This Is What Democracy Looks Like

It began very quietly, in my home, last week.

My husband, Anders, came home from his job as a high school teacher and told me that we needed to prepare to take a $400-$600 cut in his monthly take-home pay. He explained that our governor, Scott Walker, was about to introduce a (now infamous) budget repair bill that would call for a sudden and drastic increase in the amount of money public employees were required to pay into pensions and health insurance. At the same time, the bill would prevent public employees from getting raises no greater than the percentage change in the consumer price index, unless approved by referendum. Essentially, there would be no way to offset the cut in pay that would result from the increased contributions.

We spent the next few days working through the implications of this bill for our little family of four. We tossed around various ways to make cuts to our tight budget, only to discover that we were already doing most of the things recommended for living on less. For about 48 hours, we pretended we didn't already know what was weighing most heavily on our minds: if this bill passed, we would have to put our adoption plans on hold. This may sound trite, but just that morning I'd felt the rush of love felt by all moms when they envision holding their new baby in their arms for the first time. My mind had already wrapped itself around the dream of another baby. When we finally said the words out loud--when we finally admitted to ourselves that, short of moving out of our modest home, there would be no way to sustain the cut in pay and still manage the cost of daycare for another child--it brought me to tears.

As much as the personal implications of the bill broke my own heart, I knew that the repercussions for many public employees would be even greater. Sure enough, as the story of the bill began to leak into the news, families all across Wisconsin reeled from the potential ramifications. Public employees talked of losing their cars... their houses...their plans for the future on which so many of their dreams had been built.

Predictably, supporters of the bill began pushing back, explaining that Wisconsin was broke and that it was time for public employees to give back. This, despite the fact that, even when hours worked are controlled for, Wisconsin's public employees with a college degree already make 25% less than than those with equivalent degrees in the private sector and that these public employees have continually accepted stagnant wages in exchange for the very benefits and pensions for which they were now being asked to pay more. This, despite the fact that so many teachers have already given so much of themselves in unpaid time and self-bought supplies and emotional energy that the call to "start" giving back rang rather hollow.

Underneath the talk of pensions and unemployment, though, other issues had started to simmer. As people began to read the bill, they realized with alarm that public employees weren't the only target. Buried deep within the bill were "emergency rule" provisions to hand control of Medicaid over the Governor and his team, without ensuring that changes to the program would pass through the normal legislative processes, or be presented for public input, or follow the typical laws. If the bill passed, Walker and his administration (including his pick for secretary of Health and Human Services, who had previously been known to recommend dropping states from the Medicaid program completely), would have unilateral control to restrict eligibility, increase premiums, modify benefits, or revise reimbursements to doctors and hospitals.

There was more, though. More than the unemployment and the pension contributions. More than the stagnant wages. More than the potential gutting of Medicaid. More than all of this, surrounding and pushing through and rising above all of this was the component of the bill that stripped public employees of their right to collectively bargain around more than than wages. It was around this issue of collective bargaining that the ground began to swell as people started to comprehend the enormity of what was truly at stake.

To understand the depth of the implications of the provisions that would eliminate collective bargaining, one must step back to the late 1800s. Today's opponents of unions talk of bottom feeders and con artists. They argue that unions protect crappy workers, make labor too expensive, and hurt the market. This short-sighted perspective, however, comes at the luxury of a system that now accepts for everyone the very things that labor unions once had to fight for on their own.

If we rewind history just a bit, to the late 1800s, we find the topography of the work world drastically different. Andrew Leonard, a writer at salon.com, paints a picture of this world for us; as he does, we are suddenly in a courtroom with a lawyer, Clarence Darrow, who has been called to passionately defend three woodworkers from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The woodworkers were charged with conspiracy against their workplace because they had gone on strike to object to their employer's use of child labor and to advocate for a weekly payday (yes, that means that they had no guarantee of even getting paid for their work). In his closing argument, Darrow argued that he was not fighting for the men he was representing but was instead fighting a bigger battle for the sake of broader humanity:

I appeal to you, gentlemen, not for Thomas I. Kidd, but I appeal to you for the long line -- the long, long line reaching back through the ages, and forward to the years to come -- the long line of despoiled and downtrodden people of the earth. I appeal to you for those men who rise in the morning before daylight comes, and who go home at night when the light has faded from the sky and give their life, their strength, their toil, to make others rich and great. I appeal to you in the name of those women who are offering up their lives, their strength and their womanhood on the altar of this modern god of gold; and I appeal to you, gentlemen, in the name of these little children, the living and the unborn, who will look at your names and bless them for the verdict you will render in their aid.

 

Gentlemen, the world is dark; but it is not hopeless...

This, then, is what people in Wisconsin began to understand. The world before unions was not a pretty place. It was a world in which those who had money were able to exploit those who did not and discard them at their convenience. The world back then belonged to the rich and there was no one to protect the poor. Unions allowed workers to join their collective voices together and stand up to the power of money. Over time, unions fought to establish 40 hour work weeks and weekends and overtime and fair wages and health care and workman's compensation and child labor laws and safe workplaces. As these elements of fair workplaces were established in jobs with unions, those same elements came to be expected in jobs without unions as well. Soon, these things became the norm for every worker. And we all forgot about the world that existed before the common worker was allowed to stand up for himself.

As Wisconsin began to realize the true repercussions of the bill that Governor Walker had asked us to accept, the voices that had begun quietly and in isolation began to join together and grow louder. People began to gather in Madison and voice their opposition. They began to call each other and post on Facebook and write blogs and spur others to join in the action. They began to stand up for themselves.

Still, though, it appeared that the bill was going to pass. Wisconsin's Senate and Assembly are currently controlled by Republicans, many of whom were prepared to walk in lockstep with Governor Walker on the bill. Because the bill had been scheduled for a vote just six short days after it had been proposed, the public had not had the time to adequately voice their dissent to the few Republicans who might have been open to listening.

The vote in the Senate was scheduled for last Thursday. I spent most of the day on the verge of tears as I pondered both the personal ramifications of the bill and the broader implications of what it meant for so very many hard working people.

And then.

Fourteen of Wisconsin's Democratic Senators stood up to Governor Walker and his plan. Literally. They stood up, walked off the Senate floor, got in their cars and drove out of the state. In doing so, they effectively prevented the house from having the 20 senators required to take a vote on the bill. As I write this, those Senators remain in hiding. It is the only thing keeping this bill from passing.

Some people have called those 14 representatives cowards. Personally, I call them heroes. Why? Because they hit the pause button on a movie that was running in fast-forward and, in doing so, they bought back the time that Governor Walker had tried to deny our citizens as he attempted to ram through a bill that our state's citizens had almost no chance to process or respond to.

Those 14 senators gave us time.

Enough time for public employees to say that yes, they certainly understood the need for sacrifice. Enough time for them to acknowledge the potential need to contribute more to pensions and unemployment and help offset our state's budget woes. Enough time to say that they were willing to come to the table and find a solution. But not like this. Not all at once, not with public employees shouldering the majority of the burden of our current economic situation, and certainly not with a bill that went far, far beyond the scope of what it was purported to address.

The senators bought us enough time to understand that this is just the beginning of Governor Walker's overall plan. To realize that the savings that would come from the plan would not return to the public programs themselves but that, after the budget bill passed, the governor planned to call for massive cuts in funding to public education and other municipalities. That if his budget passed, public schools would face significant losses in revenue, school closures, school mergers, and major cuts in staffing. Enough time to hear that the Governor might refuse to accept federal funding for Title 1 programs and low income students. And to understand that all of this would have a devastating impact on our state's education system.

They bought us enough time to take in the very real possibility that there was no real budget crisis in Wisconsin after all. To realize that Wisconsin had actually been handling the country's economic downturn relatively well and had been set to end the 2009-2011 budget biennium with a budget surplus; that is, until the governor helped pass $140 million in new spending. To find out that this new spending was ostensibly put forth to create new jobs and create private health spending accounts, but that it smacked of special interest spending for corporate allies. And that if this spending was rescinded by the Legislature, the "budget crisis" would be fixed.

They bought us enough time to ponder the fact that Governor Walker had received a massive amount of contributions to his campaign from the Koch Brothers, billionaires in the private sector with a long-standing history of influencing political campaigns with their money. Billionaires who were known to advocate strongly for the eradication of public unions. Billionaires who had a vested interest in doing away with all collective bargaining, both private and public. Billionaires who were using money as power to shift government protections away from the individual worker and toward large corporations.

They bought us the time required for lower and middle-class Americans across the country to realize that this wasn't just a fight about the pensions and health insurance contributions for some teachers in Wisconsin. To recognize that what had started in Wisconsin had every potential to spread like wildfire across the whole country. To understand that this fight called for working and middle-class families all across our country to stand up and fight for the right to join hands and rise up against those who would hope to wield their power simply because they had money. 

And they bought my family enough time to join the tens of thousands of people flocking to the streets of Madison to protest. Enough time for us to join hands with with teachers and nurses and policeman and snowplow drivers and prison guards and firemen and union workers and non-union workers and businessmen as we all walked for the democracy we believed in. To feel the amazing power of citizens peacefully standing up for themselves.

What began very quietly is now building toward a crescendo as people join their voices together to make themselves heard.

I don't know how this will end.

But I do know that this--this power that comes from the people, up through the people, for the people--this is what democracy looks like.

And I know that every American should be looking.