I should be working on my thesis right now; however, when the subject you are writing about requires you to go back through a year's worth of blog posts that all directly relate to the anniversary of the Wisconsin Uprising, it makes it difficult to look at it from just an academic viewpoint.
A year ago I penned a diary called The Hidden Cost of Union Busting where I detailed what a busted union did to my family. That diary was the start of some pretty life-changing events for me.
On February 16th, 2011, I would attend my first protest rally, and I occupied the State Capitol with a few thousand of my closest friends.
To this day I cannot describe the pride I felt of being under the Capitol dome with my fellow Wisconsinites or the pride I feel when I think of the one million signatures collected to recall the rat bastard Scott Walker.
Over the weeks that followed the first protests we saw our beloved Capitol locked down. That was an emotional day for me, one which I documented in the diary titled Wisconsin—I do not know where to begin.
It was an emotional diary for me to write; however, it did not tell the full story of that day. I did not know how to fit something that happened that day into that post and honestly I had forgotten about this event until I started my thesis research. This story was in my original draft of that diary; here is the updated version of that story that will be going into my thesis,
Picture this scene a man wearing a 101st Airborne baseball cap. A State legislator, also a veteran, who has moved his desk outside so that he can hold office hours, hugging the man in the 101st Airborne baseball cap as they both wept about the state capitol being closed to the public. That scene happened—and not ten feet away was the political reporter from WISC-TV 3, Jessica Arp. She could have had a powerful and emotional story on her hands. Instead she looked directly at us and then turned around and went back into the capitol. The man in the 101st Airborne hat was me.
The traditional media did not want to show the emotions of that day. If they did it would have obfuscated their false equivalency and the so-called balanced news coverage they were providing. Emotions had no place in their story.
I think out of all the protests, all of the days I was at the State Capitol, the day the Capitol was closed down was the hardest for me to take. I am not sure I could ever accurately describe the emotions of that day or how it felt to have my tears freeze to my face as I circled the building that I played tag in as a child. It was like I was living in some banana republic instead of Madison, Wisconsin.
A lot has changed over the last year; however, the people of Wisconsin still have a little more housekeeping to do. Walker and his minions must go and the damage that they did to this state must be repaired.