Hello, fellow Recallers and Friends of Recallers far and near.
Tonight I found myself up at the capitol square in Madison at the end of the day. It was a cool (but warm for December!) evening, and I had business to do downtown. I saw our beautiful capitol building all lit up, holiday wreaths hung along the State Street entrance. I felt compelled to take a walk up to see what might be happening. It has been a long hard year for all of us in Wisconsin (and all of you great friends of Wisconsin from everywhere). I have been inside the capitol only once or twice since we all occupied it back in February and March.
You likely have heard about the recent outrageous restrictions on public access that are due to take effect this week. I thought it might be a good moment just to check in. And to see the state Holid... oh, sorry... Christmas tree.
Show you what I found, after the Fleur-de-kos...
There was hardly any activity at the capitol. I think I was the only citizen in the building at the moment. The tree is gorgeous. And it has a model train going around the base, with a cute little Wisconsin & Southern Railroad engine pulling it. (Oh... what's that you say? The founder of the Wisconsin & Southern is a major donor to Walker... and was sentenced last summer to two years' probation for violating state campaign finance laws? Oh... and he sold the Wisconsin & Southern earlier this month to a Kansas company whose largest customers are none other than our pals the Koch brothers? There's just no escaping, even for a moment, the tangled web they weave these days....)
It felt so odd to be alone and quiet in the rotunda that had throbbed with such righteous passion earlier this year. I thought of those 10,000 (or more) fellow citizens I stood and sang and clapped and chanted with 10 months ago... and I thought about you all now, dispersed out there in Wautoma and Washburn and Platteville and Oconomowoc and Milwaukee and hundreds of other communities across our landscape, persistently gathering in the harvest of signatures that will ultimately return pride and fairness and civility to our state. I heard the echoes of your voices, and saw your beaming faces there, quiet and alone though I was.
When I came close to the tree in the rotunda, my eyes lit on a mounted display there. I couldn't help but take a picture of it. It's just a cheap-o cell phone picture, but here it is:
I am just wondering if we don't have a mole somewhere in the depths of the capitol staff who arranged this display. Could it be a coincidence, those two posters and their captions? One advertising the Wisconsin Veterans' Museum (across the street): "We're open for you." The other featuring our own progressive extraordinaire, Fighting Bob LaFollette, in full battle mode, telling us: "See what makes us UNIQUE."
Well, that brightened my day. The capitol may be physically empty at the moment, but the spirit of my fellow Badgers is still there. We are where we need to be right now, out talking and walking and cheering and signing people up. The greatest testimony to our efforts to reclaim fair and open government is the fact that no one was there! We're outside, moving forward, doing the work of democracy. So carry on my friends. We'll see you down the road, when we have the harvest all in!
I walked back out the State Street entrance, and looked west toward the UW campus. I was standing right there back on that Saturday in March when 120,000 of us stood in the snow and ice. It was so beautiful then. It was so beautiful tonight (much more so than my cell phone could capture):
That is what makes us unique, Fighting Bob -- your progressive legacy!! And it's not ours alone. It's everyone's.