Inside the Wisconsin Occupation

Abstract

Walker announced the bill on a Friday (a traditional tactic to minimize news coverage) and planned an expedited debate so that the bill might pass within a week. Thanks, though, to some advance planning by union activists, it didn't quite work out that way. Back in December 2010, our union, the TAA, was anxious about the upcoming budget and possible cuts to university funding. We sent Facebook invitations encouraging students to deliver Valentine's Day cards to the governor that read, "I n UW: Governor Walker, don't break my n." On February 14th, we met at the University of Wisconsin's Memorial Union prepared to march to the Capitol and drop off our valentines, but news of the BRB, announced three days earlier, had energized us all. What we expected to be a modest protest turned into 1,000 people filling the Capitol rotunda. We stood in our state's Capitol building, some of us for the very first time, chanting "Kill the Bill!" The next day, Wisconsin's Joint Finance Committee began public BRB hearings inside the state capitol. The hearings were supposed to continue as long as there were people to testify, but each person was only allowed to speak for two minutes. We wanted to keep the hearings going for as long as possible, so the TAA organized a "citizen filibuster." Along with union members from around the state and supportive members of the Madison community, we stayed up late, made phone calls, sent text messages, and posted on Facebook to encourage our friends to come down to testify. They did. After 17 hours of straight testimony, despite several hundred people still waiting for their chance to testify, the Republican co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee terminated the hearing at 3:30am. Our crowd erupted in response, and we began to chant "Let us speak!" Many of us were prepared to stay the night. Again, text messages, tweets, and Facebook posts went out, this time announcing that the TAA had decided to hold a public "sleep-in." We invited our friends to bring their sleeping bags to the Capitol.

Touching Like a State

“…Many have observed that the “Wisconsin Uprising” resonated with revolts erupting around the globe in 2010–2011 (Acar et al :55; Collins ; Goldberg ; Hardt ). Yet state, military, and police efforts to “manage” protester bodies across these sites differed significantly.…”