Ed Schultz had the president of the AFL CIO on today. President Trumka was talking about how “boots on the ground” made the difference in recent races across the country.
I looked down at my feet and saw the Teva sandals that I bought last summer so that I could manage to walk door to door in Mequon, LaCrosse, Kenosha, Baraboo and Milwaukee.
Yes, I did wear boots last Christmas Eve while standing outside of the parking lot at Woodmans grocery store, but these last few weeks its been the Tevas for me.
The feet in the photo are two other canvassers.
Mr. Trumka, here in Wisconsin, we wear those “comfortable walking shoes” that President Obama so famously mentioned.
This is why and how Lori Compas will win the Wisconsin State Senate seat in district 13.
Someone with zero political aspirations but a simple yet profound sense of fairness takes on a bully that the Unions and the Democratic party atributed too powerful to defeat. She runs a clean simple recall petition gathering operation out of her small old house. She gathers enough signatures and hopes that some one will “bubble up” to run. No one volunteers.
She decides to run. An unknown mother and small business owner has 1,100 people give her campaign donations. She FILLS the Firemans Pavillion in the small town of Columbus. The donations were overflowing the coffee cans. People made food and donated it (filling out proper in kind donation forms) and HUNDREDS really hundreds of people show up to eat this cookie. Amazing woman, amazing story.
Grassroots White Wednesdays
I arrived at the Capitol last night for our daily protest laps and was greeted with the sight of over 50 Tibetans, carrying candles and flags and chanting and marching for freedom. Women and children, old and young, citizens of Madison Wisconsin all, but none speaking English and none carrying anything but a Tibetan flag or a candle. There is revolution in the world. Tsampa is roasted barley, the mainstay of Tibetan diet. The Tsampa Revolution expresses the wishes for Tibetan freedom from the Chinese attempts to destroy their culture, language and country. Monks and Nuns are disregarding their faith’s abhorence of suicide and they are setting themselves on fire in unprecedented numbers.
Over thirty individuals have used self immolation as their ultimate protest. Without social media of the electronic kind, in Tibet the people have instituted Lhakar, or White Wednesdays. In solidarity, every Wednesday they are only patronizing Tibetan vendors and they are only wearing traditional clothes, they are only speaking Tibetan. They may not have twitter and they may not have facebook but they have Solidarity and they have a plan. The vigil I followed around the Capitol last night was one of many across the world. There will be more.
As I took my leave of this protest which seemed to appear out of nowhere and of which I had heard nothing before or after, I thought about how much I have complained about what my protesting has cost me. I am ashamed.
learn more at this website:
http://lhakar.org/about/
Today I Get a Do Over
One year ago this very Sunday, I knew that on Friday the Governor had released his Budget bill, and I knew there was bad stuff in it, I also knew that there were people that were going to go to the Governors Mansion and picket this afternoon.
I thought it was a typical small response of a few dedicated lefties and that it was a nice but insignificant gesture.
Oops.
Today I get a do over, a rare thing in life.
The last year has taught me how politics works on the inside and the outside, how movements are made and how outrage and anger are turned into action. I have been lifted and carried along the way through the creativity and humor that this time has drawn out of so very many people.
I have not yet had to strike and really need Solidarity in a tangible, suffering way. I have felt Solidarity with my MTI and #WIUnion sisters and brothers, my UAW Union sister in Detroit, my odd encounter with the President of the NEA, my taking laps with my sign at the Capitols of Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. Solidarity is a way of describing the emotions felt as I walked through the stream of cars lapping the square, headlights illuminating the fog, ALL honking their horns in what I now know as the “Democrabeep”, the night of March 9th 2011…..
I am changed, for the better.
Thank you #WIUnion!!! See you at Scooter’s at noon!
