Saturday, February 19, 2011

The Workers Always Have And Always Will Have The "Solid" Advantage

Today, there will be two rallies in Ground Zero Wisconsin, otherwise know as Madison.

On one side will be the tens of thousands of teachers, nurses, social workers, police, firefighters, correction officers, clerks, secretaries, foresters, and other workers who have been there for six days now in peaceful protests of Scott Walker's tyrannical moves to suppress their rights.

On the other side will be a few thousand people, being sponsored by the multi-billionaire Koch Brothers and their neoconservative front groups like the wholly misnamed Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works.

But whatever goes down today will only be an event in a long, long historical chain of similar events.

In the 13th century, the barons rebelled against King John of England and eventually forced him to sign the Magna Carta, in which he conceded some of his power to the barony.

Fast forward five hundred years and you will find it repeated.  This time, instead of wealthy barons, it was colonial patriots, who were sickened by not having the right to have a voice in how they could live their lives. They gathered in Boston Harbor, in the definitive act of civil disobedience, dumped a boatload of tea into the water.

Contrary to how the modern day Tea Parties have bastardized the event, it was not about the taxes.  Money was important then, as it is now, but it was the secondary issue.  The real issue behind the real Boston Tea Party was that they were being forced to live under a monarchy with no voice in how they should be allowed to live their lives.

This was repeated in France just a few years later, when the people rose up against the tyrannical and harsh rule of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.  While the people suffered in abject poverty, the unfeeling king and queen enjoyed a  lavish lifestyle. Finding this system of the real haves versus the have-nots to be intolerable, the haves became the has-beens.

Back in the United States, we see how the fight for basic rights and freedoms continued throughout the history of this country.  There was the Civil War, which was fought so that a whole entire race could be delivered out of slavery.  There was the Suffragette Movement, in which middle class women fought for their voice and the right to vote.  There was the Civil Rights Movements, with great leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, which fought for minorities to be treated as equals to the ruling white population.

Another great movement, one with Scott Walker and his well-heeled endorsers would much rather have us all forget, is the labor movement.  Our forefathers in the labor movement fought for, and even died for, basic human rights in the work place.  They struggled and strove to win the things that people take for granted today.  Things like weekends off; eight hour work days; child labor laws; wages able to support a person and their family;  sick time; vacations; and safe work environments, just to name a very few of the rights they have won for all of us.

Which brings us back to today.

The Koch Brothers are channeling tens of thousands of dollars in an effort to raise a counter protest at the capital today. (Take a moment to appreciate the irony: They are using the union-won weekend to go protest against the unions.)

They are fighting for what comes to a few pennies per person, the solidarity movement is fighting for their and our rights.

The big-money special interests behind the Tea Parties are fighting for control of the state, the solidarity movement is fighting for their and our freedoms.

The Teahadists want to tear public employees and their families down, the solidarity movement wants to lift everyone up, even if it means that the millionaires don't make quite as many more millions as they might have otherwise.

As I finish this post, it appears that the Tea Party is pooping out already.  The Twitter feeds say that that the people fighting for the working families, for our rights and our respect outnumbered the special interest-supported groups by as much as 10-1.  The Teahadists are slinking back already while those fighting for our respect and our rights are preparing for going well into next week.

While the Teahadists have every right to be angry and scared if their money situations are like most peoples, they should not be doing the bidding of the uber-rich by tearing into their neighbors and even their family members.  They should be joining the unionists and middle-classers and demanding from Walker and his billionaire backers that they be allowed the same opportunities to have a good life.

The truth is, as history has shown time and time again, the only good tea is solidarity.

3 comments:

  1. There is so much wrong with this post I don't even know where to begin.

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  2. Coop, start anywhere.

    The Koch brother couldn't mobilize, even on a "Saturday," when all their supposedly hard working members were off work. The truth is that in the past, they've goaded/paid some mostly weak-minded people, mostly on Social Security, to protest for them.

    Chris, JS reported around 1:00 that the Tea Party folded their tents and went home.

    Now Democrats can consider recalling some of the 8 Republicans in the Senate, who are recall-eligible. That could tilt the Senate back to the Democrats. Or Walker could take the concessions, declare victory, and go on with what he really wants to do, run for the 2012 GOP VP nomination. That's what those 8 Republican Senators want him to do, because they don't want to spend money to fend off a recall.

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  3. To compare what is going on in Madison with the revolution or Magna Carta is a long, a very long stretch at most and quite frankly, not much will happen becuae of this. There will be a little comproise, both sides will claim vistory and that will be it. This will be gone from the headlines in less than a week.
    Recalls against either party is just silly talk right now

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