Arousing the green-eyed monster

In their campaign to stifle the rights of public employees in Wisconsin, the would-be masters of the universe are fanning the embers of a human vice: envy.

You no longer have the nifty pension or health insurance or the decent pay or the union protection that you or your parents once enjoyed. You may have even lost your job. Yet, look at those fat-cat public employees, strutting around with their good salaries and benefits and their union rights – all made possible with your hard-earned money. That’s so unfair. They should suffer just like you do.

The upshot is that this message is being brought to the working stiffs in the private sector by the very people who helped make them suffer: our corporate overlords (think brothers Charles and David Koch among others). They helped shove those workers onto a downward economic spiral. Now these tycoons are counting on their victims to reach up and grab their public-sector brothers and sisters and pull them down that spiral, too.

Some Wisconsin workers have bought that message, as indicated by signs on display at a relatively small counter-protest at the Capitol in Madison on Feb. 19. (See photos on this page.) One sign – “IT’S MY MONEY NOT YOUR HUMAN RIGHT” – particularly reflects the anti-government message coming out of talk radio and right-wing think tanks (financed by our corporate oligarchy) over the last three decades.

We don’t tell workers at our cable TV company or our computer store they shouldn’t bargain for fair wages because that’s our money they’re dealing with. Rather, we figure that once the money leaves our hands, it’s no longer ours. What’s ours is the 200 TV channels or the 500-gigabyte computer we got in exchange.

Likewise, in exchange for the money we give government, we get valuable services. Public-sector workers lock up bad guys, plow snow on the route to work, teach first graders their numbers and letters, make sure rat feces don’t flavor our pasta dish, put out house fires before they reach our homes and maintain our favorite parks.

True, unlike in the private sector, we are not just consumers; we are also collectively the boss of public employees – which gives us the right to debate how the money ought to be spent, but also the moral duty to be a fair boss and to give just compensation for work done. Collective bargaining helps ensure we fulfill that duty.

Fortunately, the appeal to envy has had only limited success, polls suggest. Most people in Wisconsin and in America side with the effort of public employees to maintain their bargaining rights (though Wisconsin residents are evenly split on Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill). Doubtless, labor’s readiness to concede on all economic issues has helped it in the battle of public opinion. The governor’s refusal to compromise in the face of that concession shows that his real goal is to castrate the unions.

A big reason America’s middle class has receded is that labor unions have eroded in the private sector. One possible response of workers there is to resent their compatriots in the public sector, where labor strength has grown over the last several decades. But most workers have not succumbed to that temptation. Rather, they astutely recognize that the middle class is less likely to rebound if public-sector labor unions lose their strength, too.

A day of protest in Madison

At a gas station in Delafield, Wisconsin, off I-94, two female clerks – one older, one younger – are arguing about the merits of the labor demonstrations in Madison. It’s Saturday, Day 5 of the protests that have grabbed the nation’s attention, and this time the Tea Party is supposed to show for a counter-demonstration.

“I do respect the teachers.” the older woman retorts, as I walk in. “But they don’t have to pay hardly anything for their benefits. A lot of people don’t even get health insurance or a pension. Besides, I believe Wisconsin is rated as having the worst school system in the country. So why should they get all that money when the schools are so bad?” (Actually, Wisconsin is rated among the top in the nation in teaching white kids and among the bottom in teaching black kids.)

I arrive in Madison about noon, park at the East Towne Mall and join a crowd at a city bus stop. Fare is $2, exact change, I’m told. A woman says she’s been waiting 45 minutes; she just missed the previous bus. Labor is operating free shuttle service to the Capitol elsewhere in the sprawling mall, but a man informs us that the line for that service is “a mile long.”

An empty No. 6 arrives. We fill the bus. Almost as many are standing as are sitting. The bus rolls down E. Washington Avenue without stopping until about 10 blocks away from the Capitol, where it picks up a dozen more passengers.

We deboard near the end of E. Washington. I pass a bank of portable toilets, relieving my mind of one anxiety.

Crowds are streaming around the Capitol sporting picket signs. The throng seems like Middle America with students mixed in. The young people add energy, beating drums, blowing horns and whistles, and leading chants, among them:

·         “It’s disgusting – union busting.”

·         “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Scott Walker’s got to go.”

·         “Kill the bill!”

·         “Down with Walker – up with the people.”

A West Allis man tells me he was surprised by Walker’s ploy to take away the bargaining rights of public-sector employees. “I knew he was anti-union,” he says. “But I didn’t know he was out to kill the unions.”

The man himself, who does not want his name used, is a union member, but not a public employee. Echoing others, he adds, “If this was just about pay and benefits, there wouldn’t be thousands of people here.” At issue, he says, is the survival of public-employee unions. Walker wants to quash their bargaining rights, the raison d'etre for unions

Equainess Price of Racine quips that he came because his job is to support teachers. He is ESP (educational support personnel) for Gateway College in Racine.

“The bill wouldn’t kill me,” he says, “but I know it would hurt many others.”

I look for the Tea Party. I find only isolated groups of counter-demonstrators. Finally, I find their rally, which is breaking up. The pro-Walker people number in the hundreds at best. The anti-Walker people number in the tens of thousands.

There are long lines to enter the Capitol, which is living up to its name as the people’s house. Madison is, of course, no stranger to protests, which hit a crescendo in the 1960s. One difference between then and now is the police. Then they were hostile; now they’re friendly. To prevent overcrowding, police courteously let in only so many demonstrators at a time.

Legions participate in a continuous rally in the rotunda, where speeches and applause echo. Protest signs and banners adorn walls and railings.

On the fourth floor young people sit at a long table in an office working on Macs. They overflow into the hallway. The Teacher Assistant Association, a union consisting of University of Wisconsin grad students, runs this operation, which is part of the protest infrastructure. The association picks up trash inside and outside the Capitol, runs information booths, supplies marshals, feeds social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, produces flyers (including a ubiquitous one here reminding participants, “This is a peaceful protest”), helps coordinate activities and do sundry other chores.

A harried-looking Alex Hanna, a UW-Madison sociology grad student, heads the 24-hour-a day operation, which he admits is “physically taxing.” He says he broke away only once to go home and refresh himself since Tuesday and he has fallen behind on his school work.

At a rally outside, Mahlon Mitchell, president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin tells the multitude: “Gov. Walker said today on TV that he received 19,000 e-mails that were in support of his legislation. Nineteen thousand. I think I have 19,000 behind me and 20,000 over there, 20,000 over here … and that doesn't include those who are in the Capitol right now.”

The protesters hear promises that they will win and expressions of love for the 14 Democratic senators who left the state to deny Walker a quorum and thus thwart action on his proposal to gut public-employee unions.

The rally breaks up. My son and grandson, who live in Madison, pick me up and we grab a bite to eat.

Photos by Gregory Stanford

To replay slide show, click "labor protest" in bottom left corner, then click play button.

Scott Walker the job slayer

Gov. Scott Walker, who talks big about boosting private-sector jobs in Wisconsin, is so far doing just the opposite: costing the state private-sector jobs. A Milwaukee think tank puts at 10,000 the number of jobs that sector would lose were Walker’s plan to cut compensation for public-sector workers to go into effect.

Yes, you heard right. Cuts in public employment hurt private employment – which is the exact opposite of the mindless mantra beaten into our heads over the last two decades: to wit, cuts in public employment help private employment.

What that mantra ignores is that public-sector pay checks stir the same economic ripples as private-sector pay checks. In other words, $50 spent at the local supermarket from a government payroll has the same impact as $50 spent there from a company payroll. Both equally enable the supermarket to meet its own payroll. The fewer dollars that come in, whether from public or private salaries, the less money the supermarket can spend on its payroll and the more likely the supermarket will have to lay off workers.

Walker is trying to crush the public employees unions in Wisconsin. He is seeking to eviscerate their bargaining rights. His diabolical plan also includes unilaterally reducing the take-home pay of union members by having them step up contributions to their benefits. That element is what an analysis by the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future  addresses. The analysis also factors in reduction in pay from planned furloughs

Jack Norman

The institute concludes that Walker’s plan would lead to the the loss of $660 million a year in economic production in the private sector, eliminate $46 million in property taxes or shift them to other taxpayers, noticably boost the state’s unemployment rate and wipe out 9,900 private sector jobs.

Yes, there are a couple of counterarguments, which I put to the institute’s Jack Norman, the author of the report:

Sure, public employees won’t spend as much, but the cuts mean taxpayers will gain spending money. So won’t the state’s taxpayers make up for the loss in expenditures by the state’s public employees?

Well, the idea of the cuts is to reduce the budget deficit. So the savings wouldn’t go back to taxpayers.

In light of the dire budget situation, doesn't Walker have no choice but to enact the cuts, whether they hurt the economy or not?

If he has no choice, why then did he give money away in a special session last month through the enactment of new or expanded tax breaks.

Even before he took office Walker killed a federally financed high speed rail project that would have led to thousands of temporary and permanent jobs for state residents. Despite his highfalutin rhetoric about creating jobs, Walker is starting his governorship as a job killer, not a job booster.

Related reading:

“An Update on State Budget Cuts,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Grizzled civil rights warriors pass the torch

Reuben Harpole speaks as Harry Oden, George Sanders and Paul Blackman look on.

Milwaukee’s Reuben Harpole grew up at 807 W. Somers St, in the shadow of the Lay’s potato chips and the Wonder bread plants, a stone’s throw from bustling Walnut St., where black-owned restaurants, haberdasheries and other establishments thrived and the Regal Theater swung to the likes of the Duke Ellington and Count Basie.bands.

Wiped out by "progress" - housing projects and a freeway - this one-time hub of black Milwaukee lives only in memories now. It served as a backdrop in the saga of the struggle for racial fairness and justice in the city, as told by Harpole and other oldtimers at a forum the other day.

A side show developed on Facebook when two days prior to the event a young man replied with bahs and humbugs to the forum’s announcement.  

“I see no record of impact they have [on] … epidemic conditions of Black Milwaukee,” he wrote of the panelists, starting a string of back-and-forth commentary

No doubt, members of my father’s generation would be chuckling now. The curse parents secretly bestow on their troublesome offspring – may you have children like you – has been fulfilled.

Back in the 1960s we young know-it-alls scoffed at our elders for accommodating white racism. We confronted it. We marched and picketed and sat in and demanded equal rights. We refused to scrape and bow. No, we weren’t loud about our superiority – well, maybe a few of us were.  Mostly we were just quietly smug. We’re putting our bodies on the line, and you didn’t.

Now what goes around has come around. So a young man attacks a panel of older activists, saying they did nothing for the cause of racial justice, offering as Exhibit A the continuing blight in the neighborhood around Coffee Makes You Black coffee house, 2803 N. Teutonia Ave., where the forum took place. It was titled “Grizzled Black Men Discuss Their Historic and Ongoing Struggle on Behalf of the Black Community.” The eight panelists were all at least 70 years old.

Harpole, black Milwaukee’s oral historian, related pieces of the struggle. He noted the epic push for open housing in the 1960s. And he told of his involvement with The Milwaukee Star in an era when black weeklies were fresh and urgent. He was the newspaper’s advertising director.

Paul Blackman, retired labor leader, recalled a flashpoint in the marathon series of open housing marches, when it encountered violent resistance on the white ethnic south side: "I was on the 16th Street Bridge dodging bottles from some of our Polish neighbors."

He related how he led A. O. Smith steelworkers on strike, shutting down Chrysler, Ford and General Motors in the process. The Milwaukee plant was the world’s largest maker of automobile frames. In the end, the union got everything it wanted. The lesson: "If you are organized, anything is possible.”

My generation was wrong – very wrong – about our elders. We came to realize that it was on their shoulders that we stood as we fought racism. Our parents forged strong families through much work and sacrifice and gave the children the security and strength to permit them to challenge the social order.

Besides, “accomodationist” oversimplifies that generation. My own dad, for instance, refused to surrender his dignity when growing up dirt-poor in Birmingham, Ala., a city synonymous with racial oppression. The rule among kids was that, when the police came, you ran. But according to family lore, my dad refused to run, to the exasperation of his playmates, especially his older brother. My dad was polite in dealing with the police, but he stood his ground.

My father’s generation emerged into adulthood in the 1940s; the panelists did so the next decade, and my wisdom teeth broke out in the ‘60s. The civil rights revolution was mainly waged by the ’50s and ’60s generations.

It is not crystal clear whether the Facebook critic is attacking a whole generation. He faults two of the panelists by name – Harpole and black business advocate Curtiss Harris – charging they have sat on economic development boards with zero benefits for the black community. But he attacks the panel as a whole, too. And since the panelists have been involved in Milwaukee’s and the nation’s broad struggle for racial justice – from Martin Luther King Jr., to Stokely Carmichael, to the Black Panthers – he seems to be pooh-poohing that struggle.

Maybe what’s at work here is the intractability of racism – a phenomenon the struggle brought to light. You get rid of Jim Crow and, as the late NAACP leader Ben Hooks used to put it, his more sophistticated cousin – J. Crow. Esquire – takes over. You integrate the city schools, then whites resegregate by fleeing to the suburbs. Sharecropping replaces slavery, mass imprisonment of black men replaces sharecropping.

In a post after the forum, the Facebook critic said many of the panelists were in denial that the black communioty was in a state of emergency. Trouble is, not one panel member expressed that opinion. In fact, they went in the opposite direction. To wit:

• Carl Estrada – who was wheelchair-bound and who was an activist in Milwaukee, Detroit and New York City – called Wisconsin the “third most racist state in the country” and urged a grassroots movement to attack the problem.
• Former State Sen. Monroe Swan intoned, "The proportion of black imprisonment in the state of Wisconsin is the worst of any jurisdiction in this country, thusly the greatest anywhere in the world.” America leads the world in overall incarceration rate.
• Harpole said getting black businesses a fair share of public contracts remains a struggle.
• Harris said, “We didn’t have parity when it came to economics and we still don’t.”
• George Sanders, artist and activist who once worked for The Milwaukee Star, spoke only briefly, but his e-mail recipients know he consantly rants about the sad state of black Milwaukee.

The other panelists were Harry Oden, a former Milwaukee Public Schools principal and a basketball star at the University of Minnesota, and Mason Bullock, a carpenter.

To be sure, the hard-fought civil rights movement fell far short of its goal. As a rule, blacks still don't enjoy the same life chances that whites do. The battered, grizzled civil rights warriors are passing the torch to a new generation.  Now it's up to the Facebook critic and his peers to change the world. Criticism has its place, but, more importantly, they must come up with their own goals, tactics and strategies.  And they shouldn't be too surprised if decades hence a new cocky generation belittles their efforts.

Sharpton to speak on jobs in Milwaukee

Al Sharpton Phot

Bulletin: Rev. Al Sharpton's trip to Milwaukee has been postponed until Tuesday. He will speak at 5 p.m.  at the New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church, 2315 N. 38th St. The civil rights leader will also broadcast his radio show from Milwaukee. Organizers said his trip was delayed because flight schedules did not allow him to arrive in time to do his Sunday show from Milwaukee. 

This post has been updated and corrected. Earlier version misidentified Rev. Brisco's position at his church.

A budding movement for jobs in Milwaukee will get a boost Sunday from the Rev. Al Sharpton. The civil rights leader will arrive in town and is slated to speak at 9:30 a.m. at the New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church, 2315 N. 38th St., and at 11:45 a.m. at Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church, 1825 W Hampton Ave.

Protest over Gov. Scott Walker’s derailment of high-speed rail is morphing into a movement demanding jobs. In scotching the federally financed, $810 million rail line between Milwaukee and Madison, Walker wiped out the thousands of jobs experts say the project would have spurred.

Walker had complained that the state would have been saddled with yearly operating costs, as much as $7.5 million, even though the project should have generated enough added state revenue - by boosting personal income and sales of merchandise and thus income and sales taxes - to cover those costs.

The governor also prompted train maker Talgo to announce it would take its manufacturing operation out of Milwaukee. Occupying a refurbished manufacturing plant on the north side, an area of super-high unemployment, Talgo had stood as a symbol of hope.

MICAH (Milwaukee Innercity Congregations Allied for Hope) had designated Sunday Emergency Jobs Sunday and has called on member churches to talk about the city’s job crisis. The Rev. Willie Brisco, associate minister at New Covenant, heads MICAH.

Rev. F. L. Crouther is pastor of New Covenant, and Rev. Russell Williamson is pastor of Zion Hill.

MICAH is a member of a coalition organizing the jobs movement. Other members are:  Amalgamated Transit Union, Milwaukee Area Labor Council,  Voces de la Frontera, League of Young Voters and Wisconsin Citizen Action.

Rail backers demand jobs at Madison protest

Madison, Wis. – As power shifted here from one major state party to the other Monday, five bus loads of Milwaukee residents rode into town demanding jobs. They invited new-Gov. Scott Walker to appear at a community meeting in Milwaukee to explain why he killed a project that would have led to employment for thousands.

The 250 Milwaukeeans were joined in front of the Capitol by roughly 100 others, many of them students. The crowd heard labor leader Sheila Cochran bellow: “He says that the state of Wisconsin is open for business. I want him to know that we mean business.”

She and others noted that, in killing the $810 million high-speed rail project connecting Milwaukee and Madison, Walker was going in the opposite direction of his promise to create 250,000 jobs.

A coalition of organizations, including MICAH (Milwaukee Innercity Congregations Allied for Hope), sponsored the protest. Their first stop was Monona Terrace for a prayer rally outside as Walker attended a prayer breakfast inside. The Rev. Willie Brisco, who heads MICAH, says he gave a Walker representative an invitation to attend a community meeting in Milwaukee and that she promised to make sure Walker got the invitation. The governor would choose the date.

The group is calling on Walker to bring good jobs to Milwaukee and to explain face to face how he’s going to do that and to invest in the Milwaukee north side complex that contains train maker Talgo, which has said it would move its manufacturing operation to another state because of Walker’s antagonism toward rail.

The group prayed and sang freedom songs, such as “This Little Light of Mine” and “We Shall Overcome.”

The sky was grey and the air was cold.  But it was not the biting cold participants had feared.

Later in the morning, the protestors rallied at the Capitol, where the Rev. Gregory Lewis said, “We are living in times of desperation” due to the absence of jobs. That desperation is leading to crime, he said, volunteering that his church office was recently broken into and its contents  rifled and items taken. He led a chant: “We need jobs.”

The Rev. Leondis Fuller said, “We have a governor who's being inaugurated today, and I want you to know he does not care about workers.”

Saying the people have the power to fight back, he added: “The fight is going to be long, the fight is going to be hard. but we're going to have to stay the course because the Republicans in this building behind us, they do not care about you and I.”

He said that “Walker had already sent jobs out of state.” Because of Walker’s action, train maker Talgo plans to move its manufacturing operation from Milwaukee to a state friendlier to rail. What’s more, the federal government has redistributed Wisconsin’s $810 million to other states, where the money will create many jobs.

The federal government would have fully financed construction of the Milwaukee-to-Madison line. Walker objected to the state’s picking up as much as $7.5 million a year in operating costs, even though the project promised to generate enough taxes – by boosting sales and personal income in the state – to cover those costs.

Said another speaker at the rally: “We are tired of going to job fairs where there are no jobs.”

After the rally the crowd broke up into groups stationed in front of the entrances to the Capitol and chanted slogans and held picket signs.

Inside, Walker was being sworn in as governor, and a new regime was beginning – a regime seemingly callous to the desperate plight of workers in Milwaukee.

Photos by Gregory Stanford and Cynthia Henry

Busses to go to inaugural protest in Madison

Prayer will take place inside and outside of Monona Terrace in Madison Monday morning. Inside will be a prayer breakfast in honor of the inauguration of Scott Walker as Wisconsin governor. Outside will be a prayer rally in protest of the actions Walker has already taken to scuttle thousands of anticipated jobs in the state.

The rally and other protest activities during Monday’s inauguration will give residents a chance to show the state and the world their anger and concern over the incoming governor’s cancellation of a federally financed, $810 million, 110 miles-an-hour rail line between Madison and Milwaukee.

The rally will take place at 9 a.m. Monday. No passenger train connects Wisconsin’s two biggest cities, so Milwaukeeans who want to participate can board busses at 6:30 a.m. in a parking lot at 27^th and Hopkins Sts. MICAH (Milwaukee Innercity Congregations Allied for Hope) has details.  (For background, see my earlier post, "Rail backers to 'crash' Wis. governor's inaugural.")

* * *

Business community paralyzed

Would Milwaukee’s business community have stood silently by had a Democratic governor-elect chased a manufacturing company out of town and rejected hundreds of millions in free economic development money, killing a project that (1) had already hired dozens of construction workers and would eventually have hired hundreds more, (2) would have created dozens of permanent jobs directly and hundreds indirectly and (3) would have linked the state’s two top economic engines by fast passenger rail?  I think not.

The business community’s silence in Walker’s case, I submit, betrays its bias in favor of Republicans. That bias made it too paralyzed to head off a Republican-engineered economic fiasco.

In announcing it would move its manufacturing operation out of Milwaukee in light of the state’s anti-rail climate, train-maker Talgo expressed disappointment about that silence, which, the firm said, stood in contrast with the encouragement it got from business leaders to come to Milwaukee in the first place.

The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce blames its non-action on a poll that found its members evenly split on the merits of high-speed rail between Milwaukee and Madison.

* * *

Other states cheer Walker

“California's high-speed rail system is slowly coming together, thanks to a commitment to 21st-century progress and political games over federal funding by the Republican governors of Ohio and Wisconsin.” Fresno Bee.

“Thanks a billion, cheeseheads.” Los Angeles Times.

“California is not too proud to take leftovers.” The Orange County Register. 

“U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla), welcomed Thursday the news that Florida is getting ‘an early Christmas present.’” News Chief  (Winter Haven, Fla.).

* * *

Let them eat donated goods

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle donated proceeds from his inauguration – $233,000 in 2003, $323,000 in 2007 – to the state's Boys & Girls Clubs. Walker plans to split the proceeds between the state Republican Party and his own campaign chest. He is, however, asking inaugural guests to bring canned goods for the Hunger Task Force. Not a bad idea. Given Walker’s job-killing propensities, hunger may well rise during his governorship.