Photos and video of about 300 protesters confronting Scott Walker at Devil’s Lake State Park this morning. Images are from Skillet Creek Media. It’s important to protest radical right wing authoritarians like Walker and it’s important to share the images and sounds of protest with others. Photos, videos, and accounts of protest beget yet more protest causing it to multiply. Protest is the living test of your right to assemble and right to speak. A thousand thanks to those who did this today.
Why are these people protesting with such anger? Here’s just an abbreviated list (perhaps you’ll add more offenses in a comment or two):
- Walker’s administration has illegally circumvented the Secretary of State to print a bill and call it a “legal” publication (Wisconsin Act 10)
- Has stripped the 1st and 4th ammendment rights of the United States constitution from Wisconsinites in the Capitol building
- Ignored open meetings law – a cornerstone of open government protected by the Wisconsin constitution
- Literally ordered the state’s conservative majority on the state supreme court to come up with a ruling that strips collective bargaining rights from Wisconsin workers by Wednesday June 15.
- Walker’s Republican legislature handed him administrative rules that give him power to supercede the legislature. This makes him more our emperor than our governor.
- Walker’s administration is dismantling the recall process to preserve it’s power: Wisconsin’s GOP is putting forth fake candidates to manipulate primaries, is redistricting to favor Republican senators, and through a voter suppression act effectively stripping vote access to the young, poor, and elderly to hobble the Democratic vote
- Slashing public education by at least 700 million dollars and pushing public tax dollars to pay for private education while also stripping school board control and handing it to his appointees at the state level
It will take an immense swell of continued and ongoing protest and work to unseat Walker and those like him. I am informed constantly that Wisconsin is where democracy will live or die. I believe it.
Photo credit: These images are from Skillet Creek Media
Scott Walker Rocks! Reason in an unreasonable socialist republic!
And NJ’s governor is trying to out-Walker Walker. Race to the bottom, it is, and normal people LOSE.