Events in Wisconsin disturb me, amaze me, disgust me, and make me proud all at the same time.
The disgusting part comes on the side of draconian Republicans, determined to punish teachers’ unions by removing their ability to even bargain for pensions and health care and limiting the amount of salary they can bargain for. This is a problem because it removes the principal purpose of unions, which is, of course, collective bargaining. In addition, they want the unions to re-certify every year, which would likely lead to their slow but sure dissolution and dismantling. And that’s not all! They want to make Wisconsin a Right-to-Work state, which is one of those horrible misnomers, like the Patriot Act, that actually harms workers by making it so they don’t have to pay union dues even when unions bargain on their behalf (basically, it weakens the union by forcing the union to provide a service without compensation to workers benefiting from its work).
This is all part of the greater war against teacher unions. The problem with education isn’t teachers, it’s that teachers are left out of the decision-making process. How much policy is crafted by teachers? None. It’s crafted by politicians and elected officials, that’s why I’m running for Scranton School Board – it isn’t right for me to complain without acting. But this Wisconsin debacle gives me hope, because it’s spurring social engagement on a massive level.
Teachers have been calling sick outs and showing up at the Capitol to protest. This is where I feel proud. Thousands of teachers and their supporters, including students, have been demonstrating. This is a guaranteed right in the Constitution – the right to assembly.
But the Republican governor, Scott Walker, doesn’t believe in this right. Nor does House Speaker John Boehner. They are criticizing the teachers for exercising their Constitutional rights, even after Beohner and his cohorts read the Constitution on the House floor.
The criticism is fine, if hypocritical and indicative of destructive agenda. People are free to have destructive agendas and voters are free to elect these types. What is very disturbing here, though, is that the Governor has threatened to call out the National Guard to force teachers back to work. How does he plan to do this? Send the Armed Forces in and point guns at them? Other than that, I don’t know how the National Guard can force them to stop exercising their Right to Assembly.
This harkens back to events like the shootings at Kent State, when National Guardsmen opened fire on peaceful protestors, killing four and inspiring a poignant Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song which, though I wasn’t alive when Kent State happens, saddens me every time I hear it. People died to protest war.
But let’s go back further, to when police forces and Pinkertons would beat up and sometimes blatantly murder union organizers in the early part of the 20th Century. Big Business, then, hated unions because they challenged the exploitative monied interests of the then-budding corporatocracy. The union movement succeeded and grew. But then the Oligarchy, as Jack London called it in The Iron Heel, figured out a way to erode it over time: simply get corporate-friendly politicians in office and in the judicial system. So, in the decades after the height of the union movement, we see steady decline. We see Right-to-Work states. We see the public demonization of unions – unions are why we’re bankrupt, they say. It’s not the declining tax rates on corporations and the wealthy – no, it’s the unions and their blue collar, middle class wages and benefits. It seems illogical to me that people would buy this claim, but buy it they did and do.
The latest salvo against unions, this time in Wisconsin, has been far more blatant than the chipping away we’ve seen up to this point. And it’s easy for people to see the unfairness. The movement is already spreading to Ohio. Protestors there are fighting the same kind of harmful legislative tactics.
Good. It makes me proud. Unions exist to protect working families, not harm America, as Republicans would have you believe.
I am union. I am proud.
I am also afraid when politicians threaten to use Armed Forces to force citizens to comply with directives. That is totalitarian. That is absolutely dangerous.
And not enough people are talking about it.
So talk. Tell a friend. You deserve your Right to Assembly, and your right to organize. We should all exercise those rights more often, the average middle class family would be better off.
Cross posted at NEPArtisan.com. Politics in Northeastern Pennsylvania.