"Chicago is up in the house!"/"He's never nipped at anybody but he barks and growls"/"I wanna be your dog"...

... "Everyone left is from Chicago"/"It's the love-in of a lifetime"/"People are going to be really embarrassed some day to look back and realize that they had joined in on something that was really a mistake and they chose the wrong side and that they joined it with such fervor"/"Did you ever do that when you were young?"



All this video was recorded yesterday... except the flashback. (That was originally blogged on February 17th.)

And here's the NYT article on "self-compassion" that I talk about in the car.

"On Tuesday, several dozen protesters slept outside the Capitol in a camp they've dubbed 'Walkerville.'"

Ha. As if Walker has caused homelessness. (The coinage presumably alludes to "Hooverville.")

This protest is NOT about poor people. It's about people with good jobs, wanting to preserve the high quality of what they've been able to acquire for themselves. Now, I do think those who are sleeping on the floor of the Capitol rotunda and outside on the frozen ground are young people who don't themselves have good jobs. It's interesting what these kids are putting themselves through for others, who are, presumably, better off than they are. I took this picture, yesterday, of the outdoor sleeping setup:



It had gone down to 11° the night before. Note the underlayer of Ian's Pizza boxes. There is a lot of free food. Ian's, by the way, is doing some kickass branding (without losing any money):

On Monday afternoon, [store manager Staci] Fritz guesstimated that Ian's had delivered upwards of 35,000 slices of pizzas in the last week, all paid for by donations...

Fritz says that while Ian's is still making deliveries and taking donations, it has been very careful to cut off the amount of money it takes in one day. "What if somebody gives a load of money and then suddenly this whole thing is over and we can't deliver anymore? We can't let anyone pay for what we can't promise to deliver."

Keeping it honest... which is good for branding too, of course. They're not just raking in donations without accounting for it all with free pizza delivered to protesters.

Madison has a long tradition of its bars and restaurants being sucked into the fervent political activity of the times, such as the Nitty Gritty restaurant and bar's role as the meeting place for the activists who bombed the university's Sterling Hall in 1970.

Well, hell... why bring that up? Things have been really peaceful, by and large — to an amazing degree, considering the difficulty of keeping a large, diverse crowd energized enough to look like a good demonstration without tipping any individual over the edge into something ugly, even as the days wear on and on.

New Media Meade catches protesters leaving the Capitol and the scene outside — including the scoop from police that anyone who wants to stay will be allowed.

Video by Meade, edited by me — all done today...



0:01 — People line the front walk of the State Street exit to the Capitol, preparing to honor the protesters who file out after the building is closed, as promised, at 4 p.m.

0:30 — Protesters file out to the chant of "Thank You... Thank You..."

1:45 — Meade asks a man with an "Ask Gandhi" sign if he's Gandhi.

2:13 — People lined up as if to ring the perimeter of the Capitol and sing "We will be peaceful, we will be strong."

3:16 — Dane County Sheriff's deputies tell Meade that no one will be arrested and, in fact, anyone who doesn't leave will be allowed to stay. They'll just have to get out of the way when the floor scrubbers come through.

4:53 — Meade talks to the woman with the "Greedy Obfuscating Plutocrats" sign.

5:35 — And older man questions the woman's ideological credentials.

6:24 — "What is a legal observer?"

7:02 — "Unions are hot."

Who invited Peter Yarrow to the Wisconsin protests? And why was he the only entertainer on the bill?

Where were all the rest of the supposedly passionate lefties of the entertainment world?

I'm embarrassed for bloggers like Eric Kleefeld who murmur appreciation for Yarrow:

Folk singer Peter Yarrow -- of "Peter, Paul and Mary" fame -- played some politically themed tunes such as "If I Had A Hammer," "Which Side Are You On," "Blowin' In The Wind" and more, and spoke of his hopes that the current crisis in Madison would reawaken in people the urge to achieve social justice that animated people during the civil rights movement. And like his audience, Yarrow often worked "Kill The Bill" and other slogans into the lyrics. (Nostalgia for my childhood made me wish for "Puff The Magic Dragon," but I suppose it wasn't germane.)

Oh, yeah, it's so sweet that he entertained children with his magic dragon. If you know what I mean. And I think you do. As Meade wrote over there in the comments:

Imagine the outcry in major media and the lefty blogosphere if the Tea Party invited to sing at one of their rallies someone who had committed and was convicted of [making sexual advances toward] a 14 year-old and got a light sentence of 3 months because he had friends in high places who used their influence on his behalf.

I wanted to dig up the old NYT report of Jimmy Clinton's Carter's beneficence toward the entertainer of children, and I stumbled across this interesting bit from a review of Robert Shrum's "Concessions of a Serial Campaigner":

Shrum relates the campaign's collective sigh of relief when the networks declined to show footage of Kerry at an Iowa party jokingly miming a toke while Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary sang ''Puff the Magic Dragon''....

How nice — how typical — of the reporters to help the Democratic candidate. Here's something about Yarrow. Anyway, why wasn't there someone more impressive who wanted to be seen at yesterday's rally? Why Yarrow? And why not some better celebrities from the entertainment and political worlds?

Yarrow followed 13-year-old Sam Frederick of Wauwatosa, who wrote an anti-Walker protest song for the occasion and led the crowd in singing it. In between, organizers shoveled snow off the outdoor stage.

The "not official UW Marching Band" — tuba and trumpet blaring — played standards like "If You Want to Be a Badger" and the chicken song...

Man, that's small time! And look at how lame it was. Meade recorded this half a block from the stage:



In another part of the recording, when I first hear it, I say: "Is Cat Stevens here? This guy needs to project a little more."

Why weren't there better celebrities? Perhaps there are inside polls on how this protest is playing out around the country and people don't want their names dragged into it.

Lefty blogger loves the idea of restaurants refusing to serve people that their other customers express open hatred toward.

"Sounds like a good idea to me. I don’t generally consider myself a snob, but in this case I’ll make an exception — I’ll be happy to dine at an establishment that knows exactly which kind of undesirables should be kept out."

Swopa loves that a Madison restaurant asked Governor Scott Walker to leave when customers booed him. He/she links to a Madison blogger who deleted the name of the restaurant after the restaurant received threats. (Threats? Were they reported to the police?) Swopa notes that he edited his post to delete the name of the restaurant, but he leaves in his "via Howie Klein on Twitter" link, and the name of the restaurant is right there.

Idiot. Don't rely on Firedoglake to protect you. They care. They want to protect you. But they just can't quite pull off the protectiveness they'd love to give you.

And that's the problem with liberals. They care. They're here to help. They're here to help the people they've decided are the people who deserve to be helped. But they do a half-assed job of protecting even the people they care about.

And how about believing in principles that you are willing to follow at a high level of abstraction? You love the idea of restaurants letting the passions of their customers determine who ought to be seated (at least when they sympathize with those passions). What sprang into my head was: Ollie's Barbecue!

Ollie's Barbecue is a family owned restaurant in Birmingham, Alabama, specializing in barbecued meats and homemade pies, with a seating capacity of 220 customers... The restaurant caters to a family and white-collar trade with a take-out service for Negroes....

Ah, but who remembers anything anymore? It's today that matters. The war dead are dead, and now their memorial is a handy place to tape your signs and back your table up against so all your stuff doesn't fall on the floor.

And who thinks about tomorrow? The state capitol is occupied right now and plastered with thousands of signs this week, and isn't that just great? You haven't give a moment's thought — have you? — to what free speech rights will apply to the next group that wants to appropriate the state capitol? Are you planning on advocating viewpoint discrimination to keep the signs you find loathsome off the walls?

No. I know. You have no plan. You haven't thought about it. Swopa began his post this way:

Sometimes, it’s good to leave detached, cerebral meta-analyses of politics aside and just get a taste of public opinion being expressed the old-fashioned way.

Sometimes! The whole point of principles is that you're supposed to follow them all the time — especially when you would find it most satisfying to violate them. Swopa's all: Let's not be "detached" and "cerebral" today when we're having such fun.

What children!

IN THE COMMENTS: There's some evidence that the story of the booing and ejectment was a hoax. Of course, nothing in my post depends on whether the incident really happened or not. I'm writing about the reaction to the incident, not the incident itself. If it is a hoax, I would like to get to the bottom of it. Did the owners of the restaurant seek to endear themselves to Madisonians with viral P.R. about their political faith? Or were employees appropriating their employer's reputation?

"About 300 students, staff and parents returned to East High School on Monday marching side-by-side with civil rights activist Jesse Jackson..."

"... who later urged them stay in school, vote and support their teachers."

"I can't think of a better way to come back home to school than to walk with the students and Jesse Jackson," said Sarah Motl, a social studies teacher at East.

ADDED: I think the best way to come back to school is to be there in the normal place at the normal time and to launch into the assigned material in the normal way — with a bit more briskness and good cheer than usual. Don't say a thing about politics. Give the students exactly what it is your duty to give them: a great education designed to serve their needs and interests, not yours. And don't delude yourself or try to bullshit anyone else with manufactured, self-serving theories about how the sickout and protest presents a wonderful "teaching moment" that ought to take up class time.

I receive a threat: "whoever video taped this has no life and needs to be shot in the head."

That's a comment on my YouTube video about the salt trucks that circled the Wisconsin Capitol yesterday, blowing horns, apparently in support of the protesters. (I blogged the video here.)

Coincidentally, last night, one of my readers sent this email to the Madison Street Superintendent:

I work in Madison, so I was delighted to read on madison.com this morning that the snow plows were out "the moment" precipitation began today.

You might want to double check whether those plows were pouring salt, however, or whether the drivers were more interested in showing their support for anti-Walker ralliers:

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/madison-city-salt-trucks-circle-capitol.html

The Street Superintendent responded:

I want to thank you for bringing this to my attention. While it was necessary with the storm system we had yesterday to have crews working the overtime to be salting and plowing our main streets, we never should have had the trucks involved in the rally around the Capitol.

We are checking our GPS and determining the what operators were involved and will be dealing with this.

While people are free to rally and support whatever cause they believe in, it should not be done at the expense of the taxpayers such as you and I.

I thank you again,

Al Schumacher
Street Superintendent
1501 W. Badger Rd.
Madison, WI 53713
(608) 266-4681

aschumacher@cityofmadison.com

Madison schools will open again on Tuesday — and Jesse Jackson will be there at East High School.

Ridiculous.

Just before classes start at East High School, Jackson plans to march from the corner of First Street and East Mifflin Street to the East parking lot for a rally....

"We could have done a big rally in the gym, but we've got to get kids in the classroom," [principal Mary Kelley said]....

But district policy says teachers can't use their positions to "promote candidates or parties or activities," including protests. [Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad] said principals will determine to what degree teachers will be allowed to discuss the matter in the classroom.

How about following the policy? Seriously. I don't get it. You have a policy. Do the rules apply or don't they? You'd better set the example you expect the kids to follow. You don't accept their explanations for why the rules don't apply to them.

Peggy Coyne, a Black Hawk Middle School reading specialist and president-elect of Madison Teachers Inc., said she plans to ask students to write journal entries Tuesday about what they did while classes were canceled the last four days.

Coyne said teachers might also incorporate recent events into lessons about Wisconsin labor history. Some elementary school teachers have been told not to discuss the political events with younger children, she added.

Ridiculous! Outrageous... and kind of intimidating. What grade does a kid get if he says he demonstrated in favor of Scott Walker? Or if he says he stayed home and played video games? If this isn't deliberate spying on the students and their families it will still feel like it to many students.

"If (teachers are) going to be speaking about the rally and the protest, it really needs to be a planned lesson and it really needs to look at both sides," [Don Johnson, superintendent of the Middleton-Cross Plains School District, said].

Look, the teachers should leave the children out of their political struggle. They've already deprived them of nearly a week of the teaching they signed on to deliver. The students should receive, immediately, substantive educational lessons of the completely normal kind. Leave the politics, indoctrination, ideology, and political discipline out of the classroom. Children are required to attend school. The teachers who hold these young bodies and minds captive owe them pure, rich education. It's a disgusting violation of trust to do anything else.

I can't believe people who are fighting to preserve their job benefits would even think to appropriate the children this way. It's mind boggling.

ADDED: Link fixed.

Highlights of the last 8 days of following the Wisconsin protests here on the Althouse blog.

The light, low-key demonstration on February 13th: "It was a beautiful, unseasonably warm Sunday, and our new governor has just dropped a shocking union-busting proposal that our newly Republican legislature is likely to step up and pass. This is the push-back from the unions?"

February 16, when the Madison schools first closed for the protest: "Okay, now, everybody go to the demonstration! The kids won't have school, but you can learn a lot of things outside of school. Some of these things are even taught by the teachers who are not there. For example, it's okay to call in sick when you're not actually sick, but you just have something that you think is really important."

A lady lets Meade know — via face — that he's an idiot not to understand the comparison between Scott Walker and Hitler.

Another lady holds up a Scott-Walker-is-Hitler sign and tells me fascism is coming to America.

On February 18th, I wonder what's really happening: "Why wouldn't the Republicans embrace a strategy hostile to the public employees? Why wouldn't they drive a wedge between the public employees and all the other citizens in the state?"

I talk to a man who likens Walker to Stalin and a young woman who likens Walker to the Wicked Witch of the West.

I don't like Jesse Jackson grandstanding here.

I'm wary of the Tea Party rally if it insufficiently Wisconsin.

I encounter the doctors who are handing out sick-day excuses to protesters.

Video: faces in the Tea Party crowd (with audio of Breitbart speaking).

I confront a woman with a "Please don't teabag our children" sign.

The Judas/Brett Favre/Scott Walker thing.

The nefarious honking salt trucks.

I'm irked at the lack of journalistic vigor from the New York Times.

Can I get my news about Wisconsin from the New York Times?

The newspaper I'd like to rely on is leading 2 main stories about Wisconsin on its website this morning: 1. "Wisconsin Puts Obama Between Competing Desire," and 2. "Protesters in Wisconsin Say They Are Staying Put."

As for #1... yes, as usual, it's all about Obama. What does it mean for Obama? And his "competing desires"? Good, lord, it sounds like jacket copy for a romance novel.

The battle in Wisconsin over public employee unions has left President Obama facing a tricky balance between showing solidarity with longtime political supporters and projecting a message in favor of deep spending cuts to reduce the debt.

What's the best way for Obama to look best? The eternal question. Is there no real Obama? Possibly not!

“This is a Wisconsin story, not a Washington one,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “False claims of White House involvement are attempts to distract from the organic grass-roots opposition that is happening in Wisconsin.”

If it's a Wisconsin story, why did Obama horn in on it? He horned in and then backed out. It's this back and forth, trying to get into the right pose to look good later on. It's so difficult for him! (As for "organic grass-roots." Organic! You just know, the Tea Party was commercially grown.) I'd like to know what's really going on! Can't the NYT ferret out some real information about the behind-the-scenes national-level politics reaching into Wisconsin instead of passing along propaganda from Dan Pfeiffer?

Now, if we can tear ourselves away from always-scintillating trials and tribulations of Barack Obama, let's look at the second article...

Union leaders urged Wisconsin teachers to return to work at schools that are open on Monday...

But the Madison schools are closed, and there was a big union vote yesterday about that, as I blogged last night. "Nearly 3,000 Madison teachers, staff and family gathered at Monona Terrace," and the press was kicked out. The NYT doesn't mention that — let alone try to find out what went on.

As the protests went on through falling sleet and snow...

But hardly anyone was out in the bad weather, as my video, taken yesterday afternoon shows. The continuing protest was indoors, in our posh Capitol building.

As for that indoor crowd, are they Wisconsin school teachers, or are they UW students and teaching assistants? Is it still about the Scott Walker budget, or has it skewed into more generic left-wing causes? Here's the video I took inside yesterday afternoon, and those are the questions that occurred to me.

Why doesn't the NYT dig out some information? Who's involved in the organizing? How are they using Facebook and Twitter to maintain the presence in the Capitol? Who's sleeping there overnight? I photographed a sign on a pillar in the Capitol rotunda that says "talk to the TAA about how we can work together." Does the NYT know or care what the TAA even is let alone its role in organizing the protest?

Democrats in the State Senate, meanwhile, who are in the minority but are needed for a quorum, said Sunday that they intended to remain out of state — and far from the voting chamber — until Republican leaders agree to remove broad collective bargaining restrictions from the proposal to increase workers’ health care and pension costs.

“This is not a stunt, it’s not a prank,” said Senator Jon Erpenbach, one of the Democrats who drove away from Madison early Thursday, hours before a planned vote, and would say only that he was in Chicago. “This is not an option I can ever see us doing again, but in this case, it’s absolutely the right thing to do. What they want to do is not the will of the people.”

Instead of passing along a cheerleader quote from Erpenbach, how about making him tell us who's paying to house the 14 Democratic Senators in Chicago? And I want some investigation into how the protest is playing with voters around the state. Are the protests stirring up support among Wisconsinites or pissing people off? Are people outraged by the teachers taking sickout days? Are working parents struggling to find alternate childcare or leaving kids alone? Do people accept the flexible ethics of doctors giving excuse notes to protesters who called in sick and legislators who don't show up for their jobs? Are people inclined to pursue remedies like impeachment or recall? What would it take to get  actual public opinion polls?

The weather here is a dreary winter mix, and the reporting drizzling in from New York only adds to slushy mush.

Madison schools will close again on Monday — the 4th school day in a row — to accommodate teachers protesting at the Capitol.

"Nearly 3,000 Madison teachers, staff and family gathered at Monona Terrace... At one point, the [union] membership was so evenly divided on a vote to return to work Monday, they were asked to exit the meeting room and re-enter through two separate doors so an exact count could be taken. The vote was 741-731 to return Monday, but a later, more overwhelming vote to return Tuesday won the day."

The protest crowd is pretty thin today, outdoors in the cold rain.

Around the Capitol Square at about 2 this afternoon. I narrate, reading signs and so forth, from the comfort of the backseat of our car:



The video ends with a decision to run inside to see what was happening, and that's blogged here.

How it looked in the Capitol rotunda at 2 p.m. on Sunday as the anti-Scott Walker protests continue.

Note the banner: "Stewart/Colbert/We came to your rally/NOW come to OURS!"

"Ask me for a flower, and I will show you a Light."

At yesterday's protest, some people did their own thing. Here's a friendly gentleman in a "PEACE" hat, with a framed picture of John Lennon, a scattering of sayings, a small "Recall Gov. Scott Walker" sticker, and a lot of postage stamps. The stamps, he told me, were his contribution to the government.

Also in the photograph:

Right side: The man-in-tights blogged here.

Top left: Corrugated cardboard signs, readable in the super-enlargement. Why do people do signs on sorry-ass broken-open cardboard boxes?

Top right: The lined-up police who were keeping the pro- and anti-Scott Walker people apart. I suspected that there was an official police policy to keep the Tea Party crowd from getting big. We were forced to enter the Tea Party group at corner of the block and blocked from walking across the lawn. I expressed my theory to a woman standing next to me, and she said: What do you expect? Whose side do you think the police are on? Meaning: They're all public service employees too.

I said that I wanted to get over to the Tea Party group and complained about the difficulty of getting through the crowd to the entrance point at the corner. Her attitude toward me suddenly changed. She snapped: "You're a Republican?" Pussy that I am, I said: "I just want to get into the Tea Party group." Actually, I'm not a Republican, but I backed away from the challenge so reflexively — a habit of 25 years in Madison — that my conscious rational processes never crystallized into the lucidity that would have produced a simple "no." 

"'I need more rights'? You've been leeching for 45 years, from the looks of it!"

A quote that begins 3 minutes at the rally today. [Note: The young man in the frozen frame below has other things to say. It's another person who begins the clip.]

"Keep our protest CIVIL/Don't become Incited/THE NATION IS WATCHING/And so are our children!"

2 young men with good signs at the Wisconsin State Capitol last night:


(Enlarge.)

Someone put a blindfold on the "Forward" statue:



And, in the rotunda, the old "Obey" image has been Walker-ized:



(All photos by Meade.)

I went down to the demonstration this morning... just now...

... to get my fair share of photos and videos.

It's a very bright sunny day here in Madison, Wisconsin. A bit windy and cold. The crowds were much thinner than yesterday, but it's still early here. I'm wondering if the Democrats' escape from Wisconsin — which is preventing a vote on the budget plan — is draining energy from the crowd, cooling down the fervor.

Nothing can happen until they come back, and we don't know when they're coming back. I spoke some people who work for a Democratic senator, and they didn't know how long the legislative exile would persist. The idea is to slow things down, at least to express outrage about the way the Republicans "rammed things down our throat."

***

Pics and video soon. Hang on and check back. I got some good stuff.

Madison schools will close once again.

The teachers take another day off to demonstrate at the capitol. What impression is this making around the state?

Demonstrating in the Capitol, with the American flag hung upside down.

I don't know who put the flag like that, and I don't think most of those people posing around it realized they were part of a tableau of disrespect.

School's out for the demonstration...

... and students, here in Madison, Wisconsin, are marching from West High School down to the state capitol to protest Scott Walker's union-busting budget plan: