Meade takes protest signs down from the Civil War monument at the Wisconsin Capitol.

New Media Meade, the protector of war monuments, takes signs down from the statue of Hans Christian Heg, who died at Chickamauga. Do you think it's cool to have a sign that reads "I fought for the Union/You should too" tied to his foot? We didn't.

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."

How did the Wisconsin protests happen? Who did what when? How did we get here? A timeline.

"On Feb. 7, with Wisconsin united in the afterglow of a Green Bay Packers victory in the Super Bowl" — so begins the Wisconsin State Journal begins today's article about the protests with a reminder about how great everyone felt in Wisconsin so recently. We were deprived of our enjoyment of the afterglow!

On February 11th, when Gov. Walker "dropped the bomb" — his words — union chiefs and organizers had "a freakout of a long weekend" — as one of them put it.

As unions organized protests to be launched in the coming days - the largest in Wisconsin's capital city since the Vietnam War - about 250 people in two separate groups picketed Sunday at the Capitol and in front of the Maple Bluff mansion Walker now calls home.

Here's my post commenting on the thin, mellow crowd that day:

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?

Ha ha. And the Isthmus didn't seem at all enthused:

Protests are exactly what Walker wants, because they can only lead to two outcomes: Either they are peaceful and accomplish nothing; or they turn violent and create a massive backlash against the unions and their members. Either way, Walker wins.

Look back over the last 2 weeks. We now know the protests were huge and peaceful, so did they accomplish anything? Did Walker win? He chose not to confront people, and, interestingly enough, the people of Wisconsin who opposed the protests didn't make trouble either. There was one pleasant Tea Party event on the first Saturday, with a good turnout, but everyone was nice. I mean, the anti-Scott Walker folks had their Hitler signs and so forth. But that's all. Over-the-top analogies.

Back to the State Journal:

Before Walker unveiled his budget-repair bill on Feb. 11, the Teaching Assistants' Association at UW-Madison, along with campus student groups Student Labor Action Coalition and Multicultural Student Coalition, had planned a noon march from the Memorial Union to the Capitol to deliver "I Heart UW" valentines to Walker and urge him not to cut education funding....

They delivered the valentines.

That night, TAA leaders went back to campus and sent their 2,800 UW-Madison members an e-mail urging them to return to the Capitol on Tuesday and testify at the Legislature's powerful Joint Finance Committee, which had scheduled a hearing on the bill at 10 a.m.

Unions across the state were doing the same, as a dozen leaders convened Monday.

State law prevents Capitol Police from locking the building while there are ongoing hearings. So some TAA members made plans to stay as long as necessary, not realizing they wouldn't sleep at home again for weeks and that their union would set up a nerve center in a Capitol office, with members coordinating volunteers and helping manage what became the Capitol's 24-hour ecosystem.

So the occupation of the Capitol began as a UW TAA operation.

[Tuesday, February 15th], AFSCME, a 68,000-member union that represents state and municipal workers... started running buses from at least seven cities throughout Wisconsin.

About 10,000 people gathered at the Capitol for noon and 5 p.m. rallies, holding protest signs and chanting "Kill the Bill!" and "This is What Democracy Looks Like!"

Inside, 3,000 more turned the ground-floor rotunda into a raucous drum circle and plastered the walls with anti-Walker, pro-union posters. It was the start of a protest village that would occupy the Capitol at least through Sunday, Feb. 27, when Capitol Police say they'll no longer allow protesters to stay overnight.

So the TAs gained the support of AFSCME (and its buses). Why did the Capitol Police let them stay? They're clearing everyone out today, supposedly, but why did they let them stay so long? I talked to the Capitol Police yesterday, and I asked them the questions I raised in this post about free speech and viewpoint discrimination. I got a sense of what the answer is and will write about that later today.

Back to the State Journal. (These are excerpts from the article. For a more complete timeline, go to the link at the beginning of this post.)

At the [Madison Teachers Inc.] meeting, executive director John Matthews  discussed the far-reaching consequences of the bill and the group decided Madison teachers should spend the next three days at the Capitol - and not in the classroom.

"We were in lockstep," said Matthews. "There was no dissention."...

About the same time, finance committee co-chairs Rep. Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, directed staff to stop registering people wanting to testify, angering opponents....

The committee adjourned about 3 a.m. Wednesday. At that point, Democrats continued hearing testimony in another room, giving justification to protesters to stay overnight in the Capitol.

So the reason the protesters could stay in the building overnight was that the Democrats kept hearings going, which kept the building open. With the Madison schools closed, the crowd in the Capitol swelled on Wednesday, and many slept in the building overnight.

Thursday morning, the Senate's Democrats absconded, which kept the bill from passing and the protest going. And here's a State Journal scoop: Republican Mike Ellis, the state senate president, helped the last of the 14 Democrats get out of state, at least according to that Democrat, Tim Cullen. Cullen was assisting the family of Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Bill Bablitch, who had just died. Cullen says he called Ellis "to ask if he could enter the Capitol without being detained," and Ellis "said fine, come in. There's no problem." Keep in mind that the Republicans only needed one vote to meet their quorum. They had Cullen, and they let him get away! According to Cullen. Ellis even called Cullen as Cullen was driving to Illinois to "double check" if he got out okay. According to Cullen. Doesn't that mean the Republicans accepted or even encouraged the prolongation of the protests?

The flight of the 14 Democrats enthused the protesters, and Madison public schools were closed for a second day and then a third, February 17th and 18th. Saturday, the 19th, was the day the pro-Scott Walker people showed up too. They came, had a rally outside the building, and then left.

That was a week ago. The occupation of the Capitol continued, and you've seen the pictures and descriptions on this blog. Yesterday, we had "about 70,000 people" at the Capitol, but they were mainly outside. I went inside. I walked right up to the nearest door, and a "volunteer" in an orange vest told me to go wait in a line to go in some other door. This door was for... I didn't quite catch who the special people were who got to go right in the door I'd walked up to, but I said, "This is a public building. You're saying there are 2 kinds of people — ones that get right in and ones that go wait in line? Who are you?" He was obviously not a uniformed city official. I was all "Who are you?" and "How dare you!" and, after a few seconds, I (and Meade) got right through that door.

Once in, I said "How dare they!" about 10 times. Sorry, Meade didn't video that. You've never seen video as emotional as I was right then. I got outraged for myself and for all the people that were out there waiting in that line. I was outraged about them for 2 reasons: 1. Because they were treated as second-class citizens who had to enter through the subordinate door, and 2. Because they meekly accepted their subordination.* On the other hand, whether the restricted entry plan came from the Capitol Police or not, it assisted them in what appeared to me to be a well-coordinated procedure of closing down portions of the building and moving a smaller and smaller group into the central area. I assume this slowly tightening cordon will effectively accomplish the end of the occupation at 4 p.m. this afternoon.
_______________________

* My stature as a "line pioneer" was verified by David Foster Wallace. I have that in writing from the now-dead genius writer, who had a problem with lines too.

"In the private sector, the capitalist knows that when he negotiates with the union, if he gives away the store, he loses his shirt."

"In the public sector, the politicians who approve any deal have none of their own money at stake. On the contrary, the more favorably they dispose of union demands, the more likely they are to be the beneficiary of union largess in the next election. It's the perfect cozy setup... Recognizing this threat to union power, the Democratic Party is pouring money and fury into the fight. Fewer than 7 percent of private-sector workers are unionized. The Democrats' strength lies in government workers, who now constitute a majority of union members and provide massive support to the party. For them, Wisconsin represents a dangerous contagion."

Charles Krauthammer.

The Badger Herald writes about last night's teach-in on the Wisconsin budget bill and completely misrepresents what Prof. Donald Downs said.

Here's the Badger Herald.  Here's Professor Downs's response — which was cc'd to me:

I write in response to Grant Hermes reporting on my comments at the Law School Forum Wednesday evening. Hermes wrote that I "alluded to the idea that the governor’s proposed bill may have long-term negative effects on political areas outside of labor disputes, such as taxes and the rising cost in higher education." This is a complete misrepresentation of what I said and meant. I was talking about the crisis of debt, and how higher education is part of this crisis because we cost so much. Walker has had nothing to do [with] having caused this problem; indeed, his measures are designed to at least address the crisis of public debt in a forceful way. At no point in my discussion of this aspect of the problem did I implicate Walker's plan as a source of the problem. The cost of higher education has skyrocketed at twice the skyrocketing rate of medical care costs over the course of the last twenty years, and we are the source of this problem, not Walker.

Donald Downs
Meiklejohn Professor of Political Science, Law, and Journalism

Maybe the reporter had trouble hearing a professor imply that Scott Walker might be doing something good.

ADDED: The boldface is mine. Here's the last 2 1/2 minutes of Downs's talk.

Don't forget the forum on Gov. Walker's budget repair bill at the law school tonight.

Previously blogged here. This event, from 6-8 tonight in room 2260 at the UW Law School, is open to the public. And, as you can see from the law school website, the law school will produce a video of the event that will be available here tomorrow.

"It's quite striking the way almost every lie the left ever told about the Tea Party has turned out to be true of the government unionists in Wisconsin and their supporters."

James Taranto explains it all.

"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.

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.

"48% Back GOP Governor in Wisconsin Spat, 38% Side With Unions."

Ah! A poll! At last!

MORE: Rasmussen surveyed likely voters across the country — I'd like to see an all-Wisconsin poll — and found "strong partisan disagreement on both questions and a wide gap between the Political Class and Mainstream voters."

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.

The organized effort to keep the Wisconsin Capitol building and grounds clean.

"Members of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Teaching Assistants' Association have been inhabiting the Capitol, working with other groups around the clock to keep the rally clean, peaceful, and democratic."

They've been successful. The place really is clean, even with people sleeping there overnight.

A lot of the organization is on the TAA level. Here's a post on the TAA blog about "Teach-out Tuesday":

Membership of the Teaching Assistants’ Association voted today [Feb. 20, 2011] to call for another “teach-out” on Tuesday, to protest the reconvening of the State Assembly and Governor Scott Walker’s planned statement about his budget....

We are calling for a teach-out rather than a walk-out because we do not want learning to cease at the UW. We value education and thus we are calling for instructors to use their discretion to cancel classes, reschedule them or hold them off campus. We are calling on action from teaching assistants, research assistants, project assistants and professors.

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."

Smile when you wield that swastika.

"Do you think Scott Walker deserves to be compared to the Nazis?" I ask and the answer is "Yes, I do":



(Yesterday, at the Wisconsin protest.)

"So you're really providing real doctor's notes for people that miss work?"

"I thought this was a little street theater..."



(That's the video I was promising to deliver, back in this post.)



The tall sign says: "I'm a doctor. Need a note?"

"'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.]

"Why are national liberal groups treating Wisconsin as if it were their last stand?"

John Fund answers:

Partly for reasons of symbolism. Historically, Wisconsin "embraced the organized labor movement more heartily than any other [state]," notes liberal activist Abe Sauer.

The Badger State became the first to pass a worker-compensation program in 1911, as well as the first to create unemployment compensation in 1932. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees—the chief national union representing non-federal public employees—was founded in Madison in 1936. And in 1959, Wisconsin became the first state to grant public employees collective-bargaining rights, which influenced President John F. Kennedy's decision to grant federal employees the right to join unions three years later.

Labor historian Fred Siegel offers further reasons why unions are manning the barricades. [Governor Scott] Walker would require that public-employee unions be recertified annually by a majority vote of all their members, not merely by a majority of those that choose to cast ballots. In addition, he would end the government's practice of automatically deducting union dues from employee paychecks. For Wisconsin teachers, union dues total between $700 and $1,000 a year.

"Ending dues deductions breaks the political cycle in which government collects dues, gives them to the unions, who then use the dues to back their favorite candidates and also lobby for bigger government and more pay and benefits," Mr. Siegel told me. 

Read the whole thing.

"The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service."

FDR wrote in 1937, quoted by Real Clear Politics:

Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, "I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place" in the public sector. "A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government."

Jesse Jackson comes to Wisconsin...

... and keeps the crowd waiting for a long, cold time, then delivers a generic speech including all sorts of inappropriate stuff about not giving in to violence — hello! Wisconsin teachers are utterly nonviolent — and how the government needs to create good jobs — which of course, the people protesting are privileged to have already.



Really, why is this celebrity from another state grandstanding here? This is truly not about him. Yet he made today, in a state that is not his state, revolve around him. It was quite selfish, especially when you contemplate the Wisconsin citizens the protesters are trying to influence. Why would Jesse Jackson's generically left-wing speech sway the people of Wisconsin to throw their support to the employees who have well-paid jobs with excellent benefits that they don't want to lose? If I had to pull a coherent thought out of Jackson's appearance, it would be self-interest. Jackson is a political speaker who plugged in to an event that he thought would boost his influence as a famous politico, and the state employees were demonstrating to preserve their power as especially fortunate participants in a struggling economy.