Wisconsin Students Protest Governor’s Attack on Unions

Wisconsin Students Protest Governor’s Attack on Unions

Wisconsin Students Protest Governor’s Attack on Unions

A proposed bill to end collective bargaining for nearly all public employees has mobilized the state’s students to protect teacher’s unions.

Facebook
Twitter
Email
Flipboard
Pocket

Protests have engulfed the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where students are standing against a proposed bill that threatens teacher’s unions. The outcries come as the state’s new Republican Governor Scott Walker announced a plan to end collective bargaining for most of the state’s 175,000 public employees.

More than 10,000 protesters, including students,  demonstrated outside the state Capitol building in Madison today, many of them carrying signs and chanting “recall Walker.” This comes one day after hundreds of students flooded downtown Madison chanting, “kill this bill” and handing out valentines that read, “Have a heart, don’t tear the UW apart.” The governor did not make an appearance.

Even before the protests hit the state’s capital, about a hundred high school students in Stoughton, Wisconsin, a city about 20 miles outside of Madison, walked out of class Monday morning to protest the governor’s proposal. And today, nearly 800 Madison East High School students also walked out to join the demonstration.

"Let’s show Gov. Walker that we care about learning, and the teachers are worth every cent that we pay to them,"  Theron Luhn, a high school junior who helped organize the protest in Stoughton Monday, told one of the local newspapers The Capital Times.

The Nation’s John Nichols called the governor’s move the “most radical assault yet by the current crop of Republican governors on the rights of workers," and said that this attack "has inspired outrage in a historically progressive and pro-labor state.”

UW sophomore and campus activist Max Love told one of the university’s student newspapers The Badger Herald that the proposed bill, while striking the most direct blow to the state’s unions, will undoubtedly negatively impact public education in Wisconsin.

“The quality of our institutions would suffer if this bill passes,” Love said. “This is a student cause, and we’re seeing a lot of people who really care about this issue.”

Walker has notified the National Guard to be on alert for actions taken by unsatisfied state, county and municipal employees.

But as Nichols said on his appearance today on Democracy Now!, "the interesting thing is that we have already heard from an awfully lot of teachers and public employees, who also serve in the National Guard and who are saying they have no idea why they would be called out to beat down or to beat back protests by their fellow workers, who are not being violent, who are simply doing what—you know, to use an analogy here—we saw on the streets of Cairo and other cities."

 

Like this Blog Post? Read it on the Nation’s free iPhone App, NationNow.

 

Thank you for reading The Nation!

We hope you enjoyed the story you just read, just one of the many incisive, deeply-reported articles we publish daily. Now more than ever, we need fearless journalism that shifts the needle on important issues, uncovers malfeasance and corruption, and uplifts voices and perspectives that often go unheard in mainstream media.

Throughout this critical election year and a time of media austerity and renewed campus activism and rising labor organizing, independent journalism that gets to the heart of the matter is more critical than ever before. Donate right now and help us hold the powerful accountable, shine a light on issues that would otherwise be swept under the rug, and build a more just and equitable future.

For nearly 160 years, The Nation has stood for truth, justice, and moral clarity. As a reader-supported publication, we are not beholden to the whims of advertisers or a corporate owner. But it does take financial resources to report on stories that may take weeks or months to properly investigate, thoroughly edit and fact-check articles, and get our stories into the hands of readers.

Donate today and stand with us for a better future. Thank you for being a supporter of independent journalism.

Thank you for your generosity.

Ad Policy
x