University Place

cc >> This afternoon we have a wonderful panel. They'll be speaking in the following order. Paul Buhle, formerly senior lecturer at Brown University, who's retired back here to Madison where he produces radical comics. Together with Mary Jo Buhle--

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--together with Mary Jo Buhle, co-edited the book It Started in Wisconsin, Dispatches From the Front Lines of New Labor Protest Next will be Mary Jo Buhle.

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Mary Jo Buhle, emeritus professor of history and American civilization at Brown, also retired here to Madison. A great asset to all of us. Followed by Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine.

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One of the leading voices for peace and social justice in this country, and recently celebrating his 100th anniversary.

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>> Jean would never be with me that long. >> After Matt, we'll hear from Ruth Conniff, a native of Madison, Wisconsin. Ruth is the political editor of The Progressive magazine. She'll be with us shortly. Then Bob McChesney--

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--who is a teacher and writer about media and politics. His latest book, The Endless Crisis, from Monthly Review Press, co-authored with John Bellamy Foster. Also co-founder of Free Press, the media reform group, which continues to have important relevance--

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--in all of the struggles that many of us are involved in. Then finally, John Nichols, associate editor of the Capital Times, and columnist for The Nation magazine. He will be joining us shortly as well. I think it was Walter Cronkite who said that sociologist are just slow journalists.

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What we have today is people who are fast journalists and fast historians, writing about events that are happening in our lifetime, in our daily lives. I think I would have to say, if someone shot a missile into the Overture Center right now, we would lose over a half a century of the history of the American Left and radical politics and progressive journalism here in this country. So we'll hope that that doesn't happen. But I want to--

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I want to welcome all of our panelists today, and just say that without the work of these six people, and many, many others in the independent media field, the stories of Wisconsin would not have gained the national prominence that they did in 2011. They have served as inspiration for many, many of the movements that have happened since February of 2011. Let me start by giving a warm welcome to historian, Paul Buhle.

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>> Someone in the audience came up just before hand and said something very kind about the book that came out in 1990 that I edited called History of the New Left, Madison, Wisconsin, 1950-1970. A few years later I was very fortunate to be able to write, or actually co-write, a biography of William Appleman Williams. I would say, although Mary Jo and I left our graduate school years here in 1971, Madison was never, ever, very far from our minds. Coming back and really retiring in '09 has been a tremendous experience. If we had been somewhere else, like Santa Cruz, California, where we lived for a year, and heard of things going on in Madison in 2011, we likely would have thrown ourselves into the ocean.

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Because I could not imagine anywhere else to be, from so many different standpoints, that I and she automatically, without hardly thinking about it at all, began working on this anthology of essays and photographs and comics and documents subtitled "It Started in Wisconsin." Looking a little further into the future, we really believe it. I'm sure it also started in Tahrir Square and other places, but from our standpoint, it started is Wisconsin. And it's going to keep going. Well, Mary Jo and I attended a conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan last week. It seems like a long time ago. It was for the 50th anniversary of the Port Huron Conference, the Port Huron Statement, of 1962. It was sort of like a founding moment of the American New Left and the creation of a document. It was a 25 cent pamphlet from my generation in the '60s that was a generational statement. It was a formidable view that did not come from some ancient Marxist or anarchist sect. It didn't come from anything in the Democratic and Republican party. I would say, it was tinged as much by feeling for Robert La Follette and the Wisconsin Progressive tradition as any other tradition. But heavily weighted with C. Wright Mills, Albert Camus and others who were spiritual influences on the New Left. We were there 50 years after the founding of SDS and the Port Huron Conference with the Port Huron Statement. I realized while we were there, that even in a neighboring state, with plenty of it's own problems, Michigan that is, and even a scant 18 months since the high-point of our movement here, memories outside Wisconsin itself were fading. Other things had happened in the world. As a historian looks at things, the present is always history in the making. In a deeply personal sense, I look back at the uprising as one of the most exciting moments in the lives of my own generation. And not only in Madison. An extended phase of social mobilization that was fascinating and important in itself, but also because it both reminded us and so starkly contrasted with, the mobilizations of 40 years ago. I should say, not just for the two of us and our friends our age in Madison and around Wisconsin, but for dozens or hundreds of people who had graduated from UW. Probably a couple hundred in New York City alone, who sent us missives and notes and were very excited, and swore they spent whole evenings watching The Ed Show hoping for John Nichols to show up on it. As he so often did in those days. I'm going to be talking to him as the chair now.

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As we looked around then at crowds of 10,000, 25,000, 50,000 or 125,000 around the square in the spring and summer of 2011, and the crowds of various sizes that could be seen as late as April or May 2012, we saw a large contingent of the '60s generation. It was rather like looking at ourselves. Not only, definitely not mainly, because of the professor-ish looking types on hand. Union retirees where heavy in number, as I'm sure most of you remember. And celebrated by fellow unionist and the rest of us, considerable numbers of them came from neighboring states, or the distant northern zones of Wisconsin. Among the thousands of aging figures who could not be identified that way, quite a few had the 1960's demonstrator look about them. Or at least we thought so. Perhaps because absolute strangers would say to us things like, I've been waiting 40 years for this. Or, if it never happens again, I'm happy to have lived long enough to see it. During the great anti-war mobilizations in Washington in April, 1965-- by way of contrast when I was only 20-years old. I remember looking around at how many people around me seemed really old, in the eyes of a 20-year old that it. Actually, as I looked at them, if I'd known better, as I came to do oral history interviews with old-time radicals of various kinds, so many of them were veterans of social movements of the 1930's and 1940's. Some of them were amazingly in World War II uniforms. It wasn't much like that in the US anti-war demonstrations of the later 1960's, except sometimes in big cities. There were always peaceniks working hard in the community here in Madison, and they could be found in Milwaukee, Waukesha, La Crosse and Superior, especially as the public view's of the war changed and blue collar America turned against the continuing of the invasion of Vietnam. But the Democratic party, even most of its liberal edges, including the editorial board of the Capital Times, disliked campus demonstrations at least as much as they disliked the war. They did nothing to encourage the movement except to appeal to us to stay calm until the next election. Or perhaps come out for a peace speech by somebody notable. Mostly then, we were the young, the restless and the long-haired. Not to mention the scent of marijuana and the sounds of anti-war music coming from speakers at Bassett/Mifflin. Coming back to Wisconsin in our movement in the sun not long ago it is surely impossible to over-estimate the multi-generational nature of the crowds around the square. Women in their nineties being pushed by their daughters or granddaughters, all the way to babes-in-arms with their young parents. Perhaps our strongest defenses against the possible threats of official and unofficial violence. As long as the very young and very old were there, we were protected. The movement became a vast social movement. Likewise, impossible to under-estimate, how un-'60s this made us feel. In the sense that we were not a bunch of anti-war and anti-racist youngsters cut off from the bulk of an older population. The Madison of 1965 had already been, since at least the 1940's, this place, that many Wisconsinites, particularly suburban and rural and evangelical, looked upon as the epicenter of sin, sodomy and socialism. But the crowds of 2011 looked normal to us at least. We were defeated for the time being. Despite Tammy's victory over a figure we can now look back upon without much nostalgia as the old drunk--

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--in much the same way as the most Democratic and radical impulses of the 1960's were defeated. Have been defeated in the 1970's and beyond, despite the many victories we had. By 2011, the state's Democrats were indeed prodded forward. Some of them boldly took the initiative and deserve a lot of credit. Then, the normalizing power of big money, along with the dull, unidealistic, unappealing centrist quality of what can be called business Democrats failed to offer the kind of alternative that might have won, and thus shifted the political momentum of the state in another direction. Our movement was not large enough to encompass the 13 poorest counties of the state, whose voters chose Scott Walker at the price of endangering public schools and health services that they most urgently need. The voice of Rush Limbaugh and the television ads in the football season, paid for by the Koch brothers, where more powerful than anything we had to offer. It wasn't 1932. The system had not failed dramatically, only wound down from factory towns to ex-factory towns. Tom Barrett running against Walker was no Franklin Roosevelt, or Phil La Fallette, to say the least. Still, the uprising was an extraordinary exercise in popular democracy. It brought back to mind Obama's extraordinary popularity in 2008, the sense that a different America was possible. But it also brought back countless smaller efforts from support movements, from Third World struggles to ecological initiatives, such as stalling the mining bill for the time being, to student struggles, and yet another that should be familiar to this crowd, the struggle for a democratic university. The chancellor of the UW, the unlamented, departed Biddy Martin, had conspired with the new governor to protect our institution, supposedly, to the detriment of others in the state. Also at the expense of Teaching Assistants Association, being as much as abolished, despite her having been a former TAA, as she worked to militarize the UW, to bring Pentagon related cash and personnel from the time her tenure began. We protesters were, as in 1968, struggling to save the university and surrounding communities from corruption and subtle devastation. I'll leave it here and invite you to look at It Started in Wisconsin for the documents that I think show more than a brief speech can. Thank you very much.

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>> I'd like to pick up where Paul began, by reflecting back on the uprising of 2011, and how it was a very vibrant response to Walker's introduction of what became Wisconsin Act 10, which curtailed collective bargaining for the public sector workers. Like Paul, I was around in the 1960's and am a veteran of the protest movements of that era. One of the first things that struck me in February, 2011, was the preponderance of woman on the street. This should be no surprise really if you just think about it. Women are the majority of workers in the public sector. They make up nationally something like 57%. In terms of Wisconsin's target, women represent and even greater proportion. Librarians nation-wide are something like 82% women. Teachers nation-wide, 80%, and 80% in Wisconsin. Nurses in Wisconsin are more than 90% women. So that was the first thing that crossed mind, but when I reflected on it a bit, I thought that there was another, a less visible sign to the Wisconsin uprising that I as a historian, an historian of American women, find equally significant. As the spring of 2011 wore on it became increasingly clear that the Republican agenda comprised far more than simply the curtailment of bargaining rights for public sector workers, or even private workers. It was nothing less than the overturn of the complete Progressive agenda in Wisconsin, all of the social legislation that has given Wisconsin its distinctive Progressive legacy for the past 100 years. I would like to step back in time to 100 years ago and look at the role of women, and actually effecting that first Progressive legislation that is now so endangered by the Republican administration. By the time Fighting Bob La Follette became governor of Wisconsin in 1901 he had already defined very clearly what he thought was the purpose of government. Simply, to serve the people. Within a few years after taking his role as governor and then moving on to the US senate, it became clear that, under his leadership, Wisconsin was going to be a beacon in enacting social legislation, a beacon for the entire nation. La Follette, as the first UW graduate to serve as governor, also promoted what was called The Wisconsin Idea, the notion, according to the mission statement, that the boundaries of the university are the boundaries of the state.

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The idea that the legislatures and the faculty associated with the university would work hand in hand to build new legislation. It's precisely at this junction of the university and the state, of the faculty and the legislators, that many women came to have a very important role in Wisconsin a hundred years ago. In the 1870's a President Bascom decided that he would work to raise the status of women at the UW, and to especially to increase their numbers on the campus. In 1903, two years after La Follette became governor, President Van Hise of the university began to even worry that women would soon out-number men on the university campus. And indeed, by this time, they represented something like 30% of all of the students working for advanced degrees, which a hundred years ago was really quite a significant proportion. Now, almost all of the women that went on to work after they got their degrees at the UW went into some kind of public work, probably working as teachers. But there was a small group, a very small group, who were moved by the kind of progressive, political climate of the era. They veered toward the social sciences and began to look at economics, history, sociology. Among them there was even a smaller more select group who found their mentor in the esteemed economist John R. Commons. Commons was the best known labor economist in the nation at that time. He had just joined the faculty in 1904, and he probably was the best known labor economist in the world. Commons was known as a really poor lecturer. His students complained, and I can take this with a grain of pain here, that he never really got to the point and rambled all over the place. But he was, nevertheless, a very resourceful and inspiring teacher. What he did was he enjoined his students, undergraduates as well as graduate students, to work together in teams to do research on the state of Wisconsin, what they would later would call Action Research. His legion of students, as they took pride in describing themselves, under his tutelage, went out in Wisconsin and they collected massive amounts of data on working and living conditions in the state. They came back, they analyzed that data, and with his help and supervision, they crafted that data into the path-breaking social legislation that we know as the Progressive Era. A sizable part of that social legislation that was done in Common's classrooms was enacted in Wisconsin from 1911 to 1913 in the historic legislative session. But a large part of that also went on to the federal government in the 1930's and was enacted, most notably, as the Social Security Act in 1935, which was drafted by one of his students. Now, of his group there were quite a few women, at least for that time. I suspect that Commons was very generous to his women students. The most noteworthy was Helen Laura Sumner who was born in 1876 in Sheboygan. She had gone out East for her undergraduate work, but in 1902 she came back to Madison to study with Frederick Jackson Turner of the famed Frontier thesis. Just in time, and I know a lot of graduate students will sympathize with this, when he decided to leave the university. She transferred her interest and started to work with Commons. She worked with him to draft, in 1905, the first civil service law in the state of Wisconsin. She also then went on, under his tutelage as a graduate student, to draft the state's regulatory public utilities law, which was passed in 1907. After Sumner left Wisconsin with her Ph.D, she joined the United States Children's Bureau, which had recently been created by some nearby neighbors at Hull House, to become the first national agency that was directed by women. It was the first national agency anywhere in the world that took as its charge, the protection of women and children. It's no surprise that when Sumner got to the Children's Bureau in it's early years, in 1914, one of the first things that she did was apply her skills that she learned in Commons' classes, to collect data on child labor conditions in the United States. She used those skills to conduct a massive survey and put together, in 1915, a huge compendium, a thousand-page plus compendium, of every single state law in the United States that effected child laborers. Now Sumner was just one of Commons' students who was extraordinarily accomplished. Another was Katharine Lenroot who was born in Sheboygan in 1891. She was the daughter of Irvine Lenroot who a prominent judge, a US senator, and a some-time ally of La Follette. As an undergraduate, Lenroot came to the UW to work with Commons who pointed her in the direction of minimum wage legislation. It did not yet exist anywhere in the United States. She too went out, collected all the data on wages that she could find in the state of Wisconsin. As an undergraduate, she analyzed that data and wrote a brief that was presented to the legislative commission of the state that became the United States' first law on minimum wage. After graduating in 1912, like Sumner, Lenroot joined the US Children's Bureau. She became its director in 1934, a position she held until 1951. At the Children's Bureau she again used many of the skills she had learned at the UW, and focused on child labor and maternal health. She wrote the sections in the Social Security Act that pertain to those subjects, what later evolved into the aid to families with dependant children. That was her work for that. She was also, as the head of the Children's Bureau, a major proponent of continuing the work which Sumner did to look at the investigation of child labor in the United States. She wrote the portion that was the first federal child labor law in the Fair Labor Standards Act that was enacted in 1938. Lenroot partnered for many years with Emma Octavia Lungberg, another UW graduate from 1907, also a Commons student. Together they wrote a dozen or so investigative reports effecting maternal health and child welfare. They studied the juvenile court system. They looked at unwed mothers. They published on people with mental disabilities. Sumner, Lenroot and Lungberg were probably the most visible of Commons' female students to go on from Wisconsin to the New Deal and to carry the Progressive legacy into that particular venue. After receiving their BA's or Ph. D's from the university they directed their skills to public service. They worked with this incessant collection of data and analysis, and in drafting legislative bills that now would have an impact at the federal level. They kept it up until they retired or they died. The legacy of the Wisconsin Idea, I believe, is for me anyway, another point of reference for the upraising of 2011/2012. Particularly in terms of the women who stepped forward to protest the GOP measures that curtail, not just collective bargaining, but all of the issues that were pertinent to the condition of women and children in the state. Many of the teachers that were out there, they may not have realized it, but I knew that they were carrying this legacy with them. They were protesting, not just for the curtailment of their collective bargaining rights, but also for the impact of the whole educational policy on the children they taught in Wisconsin schools. The women, the mothers, who came out there with their children in tow, were protesting cuts in the budget that effected maternal health and child health, such as the curtailment of funds to Planned Parenthood, or the reduction in funding of Badger Care. But they were also, in an even more unknown way, protesting measures that were at the center of this work that Commons' students did that was focused on child labor in the state of Wisconsin and nationally. You might remember in June, 2011, in a motion that was sponsored by the joint finance committee and taken to the legislature by its co-chairs, Robin Vos and Alberta Darling--

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Thank you. And pushed by the Wisconsin Grocers Association, Wisconsin would now expand the number of hours that 16 and 17-year olds could work in the state in any one week and any one day. Essentially changing the law of the state to make them equivalent to adults in the labor force. This change was really not so draconian. It actually simply brought Wisconsin in line with the labor laws at the federal level. Yet, if you think about it, it still does something that diminishes, as does the other bills, an important part of the state's Progressive legacy. Its role that was crafted, to a very large extent, by the women who worked with John R. Commons, in shaping these kind of protective legislative rules for women and children. They had been instrumental in shaping it, and it's part, I think, of the Progressive legacy that we inherited, and is now so greatly endangered.

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>> Thank you all for coming. One of the great things about being in Madison is there are so many impressive people here. There are all of you here, and look at this panel. Here we have on the panel--

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John Nichols and Ruth Conniff, who's writings in The Nation and The Progressive are sterling, and who are becoming stars on MSNBC on the small screen. We have the Buhles here, and it wasn't mentioned in the introductions and humbly not by them, but their co-edited book with Dan Georgakas, The Encyclopedia of the America Left, is really an indispensable book for all us to have. I refer to it quite often. It's an incredible, colossal achievement. Then Bob McChesney who is nothing short of the world's leading scholar on mass media and communications. We're lucky to have people like this in Madison. It's not just in the Progressive community though, I'd like to think of us as the center of the nation's Progressive community,

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but also in the universities, in the hospitals, in the non-profit sector and the literary world. We are so fortunate to have so many amazing people here. I do want to thank each and every one of you who participated in the Wisconsin uprising of 2011. It was the most exhilarating experience of my political and journalistic life. And I've been doing this for 35 year now. Just to see the almost spontaneous outpouring of, first 10,000 people on that Tuesday and it just snowballing from there. 35,000, 60,000 and the subsequent weekend, 100,000. The next weekend after that, another 100,000. It was just amazing. I'd read about this. Howard Zinn had taught us about this with his, kind of, volcanic theory of social change that erupts at surprising times, and we never know when but we've got to keep pushing and hoping that it will erupt while we're around. Here we were, just three blocks from the Progressive's office at 409 East Main Street. There was this mass gathering of people exercising political power, not in the voting booth, not as a plebiscite, but real political power in the streets. How fun that was! How jubilant that experience was.

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How creative and ingenious people were with their costumes and with their signs, and with their slogans. I remember, you know, Walker if you keep screwing us we'll multiply. Or the elderly lady who said, I may be 80 but I can still recall you. Then the more political ones, you know, how do you solve the budget deficit? Tax, tax, tax the rich. There was real politics happening there in the streets and the energy was such, and the power was such, that I'd never felt before. That was really dramatic. I think we need to recognize how historic this was. The mainstream corporate media didn't make the point that this was the single biggest sustained mass rally for public sector workers in the history of the United States. It was the biggest sustained mass rally for labor rights period since the 1930's. This was something really dramatic. I have to laugh because I remember reading a column by Tom Friedman, the horrid Tom Friedman of the New York Times, who was saying, boy, if there's 50,000 people gathered in sub-freezing temperatures, the media have got to pay attention. Well, he was talking about a protest in Moscow. He never even seemed to make it out to Madison, Wisconsin. Neither, for that matter, did the president.

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We were abandoned by the president. We were abandoned by-- >> He called in his support. >> What? Oh, he did? He phoned it in, he Tweeted it in the day before. I think a lot of us felt betrayed by him. He was able to rescue support here in Wisconsin and win. I'm grateful that he won, but we need to recognize a kind of president he is. When he came to Wisconsin and said, I'll be with you, fighting for you. When he said that the other day, I mean, you almost had to laugh. I think-- >>

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>> Yeah, he didn't have those walking shoes that he promised to put on whenever there was a strike anywhere. He wasn't walking the picket lines in Chicago either, for that matter. Let's examine why it happened in Wisconsin, just briefly. It happened in Wisconsin, I think, because we recognize, we respect, we honor, we celebrate, our progressive history in this state. I wish other states would do that. The progressive history that Mary Jo was talking about, that Paul was talking about, is really a living, breathing thing. We honor it with streets named after La Follette, with schools named after La Follette. We're taught about La Follette in the school. And bless his heart, Ed Garvey has his Fighting Bob Fest every year in Madison, or in Baraboo or up north. There we have one speaker after another, and also just an incantation of the progressive history here in Wisconsin. It's important for every state to do this archeological excavation and celebration of our progressive history, if we are to advance the Progressive movement in this country. Looking back, I do need to say a critical word or two about the Wisconsin uprising. First, I want to honor the work that the TAA's did. Tremendous work here. I want to honor the work that Madison Teachers did, that John Matthews did, that Bert Zipperer did in courageously going out on strike, on a Wildcat strike, an illegal strike. And taking the brunt of it if the brunt was coming down. That really inspired this mass movement. It was at risk of being smothered in its crib. That was the good part. The bad part was partly procedural, and partly in the imagination and in the conception of what power is. Procedurally, it was very undemocratic, what happened, ultimately. I don't mean the Walker Supreme Court push, which was as undemocratic as you can get. I'm talking about, what do you do with a hundred thousand people on the street? How do you decide what to do? Who decides? This decision was made by a handful of people in a very undemocratic way, that we were going to just-- We should all go home. We should all go home and work on one recall after another. We should pull all this fervent, creative, exciting, exhilarating, powerful energy into the tiny, little channels of Democratic party recalls. There wasn't a show of hands whether we should do that. There wasn't consultation with the crowd. There wasn't breaking down into small groups and deciding what options we wanted to do. We weren't given a menu of options to chose from. I remember being there, they said, go home. Don't come back to the Capitol next week. Go home. This diffused the energy, diffused us geographically, diffused us emotionally and took away our political strength where we needed it. The failure of the imagination, the failure of understanding power outside of the ballot, was a crucial mistake. We had real power in the streets. We could have exercised it in a lot of different ways. Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, would have told us to engage in civil disobedience. Then there was power on the in the workshop, on the shop floor. We could have had a revolving Blue Flu epidemic from one industry into another, where people would call in sick. One industry on Monday, another one on Tuesday. Another one on Wednesday. Or we could simply, you know, do the bare minimum work to rule that our contracts require. None of these options were offered to us, much less, I don't know if they were even considered. That was a real problem. Here we are today after this great uprising and sadly, despite the tremendous and exhilarating victory Tuesday of Tammy Baldwin, which is part of redemption of the energy of the uprising, but here we have Scott Walker with as much power today as he had the day before the uprising started. He is still in power. They still have the state assembly, and the have the state senate 18 to 15. So we're going to be in for some tough sledding here for the next couple of years. We have to figure out a way to exercise power and keep our spirits up in the interim. Also, figure out how to organize again. I think there will be as effort by him to redeem his promise to the hideous Diane Hendricks, the roofer in Beloit who wanted him to move along on Right to Work legislation. I think he will introduce Right to Work legislation. What are we going to do then? We need to have those conversations now. Part of the long term answer, I think, is coalition work with organized labor here in this state, but also local organizing. Organizing local progressive councils in every city and town. Meeting once a week or one a month. I know they do this in Oregon, Wisconsin, at a coffee house. Gathering together as friends. One of the great things about the uprising is we went with friends. We went with neighbors. Bringing people along who don't necessarily agree with you but have an open mind. Bring good food and have, you know, a beer or two. Make it fun. We're not going to do politics if it's not fun. I don't mean it should be drudgery. It doesn't need to be 365 days a year, but once a week or once a month would be good. Then we could meet, maybe a Fighting Bob Fest, and gather these demands from the local progressive councils and figure a way forward. Figure out how to stay united. Who's got those million signatures, by the way, and what we doing with those million signatures? How do we grab all those people together and exercise the power that is greater than the sum, even of those million parts? Thanks very much.

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>> I always love listening to Matt. He didn't like my idea of doing Newt Gingrich and close to Gingrich thing though, where we each say a line alternately. So I'm going to have to give my own talk, based in part of what The Progressive magazine has been covering lately. I think it was really genius of the Buhles to name this book It Started in Wisconsin. We've been through some ups and downs since it started here. It started historically, as Mary Jo pointed out, in Wisconsin with the Progressive Movement. And this uprising that Matt describes so beautifully was really this incredible flash-point for the sense that a real democratic politic could make a difference in an era of overwhelming money. A sense of almost a, you know, unconquerable, concentrated power of wealth. So it did start in Wisconsin. We've been through some incredible roller coaster ups and downs. I just would like to take a moment now to revel in what has happen in this last week as we have once again a sense of the power of the Progressive Movement and progressive politics to capture this country and turn things around. It did not seem possible, right? To illustrate my point I want to show you the cover illustration of The Progressive magazine. I think it's one of the greatest pieces of art we have ever had on the cover of The Progressive magazine.

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Tammy Baldwin, and if you can't see,way back here in the corner of the cover, panting, is the former governor of state, that guy, Tommy Thompson, I think his name was. He's on the ropes. He's slouching down. He's looking tired. This was our cover in October, by the way, which I'm particularly proud of. Because, as you all know, even Progressives in Dane County counted Tammy out. It wasn't just Karl Rove who failed to come in with the money for Tommy, because he was so sure Tommy would win, it was even Democrats in Wisconsin who grossly underestimated the power of an absolutely bold, forthright, Progressive from here in Madison, Wisconsin. She is now the first woman senator from the state of Wisconsin. It's just such a great feeling.

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And I have to same, being at Monona Terrace on Tuesday night for the Tammy Baldwin victory party, and watching those returns come in on the Jumbotrons as the room filled up, and as the Democrats where winning state after state. As Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown were winning seats in the senate. They are going to form, by the way, part of the backbone caucus now, with Tammy Baldwin, right? It was incredible. When Mark Pocan got up on stage and kissed his husband Phil and the crowd went wild. You really had a sense of politics moving in a progressive direction. And it was that euphoric feeling that we had at those great rallies that Matt describes that this is it. You know, that these guys who crawled out from under a rock to try to redefine rape and thought they were going to win this election with that message. Right? I mean, these guys who were absolutely shocked to see the Latino vote come out in force. Matt has this great quote that he captured from the Latina Republican analyst Ana Navarro from CNN. She said that Mitt Romney self-deported from the White House.

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I mean the racist campaign that all over this country that really seemed to be getting some traction to take down our first black president. Just the fact that, except for that one really sleazy and embarrassing e-mail that Thompson had to apologize for, where there was the little clip of Tammy Baldwin dancing on stage with what the Right Wing bloggers I thought hilariously called a fake Wonder Woman at the Gay Pride parade. That one little slip that he apologized for, that was really pretty much it for a homophobic attack on Tammy Baldwin. She said in her acceptance speech, I am well aware that I'm making history as the first out gay member of the US senate, the first woman from Wisconsin. But most of all she is there because she is carrying this incredible Progressive message. I love it, it's up there! Yay!

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I mean, that is our team, you know? I think we should really just wallow in it for a minute. It's true about President Obama. He didn't come to town. It was a little sad to see him on the stage with Bruce Springsteen saying, you know who I am. Really? However, I think one of the most fascinating things that happened in this political year was to watch the National Democratic Party move over to Tammy Baldwin's side. She was out front day after day as Obama did finally come to Wisconsin to try to nail it down for his presidential re-election. She was out of stage touting her 100% voting record on fair trade. Talking about not outsourcing jobs, not sending jobs to China. Then Obama would come up behind her and second that motion. Never mind his record on those same bad trade agreements. But, I mean, it was really that Progressive message that ignited the base, that brought people out. It was the reason that we saw that huge turnout among younger voters, which we did not expect. It was the reason that we saw these fabulous referenda on marriage equality. I think we have finally put that whole line of attack, remember the "gay agenda" films? That is over. It's over. Both culturally and economically the Progressive message was triumphant. It was fabulous to hear Obama stand up and say, very simply after Baldwin spoke, I am not going to kick some poor kid off of Head Start so I can get another tax cut. I mean, it was just a simple, clear message, and it was exactly what we were talking about during the uprising. It was also just a stunning rebuke to David Koch and Sheldon Abelson, and that whole cabal of money who really have transparently, since Wisconsin, they've made it very clear that their aim is to liquidate civil society, starting with our whole set of progressive traditions coming out of Wisconsin that Mary Jo so carefully and eloquently described. They were turned back. All of America-- I think one of the things that was so amazing about those huge, mass rallies we were at, was to see this really majoritarian movement of people saying, no, we want public schools. We like public school teachers. We want some environmental protections. We want to have a society here. I think that is really the victory that were seeing in this movement across the country. It's still a struggle. It has been an up and down period since, you know, as we in Wisconsin have lived though these up and downs since. We know. But there is this incredible thing to grab on to. The chapter that I wrote in this book is about public education in particular. I think that was a really interesting flash-point for really getting across this message to the whole world about what we're talking about and what's at stake. The massive out-pouring from, not just Milwaukee public school teachers, but little towns across the state. People came out to say, if our state legislature passes this bill which would create a state-wide charter school district and allow money to be siphoned out of bricks and mortar schools and into on-line education, little schools will close down in little towns all across the state. The towns will die. When you drive through those towns you won't see the sign propping up the football team and talking about the school play. That whole sense of community is going to collapse along with the collapse of our great public school system. Of course we know, in Wisconsin, we've had this incredible public education system which ironically is touted on the website of the job development corporation that's sponsored by the state. The number one reason that corporations should locate in Wisconsin. The idea that we would liquidate that in the name of bringing on more jobs is just preposterous. Republican and Democrats alike saw that, people like Dale Schultz, turned that bill aside, they put it eternal hold. In the midst of that euphoria at Monona Terrace, obviously everyone was also aware that we were loosing ground in the state legislature in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, as across the nation, the big obstacle that we face now is that because the Republican wave happened in 2010 and the Republicans were able to redistrict, they have consolidated power. And in spite of this massive progressive movement, in spite of this huge public rebuke of their positions, we are dealing with that in Wisconsin. That's why Paul Ryan is still in congress, even though he couldn't win his home town as a vice presidential candidate. That's why, unfortunately, we're dealing with these guys in our state legislature. But I think that they have gotten a very surprising and disheartening message, from their point of view. In fact, I bumped into a guy who lives in my neighborhood whose daughter is in gymnastics with mine. He is a Republican consultant, and he's on a first name basis with Karl Rove, and he has been coming up to me and elbowing me, and talking about how things are going throughout the year. I was there this weekend at gymnastics, and I could tell he just didn't want to do it. But he came over. He was feeling a little sick. He's like, well, my condolences because I know your circulation will go down now that the Republicans aren't in power. It the best he could do. That's fine. I think that we really need to enjoy this moment, and I think we need to hold our backbone caucus accountable. Talk to them about why they won. I think Obama is going to be thinking about this. Why did he win? Now that he has power, what is he going to do with that power? How is this conversation going to go about this fiscal cliff? He's made some very clear statements that drew a lot of applause about defending civil society and everything that we care about and we've been out there defending. I mean, I think this is a great moment that we have accumulated a renewed sense of our power and our efficaciousness. It was such a great high, and then it was a bummer when the recall results came down. But we have now got a little bit of a mini view of the long view that we can get it together and we can win. I think that's really important for us to keep in mind going forward. Thanks a lot.

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>> All right, well, thank you all for coming out. I'll try to keep this short and sweet. It's been like a roller coaster for us since 2006, if you follow elections. I suspect everyone in this room does. We had two consecutive landslides, really, in 2006 and in 2008. Unprecedented, I think, John, since the '30's, that one party had two consecutives. >>

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>> Since '36 and '38? Or '34 and '36. So unprecedented landslides for one party consecutive, '06 and '08. Followed then by the 2010 demolition. Followed then by the uprising we've all been participating in and extolling here today. Followed by the recall defeat. Followed by having our entire brains marinated in asinine advertising for six months to the point we all wished we were dead. Followed by Tuesday's outcome. So it's fair to say you feel like the person whose has one foot in the frying pan and the other foot in the ice bucket. How exactly do you feel? Unbalanced? Okay.

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But I think the real story here is-- actually the long term story here, and the most important story, is that the truth that's emerging, I think it's now increasingly clear, is exactly what Ruth was just talking about. This is basically a Progressive country now. This is a country that is well to the Left, of the adult population, then it's been since I was young. I don't know when Paul and MJ would date it. They study this more than I do. Certainly we had nothing like this is the 80's or 90's, not remotely close to this. Back in those days I thought in a fair election my side would always loose. Now I think in a fair election my side will always win, of have a really good shot at winning. That's a change. I haven't felt that in my life. That's not going to ever go back the other way. And the other side knows that. Besides all the-- you hear all the stuff from Sean Hannity and Mark -- I listen to a lot of Right Wing radio, because I only have an AM radio in my car. That's all you can listen to, basically, if you get out on earshot of the one Liberal station in the Midwest. You hear them all talking about how they're going to have to re-package their Conservative ideas. The ideas like what Ruth was talking about, getting rid of public education and unions. Once we re-package those we'll get Latino votes. I'm not sure what sort of perfume they're going to put on those ideas, but I don't think they're going to be getting a lot of Latino votes with those plans, with those ideas. I don't think it's a marketing problem they've got. It's a fundamental political problem. Now during the presidential run, on the day of the election, finally there was a recognition. Demographically, this sort of, tacit white supremacist campaign isn't really going to work in a country that's no longer dominated by white voters. There's that demographic recognition.

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And there's that demographic recognition that parsing out legitimate and illegitimate rapes, and God's will for when a rape is okay. This sort of stuff is going to antagonize a lot of people. Not just women, I think most men too, but especially women voters. That is a demographic problem. 51% of the voters are women. You're going to have some issues there. Most important in a lot of ways, and I think the most frightening thing to Conservatives, is that if you look at the tendency among young voters, including white, male, young voters, the tenancy has been strongly away from the Republican party now for 25 years. The last two elections have shown that too. 2008 was the first election that 18 to 29-year old, white males, the majority voted for a Democrat. The first time, I think, ever. Certainly since the '30's. I didn't see the demographic data, John, have you, for this election on 18 to 29, white males. >> White males 18-29, it's actually up for Obama. >> Wow. That's extraordinary. So if you're taking a honest look at the data of what's going on in this country, the future is on our side. People always say to me, and I know John gets this a lot too, I write these books that are incredibly depressing, about how screwed up this country is.

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And then they say, how come you're not depressed? That's why I'm not depressed. We've got the numbers on our side. We've got the wind in our sails. The problem is that our political system and our economic system are completely at odds with the democratic aspirations of the people of this country. That's our challenge. Lessening that great divide between what people want, what they stand for, and a media system and a political system that's completely incapable of addressing those needs at this point except in very marginal ways. One other bet, that's even more scary if you're a Right Winger-- And this is something that's been known in political science that's never talked about. You'll never hear the mainstream media talk about this issue. It's sort, once they talk about this, the jig is up for their whole shtick. The United States has just about the lowest voter turnout of any democratic nation in the world. The reason why people don't vote, and you'll never hear this the mainstream media-- It's really obvious if you study it. It's all class based. Rich people vote, poor people don't. You could draw a straight line from the richest Americans to the poorest to see who votes. If the poorest 20% of Americans voted at the same rate as the rich 20%, they'd almost vote twice as much. Going back even to the 1950's, -- the great political scientist determined that, if poor people voted at the same rate as rich people in this country, and we had an 80% turnout rate like most democracies, we'd be well to the Left. The Democrats would be the conservative party in our political culture. The Republicans would not exist. They'd have to completely reform.

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That, to me, seems like a pretty rational allocation. The Conservatives would make a pretty nice-- not a good one. They're still pretty whacked out for a conservative party in a democracy, but they'd be a least better than what we have. A lot better. So that's our challenge. Our challenge is that we are a two party system, the gerrymandering, all the voter suppression, terrible journalism, collapsing journalism, a completely corrupt court system, and most importantly I think, immediately at least, the immense amount of money going into politics. They are all preventing democracy from taking place in this country. Our challenge is just to make it take place. We will win a fair fight. We will win going away. I would just add one proviso to underscore a point that other speakers have made. Don't think that the only money in this election is being spent by Karl Rove and for Republicans, that it was just small donors who bankrolled the Democrats. Not so. We'll see the effects of that unfortunately in issue after issue in the next two years. I wish that weren't the case. But if you want to understand why we're going to be betrayed, and we will be, on trade, on issue after issue, on labor rights. Even though he won the election basically by people who are progressive. Just because of where the money's coming from. You can take that to the bank right now. We know that, but we know that's better than Mitt Romney. So we're happy. But let's not get too excited. We've got a lot of work to do.

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The last point I'll make is simply that we should be optimistic going forward. We have the wind at our sails, as they say. We should act with the confidence that inspires. Much more confidence than I've had certainly in my life politically. But the road ahead, because of the corruption of our political system and the collapse of our news media, the road ahead is going to be rocky. It will necessarily involve, not just working on elections, but doing lots of political work outside of elections. 2011, in that sense, is really the beginning. Thank you.

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>> I like the microphones here. I'm John Nichols and I am a seventh generation Wisconsinite.

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So I'm very used to losing.

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And not all that used to winning. Because my roots are in this state, and deep in this state, I always begin by looking around me and see who's at my side, who's with me no matter whether we win or lose. I want to tell you that throughout the last two years what has been absolutely heartwarming, inspiring, wondrous, glorious, has been the ability to go to our Capitol and to see people rallying who I know as my friends and my neighbors. The Buhles did not just write, put together, edit, a fabulous book about the Wisconsin uprising, Pal and Mary Jo were at the Capitol every single day rallying as part of the Wisconsin uprising. Sometimes I would be at an event and I would call my dearest friend, Bob McChesney, after the event was done and say, oh, we just had this incredible thing happen at the Capitol. Then Bob would say, I know, I was there, back amongst the 150,000 people. Bob was there every day he could be there at our capitol.

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Ruth Conniff was not only there, but becoming such an exquisite spokesman, spokesperson, spokeswoman--

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--on these issues. And my friend Matt Rothschild who got it every step of the way. Every step of the way he understood where things were going to go awry. Matt's dark, unyielding sensibility never allowed us to get too optimistic out there. Yeah. If you don't shoot too high, you won't fall too far. But Matt always shoots high. I want to pay one more tribute here, in addition to all the folks in the room, to Norm Stockwell. There was a never a speaker system that wasn't set up by Norm Stockwell. If anybody heard a speech, it was Norm who made it go out and WORT that told us what was going on.

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So I said at the start that I'm used to losing, and I am. The fact of the matter is that Robert M. La Follette, the iconic figure who came from down in Primrose Township, just over the county line from where my family comes from. Robert M. La Follette ran for governor and lost. He ran for governor again and lost. Finally he ran a third time and he won. And transformed this state. Got such a big head on him that he decided to run for president. It's just a very interesting thing, the Wisconsin-- This is how much of a freak show we have been for more than a century. The Wisconsin delegation of the Republican National Convention nominated La Follette for president and cast all their votes for him in 1908 and 1912 and 1916 and 1920, and 1924 when La Follette finally said, screw it, I'm running as an independent. He ran nationally and he lost. But he carried Wisconsin overwhelmingly!

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The interesting thing about it was La Follette then did after that, when he lost, was he died. He didn't live to see Franklin Roosevelt appoint one of his chief campaign strategists, a person who is intimate to some of the early stages of building the Progressive political movement, Harold Ickes. Not the Ickes now, but the Ickes dad. It's an interesting thing, when they were staffing the Roosevelt administration back in the 1933, 1934, people would come in to be interviewed, young folks would come in to be interviewed, and they were subtle about it. They would let their jacket drop open a little bit. Inside they would have the copper pins that were made with La Follette and Wheeler in 1924. It was said that if you had a La Follette/Wheeler pin, you got a job.

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The fact of the matter is La Follette lost and Roosevelt implemented the La Follette agenda as the New Deal. We lose and then we win. We always win bigger than we lost. It is worth remembering, I remembered this very much on June 5 of this year, that my ancestors fought to remove Joe McCarthy from the US senate. They fought him in 1946. But more importantly, because you can always elect somebody wrong initially, right? Mistakes are made. It's the re-election that's the problem. When Bush-- well, he didn't actually get re-elected, but if he had been re-elected and not stolen Ohio in 2004, when Bush came back in the rest of the world was like, whoa, hold it. You guys are serious? This is crazy. I always remind people that in 1952 we tried to get rid of Joe McCarthy. We ran one of the smartest, best people this state ever produced, Tom Fairchild, the elected attorney general of the state, who went on to become a fabulous federal judge. Gaylord Nelson, Bill Proxmire, all these people went out across the state. All these iconic figures. They had rallies and they campaigned. They petitioned. They did it all, and they lost. Joe McCarthy got re-elected. I would say that was a pretty bad night for Progressives in Wisconsin, 1952. Then Joe McCarthy died drunk in a bathroom. He didn't pay his taxes either, by the way. There are so many things I could tell you about Joe McCarthy. He dies drunk in a bathroom, and then they have a special election to replace him. The loser, the guy who lost for governor once, twice, three times, Bill Proxmire, gets elected to the US senate. Then a year later, Gaylord Nelson gets elected governor of Wisconsin. In one of his very first acts, he signs a collective bargaining law for public employees, teachers, public servants in this state.

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We lose, we win. In 2008 Barack Obama won the presidency, and of course that set up 2010. We had our little struggle. We lost a recall election. We didn't lose everything. We re-took the state senate, briefly. We lose the recall election. Then that movement that started here, that didn't stop here, did something remarkable. I was not here in Wisconsin on election night, which is a dreadful reality, a horrifying notion. I'm glad to be in Wisconsin any day. Especially on elections. Especially when we elect a out lesbian who was accused of being too anti-war to the US senate. That's a good, exciting thing. So I was sad not to be here, but I was in Toledo, Ohio. I'm in the Teamsters' Hall in Toledo, Ohio, and when the head of the teamsters' local there announced, brothers and sisters, our president of the United States has been re-elected. He didn't mean, our president, like, oh, you know, let's sing Kumbaya. No, he meant our president, the president that the Labor movement in this country re-elected had prevailed in the election. When he stood up and he said that, I saw blacks and whites and Hispanics, men and women and young people, go into throws of ecstasy. Not because Barack Obama has delivered on even half of the promises he made in 2008. Not because the people in that room necessarily expect that he will do it going on out from here. But because they knew that they had gone into battle with the extreme Right Wing of this country and they beat them! They beat them.

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After that happened the secretary treasure of the teamster's local there, he came up to me and he took me, and he was about four times the size of you. He's a very large-- He's a big guy. He takes me by my lapels, like that. He's looking down at me. Looking way down at me. Then he goes, Nichols! I go, yeah? He goes, ya know we won this 'cause of you guys. I said, what do you mean? He said, after 2010 the Labor movement in this country was as pathetic as it has ever been. The Labor movement in this country was looking around like a beaten dog. It didn't know what to do, didn't know how to respond to everything that was happening. We had elected all these Republican governors. In Ohio they had started passing anti-labor laws. Wisconsin as well. States across this country. He said, you know, we turned on our televisions and we saw you people doing this in Wisconsin. We decided that we would fight here. We went out and fought in Ohio. They over-turned their anti-labor law in a referendum with 61% of the votes. Something we would have done if we'd had a similar thing. He said, we never stopped. We never stopped. When they called Ohio as the critical swing state, unquestionably won because of the Labor movement, the head of one of the biggest unions in Ohio said, we won this because of Wisconsin. We won this because of Wisconsin. I ask you-- I know that we would like to win every election. I know we'd like to have everything turn out our way. But our duty as Wisconsinites is actually much greater than that. We have a fundamental responsibility to go out and take the harder hits. We have a fundamental responsibility to go out and lead this nation. We have done it from when we founded the radical Left Wing party to get any kind of prominence in American history, The Republican party in 1854, in Ripon, Wisconsin. It was founded with the goal of ending the original sin of the American Experiment, human bondage. They went out and they did it in ten years. That's Wisconsinites leading a struggle that became global. We did it with the Progressive movement a hundred years ago. I cannot emphasize to you, we did it again in February and March of 2011. We went out and showed a Labor movement that was on it's heels how to get up and fight. David -- you know, full well, that because you built a muscular trade union movement in this state. Because you fought to keep those unions strong through the hard times, they were ready for the fight. We went into that battle and we did what we needed to do. I would have loved it if we had won the recall. Of course that would have been fun, but I will tell you what was much more fun. I will tell you what I will always take away from this, and what has kept Wisconsinites strong, what has kept people across this country strong, what has made people in Japan and Germany and India and countries around this world reference Wisconsin right up there with the Arab Spring. What has made this so significant is that we didn't form a political campaign. We formed a movement that will sometimes campaign. But also a movement that will also go into the streets when necessary. I didn't know we could do that. I love this state. I love the trade union movement. I love the Progressive movement. Yet when this struggle began, when Scott Walker launched his assault on trade union rights, I had top Democratic officials and union leaders in this state say, I don't know what we're going to do. I don't know. Maybe we can negotiate with him on civil unions or something. Literally, they were talking about, we're going to lose this fight for such, but maybe there's something else we can do. There was so much defeatism going into this struggle. Somebody forgot to deliver the memo to teaching assistants union. Arguably the weakest of unions. They were the ones who went up to that Capitol. It was Peter Rickman who stood in front of that door with that bullhorn and he said at the end of the rally, you know what? These doors aren't locked. Why don't we go in and occupy our Capitol?

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There was a rally. There was that first big teachers' rally, MTI and WEAC organized. I was supposed to speak that night. I pick my daughter up after school. I said to her, well, we're going to a labor rally. She said to me-- She was seven at the time. She knows the current circumstances of the Labor movement. She knows a Labor rally last 10 to 15 minutes, and at the end of it we all stand around and talk about how we wish it was the 1930's.

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I said, it's okay, and we're going to go to Noodle's after we do the rally. Of course, children only eat at Noodle's. We headed up to the Capitol, and instead of the usual-- you know, you guys. There was like eight, nine, ten thousand people out there. I was like, well, this is interesting. Do you know why those eight, nine, ten thousand people were out there? Because they had heard on the radio and they seen on the news, that the students had gone in and occupied the Capitol. The one thing about Wisconsinites, even in winter, is that if something cool is happening, we want to be a part of it. So there are all these people gathered up, eight, nine, ten thousand folks, and I'm looking out at this incredible rally. This is the start of the thing, not the 150,000 or 180,000 in March. This is the start. I looked out at that rally and I'm thinking, what is going on here? There was a guy standing next to me. He had a sign in Arabic. I've covered wars in the Middle East. I turned to him and I said, Ma salam alaykum. He turned to me and he said, I don't speak Arabic.

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I knew this was a Wisconsinite. I said, you can understand my confusion, the sign. He said, Oh! That. I want on the Internet and I looked up how to do that translation thing. I said, what does your sign say? He says, if Egypt could get rid of Hosni Mubarak, we're going going to get rid of Scott Walker.

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That's when the light bulb went on. What Wisconsin was about wasn't just a labor struggle. It wasn't just some kind of political struggle. What Wisconsin was about was a recognition that sometimes when bad things happen you have to go to the Square. You have to go to the center of your city, to the center of power, and you have to throw yourself into physical confrontation with that power. That is an American principle. That is written into our constitution. We have a right to assemble and to petition for the redress of grievances. We forgot that. We forgot that. Over in Egypt students and trade unionist remembered our message, and they taught it back to us. The bottom line is Wisconsin succeeded because international solidarity still means something. Wisconsinites got it first. We got it first here. And it was so hard for the media to understand. It was so hard for the political class to understand. I'll close by saying, that first rally was wonderful, but the greatest day of my political life was the day I was walking around the Square with, I don't know, 50,000, 70,000 of my fellow Wisconsinites and there was a guy walking in front of me. I just want to emphasize to you, if you see a printed poster at a rally, forget it. If it's printed by a-- I'm for union printers. I want them to make a lot of money, but they can do yard signs. You see a printed sign at a rally, forget about it. If you see a sign on poster board, made with very nice markers, it cool. That's okay. But if you see somebody walking around with a torn apart cardboard box, on which they have taken a ballpoint pen and gone over again and again and again and again, you know that you are a part of a movement that has reached some place better than almost all of our movements up to this point. The guy walking in front of me with that cardboard box, with the pen scrawled on it, holding it like this as the snow came down. His sign said, "I thought Cairo would be warmer."

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Brothers and sisters, we brought humor and music and grace back to the Left in this country. We made people across this nation and around the world believe that they could stand up and make fundamental change. We are not done here in Wisconsin. We haven't even started to fight here in Wisconsin. Tammy Baldwin, she's the appetizer. Tammy Baldwin is just the start of this fight. The fact of the matter is, we are going to take our state back, and we are going to make it again what Robert M. La Follette said it must always be. A light unto the nation, this is a Progressive state. We are a Progressive movement. We are a Progressive people, and we will renew our state's legacy, sooner rather than later. Thank you, brothers and sisters. Solidarity!

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>> Thanks. Thanks to all our panelists, John Nichols, Bob McChesney,Ruth Conniff, Matt Rothschild, Mary Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle. We won't have time for formal questions today, but I know that the authors will stay to sign copies of their books and speak with you a little bit afterwards. Thank you all, and thanks to the sponsors of the Wisconsin Book Festival. Thanks for a great book festival, all of you that have been here throughout the weekend.