The effort to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, or as Keith Olbermann and I prefer to call him, that "fascist bastard", has been going on and going well for several weeks. Hundreds of thousands of signatures have been collected, and the wingnuts are responding with obscene gestures, felonious behavior, and of course, a few million dollars worth of "Scott is a nice boy....really!" TV advertising.
All of that stuff is well known to any literate person who visits this site occasionally. What wasn't so obvious, at least to me, at least until today, was where to sign one of these petitions.
The recall process is fairly unusual in Wisconsin, current avalanche thereof notwithstanding. And like the snowflakes that make up the avalanche, apparently no two of them are exactly alike.
My assumption, sitting here in the northeastern corner of Milwaukee County, was that the Walker recall would have more or less the same dynamic and same level of intensity in terms of locally deployed manpower as the Alberta Darling recall of last summer did. In other words, there's no real need to seek out someone with a petition to be signed; they'll just fall out of the sky like snowflakes, to extend the snow metaphor to an absurd length.
Anyway, there's no snow in Milwaukee yet, which is unusual, and there were no people around gathering signatures either, which I thought was puzzling. So a month into the recall effort, despite the fact that my loathing of Scott Walker is as intense as anyone's, I hadn't signed the petition. Neither had my wife, who is as unethusiastic about Scott Walker as I am.
Finally, it dawned on me that I'd have to just go and seek out a spot where they're collecting signatures, so I don't have to keep apologizing in this forum for being a slacker. They're not doing door to door yet, although they may do so at some point. The personnel deployed to gather the signatures is statewide, and not concentrated in my little state senate district as was the case last time. Signing the petition required a little initiative, and finally I managed to get up and out of the house to find a place to sign. The maps on the state party website were a little confusing and the info there was a tad vague, but I finally, just today, just before the Packers game, managed to do the right thing and sign the petition to recall the fascist bastard and our Palin wanna-be lieutenant governor.
Still with me, Milwaukee County residents or people who live in the nearby 'burbs? Anyway, here's where to go, according the flyer they handed me at the local recall office.
Greendale: 8421 Midland Dr, Monday-Sunday, 10am to 8pm
North Shore: 6807 N Green Bay Rd, weekdays 9am to 9pm, weekends 10am to 7pm
Northwest: 7984 W Appleton Ave, weekdays 9am to 9pm, weekends 10am to 7pm
East Side: 2604 N Booth, weekdays 10am to 2pm and 6pm to 8pm, weekends 10am to 7pm, but not during Packers games. (Booth is between Holton and Humboldt in Riverwest)
South Side: 1027 S 5th, weekdays 9am to 9pm, weekends 8am to 6pm
West Allis: 1370 S 74th, every day 9am to 9pm
Simple. It all is right there for you, in case you've been as confused, overmatched, and clueless as I was. Until today, when I finally got it done.
Your turn, fellow Milwaukeeans. Get out there and use a pen to metaphorically poke Scott Walker in the eye, and send a message to every other wingnut that Wisconsin may screw up on election day every once in awhile, but we're not afraid to correct our most egregious mistakes. It's us and our clipboards and Bics versus the Koch Brothers and their truckloads of Benjamins. Let's get it done.