy and whole if—at the first sign of trouble—we are willing to throw away millions of our everyday heroes. Our teachers, police officers, firefighters, nurses and others make our communities and country strong. Their daily work is essential to the smooth functioning and long-term success of our nation. An attack on them is an attack on the backbone of America.

Nobody objects to politicians cutting budgetary fat. But the GOP program everywhere is so reckless that it would actually cut muscle, bone, and marrow, too. This approach is both shortsighted and immoral. We should rise up against it—in our millions.

Both parties should be taking steps to solve the country's problems in a balanced, fair and rational way. If deficits are truly the issue, then raising taxes and cutting spending both should be on the table, as tools. But Wisconsin's governor recently handed out massive corporate tax breaks, reducing the state's revenues. That move greatly added to the problem he now wants to fix by attacking essential services with a meat axe. A slew of GOP governors in places like Ohio are gearing up to take similar approaches.

If a foreign power conspired to inflict this much damage on America's first responders and essential infrastructure, we would see it as an act of war.

And if a foreign dictator unilaterally announced that his nation's workers no longer had a seat at the bargaining table in their own country, the U.S. establishment would rightfully go bananas.

If Republicans would oppose that kind of thuggery abroad, how can they champion it here at home?

How can they accept for the American people what they would denounce for the people of any other nation on Earth?

GOP governors in multiple states are advancing schemes to erase the long-standing rights of American employees to choose a union and bargain collectively. We need to call these outrageous plots what they are: un-American and unacceptable. They are not just assaults on workers; they are assaults on the American Way itself.


This Is Our 'Tea Party' Moment

It is time to draw a line in the sand—nationally. Someone has to stand up for common sense and fairness. It is time to use all nonviolent means to defend the American people and our American principles from these abuses.

Wisconsin: The First Stop in an American Uprising?

If we take a bold and courageous stand, over time, we can win. Make no mistake about it: this is our "Tea Party" moment—in a positive sense.

In fact, we can learn many important lessons from the recent achievements of the libertarian, populist right. Don't forget: even after the Republican's epic electoral defeat in 2008, a right-wing uprising was still able to smash public support for "new New Deal" economics. Along the way, it revived the political fortunes of the GOP.

A popular outcry from the left could just as easily shatter the prevailing bipartisan consensus that America is suddenly a poor country that cannot possibly help its people meet our basic needs.

The truth is that we don't live Bangladesh or Malawi. America is not a poor country. The public has just been hypnotized into believing that the richest and most creative nation on Earth has only two choices in this crisis: massive austerity (as championed by the Tea Party/Republicans) or semi-massive austerity (as meekly offered by too many DC Democrats). It is ridiculous.

Fortunately, the people in Wisconsin know that. So they are fighting courageously. Their efforts could blossom into a compelling, national force for the good—offering a powerful alternative to those false choices.

And while our re-born movement needs to be as clear and bold as the Tea Parties, we must base our efforts on a deeper set of American values.

The Tea Party attached itself to only a single American principle. And it identifies itself with only one moment in our distant past: the Boston Tea Party, symbolizing "no taxation without representation."


"American Dream" Movement Rooted in a Deeper Patriotism

That is an important moment and concept. But the notion of "negative liberty" ("don't tread on me!") is only one principle among many that make our country great. Other equally vital American values and ideals (like justice, opportunity, fairness, and democracy) have gone largely undefended and unheralded, in this recent crisis. That ends—now. Our rising movement should stand for the full suite of American values and principles.

And the American ideal most in need of defense is our most essential one: the American Dream.
The steps needed to renew and redeem the American Dream are straightforward and simple:

• Increase revenue for America's government sensibly by making Wall Street and the super-rich pay their fair share.
• Reduce spending responsibly by cutting the real fat—like corporate welfare for military contractors, big agriculture, and big oil.
• Simultaneously protect the heart and soul of America—our teachers, nurses, and first responders.
• Guarantee the health, safety and success of our children and communities by leaving the muscle and bone of America's communities intact.
• Maintain the American Way by treating employees with dignity and respecting their right to a seat at the bargaining table.
• Rebuild the middle class—and pathways into it—by fighting for a "made in America" innovation and manufacturing agenda, including trade and currency policies that honor American workers and entrepreneurs.
• Stand for the idea that, in a crisis, Americans turn TO each other—and not ON each other.

A Return to the Moral Center

These are not radical notions. They are the common sense ideas that form the core of who we are as a nation. We can rally Americans, once again, to stand up for these values. We can make America, once again, a land where it is safe for everyday people to dream

We will prevail because—in truth—we are not in a right-wing period of American history, nor are we in a left-wing period. We are simply in a volatile period.

Signs of the Times

Some of the best signs and slogans from the Wisconsin protests.

And during times like these, we can take comfort in knowing that a great nation will ultimately pull its answers—not from its ideological extremes—but from its deep, moral center.

By standing up for dignity, equal opportunity and fair play, the Wisconsin workers have found their way to America's great moral center. They have shown us all, at last, the way back home. By standing with them, we reclaim what is best in our country.

April 15, 2009, marked the beginning of the national movement to remember the Tea Party and pull America to the ideological right.

Let Saturday, February 26, 2011, mark the beginning of the national movement to renew the American Dream and return us to the moral center—where everybody counts, and everybody matters.

Van Jones is a former contributing editor to YES! Magazine and the founder of Green for All, a national organization working to build a green economy and pull people out of poverty. This article originally appeared in The Huffington Post.

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University of Wisconsin student Matt Wisniewski created this video from two days of footage taken in the Wisconsin state capitol building, where teachers, fire fighters, and others have been rallying in defense of union rights for the last week.

The protests have drawn tens of thousands of public workers and their supporters in opposition to a proposed bill that would cut their wages, benefits, and right to bargain collectively. Solidarity protests have been reported in a number of other states.

Video by Matt Wisniewski

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  The best signs and slogans from protesters in Wisconsin.
  

Click here to view the photo essay.

In Madison, Wisconsin, public workers—and their supporters—have been protesting by the tens of thousands, night and day, at the state's capitol building. They're hoping to block a proposed bill that would curb workers' wages, benefits, and bargaining rights.

For days, teachers, students, firefighters, and many others offered uninterrupted testimony in the capitol, explaining why they want to protect the rights and livelihoods of Wisconsin's middle class.

But they may be equally eloquent in the homemade signs they're carrying:

"My teachers, my mom, and my granny r NOT public enemies," reads one girl's poster. "Union workers: When we get screwed, we multiply," says another.

Click here for a slideshow of signs and slogans from the Madison protests.

Photos by Matt Baran, Andy Peters, Rob Chandanais, Aaron Fruth, Felipe Gacharna, Paul Baker, Mark Riechers, Lynnebin, Thomas Coulton, Jessie Reeder, and Emily Mills.

Interested?

• Wisconsin: The First Stop in an American Uprising?
  by Sarah van Gelder
  It took awhile, but protests in Wisconsin show that poor and middle class Americans are ready to push back against the policies and cuts that hurt them most. Madison may be only the beginning.
• Solidarity Among Workers ... And Football Players
  As Wisconsin's public workers fight to keep their wages and bargaining rights, they're joined by others involved in a labor struggle: their Super Bowl champion neighbors.