When I first heard about the protests at the Wisconsin Capital over Scott Walker's budget, I will admit that I didn't think much would come of it. It was Tuesday, February 15th, and although I had an invitation to stay with a friend in Madison, I resisted going, feeling a small labor protest wouldn't be enough to justify the money or inconvenience of a last minute trip from Chicago. It was only later, when I saw the images from the protest on Wednesday the 16th, of thousands filling the Capital rotunda and demonstrators making camp on the Capital floor that the sheer laziness of my petty logistical concerns sunk in. I made plans as soon as possible to head to Madison, and the front line of the Class War, now finally joined in earnest.
Yet even the knowledge that this time it was real, it was on, that the battle I had on some level been waiting my whole life for was finally here, could not prepare me for what I found.
I finally arrived in Madison on Saturday the 19th. My first visit to the Capital left me stunned. The sheer number of people, chanting, singing, making noise, all united in common cause was an emotional punch nothing in my political life had prepared me for. That night I would sleep in the Capital, an experience which I diaried shortly thereafter, and which I will never forget.
After my first three day visit to Madison, and sharing my experiences with the Daily Kos community in my diary and with others through my photographs on Flickr, I couldn't concentrate on every day business. Taking care of house hold chores, getting my taxes done, worrying about finding long-term employment all seemed so hollow. I knew I had to get back to The Front and soon.
The next weekend I got my chance, documenting the scene inside the capital on Friday the 25th, a particularly tense day of the protests, and being there for the massive rally on the 26th during which the crowd exceeded 100,000 for the first time.
During these two visits, I was attracted not only to the carnival spectacle of the protests, the clever signs and creative costumes many were adorned with, but to smaller details that might escape the notice of many others. As a political scientist and a photographer I was fascinated by the carefully organized infrastructure that had been laid by demonstrators within the Capital in support of the protests. Whole wings of the building had been converted to serve the protesters' needs; a family area, a supply room, a medical station. Away from the capital, visual artifacts of the protests were everywhere. Popular bars and restaurants had rows of picket signs propped up in every entryway; small business owners showed solidarity with the demonstrators by putting up signs, often home made with messages of support. I talked with the owner of a cafe on State Street who had been sending gallons of coffee up to Capital Square to support the protesters marching outside in the bitter Wisconsin winter. He told me one of his baristas had gone totally above and beyond the responsibilities of his job, suffering frost-bitten fingers in his furor to serve the coffee to the marchers.
It's these stories that fascinate me; small stories and visual clues that tell of a larger movement that's growing stronger every day. I realized that even if I could keep making the trek from Chicago to Madison every weekend (and I've in fact made it three out of the five weekends since the Protests began), I would only be able to scratch the surface of the deeper story writing itself in Madison, waiting for someone to take notice.
It is for this reason that I am announcing my project on Kickstarter.com to establish a "citizen's news bureau" in Madison to provide full-time coverage in words and photographs of the all aspects of the Budget Protests and labor issues in and around the Wisconsin Capital.
Not familiar with Kickstarter? Kickstarter is platform for crowd sourcing patronage of creative projects. Kickstarter is neither a fund raising site nor an investment site; contributors receive rewards for their support, but these are in the form of the creative fruits of the project (books, musical recordings, photographs etc), not financial dividends. Please see their FAQ page to learn more about Kickstarter.
My goal is to raise a minimum of $3500 which will cover the costs of temporarily relocating to Madison and providing full coverage of events in the Capital as they unfold. This figure is for approximately one month of coverage. If substantially more more is raised, the project will continue until the money runs out or the situation is resolved (but probably the former will happen before the latter). The product of this coverage will take the form of a new blog using the Tumblr platform, with content regularly cross-posted to Daily Kos. This project must reach its minimum fund raising goal by April 9th (Kickstarter requires projects to meet their minimum goal before any contributors are charged, thus eliminating risk of underfunding for both contributor and creator).
At this point, you've probably clicked through the links, you've familiarized yourself with Kickstarter and maybe some of the fantasticprojects they've already helped fund. But why should you contribute money to help some blogger cover an event that's already being regularly diaried by several people on the ground? Well, that's a very good question, which is why I asked it rhetorically. The work of people like Giles Goat Boy and Kodiak54 is tremendously important, and this project is in no way meant to compete with or supplant them. But for all their talent and their devotion, citizen journalists working in their spare time can only do so much alone. The immensity of these events requires the work-hours that only a full time journalist can put in, and as we all know, we can't count on the traditional media to care enough to give the Protests the coverage they deserve, or to get the story right. We can no longer trust the corporate-controlled mainstream media to do the task of journalism. What we need is journalism of the People, by the People, and paid for by the People and beholden to no interest but the People.
These are momentous events that require us to raise to their occasion, and this occasion provides us with a great opportunity for organizing, for making new connections, for discovering new ways to replace the old systems that have failed us. If this project is successful if will prove the viability of a new model for how journalism can be done in this country, free of corporate control or interference.
Together, a different world really is possible. Let's show the corporate-run media just how unnecessary they are when the People organize to break their haughty power.
Support Wisconsin! Support Citizen Journalism!