lent

After insisting for three weeks that smashing public worker unions is a necessary “budget repair” measure, the Wisconsin Republicans went into Executive Session this evening to delete the fiscal parts of the “budget repair bill” (which lack a Constitutional quorum without the absent Democratic Senators) and voted to pass the non-fiscal parts, including most collective […]

late monday as it gets colder and uglier in Madison

Although I’ve been sick, my spouse and I decided to go to the 6pm rally for a while. It’s been in the 20s today — not all that bad for here — but it is supposed to get down to 12 overnight. (That’s in Fahrenheit, or -11 for the rest of the world.) It is […]

policing, repression & solidarity

It’s getting tense today in Madison. The Department of Administration (not the Capitol Police) has issued a series of orders that have the effect of not allowing protesters into the Capitol and of making things tough for the few still inside. People who are authorized to enter by a legislator are being escorted in and […]

madison and back to disparities

Quote of the evening (partly paraphrased): “I know you sat around and let Walker get elected. You-all didn’t think Walker was going to hurt YOU-all, just us Black and Brown and poor people.” This seemed fitting, as I’ve been party to many political conversations about the narrowing of the protest to the collective bargaining issue.

protest food & supplies

If you are following this story, you may have read that people from all around the world have been ordering pizza for the protesters; one pizza firm has now stopped doing any other business. But at least the grad students in the TAA are getting tired of pizza and have finally found the time to […]

wisconsin governor taking a page from china and egypt

My Facebook feed tells me that the public wireless network at the Capitol is now blocking access to at least one of the protest coordination web sites.

wisconsin nice

I thought some of you who are studying repression and such might enjoy this local news report (source: http://www.channel3000.com/news/26927705/detail.html ): MADISON, Wis. — Madison police estimated that crowds on the Capitol Square peaked at about 60,000 people. That’s not much less than a Wisconsin Badgers football game at Camp Randall, but police reported that despite […]

madison saturday mini-update

My spouse and I were downtown this morning for part 1 of today’s events but couldn’t spend the day. We decided to do our part to inflate the pro-union crowd before the pro-Walker rally and then head home. Given what we saw as we left, I think it will have gotten a lot bigger after […]

madison snippets

I just happened to be inside the Capitol when Jesse Jackson showed up. It was a pretty amazing site to see him leading an overwhlemingly (but not exclusively) White crowd singing “We Shall Overcome” and reminding them that King supported workers’ rights. It’s a huge crowd, a lovely day by our standards (sunny and in […]