Voices and pictures from Madison, Wisconsin, protests
- maggiekb
- Uncategorized
- Feb 25, 2011
- Action, Everything Happens in the, Happy Mutants
We Are Wisconsin from Finn Ryan on Vimeo.
Last night, I joined the scattered groups of people walking down Madison, Wisconsin’s State Street towards the State Capitol Building. There weren’t the mighty throngs from last weekend, but for a Thursday night, at 8:00 pm, the smaller clutches still made an impact. They came up both sides of the block. A group of five here. Another three over there. Four coming up right behind them.
I wanted to see, for myself, what was happening in Wisconsin—what it really looks and feels like when a diverse swath of Americans band together for a common cause. From that first realization that all the people on State Street were going to the same place I was going, I knew this was going to be a new experience.
That’s “Kill the
Bill” by the way, not a threat to a
person.
In fact,
I’d gotten a hint of that difference earlier in the day, when
some of the people I’d eaten lunch with ducked out early to
spend the last 20 minutes of their lunch hour at the protest.
The layout of Madison is somewhat uniquely conducive to public
action. Unlike every other capitol city I’ve ever spent time
in, their Capitol Building isn’t located in the middle of a
half-abandoned downtown, miles from where most people live,
work, and play. The University of Wisconsin is a short walk
away. All the streets that stick out from the Capitol like
spokes on a bike tire are packed with businesses—most
of which have signs in the windows offering support to the
protesters. Residential neighborhoods are close.
Many protests I’ve been to in the past were made up
largely of students, retirees, and people whose main hobby was
protesting things. That’s not the case here. The urban
geography of Madison makes it relatively easy for working
people to participate. I think a big part of why Madison has
been able to maintain this protest is simply that maintaining
it—while simultaneously maintaining a
life—is relatively easy, compared to other
cities.
This protest looks different from inside
the Capitol, too. Yes, there are the requisite
meditators—OM-ing their way to a legislative
compromise. And, yes, there are a few obvious old hippies,
leading chants or standing around looking generally pleased
with the world. But these people are the minority. Most of the
Wisconsinites I saw at the Capitol didn’t look like
“protesters”. They looked like me—professionals who’d
come over straight after work. They looked like my
Father—teachers with union t-shirts pulled on over
their business casual wear. They looked like my
Mother—working women with big smiles and big, comfy
sweatshirts. And there were LOTS of them. At least a few
hundred, I’d guess. My hosts told me I’d missed the much larger
crowds that come right after work.
These people were packed around the
Rotunda. Their air mattresses and cots were tucked into little
sheltered corners of the upper floors. And the walls all over
the buildings were covered in posters and signs and printed off
sheets with messages of support from all over the state. It
didn’t feel like a protest, it felt like a party. The Wisconsin
protesters are unhappy, sure. They’re angry that their Governor
wants to eliminate the right of public employees to bargain
collectively for their salaries and working conditions. But
they aren’t angry in the sense of being violent, ill-tempered,
or even so much as downbeat.
People talked and laughed. A couple of
guitarists had set up impromptu concerts in the hallways. The
protesters shared food and camping supplies. They’d set up a
first-aid station. They organized volunteers to sweep and mop
the rotunda, to keep it clean. I saw signs all over the place
urging protesters to pick up after themselves—”This
is our house,” the signs said.
A graduate
student in engineering from the University of Wisconsin told me
that his TA union was offering homework help. He was thinking
about doing a series of science demonstrations, just to help
keep people entertained and to do his job while he also
protested.
Honestly, I’ve never seen
anything like this. I spent about an hour wandering through the
crowd, moved to the point that I developed a Keanu Reeves
speech impediment. All I could say was, “Wow.”
FYI: The video at the beginning of this post
was made by Finn
Ryan, an awesome Madison media producer who was also
responsible for the beautiful
video about the impact of climate change on maple syrup
production that I posted here a few months
ago.
And big thanks
to David Zaks for lending me his iPhone to take these photos,
and then
uploading them to
Flickr!