LISTEN TO JESSE ZARLEY & BRIAN WARD
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“Why is a 5 percent tax increase on the rich called ‘socialism,’ when a 14 percent wage reduction on workers is called ‘doing your part.'”
A Daylight Savings reminder from a labor journalist: “Don’t forget to set your clocks forward by one hour unless you live in Wisconsin in which case you should set them back 50 years.” – Mike Elk
“It’s a watershed moment in this country,” said Jesse Zarley on Friday as he stood alongside fellow Wisconsin native and D.C. activist Brian Ward at a solidarity protest outside the D.C. office of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R).
“I don’t know if Wisconsin will win or not. I hope, I hope it will. But I think that you can’t go back to the way it was… There are two sides in the fight now. It’s not just one side. It’s not just corporations and the wealthy beating down on working people.”
“It’s inspiring,” said Ward. “These people who have been taking it for thirty years are actually standing up and saying, ‘Hey, we’re not going to take this.’ This is an example… the rest of the country can see, that there is a way to fight back. You don’t have to just sit and take these cuts and say it’s part of a budget [crisis]. It’s not part of a budget crisis. It’s a manufactured crisis in which Walker gives tax breaks to corporations but… [tells] workers to tighten their belt.”
“One of the first things that Walker did… when he came [in] as governor was give two corporate tax breaks for $117 million total. The budget gap right now, $137 million. The reality is he manufactured that crisis. He made [a] conscious choice to say, ‘I’m going to give tax breaks to corporations in this state but I’m going to ask workers to reduce their pensions, take away their collective bargaining rights and pay more into their healthcare. It clearly wasn’t a budget issue.”
“Wisconsin is not broke,” said Michael Moore. The filmmaker traveled to Madison last weekend to deliver a message: “Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just that it’s not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.
“Today just 400 Americans have the same wealth as half of all Americans combined. Let me say that again, 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer ‘bailout’ of 2008, now have as much loot, stock and property as the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can’t bring yourself to call that a financial coup d’etat, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true. And I can see why. For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we’d have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious Democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic – and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it.”
Zarley, who recently returned from a trip with Ward to Wisconsin, described the mood of the protesters in Madison. “There was a sense that if we don’t fight now we’ll lose it all. [There was] a very fighting spirit… I spoke with one public worker [who] was like, ‘We gave up the right to strike in order to get the collective bargaining agreement. Now they’re taking the collective bargaining agreement. Well, does that mean we have to strike?'”
Ward said, “I think that we’re coming to a crossroads: Okay, we’ve had 100,000 people at the capital. That didn’t force Walker to come to a compromise. What’s next? And what’s next, logically, is a strike. And whether it’s illegal or not in the United States – you can’t technically have a general strike, we haven’t heard talk of it in 50 years – but the reality is that what Walker has done is illegal… So when push comes to shove we have to fight back in these terms and I think strike is the next logical thing.”
“Obviously what’s going on in North Africa and the Middle East is different than what’s going on here,” said Zarley. “But the idea [is spreading] of revolution and [over]throwing thirty year old dictators, U.S. backed dictators, by people in the Muslim world.”
“Right now, [Muslims are] being scapegoated like crazy in hearings on Capitol Hill in a disgusting fashion. The fact that people in Wisconsin, white people in Wisconsin who have been fed nothing but Islamaphobia for a decade, are like, ‘Oh, we identify with the Egyptians throwing off their dictator.’ [Wisconsin protesters had signs which read] ‘Walk like an Egyptian.’ People [had] signs that said, ‘Ben Ali: 20 years. Gone. Mubarak: 30 years. Gone. Walker: You’re next.'”