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Notes on the Wisconsin Insurrection
by Franco Barchiesi
(Dept. of African-American and African Studies, Ohio State University)
“If you screw us, we multiply”, read one of the signs held by the hundreds of demonstrators who staged, throughout the second half of February, a virtually uninterrupted occupation of the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. It was a rather unusual expression of defiance coming from a left end of the American political spectrum that, in the post 9-11 world and in the days of the Obama administration and its disappointed hopes, has realigned itself along paths of moderation and responsibility, or has simply been cowed into a public discourse that admits only “patriotism”, liberal-democratic individual rights, and the defense of the “American dream” as legitimate foundations for dissent.
But then, the huge demonstrations against the budget and the anti-labor laws of the ultra-right wing Wisconsin state government had a distinctly new quality about them. They represented the first instance of a mass, nationally visible mobilization explicitly directed against corporate power and its institutional representatives since the start of the current economic crisis, whereas the limelight has otherwise gone towards right-wing mobilizations, such as the Tea Party, blaming imaginary un-American foes and socialist conspiracies for the nation’s ills.
The catalyst of the Wisconsin insurrection has been governor Scott Walker, a staunchly pro-business Republican hawk elected in November 2010 with a 52 percent majority as part of an election cycle marked by a national wave of collective disappointment and disgust at the Obama administration’s response to socioeconomic collapse. Despite the hopes raised by the 2008 presidential election, it had in fact become quickly and painfully clear that the priorities of the new White House would be to demobilize the vast grassroots movements that brought Obama to power, rescue big business with a multi-trillion dollar bailout in the absence of any meaningful social measure to even alleviate the plight of the tens of millions thrown into poverty by the depredations of Wall Street, and put in place “bipartisan” measures – continuing tax cuts for the ultra-rich while slashing public spending and social programs – to make ordinary people and workers pay once more for the crisis.
