The huge turnout was in response to Friday’s action by Governor Scott Walker, who signed into law his so-called “budget repair bill,” which strips nearly all of Wisconsin’s 300,000 state, county and municipal employees of collective bargaining rights and sharply reduce their take-home pay.
Workers flooded into the capital from all over the state. Many traveled hundreds of miles from Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan and other states. Tens of thousands of teachers, firefighters, nurses and other public employees were joined by union and nonunion workers in construction, steel, auto and other private-sector industries.
The resistance of the working class has popular support from doctors, professors, lawyers and small businessmen, including restaurants and shops throughout Madison that are displaying signs denouncing Walker’s measures. Hundreds of farmers from throughout the state, who are being hit by cuts in the state’s BadgerCare health program along with the rise in fuel prices, organized a “tractorcade” to the capital and carried signs against the law, including one that said, “Farmers know what B.S. is.”
Despite the best efforts of the media, the politicians and the trade union officials to smother class consciousness with their incessant talk of “middle-class workers,” many signs at the demonstration reflected the growing recognition that workers are engaged in a class struggle with the corporate and financial elite. There were references to “class war” and the French Revolution and demands to “Tax the Rich.” One worker carried a sign with Marie Antoinette’s body and Scott Walker’s face, reading “Let them Eat Cake.” Another held a picture of a guillotine with the slogan, “We’ve Had Enough Cake!”
“People are realizing this is class warfare,” Gary, a teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin, told the World Socialist Web Site. “They are waking up to the fact that there are two classes in this country.”
The militant mood of the demonstrators was underscored by the popularity of the demand for a general strike. Signs calling for a general strike were widespread and the campaign by the Socialist Equality Party for a general strike to force the resignation of Walker won support, with many workers and students taking up the chant for a general strike in response to calls from SEP supporters on bullhorns.
via www.wsws.org
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