May 6th Event: Commemoration of the Bay View tragedy

(from Lorraine Haeffel, Wisconsin Labor Historical Society):

I am a volunteer for Wisconsin Labor Historical Society. I am trying to help attendance at the event this year. It would be a very good place for a rally for solidarity over bargaining rights.

The annual event is the Bay View Tragedy. In 1886, seven men were killed by Wisconsin Militia when marching for the 8 hour day. It still took over 50 years before it was obtained.

Below this message you will see the official announcement of the annual Bay View Tragedy event. Stump speeches mention 'the strong labor history of WI'... what they don't do is give an example. I can't think of another example that trumps this one where 7 people were killed by the WI militia when marching for the 8 hour day.

The event is two days from the primary. There seems to be memory loss and complacency showing Scottie is neck to neck in the polls. Let's get the fire we had last spring back. Many lines were crossed by many when they took away the bargaining rights of state employees. Stand with us in this cause. If you come, the press will come and the message can be heard and read in the media.

We all need to show our solidarity...

I am inviting many other state politicians to come and show their solidarity with each other over the loss of the bargaining rights of state employees. Not only Solidarity with the crowd, but solidarity with each other. You will be recognized for attending, you will be added to the media, you will probably get an interview with media.

Once I have confirmation of attendance from everyone, I will be notifying the media: papers, web sites, radio, TV.

Please come and be a part of a rally just two days before the primary election! I feel this is a win-win for all of us.

~ Lorraine Haeffel - volunteer for the WI Labor Historical Society

Bay View Tragedy

126th Anniversary of Bay View Tragedy

to relive deaths of 8-hour day marchers

May 6th Ceremony marks Wisconsin’s most historic labor incident

The Commemoration of the 126th Anniversary of the killing of seven persons in an 8-hour day rally will be followed this year with a discussion forum on the importance of the incident and its meaning in the present era.

The annual Commemoration of the Bay View Tragedy is to be held at 3 p.m., Sunday, May 6, 2012 at the Bay View Rolling Mills State Historical marker site at S. Superior St. and E. Russell Ave., on Milwaukee’s lakefront. It commemorates the tragedy of May 5, 1886 when the State Militia shot into some 1,500 workers marching in an 8-hour-day rally and killed seven in front of the old Bay View Rolling Mills, then Milwaukee’s largest manufacturing plant.

This year’s free outdoor ceremony will be followed up with a discussion forum beginning at about 4 p.m. led by Milwaukee Historian John Gurda, who will open the session with remarks and then look for comments from a panel of historians and worker activists, as well as the audience. The forum will be held at the Club Garibaldi, 2501 S. Superior St.

The outdoor event — similar to the ceremonies that have been held annually for the last 26 years — will feature an address by Wisconsin State AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Stephanie Bloomingdale.

The program will also include a re-enactment of the May 5, 1886 event, featuring actors reading from speeches of the period, accompanied by players of the Milwaukee Public Theatre dressed in period costumes, supported by larger-than-life-sized puppets.

Larry Penn, folksinger and retired Teamster, will perform several songs, including his own, “Ghosts of Bay View,” and “Solidarity Forever.”

Members of the family of the late Mayor Frank P. Zeidler will participate in the ceremony, which includes the placing of a wreath honoring the workers who were killed. Zeidler, Milwaukee mayor from 1948 to 1960, died at age 93 in 2006 and was a regular speaker at the event.

Since 1986, members of the Wisconsin Labor History Society, the Bay View Historical Society and others have been holding this celebration to memorialize the tragedy, which was Wisconsin’s most dramatic labor event, and was important in the struggle of workers and their unions to gain decent wages, hours and conditions.

More than 400 persons attended last year’s ceremony, including many public officials.

The event is sponsored by the Wisconsin Labor History Society and this year is funded in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Humanities Council, with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this project do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment of the Humanities. The Wisconsin Humanities Council supports and creates programs that use history, culture and discussion to strengthen community life for everyone.

Hello everyone. This is a test to see if new posts are going through. It is a gloomy and cloudy Sunday fall morning in Wisconsin.

Farida

'America Is NOT Broke': Michael Moore Speaks in Madison, WI -- March 5, ...

Showdown in Wisconsin: Defending Democracy

a commentary by John Weeks, University of London

Defending democracy in Madison, Wisconsin.

Until recently known as the home of whole food co-ops and alternative life styles, Madison, Wisconsin is today the key battle field in a class war declared unilaterally by capital. Formally at stake in the battle of Madison are the rights of public sector employees to bargain collectively. In practice the battle is joined over the basic human right of freedom of association, which lies at the heart of a democratic society. It is not hyperbole to describe the struggle in the snows of Madison to be a battle in US capital's counter-revolution against democracy.
To understand the full significance of the confrontation in Madison it must be placed in historical context. A progressive alliance of farmers and workers in Wisconsin produced Robert Marion La Follette (Fighting Bob), who was probably the most leftwing politician elected to major office in the United States. Elected to the US House of Representatives, governor of the state, and US senator, La Follette was a Republican when it remain partly the party of Lincoln.
By World War I he was too progressive for either major party. In 1924, the year before he died, La Follette formed his own party, the Progressives. He won seventeen percent of the national popular vote for President, running as an uncompromising enemy of corporate power. If 100 years later the Republicans generated a defection to a new party, it would be neo-fascist (as opposed to the proto-fascism of what would remain).

Fighting Bob La Follette

Fighting Bob's sons Philip (governor in the 1930s) and Robert Jr ("Young Bob", US Senator 1925-1946) formed the Wisconsin Progressive Party that briefly controlled state politics. Wisconsin was a state deeply divided between progressive labor and reactionary capital. In a bitter electoral defeat of progressive ideals, Young Bob lost the 1946 Republican primary to Joseph McCarthy (by 5000 votes). McCarthy went on to defeat the Democrat in the general election and become perhaps the most venal US politician of the first half of the twentieth century.
The current governor leading the assault on human rights in Wisconsin, Scott Walker, rests comfortably in the McCarthy tradition. To give credit where it is due, Walker has considerably exceed McCarthy's assault on human rights. While McCarthy for the most part restricted himself to alleged communists and the alleged "fellow travelers" of those alleged communists, the neo-venal Walker has broadened the assault to the population as a whole (except, of course, capital and its agents).
In the state elections of 2010, those who voted in Wisconsin brought a Republican majority to both branches of the legislature, as well as the governor. This would be no changing of the guard. With the state's budget deficit as an excuse, Walker launched a program of savage cuts. Had he done no more than this, he would have remained as singularly undistinguished as he certainly is. He would have been lost in a crowd of similarly reactionary politicians throughout the western world, a George Osborne with a mid-west accent.
Walker of Wisconsin is no commonplace reactionary. He aspires to a far baser goal than budget cuts: a frontal assault on the right of people to associate. Freedom of association is the right of individuals to collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests. While the phrase "freedom of association" does not appear in the US constitution, federal and state courts interpreted the first amendment to include it (the amendment specifies freedom of religion, speech, the press, assembly, and to petition the government).
Just thirteen months ago the US Supreme Court stuck a potentially fatal blow to the freedom of speech part of the first amendment. By a 5-4 ruling the court voided restrictions on the funding of political campaigns (Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission). This ruling granted capital unlimited freedom to propagandize and, by doing so, judicially reduced the rights of the rest of the population to freedom of speech. The unspeakable Walker has his eye on another first amendment prize, the freedom of people to "petition the government for redress of grievances" (last clause of the first amendment).
A growing number of people in the United States recognize the danger to democracy posed by Walker's bill to destroy pubic sector unions in Wisconsin. Over 70,000 are suffering snow and freezing temperatures to stop him. Credit should also go to the Democrats in the state senate who temporarily blocked legislative action (by preventing the senate from having a quorum).
At stake in Wisconsin are not wages and pensions (the union has conceded to Walker these issues). It is not a "labor issue". At stake is political democracy. Walker and the Wisconsin Republicans are militant extremists. With the overt support of big capital, they seek the destruction of democratic government. The demonstrators in Madison struggle against a reactionary vanguard that would implement its anti-democratic programme at the national level when it can seize the presidency.
For those of us living in the United Kingdom the struggle is at an earlier but no less dangerous stage. Only last month the prime minister David Cameron told members of parliament that he intended to act "to prevent militant trade unions holding Britain to ransom" (Daily Mail, 13 January 2011). Feeling its power on the rise, global capital is abandoning the pretense of democracy in favor of "order". A New Order. With an old name, fascism.

The Story of Citizens United v. FEC (2011)

Wisconsin Protests Governor Walker's "Budget Bill" 2-26-11

I went to Madison yesterday (Saturday)--the largest gathering yet (70,000-100,000). My wife and son were with me. I made this video to commemorate the experience. Enjoy--and be inspired!