Thank You For Supporting Wisconsin Public Workers

Thank you for attending the demonstration near you yesterday on Solidarity Saturday. It's important to turn up in physical as opposed to digital form, to link arms, to carry signs, to speak out, to be counted on this important issue.

I've been on fire about Scott Walker's plan to abrogate public workers' collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin, and the copy cat legislation introduced in other states in which the Teapublicans and as important, the Koch brothers have control. I've written about it here and elsewhere on the Port Writers' Alliance blogs. I've bought pizza for the demonstrators. I've talked to colleagues and friends about it. So pulling on the heavy boots getting out the lined boots and the thermal underwear and hitting the pavement in Albany, New York with others was a natural, positive next step to express my view that the termination of collective bargaining for public or private workers, in Wisconsin or elsewhere, is an unwarranted regression to Teapublican Nirvana, the Nineteenth Century. That and every other atavism that increases oppression and exploitation, however disguised, has to be fought.

My hotos of Albany's demonstration are here. A festive, large warm crowd in a park with snowy trees.

What is next? Will Wisconsin's unionized police follow the orders to remove demonstrators from the state capital at 5 pm ET today, or will they ask demonstrators please to go and do nothing more? If the demonstrators are evicted will they link arms and circle the Capitol? And for us who are not in Madison, what's next for us? We probably have to dream that up, beginning right now.