propositions press

recalling legitimacy

While the rest of the American left was out on May Day celebrating, trying to make something happen, or block business as usual, Occupy Madison marked the day by quietly closing down the encampment they’d held for months. The fact that this development meant practically nothing to the Wisconsin movement says volumes about the different political space traveled by the Wisconsin Uprising at this moment, compared to the national Occupy movement. It is not Occupy that is on the mind of Wisconsinites, but rather the upcoming Wisconsin recall election targeting governor Scott Walker and several others.

The election, set for June 5, 2012, only about six weeks from now, was forced by overwhelming petition. Before then, the Democratic and Republican candidates will be winnowed down to one nominee from each party by a primary election set for May 8, barely one week from now. May Day it is not. But unlike the May Day protests, actions, symbolism, and demonstrations—whose sound and fury, let’s face it, are pretty easily tuned out by the mainstream (and not just media, but actual people)—the consequences of this election will be felt concretely by everyone in Wisconsin, activist or not, and for way longer than the news cycle of a single day. Hundreds of thousands in Wisconsin—probably even millions—will feel the effects of this election directly in the measurable forms of a reduced paycheck, a lost job, a health problem that leads to financial ruin, an unmanageable classroom, and twenty other big things. Furthermore, the consequences will ripple out nationally, either to draw a line on austerity attacks or to green light the regressive austerity agenda.

It has been said by Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, and countless radicals that if elections mattered, they would be made illegal. Well, through their various voter suppression efforts, the Wisconsin GOP has been trying to do exactly that—make voting difficult and legally restricted. This election matters and they know it. But the movement grassroots has not grasped yet the meaning of the election. We must discuss this, if the movement is to have any hope of effectively continuing beyond the advertised finality of the recall election. This is my attempt to think through how the movement needs to interpret the election if the Uprising is to remain relevant, powerful, and strategically ready on the morning of June 6, no matter who wins or loses.

*

Wisconsin has an open primary, meaning anybody of any party affiliation or non-affiliation can vote for any of the candidates. Conservatives can vote for a Democratic candidate and progressives can vote for a Republican. An open primary removes the exclusivity of an official party-identified electorate, which is good. At the same time, the open primary assures an element of cynicism through tactical voting and bad-faith candidacies. 

For example, right now the Republicans are running several candidates in Democratic primaries without a shred of pretense that they are anything other than electoral hurdles and tactical disruptions. In the case of some or maybe even all of the “fake” Democrats, there is hardly anything dishonest about them. For example, the Senate Majority Leader of the Wisconsin state senate is Scott Fitzgerald, and he is facing a recall election of his own (also June 5). In order to force the Democratic challenger, Lori Compas, into spending resources on a primary election, regressive Republican activist Gary Ellerman is running as a Democrat. If it weren’t for him, Compas would not have to compete in a primary at all. This helps Fitzgerald by taking the fight to the Democratic primary election, which, if enough Republicans vote in it, theoretically could be won by Ellerman. Then he simply runs a concessionary campaign for the recall election and hands a victory to his buddy Fitzgerald. So Compas must win the primary.

This tactic was used back in the summer of 2011 against some of the Democratic state senators facing recall. It has not been actually successful, not to the point of undermining a good-faith candidate. Not yet. But this time the Republicans are trying harder, and I heard some rumor about Tea Partiers pledging to vote in the Democratic primaries.

The tricky part comes with the rule that however one chooses to vote in the primary, a voter only gets one vote. So if conservatives spend their vote on a bad-faith Democrat, then they leave the Republican side open for progressive voters to do the same thing to them. Democrats, unsurprisingly, are not aggressively taking the opportunity to generate havoc for the Republicans by running bad-faith candidates, somehow being content to leave the Republican candidate unchallenged while they sort out their own. As usual we can chalk up the Democrats’ timidity to a cowardice masquerading as integrity—a lack of fighting spirit that essentially has become the national Democratic brand, from Obama on down.

But here again, an opportunity opens up. Arthur Kohl-Riggs, a young activist with no Democratic Party connection, recognized the gap and filled it by running in the Republican gubernatorial primary as—and get this—not a “fake” Republican, but as a good-faith Lincoln Republican, a LaFollette Republican, which is a posture that carries inescapably more than a whiff of irony, if not exactly bad-faith. Kohl-Riggs is recognized by many in the uprising circles as a regular at Capitol demonstrations and for his social media activism, so it is clear to all that he is certainly not of the contemporary Republicans. But he is playing it straight, pounding the argument that he is, in fact, the true conservative, that Scott Walker is a traitor to the grand Lincoln tradition of integrity, justice, and leadership, and that true conservatives will consider voting for him.

That Kohl-Riggs got himself on the primary ballot means that however secure Walker and the Republicans feel, a signal has been sent. The mantle of the LaFollette tradition—such a Wisconsin thing—could be picked up yet in the future by some enterprising and substantive candidate who speaks the language of Colbert irony, and who potentially could bring a measure of chaos into the Republican side, and do it without any Democratic Party involvement whatsoever.  Could there really be an insurgent force of ironic conservatism brewing somewhere that could invade the Wisconsin GOP? Not if the GOP can help it, of course. See how they’ve shut down the principled libertarian candidate, Ron Paul, for years. If Kohl-Riggs dedicates himself to his idea, I for one would not discount the possibility of some youth-driven movement to reclaim conservatism eventually gaining visibility. It might be marginal to the party mainstream, but again like Ron Paul, it would bring into play many new people. Kohl-Riggs is only 23. If he decides to become a politician (as opposed to the citizen-running-for-office that he is now), to perform that act, follow that career, and dedicate himself to the craft of becoming an image, then who is to say where will he be in fifteen years.

Let’s parse out the present situation.

Scott Walker, the incumbent Republican governor, faces a primary challenge from Arthur Kohl-Riggs.

Democrats Kathleen Falk, Kathleen Vinehout, Tom Barrett, and Doug LaFollette are running against each other in the primary. Gladys Huber, a known Republican, is running as a bad-faith Democratic candidate.

Voters get one vote, and it goes to only one of the above seven candidates—the vote will be spent on either a Democrat or a Republican, not both. Say a sizable bloc of progressives decide to vote for Kohl-Riggs. Maybe a previously non-voting bloc comes out of the woodwork, attracted by the Kohl-Riggs novelty. Whatever the case, the vote total for Kohl-Riggs is sure to be small. But in a tight Democratic primary, those votes (or rather, the consequent non-votes for the Democrats) will make a difference. Where might those non-votes leave Falk, given that, presumably, many of those people would have voted for her over Barrett? Then again, a prediction based on ideological correspondence perhaps would have many of Kohl-Riggs’ crossover voters going for the outsider-ish progressives,Vinehout or LaFollette.

Similarly, conservatives who might otherwise have voted for Huber just to mess with the Democrats might feel some pressure to spend their vote on the Republican side for Walker because of Kohl-Riggs. If he were to attract even a five-digit vote total, Kohl-Riggs, the future/throwback candidate, might garner more media attention embarassing to Walker, and therefore (though we know that Walker himself plays the unflappable zombie to inhuman perfection) further damage the Republican brand. I can imagine conservative activists thinking it more important to put on a display of overwhelming support for Walker than throw vote wrenches into the Democrats’ race by marking the arrow for Huber.

* 

As in an epic sporting contest in which the bad breaks, bad calls, and bad bounces on both sides cancel each other out, perhaps the tactical manuveurs will ricochet through all corners of the contest, leaving no perceptible effect. Or, maybe it is all even until the very end, leaving a final surprise to stand as the defining controversy that shifts a race this way or that. Of course, unlike in sports, political candidates feel no special obligation to respect the rules. They bend or challenge them all along the way. And that, of course, only guarantees the expansion of cynical tendencies in two directions—ie, that platoons of lawyers searching for technicalities end up deciding the contest for the parties while ordinary voters throw up their hands and wonder, why did we even bother doing this?

My armchair dissection may not clarify the elections themselves, and likely further confuses one’s predictions. But the very futility of sorting through the permutations and possible outcomes of tactical versus naïve voting makes apparent the larger but hardly abstract problem of legitimacy as it relates to elections in general, and to this election in particular. Because of the unavoidable cynicism and calculation inherent in voting, there can be no moral legitimacy gained or lost in an election victory, period. The Wisconsin movement must be very clear about this. No matter who wins or loses, we will not accept the victory as the final stamp of legitimacy—any outcome is in essence illegitimate on the level of values. An election is a non-violent contest for control over the state’s levers of coercion—and that is all it is. This is a crucial statement to broadcast because should he win, whether it be fairly or by theft, Scott Walker will wear the victory on his sleeve, using its aura of legitimacy as a bludgeon. Make no mistake, Walker and his GOP cabal have a second, more horrible act of legislative aggression at the ready, to be unveiled just as soon as he beats back the recall. To the good people of Wisconsin: be prepared to fight a governor unafraid to rule by emergency executive decree—and everyday forward, he will remind everyone that this is what the voters decided. Such will be the emboldened Scott Walker we will face after his victory. 

Thus, it goes without saying that we must defeat Walker in June. This is no small task given that Walker will have amassed a war chest that guarantees dominance of television and radio advertising, and has the support of any number of third party groups, flush with cash and a willingness to lie. 

But should this much-desired defeat come to pass, whoever the Democrat is will have earned no legitimacy on a values level. The movement grassroots must view and treat the new governor as distrustfully as any other ambitious, ego-driven careerist politician all too capable of selling out the public interest once in office (which is, of course, a specialty of the Democrats). The values of the movement will only be expressed by the elected leadership if the movement remains large, vital, visible, and beyond the reach of both union and Democratic Party control—or, in other words, dangerous, hydra-headed, and untamed. How to be that movement and yet engage in the most difficult and momentous electoral contest most of us will have ever seen is the paradox within which the Uprising now exists. Let us embrace it. 

*

My last thought concerns the mentality and commitment of a winning movement. The last and perhaps most meaningful victory gained in the Wisconsin movement was the successful blockage of new mining up north—a key item on GOP’s corporate agenda. (For those interested in the story, Rebecca Kemble’s reporting for the Progressive is a great place to start.) The victory was gained at the Capitol through a state senate vote, but was won over a translocal theater of activism and coalition-building, binding together numerous groups and constituencies across different parts of the state. Of complementary significance was the willingness and even resignation among coalition members regarding the likelihood of having to fight an eventual ground war up north, pitting our bodies against their machines. Without this coalition, led by the native peoples of the Bad River Band Chippewa, the victory could not have been won. Without the latent militancy, spiritual dedication, and specter of nihilism belonging to a people who recognize a battle for survival when they see it, the victory could not have been won. Without the ability to simultaneously: lobby legislators politely and agitate on the streets angrily; collect independent, scientifically-sound research and launch barbs of wit and ridicule at GOP targets; pack the assembly hearings in person and disseminate information through social media, the victory could not have been won.

The lesson is clear. Prepare for the worst. Work for the best. Make our appeals to the hearts and minds of the unconvinced while standing firm at a threshold of ultimate defense. And deal with whatever comes.

 

 

l.a. report

I am just returned from a very short trip to Los Angeles. The excuse for the trip was having the chance to present a paper about The Journey West at the College Art Association’s annual conference. In the weeks leading up to the trip I found myself in conversations with art friends that went one of two ways. Either they would say, “Are you going to CAA? Let’s get together.” Or else it would be something along the lines of “I can’t believe all these people go to CAA. It is so lame.”

I have never fully understood the gripes about CAA. It is true that CAA excludes participation because of its registration fees, and that the format is not very imaginative. But what do people expect? The conference for any professional organization costs a lot to stage, and CAA's registration fees are much more affordable than that of organizations in many other fields. And while colleges and universities range from semi-accessible to elite and exclusive, they are not exactly the same as corporations or government institutions. They are knowledge and education factories, and as such offer a space for protected intellectual activity on a limited but real and substantive basis. As a vehicle for serious discourse and the sharing of ideas, I find CAA much more palatable than, say, the add-on symposia or discussion events that seem to be attaching themselves to all the commercial art fairs.

I have been to CAA eight times. Some of my friends think that is a lot. I first started going because for about three years after I finished my degree program, I had no functional intellectual community. I would save for the trip and that would be my big travel expenditure for the year. From the beginning I always worked in visits to family and friends, too. The conference alone was never enough to fully justify a trip, especially without free couches to sleep on.

Then I found my community of artists and researchers. I stopped going to CAA for about five or six years, except for once when I had a chance to present for the first time (and visit a friend I had not seen in years). Then I attended again in 2011, playing the role of editor and coordinator of the annual newsletter of the Radical Art Caucus, for the first of two years. I have gotten something out of RAC and CAA. I figured it was time to give back, in a capacity appropriately minor to my life as an adjunct professor.

This year I was at the conference for only a couple of hours besides the time of our presentation, plus a little time for shopping at the conference book fair afterward. My Columbia College colleague Annika Marie gave a great lecture on Ad Reinhardt’s cartoons. Our session was organized incredibly well by fellow Madisonite Laurie Beth Clark, we received good feedback, and the whole presentation exercise was valuable in advancing our understanding of The Journey West. A highlight of the conference was seeing the work of my Madison brothers, Lewis Koch and Patrick JB Flynn on display. Lewis’s book marked down to a clearance price.
Yup, that is cheap. I left it for somebody else; I already have a copy. Patrick got the design gig for the new Baffler. Very sweet to see it being pushed.
I got the newsletter put together, this time with a poem by mrcc resident poet Matthias Regan as the featured art content. But I did not even have a chance to see the hard copies in action at the conference.

So that was CAA. 

More interesting was speaking about the Wisconsin Uprising on Friday night at the Public School in Chinatown. The attendance was almost as good as that for our CAA session (about eighteen), but in a much better space with a non-academic audience. As an autonomous educational entity, it was impressive–something we who are trying to keep the Madison Autonomous University alive can aspire to. As a social space, it was lovely. As a community, it was supportive and welcoming. I am a fan, and it was a privilege to have the floor there for an evening. And I must say, the interest in the Wisconsin political situation was enthusiastic.

I stayed with my friend Ava. She was one of the original Mess Hall keyholders. For the past year and half she has been working as a project manager of a large real estate development called Atwater Crossing, or ATX. The last time I was in LA was in October of 2010. Ava was just about to start on the job then, and drove me around the complex. There were only something like five or ten tenants then. Now there are something like forty. Nearly all of them are creative industry or arts-related concerns. She took me there again this time, to scope out the buzzing restaurant scene. It reminded me of large developments in China—creative industry and design-oriented businesses taking root in clusters, but here it was with more substance and breadth. The interactive media companies are there, but so are theater companies. Crafty artist’s studios are there, but so is Pomegranate Pictures, who make videos for System of a Down. You won’t find that in China. 

ATX is very impressive, all the more so for Ava having managed it all without hardly any staff until about a week ago.

Before heading out to catch my overnight return flight Ava and her boyfriend treated me to an excellent departure dinner at Lou, on Vine. The restaurant had an outline map of the US on one wall, with handwritten names and arrows pointing to their sources. They had probably twenty or twenty-five different suppliers named from across the country. Well, well, well. The state outside California with the most suppliers named was Wisconsin, with four. And that is where I was headed. Home, sweet cheesy home, where all the battles are currently raging. Including about Wisconsin farmers supplying not upscale wine bars in LA, but the neighbors of the farmers. In about six hours time, I landed in Milwaukee. Back in the midwest, home of the emerging locavore economy and KillerSpin (in airports).

 

 

wi uprising @ year one

It was one year ago that the outward ripples of the Tunisian uprising were felt across borders and through unlikely differences in context. One of those places that saw a righteous outrage directed at a local tyrant in early 2011 was Madison, Wisconsin. Beginning on the day Mubarak fell, Wisconsinites opened their Friday after work routine with the surprise announcement that Scott Walker's so-called budget repair bill, set for a vote early the next week, would end the collective bargaining rights of the state's public sector union. As citizens read the fine print, they found that the bill contained other controversial measures, as well, such as a provision to sell off some publicly owned energy facilities on a no-bid basis. A variety of constituencies found reason to mobilize.

Thanks to the grassroots info-activism of individual citizens from all quarters of the state, the rapid circulation of information through social media, and the prevailing global mood of ya basta (and in this sense, Madison has long been a very global town), within a matter of hours our governor crossed the all-important line of perception, going from harmless amateur to despotic, venal, and dangerous egomaniac. Then, as Walker dug in his heels, the movement to criticize, resist, and now to oust him, gained traction through months and months of renewed outrages committed by him and his Republican lieutenants. Right up to, literally, this very moment. As I type this post, the Republican-controlled Assembly are preparing to ram through yet another of their controversial, poorly-written bills. This one would effectively gut Wisconsin's regulatory apparatus that has successfully conserved wetlands across the state, giving in wholesale to the well-financed interests of irresponsible short term wealth-generating development. It would also have the effect of heaping additional unworkable duties on the DNR, setting that agency up for failure. This is a prime example of T.C. Frank's wrecking crew in action. 

So at the one-year mark, what does it look like going forward? The many subplots and numerous controversies of the last six months have recently been reduced to three main storylines, each with its own actors, antagonisms, and possible outcomes. Now fully developed as political narratives, how they play out from this point will shape the contours of the Wisconsin movement for at least the first half of 2012 and possibly the second. The three stories are 1) the massive grassroots recall effort and election, 2) the battle over new mining up north, and 3) the ongoing FBI John Doe investigation into illegal activities in Scott Walker’s office when he was Milwaukee County Executive and running for governor in 2010. 

The overwhelming enthusiasm of the petition-phase of the recall campaign shocked even the optimists. Gathering over a million signatures means that two of every five would have to be invalidated, an insanely unrealistic prospect, thereby crushing the Republicans' first defense. As well, in absolute numbers, the total comes very close to the 1.2 million votes that Walker received in 2010, indicating how widespread the disapproval really is. Most importantly, given the grassroots nature of the recall effort, this contest is being written as a David vs Goliath story, and therefore a possible turning point in electoral strategy beyond this one election. The David (the WI movement, leading the Democrats and not the other way around) and Goliath (Walker, Koch, ALEC, WMC, money, money, money) story, helped along by citizen reporting on the forces organizing behind Walker, has opened this struggle to a possible outcome in keeping with the idealism that has fueled the movement thus far. If the movement capitulates to the conservative tendencies that are already emanating from within the Democratic Party and union leadership, it will have been another opportunity lost.   

Up north, anticipating what would be in effect a ground invasion, the tribes and their allies are ready to defend their lands, through the courts, and physically if necessary, in the hills. There are successful treaty rights and environmental defense campaigns within the recent memory of a great many Wisconsin activists; organizers are confident in their abilities to form strong native/settler, urban/rural coalitions and use all tactics, from lobbying and media work to civil disobedience and direct action. The state’s strong environmental constituencies (remember, Wisconsin is the state of Aldo Leopold and Gaylord Nelson) are already on the same page in opposing the proposed new mining, and the strict regulatory regime that ranks Wisconsin one of the states least friendly to mining is a legacy of the victorious grassroots-led anti-mining/land preservation struggles that happened fifteen years ago around the proposed Crandon mine. Are the Republicans really anxious to go to the ground in the face of people who are willing to sacrifice their own lives before seeing the ruin of their land and culture? Are they that foolish? Yes, they are. When the invasion begins and the struggle takes a turn toward the dramatic, if the movement articulates its moral, scientific, and economic positions wisely, the chances are good that in one way or another Scott Walker's image and reputation will take another lasting hit. With any luck it would be politically fatal, career-wise.

And, finally, the drip-drip-drip criminal investigation that has placed a chokehold around Walker's inner circle raises the possibility that the other dogs are willing to cut him loose to save their own future ambitions (remember, Paul Ryan and Reince Priebus have their own delusional plans). Walker has retained a legal team, now that the John Doe investigation has the feds breathing down his neck, and I'm sure even his corporate backers are beginning to formulate their own Plan B. As far as I can tell no arm of the WI movement has a contingency plan should Walker be indicted before a recall election is scheduled, even though at this point it seems like a real possibility. I am not even sure what happens. Is he removed from office? Does an indictment trigger any sort of impeachment process? Or will the state's Republican cabal of the Fitzgeralds, JB Van Hollen, and the David Prosser state supreme court work to protect him? Our theocratic lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch is also the target of the recall campaign, and will likely stand for early election along with Walker. But could there be a situation in which she assumes the office of governor and thereby invalidates her recall? Given the tangled plots and unprecedented nature of this whole thing, the legal minutiae yet to be wrangled over cannot be underestimated. How we, as the grassroots engine of the movement, write this narrative is the question. Above all, we must continue to find ways to keep the stories open enough–through both well-timed political offensives and the attendant shaping of the mediated narrative–for a possible outcome that definitively reduces the present and future power of the regressive forces. 

Though a wooden performer in public, we know that through it all Walker's been shaken. He has attempted to spin himself a softer image in recent weeks, miserably, baldly dishonestly, and unsuccessfully. (Playing the compassionate card is not his forte; neither is being honest). But the tone deaf narcissists our careerist political system produces–and Walker is precisely such a product–never really comprehend the message, even if they sense an external threat. Scott Walker is an embodied example of what Debord wrote more than a generation ago: the spectacle is incapable of thinking strategically. And we knew this as early on, when he made a calculated move to play the role of Dairyland Dictator on the very day that Egypt's Mubarak ended his career with a literal escape for his life. Can you say political blind spot?

Blundering his way through, with all the resources that large amounts of cash can buy him, but with none of the kind that don't come with a price tag, Scott Walker now faces a crisis every which way he turns, each one of his own making. Whether Walker realizes it or not, he can never go back. Apart from the hardcore ideologues, his support has evaporated, even as his people lamely manage his deteriorating image and reputation, as exemplified by this sorry effort at staging, and then spinning, a pro-Walker event. It is safe to say Walker's done. Only the ending has yet to be written.

The relevant sign you'll see in this video, shot earlier today at the tail end of the noontime rally (after most of the people left, and before the larger afternoon rally that happened later), is the one held up by the firefighter, first at 3:36 and then at 7:18 with interaction.

    

And one year ago? Let's remind ourselves of what the mood was. Anxiety, disbelief, and a vague hopefulness in a movement yet to fully blossom, tempered by the depressive expectations of a collective lifetime of cynicism. The video below is from noon on Tuesday, February 15, 2011: the occupation of the Capitol began about fourteen hours after it was recorded. Massive demonstrations went on for weeks afterward, generating a whole culture of activism, resistance, and grassroots leadership. John Nichols' review of notable actors and events is only the very tip of the iceberg.

The movement continues, with arrests of activists being tweeted from the Capitol as I compose this, and the disgraceful dead-of-night passage of the wetlands destruction bill as I edit. 

 

 

 

 

the getaway that left questions

Walking home from the hardware store, I was lost in my own thoughts when a rising gutteral roar turned my head. My eyes settled on a remarkable scene unfolding in comical slow motion across the street from me. The first thing I saw was a young pale-faced man in a name-patch uniform lumbering across the lot of a BP gas station, apparently at a full sprint, but weighed down and misbalanced by a beer gut so big that he might have rolled faster than he could run. Then I saw what he was running after. Super loud but super slow, a rust-eaten nineties mufflerless Caprice with a young black man about two-thirds reclined behind the wheel lurched out of the lot, accelerating at a rate just barely faster than the man on foot. For another two seconds it was a contest, but the car gained in momentum what the belly lost. The chase went into the street but after another moment it was all over except for the cursing.

I deduced what had happened easily enough, but the meaning of the event is not so simple to determine. To my mind the story of this one event can be interpreted in at least three ways.

1)    It was a routine drive-off from the pump, the kind of loss-leading nuisance that vexes small retailers daily, the costs of which are built into the price of purchase.

2)    It was a counterproductive assertion of entitlement, feeding the perception in the secure spaces of white America of a growing and increasingly dangerous black and brown criminal underclass.

3)    It was an act of everyday resistance, a concrete, elemental, but banalized fuck you of the kind for which even the anti-capitalist activists of Occupy Wall Street essentially lack the guts.

These interpretations do not hold mutually exclusive purchase. In fact, all of them make sense simultaneously because of the subject positions in play, not only across the spectrum of positions but within them. Consider the players. First there is the station attendant. Then the driver/perpetrator. There was a white man watching from one of the other pumps. And there was me, witnessing from across the street. The multiple interpretations move across the complexities of and between these subject positions.

My first assumption was that the paying customer at the pump would tend toward interpretation number (2), but who knows; there are ostensibly anti-racist white leftists around here among whose questionable ideological merits include the capacity to rationalize even the most anti-social of behaviors on the part of African American persons. There was part of me that hoped the driver himself harbored a feeling going in the direction of number (3), but it was probably more like a perpetrator’s perspective on number (1); he was likely already thinking about how to get his next tank of gas as he pulled into traffic. He already had to seek out a non-pre-pay station for a fast one, and how far could he get on a single tank of gas, in a guzzler? For the station attendant thinking about his job—how to explain the incident to his boss, maybe having to fill out a theft report—number (1) might be the go-to interpretation. But the driver was an African American man, with all the stereotypical indicators of an inner city migrant, quite out of place in Middleton, Wisconsin, a town less than 2% African American. With an outsized pride of place, some residents of Middleton (adjacent to where I live in Madison) actually believe that Middleton is one of the country’s “best places to live,” as trumpeted in mainstream media reports. Would these factors of race and social exclusivity figure into the station attendant assigning number (2) as a meaning? 

Finally, the station was a BP. After feeling the frustration of both last year’s impotent post-Deepwater Horizon boycott campaign against BP stations, demonstrating that consumers really do not have the power to meaningfully punish transnational corporations, and of the current inability of the Occupy movement to exercise a power beyond changing the national conversation (which I acknowledge is huge, gratefully), I tended to see the episode as an example of number (3). I was actually glad to witness an action that could be described an unapologetic fuck you—after all the devastation (which is still inconclusively known, but constantly upped in estimation) in the Gulf of Mexico and BP’s proven impunity—finally! Inarticulate or not, politically meaningful or not, counterproductive as it was, for one short moment, in my mind I quietly saluted the driver.

But then I felt terrible afterward, for the knowledge that the tendency toward racial profiling in an area where even I, a Chinese American, routinely get stared at had just been fed the equivalent of an energy drink by this young man's action. Also for what such an act of disobedience says about the conundrum facing the Occupy movement. That is to say, significant parts of the Occupy movement must show that they can make progress in creatively addressing the system it critiques, opposes, and abandons, as one that is fundamentally racist. But the all-important African American street element, having suffered thirty years of massive incarceration and everyday police repression, is basically neither politically present nor self-consciously politicized, made up of individuals existing in survival mode, same as the driver of the Caprice.

Finally and not least, I felt the negativity of the continued erosion of trust that goes along with another business perhaps deciding to safeguard against theft through pre-pay means. On the other hand, why should the self-satisfied town of Middleton expect a different standard of public trust than what millions of people live with in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, and other places across the region? Another salute....

I witnessed a crime. Or was it an act of resistence?

These questions follow:

Is an interpretation informed by racism in any way a reasonable response?

If not, then how does one begin to address racism when those who racially profile their fellow citizens believe it reasonable?

What hope have we that the everyday daring of the most economically desperate become self-consciously politicized? 

How do those of us who are less daring than we need to be model ourselves on the driver and inflict a pain, no matter how small, measureable in units other than webpage hits?

 

psychedelic recall

“What’s going on in this country, it’s fascism, simple as that.”

The stranger who spoke those words to me had not attended and did not even know about the Saturday noontime rally on Capitol Square, at which there was an estimated crowd of 40,000 celebrating the recently launched campaign to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. On the square the spirits were high, and the consciousness evident. This was the massive and genuinely popular Wisconsin movement, again visibly churning to life. But the critical pronouncment above came neither from the rally stage nor from any of the scores of petition-gathering volunteers, nor from a protest sign. It came later that evening, from the mouth of the guy in his early 50s sitting next to me at the Furthur show.

“The people are distracted by this bullshit corporate media, which is all lies and pure bullshit. What’s that show, Three Men and a Half, or some shit. Fuckin’ bullshit. And in the meantime the rich are putting up a police state, and nobody fuckin’ notices. They’re defunding schools, keeping people stupid. It’s fascism!”

This man was pissed, possibly in despair, but clear-sighted. When I asked him what he did for a living, he admitted embarrassment and then proceeded to tell me all about the new gold rush of the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota, where he has been working as a contractor for six months at a time. He was embarrassed because, as he put it, “It’s a goddam free for all out there, 4 billion barrels of recoverable oil, maybe more, with no consideration for any kind of environmental responsibility. And it’s insulated. You don’t see any big oil company that you’d recognize. Only Halliburton, and a lot of companies like Halliburton that nobody’s every heard of. It’s fucked up. I hate it.”

And right then the band went into Throwing Stones.

Picture a bright blue ball, just spinning, spinnin free,
Dizzy with eternity.
Paint it with a skin of sky,
Brush in some clouds and sea,
Call it home for you and me.

This encounter did not happen at a political rally. Or did it? I spent $110 on two Furthur shows this weekend, outside Chicago and in Madison. Very un-critical art of me. Not radical.

It was great.

Not because the boys opened the party with a raging Sugar Magnolia and Chimenti wailed the keys on a tightly shuffling Stagger Lee in Friday’s first set, or because they hit the euphoric passages of The Eleven and St. Stephen with full, thunderous volume in the second set. And not because they offered up favorite cover Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues in Saturday night’s first set, or because the band pummeled Viola Lee Blues and Bobby crushed the vocals on Death Don’t Have No Mercy in the second set.

Those are some of the reasons the shows were excellent for Deadheads, something I most certainly am. But these nights were not merely about Dead fandom. They were about an old counterculture meeting a new moment of economic and cultural upheavel.

The thoughts that came to me during the shows had to do with if and how those nights connected with the times of the heterogenous psychedelic counterculture before “Deadhead” gained meaning as a defined subcultural identity, and which had emerged visibly already by the early and mid-70s. Having come into the scene in the age of the mega-Dead (from 1987 on—basically the years after Garcia’s diabetic coma), aesthetically speaking the ur-mythical early days had always felt rather remote, even with Captain Trips on stage. By then the concert experiences had become packaged and predictable, all the more so for having attained the status of a major concert draw. By the 90s, the band was falling apart in terms of internal communication and the concert experience ran on the fumes of cliches. I had tickets to two shows at The Palace in Auburn Hills, Michigan, in 1992. The first show was so flat that my friend and I gave our tickets to the second show to some “miracle”-seeking fans, who looked extra-pathetic given the sorry performance they were dying to see.

By contrast, the Furthur shows of this past weekend were meaningful on an intellectual and aesthetic level I have never felt before. The shows were great because they gave me time, space, and stimulation to think—and feel—through the political sensations of our day. To really stop and wonder about this cultural moment in America, in so many ways seeming to be on the edge of a cliff—or, more promisingly, on the take-off edge of a growth spurt of a kind. That Furthur remains a direct link to some of the most important American cultural experiments of the Sixties—open-ended, bravely good humored, at once literati and working class, astonishingly amateur, and selectively provincial—figured importantly in the experience.

My musing began with the questions, what does it mean for a few thousand people to gather for an evening party, many of them wigged out on mushrooms, Ecstasy, or acid, plus copious amounts of grass, shaking to music supplied by a fresh-sounding and expertly performing outfit directly descended from the original house band for the Acid Tests of forty-six years ago? What does it mean for this event to be happening in a time of unrest, persistent economic crisis, and a general deep questioning of values? Can a form of hedonistic revelry borne out of a turbulent and revolutionary time from a generation and a half ago maintain purchase on a measure of meaning that goes beyond a consumer experience—and maybe even opens doors to new pleasures and, therefore, desires? What are the changed structural circumstances, from then to now, that might limit the reach of the experience, or re-inscribe fresh meanings?

The discontents and desires out there, products of a generalized injustice, so personally felt and expressed in the America of 2011, had me reaching for the poignancy of forty year-old lyrics, my ears pulling them out of the mix. See the romantic indignation of Hunter’s losers and wharf rats.

Half of my life
I spent doin’ time for
some other fucker’s crime…

Measured in pure pleasure, the Rosemont show was the better of the two. It was a happy crowd, ready for a high energy party. The first set put us on notice. The band was tight. The unusually coherent second set, full of high points and seamless transitions, took me to the recordings of the early Seventies, the mindfully groovey playing I never got to hear in the late Grateful Dead. I could only think, so this is what this music is supposed to feel like. Music sung to the hassled longhairs of 1969, newly resonant in the contested space that is brutalized Occupy America, 2011. A basic message we can all relate to, from Ron Paul supporters to the drummers of Zucotti, and everbody who has been hassled post 9/11—which is to say, everybody. Get off our backs. Let us be. Stop telling us what to do.

Ooo, Freedom!

 Ooo, Liberty!

Oh-wo, leave me alone

I want to find my own way home

I expected the Madison show to have some discernible political vibe, simply because of the setting—there were sure to be recall campaign volunteers out, fans with buttons and Wisconsin solidarity t-shirts on. Appropriately, the music was darker than the previous night’s jolly ride, more bluesy, sadder songs, and hard driving rock. Less ecstatic.

Saturday night’s message seemed to be that nowadays, we are losers, all of us. But we can wallow together if we are fortunate enough to escape the various wars (dodging the draft then, evading the creditors now), score a ticket and a ride. And for an evening at least, a diversion of mind and body that might be more than only a diversion, with the right dosage and preparation, can still be had.

It used to be said that the Grateful Dead weren’t the best at what they do, they were they only ones who do what they do. That is no longer true, and hasn’t been for quite some time. The second generation jam bands, not to mention the modern psychedelia of techno tribes and orchestral pop, reached maturity long ago. Now the kids have a lot of choices. Consequently, the Madison show wasn’t a sellout. Not even close. The upper sections were were sparsely attended, mostly with people who wanted lots of space to “white person wiggle,” as Jim DeRogatis would say. But the floor was another story. It was full, with many from the upper reaches having come down. And here again, as I scanned the floor party, I wondered, is this what those 70s Winterland shows felt like—intimate and non-glamorous, and decidedly not the hottest ticket in town?

Like my discontented new friend—whom I never would have met at an activist event, or at Mess Hall, or through a critical art project—people are back to speaking and working against the system, and most importantly, hating it while having to make do in it. 

We used to play for silver, now we play for life;
And one's for sport and one's for blood at the point of a knife.
And now the die is shaken, now the die must fall.
There ain't a winner in the game, he don't go home with all.
Not with all.

For me, the guy made the occasion more than a party. Maybe not a political rally, but even better, a politicized reenactment of Deadhead social memory once in danger of being permanently overtaken by stylized consumerism and now returned to the truth of an aesthetic experience, a pre-enactment of times to come. We are going “furthur” indeed, both forward and back.

*lyrics from Throwing Stones, Wharf Rat, Liberty, and Jack Straw.

 

another book event: madison

As I've mentioned before, I contributed a couple of texts to the book We Are Wisconsin–texts that originated here on this blog. One by me, and one co-written with Nicolas Lampert.

Editor/instigator Erica Sagrans has been pounding the pavement, getting the book out into the reading public. This weekend we'll have two events around the book, a discussion at Rainbow Bookstore on Saturday and then a panel at the UW Cinematheque on Sunday. The Sunday event is a part of the weekend's Wisconsin Book Festival. I'll be saying something at both events, along with some of the other writer/activists. Amazingly, this will be the first time that I will be in town for the festival since having moved to Madison after having missed it because of travel or whatever, for five consecutive years. 

These will be the first events for this book to take place in Wisconsin, and for that reason obviously they will produce a different and more meaningful atmosphere. Undoubtedly, these events will be high energy and participatory. Many if not all of those in attendance will have had some involvement in the Uprising and subsequent movement, including in the offshoot campaigns targeting politicians for recall, saving Badger Care, protecting the Penokee Hills, and so forth. In this sense, these events will likely include an organizing element and take on a social forum character.

See you there.

Here's a bit of the event copy from Erica: 

"We Are Wisconsin: The Wisconsin Uprising in the words of the activists, writers, and everyday Wisconsinites who made it happen" is a new collection that gives an up-close view of the Wisconsin struggle. This mix of essays, blog posts, and original writing looks at what happened, what it means, and what comes next—and includes the real-time, fast-paced story of the Capitol occupation as told through tweets from those who were on the inside.

In conjunction with the Wisconsin Book Festival, join us to celebrate the launch, talk about what's next for this movement, and hear from contributors including Andy Kroll from Mother Jones, Alex Hanna, Jenni Dye, Dan Wang, and editor Erica Sagrans. 

We'll also be showing short films on the protests produced by Shahin Izadi and Jason Nolen.

Sponsored by the Teaching Assistants' Association.

Books will be available for purchase.

http://www.wearewisconsinbook.com/
http://www.twitter.com/WeAreWIBook

Sunday, October 23 · 2:00pm - 4:00pm

UW-Madison Cinematheque 

4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Ave

Madison, WI

 

nyc: summit notes, before the event

I was conversing with an artist friend yesterday. At one point we talked about the Creative Time Summit 3 in New York, which I am on my way to now. He said that he’s been finding these kinds of gatherings less and less satisfying, ie conferences and symposia in which a bunch of socially engaged artists come together and discuss how and what “social engagement” means for art and artists. I understand where he’s coming from. When Daniel Tucker and Nato Thompson organized a one-day gathering in Chicago back in January of 2009, inviting what would be for any conference an impressive list of art activists, I skipped it. Maybe because I already knew a lot those folks, or it didn’t seem clear as to what the purpose of such a meeting would be. Many of the people already had working relationships with each other. And—now I’m remembering—at that time I just needed to stay home in Madison for a while and not travel. All in all, for me the event just felt kind of unnecessary.

I also recall people asking questions about the first Creative Time Summit, which took place in the fall of 2009. The presence of a few art star names in the program, while not exactly disappointing, did pose the question of what this event was aiming for, in terms of status, prestige, and constituency. That was my main question, understanding that those considerations can be quite practical. For others there was the hang-up about access, specifically the price and availability of tickets. This event charges more than a nominal fee for entry—some of the costs are definitely passed on to the audience. For a summit ostensibly about exactly those issues of democratic process, access, and structures, it did not seem out of line for art activists to wonder aloud. 

And when I heard about Open Engagement, I concluded that the deed had been done. Now we can say it. The collective force of artists, curators, teachers, writers, and others has successfully opened up a new genre, even though we haven’t made our society any more democratic or participatory. We have carved out a tiny niche in the resource-rich world of cultural production, a niche that seems to be going by the name of “social practice.” If, as Todd Gitlin likes to say, the Sixties generation took over the English departments but left the real power of legislating and governing to the Right, then we have achieved something, but haven’t even accumulated English-department levels of power. What we can do is organize periodic get-togethers, and even sponsor some of the travel.

Where is this all going? And what are these gatherings for? Based on how Summits 2 and 3 were designed, I can see that these questions have been considered by the Creative Time team. The presentations were streamed live for Summit 2 and archived—I don’t think they were streamed live the first time around. And the range of presenters for Summit 3 is noticeably wider, reaching out of the art school/art world and into social service and regionally identified people and projects. They also dropped the "Revolutions in Public Practice" tag that was used for years 1 and 2.

I certainly still have those questions. But here I am, participating in Summit 3. Why? 

Well, for one thing, it is hard to say no to Nato, the curator. His friendly force of personality—let’s call it that laid-back California soft persuasion I find irresistible—is perfect for the job of bringing lots of interesting people together, and making intense, urgent topics fun. Plus, not to be discounted, it's a mostly-paid for trip to New York. That could just be me, or an art thing; some people and groups who are farther from the art universe who were invited didn’t get on board. (That's another way of saying the spectrum of participants is not quite as wide as it was hoped to be.)

Beyond Nato and the personal pleasure of helping to realize his vision of what the Summit could be, there is the substantive reason I was invited: to say something about what happened in Wisconsin and especially Madison back in February and March, to a New York audience of artists, activists, and intellectuals. Yes, somebody has to do it—or more to the point, the Summit audience definitely needs to hear about it. And yes, bringing an account of the most important turn in American labor and left wing movement politics in the last three decades is a good reason for being here.

But then I’m back to the problem of these gatherings, on a structural level. There are about thirty presentations. Outside of the keynotes and performances, the slots are limited to eight minutes at the microphone. You can say a lot in eight minutes about one, precisely bounded thing. A single, titled art project, for example—which is what many of the presenters talk about. Try saying something compelling in eight minutes about an incredibly complex social and political movement, one that’s not finished and in fact continues to unfold even now, to an audience of people who might know a lot about it, or nothing at all. As is always the case with any kind of conference, the best conversations will happen outside of the program structure, in the socializing and informal encounters. But the presentation is the only time when the whole assemblage will get their ears stuffed with Wisconsin Uprising info. What am I or anybody speaking about the Wisconsin Uprising under such constraints supposed to say?

Even though I’ve rehearsed and have my talk pretty much down, I have no idea how it’ll come across. The points I make might be obvious or even stale to many, but completely baffling and without context for others. I guess all I can plead is, folks, go through my old blog posts on the Wisconsin Uprising and do some searches of your own. There is so much great reporting out there, tackling the million or so angles on our movment: John Nichols, Rebecca Kemble, Abe Sauer, Lane Hall/Lisa Moline, and others. And there you go—the last and best reason for being here: I’m at the Summit to get people intrigued, to open the doors of their curiosity about what the hell is happening in the Great Lakes states, and, hopefully, to direct people to the world of activism, movement analysis, and exemplary solidarity work that is our Wisconsin of the moment.

 

The Summit schedule is here.

I'm going on at around 12:30 PM or shortly thereafter. Catch it live here:

http://www.livestream.com/ 

 

 

 

 

musings on the eve of the recall elections

So it seems that a group of mostly freshmen Representatives, with the quickest draw in the Tea Party midwest, Michele Bachmann, often playing their face, are hell-bent on acting the idiot’s role into reality. If one precondition for brute fascism is that the actors forget when to stop performing, based on these people we are about there. Even Speaker Boehner is fed up with them. Forcing President Obama to dance was all fun, but they made Boehner shimmy, too. The Speaker didn’t kiss all that ass for that many years only to be saddled with a non-compliant majority. The progressive Left, which came back into the electoral field after at least two decades of irrelevance with Obama’s winning coalition of 2008, has nowhere to go, other than cheering on the few sane voices in Congress ever allowed to reach the national media, ie Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich, and a few others. Anthony "the Torso" Weiner did not help the progressives with their visibility problems.

Besides bemoaning the smallness on display and dreading the real hurt that the working classes and all things public will suffer should this systemic dysfunction continue to play out as mindlessly as projected, for some there is the schadenfreude to be gathered while witnessing the establishment go into crisis-management mode. How many times does your average lefty intellectual use the word ‘crisis’? Me, I practically live on the word. For reasons of easing the alarmism, I always like to say that the crisis is not something that arrives, but rather is a time that we are living through. We have already gone over the environmental/economic edge in terms of guaranteed massive change, but it unfolds over decades, not weeks. It is not a news story. And yet here is exactly that, an alarm situation, a newsmedia play-by-play that has gotten the credit ratings agencies seriously involved and the markets spooked. All delivered by a bunch of pukes who rode into office only because the black people and the young people conveniently fell back into their traditional indifference, not showing up to vote in last year’s mid-term elections. Elections have consequences. That’s the new favorite line from conservatives around here, and they are right. For today’s conservatives, election victories are a readymade line absolving them of any and all responsibility, spoken in defense of both Republican intransgiance at the national level and their extremism here in Wisconsin.

So I’ve mentioned Wisconsin. What happened to the Wisconsin movement? No more demonstrations—did those people just disappear? What do hundreds of thousands of mobilized citizens do when the protests are over? Was it a purely foul-weather movement? No, it was not. The mobilization has dispersed throughout the state, leaving Madison a quietly angry summer town. Even though we know now that the Wisconsin Republicans were busy drawing up their ridiculous and transparently vindictative redistricting maps even then, by the time the weather had warmed I sensed that conservatives, too, were worn down by the fights that went through the frigid winter and into the muddy spring. But here we are, in the dog days of a lush and humid midwestern summer, re-energized for the August 9 elections, aka the ballot machine/creative counting event, again with chaotic events reverberating globally in the background, as in the winter and spring.

The last time I reported on the Uprising in any detail here, the movement was in re-group mode. The stolen election of April 5, for a key seat on the state Supreme Court, was still very fresh and a reminder of to what lengths the party of thievery will go to retain power. The impending early summer signing of Governor Walker’s bills was nothing to look forward to, and the recall elections seemed far off, with plenty of time still for the Republicans to pull more abusive moves from the Capitol. The mood was negative, but true demoralization was kept at bay by the constant reinjection of outrage, thanks to the regular pace of variously targeted attacks emanating from the offices of either the governor or state Senate Majority Leader Fitzgerald. From assaults on Wisconsin Panned Parenthood that will end up limiting affordable women’s health screening services, to a horribly conceived and written Voter ID law, to the attempts to open up a four-county stretch of northern Wisconsin less than thirty miles from Lake Superior to new mining, and more—the Wisconsin GOP guaranteed that people stayed motivated and involved. They supplied the opposition with fuel for anger, outstripping their own best weapon: despair and paralysis. Top Republicans had been confident that once the bill and budget were signed and implemented, the people of Wisconsin would forget all about the fight and accept the new reality. As many of us probably would have, had the attacks stopped then. But they didn’t. In northern Wisconsin, the fast-tracked move toward mining raised such concern that citizens organized quickly, broadly, and angrily--enough to apply the brakes. Such extraordinary motivation can be found across the state.

Not to be underestimated, the Governor continues his missteps, mostly due to blind spots. Walker mostly certainly has them, that much we have known ever since the “David Koch” prank call back in Week 2. What we have seen over the last several months is a politician who frequently cannot adjust, neither ideologically nor strategically. His failure to read the whole media landscape is encapsulated in one repeating scenario that has become an established pattern over at least five or six occasions since April. Either it is leaked or announced that Walker will make an appearance at a given site, visiting a company, a school, or a ribbon cutting ceremony. Word circulates through social media, with emphasis on the outrage inherent in this governor’s daring. A recurring theme is his daring to pretend all is fine, making pro forma celebratory and laudatory remarks on the site of a public institution or public works, while in reality cutting the legs out from under the public sphere.

For example, Walker tried to speak at the centennial celebration of Gateway Technical College—a public college facing massive difficulties after Walker passed his budget, cutting $30 million from the already barebones and affordable technical colleges. For this kind of insult, people turn out to boo at the top of their lungs. Each such appearance gives activists an occasion to make the negative connections between the Walker agenda and wherever the place his appearance happens to be. Protestors show up, footage of the demonstration gets returned to social media, and the best of the videos—the ones that capture anger, hurt, sincerity, cleverness, and commitment—get thousands of views. Seeing images of people birddogging Walker in a new location every two or three weeks has provided the mobilized with a constant new infusion of morale, motivation, and yes, entertainment.

 

  

And the best one, from a few days ago:

 

These repeated victories in the war of images filter through to the mass media and therefore have something to do with Walker’s declining approval ratings, helping to associate the carefully groomed and disciplined Walker brand with controversy, unhappiness, and general negativity. And yet the man continues to stake his career on the conventional playbook, believing that by making public appearances he is projecting normalcy, showing people that he is not afraid, not rattled, and will not deviate from his agenda. To the many tens of thousands now dedicated to opposing him, such images are read quite differently, as the picture of entrenched defiance against popular opinion, an ideologue so committed to his program that the term “weapon of mass destruction” reasonably applies. Walker’s minions, from Prosser to Hopper, also continue to screw up, undone by their own essential asshole-ness, apparently. On the day these scoundrels are turned out, we will have the Governor and his troops to thank in no small part.

The truth is, the Walker agenda may come to a halt, more or less, after tomorrow, August 9. That is the hope. Voters in six state senate districts will go to the polls to vote on their recalled Republican state senators, all of whom supported the Walker agenda. The opposition needs to capture at least three of those six seats and then hold their two Democrat seats in another two district elections a week later. This round of recalls, including the inevitable efforts concerning Walker himself, may ultimately require as many as 22 elections. Factor in the weaponization of redistricting, in which the current Repubican-controlled legislature deliberately mapping some of the Democrat challengers out of the districts that they would be representing should they win. That, and the massive inflow of national money, the possible disruptions (for example, a suspicious fire last week that destroyed a building that included the La Crosse office of We Are Wisconsin, a group coordinating the recall effort targeting Republican Dan Kapanke), and what we have is a state-level display of American democracy in a vital and almost electric, but heavily degraded condition, in what had been for decades one of the cleanest and most straightforward political systems out of the fifty states. 

With the movement’s attention and activity channeled into this avalanche of recall elections, we have another occasion to feel all the excitement, trepidation, and despair about electoral politics as a direction for a social movement. Instead of the usual voting vs. non-participation debate within leftist circles, I propose that we judge electoral politics on the basis of a different kind of efficacy. Today the exercise of political power is equally legitimate, compromised, and problematic at every level and in every mode. The reformism vs. radicalism debate is not relevant when, for the change Wisconsin and the world needs, voting is necessary but not sufficient but the same can be said of any other kind or instance of political engagement.

The alternative criterion is this: any particular exercise of democratic power gains in surplus political potential when it also unleashes a process of rewriting social relations. By this measure, most instances of electoral engagement stay very much within their pre-determined bounds of possibility, ie everybody from candidate to campaign manager to volunteer canvasser to voter has their strictly limited role to play. The same is true of most large and established activist organizations—ie the professionalized left and the non-profit industrial complex. In the context of an evolving social movement, however, in which a campaign for office is not entirely under the control of an official campaign, often some social creativity overflows the expected bounds. This has been true in the season of Wisconsin recall elections. Partly because each of the recalls was started as a citizen-initiated grassroots effort, these efforts have been far less conventional in their social aspects, with truly promising communities of social action appearing in some of the contested districts, out from the previously undifferentiated citizenry blob. Based on this criterion, for example, the Playground Legends—a grassroots squad doing creative voter education in the African American sections and documented confrontations in the ultra-conservative parts of Alberta Darling’s state senate district —is as valuable a contribution as the Capitol occupation was, as is the ongoing Solidarity Singalong. New social forms, all. If the Singalong and the related Heart Balloons Rotunda action still fall into the category of “cute activism,” when put under the duress of Wisconsin’s “cute” tyranny (see the story of the locally infamous Heart Balloon Assault of several weeks ago) they nonetheless have the effect of knitting people together in a new and meaningful sociality.

Yes, we need progressive legislation. The regressives put their money and organization into the electoral process because they know that nothing legitimizes like an electoral and consequently legislative veneer. And yes, we need to apply pressure through creative disruption, to carve out the political space for meaningful change. But, above all, our worlds need different social relations, cultures of new value systems built up in a political context. No matter what the results on Tuesday, no matter how they resonate nationally or don't, those of us who identify with the movement must continue our activism such that the organic and immanently energetic social formations that have come out of the Wisconsin Uprising continue to grow and proliferate.

 

 

summertime in walkerville

It is high summer in Madison, warm lakes, fireflies, and thunderstorms. 

And camping. Not in the woods, but on the sidewalks and patches of grass outside the Capitol.  

The Wisconsin Uprising lives. Which is saying a lot considering that after the real, meaningful, and historic victories of the first two to three weeks, we have suffered a string of defeats, each more serious than the last. But the movement is in a stage of metamorphasis, in a fragile state but trying to grow wings.

So let us review the political achievements of the Scott Walker regime, pretty much all of them concluded in the month of June. After recounts, at the very end of May the April 5 election for Supreme Court was finally certified in favor of the reactionary incumbent, David Prosser. The state’s Government Accountability Board declined to review the widely reported irregularities in the Waukesha County vote-counting process that made the difference in the election, despite problems during the recount that were documented by observers. The challenger declined to call for an investigation, instead opting to note the irregularities in a statement that called for improvements in the election system. Only about two weeks later the Supreme Court overturned the ruling by a Dane County judge that blocked the GOP-backed law stripping state workers of their collective bargaining rights, in a legally unconventional opinion blasted by the minority. The end of collective bargaining and payroll-deducted dues collection is now the law and will probably be upheld against further legal challenges. And then, as of last week, the budget, packed with deep cuts to nearly all state services (for example, BadgerCare, the state’s award-winning Medicaid program that serves about a million people), savaging anything progressive in particular (past provisions friendly to wind energy), and doling out special favors to private interests (the highway and road construction lobby), was passed with zero input from the Democrats and now waits to be signed by the governor.  

The curtain on this first drama has been drawn. Austerity is come to Wisconsin, dressed in the brown shirts of anti-abortion fanaticism and the Voter ID xenophobes, planned by the hard-scheming policy minds of ALEC, and sponsored by Koch Industries and the Cline Group.

On the left the consensus is emerging, just maybe, if the many movement analysis panels are to be believed, that the leadership of the unions was too timid. Of course the rank and file and grassroots knew this as it happened—on the night of March 9, to be exact, when Scott Walker essentially dared the workers to strike by ramming through his union-busting bill. As gratifying as it is to have one’s assessment affirmed even if long after the time of consequence, moving forward I am not convinced that the movement, at least as constituted in Madison, has the power for what it is going to take to halt the Walker regime, never mind undoing the damage. That is because the movement’s last remaining hope in the legislative arena is in the recall elections and our efforts on that front have been spotty to say the least.

Six sitting Republican and three Democratic state senators will defend their seats in an August 9 recall election. The money on the conservative side is already pouring in, as are the dirty tricks, the most widely publicized of which is their tactic of running fake Democrats to screw up the primary elections. Knowing this already, and having seen the Waukesha County electoral theft in plain sight, the Republicans will no doubt resort to any tactic that they can get away with. They know full well that a result short of a three-seat net gain for the Democrats will preserve not only their lock on Wisconsin government, but also crush the chances of a later recall campaign targeting Scott Walker (which cannot be filed until he’s been in office for a year).

In the meantime, the looming recall elections have the Republicans nervous enough to be piling on new policy and legislative initiatives at breakneck speed. There are too many proposed laws and regulations to go into here, but you can trust that they are nearly all uniformly hostile to any sort of public interest, and some are so extreme in their costly privatization schemes and ideological slants that even Republican voices are questioning them. The recall elections are all the more important as a result, but only as a negative achievement. In other words, if the Democrats do not gain the majority, the Republicans will trumpet their victory, call it an approval of the Walker agenda, and press forward even harder. If the Democrats win, they can only slow or stop the process, at best. Nonetheless, we must win. Youth and minorities will make the difference, which, again, given their rates of participation is anything but a safe proposition. 

So what to do? Helping with the dispersed recall campaigns in other parts of the state (election in seven weeks) is only the first of at least three shifts attention away from Madison. The second is finding meaningful ways to reach out in support of our comrades elsewhere, to return the favor to the people of the world who touched us back in February and March, whether in Spain, Greece, and Egypt. These gestures are more important than ever in the YouTube age.

 

But the most important pivot turns toward the looming battle over proposed new mining in northern Wisconsin. This is primary extraction, a proposed four-mile long dirty gash (inevitable leaching of sulfides, acids, and mercury) at the headwaters of the Bad River, which flows directly into Lake Superior, the largest and cleanest of the Great Lakes, the planet’s largest freshwater system. The formerly unprofitable levels of iron ore are now viewed as a pile of cash, an illusion driven by the appetite for steel in China and India—the main markets to which the taconite pellets will be shipped. Some of it would probably end up being unloaded in Tianjin.

The battle will bundle together a host of constituencies, pitting Gogebic Taconite and their hired representatives (GTAC, as they are known, was a big out-of-state donor to Scott Walker and expect to benefit from industry-friendly streamlining of regulations that are currently some of the toughest in the nation) against the citizens of the progressive strongholds of Ashland, Bayfield, and Iron counties, along with the Bad Water Band of the Lake Superior Ojibwe, whose traditional wild rice harvesting beds lie downstream from the lands eyed by GTAC—all in the context of lost American industry, globalization, and new BRIC economic power. This federally recognized band, though small in numbers, includes veterans from the Walleye Wars of the 80s and the Crandon Mine campaign of the 90s, both of which were successfully fought by grassroots anti-racist and anti-corporate coalitions. In the two campaigns, activists led by indigenous defenders of the land performed direct actions that confronted racist groups on the ground, stopped industrial equipment on the roads and tracks, and engaged legislative and media fronts simultaneously. In meetings, in letters to the editor, on message boards, references are already being made to both struggles. If the efforts to begin mining continue to advance, then the north woods is where colorful midwestern radicalism will make itself felt again. With the mining interests attempting to divide public opinion by promising jobs (first 700, then inflating that number to 2800–who believes them?), the position of labor will be interesting to watch. I’m not very hopeful, but what a time and place for labor to break its conservativism in relation to environmental politics. If there ever were an occasion to gang up on the common enemy, this would be it.

*

After the budget was passed last week, activists struck the camp. The square is mostly quiet, the Capitol will be reopened without metal detectors in about a week.

Walkerville is no more. Everywhere is Walkerville.

 

notes to a movement: wisconsin's lost strike moment

Wisconsin’s Lost Strike Moment

Dan S. Wang/Nicolas Lampert

Two months into the Wisconsin Uprising a movement still exists, but where it goes from here is unclear. The so-called Budget Repair Bill that will end collective bargaining rights for most public employees in Wisconsin is currently tied up in the courts. Legal challenges will likely go on for several months, maybe longer. In the meantime, risks, challenges, and contradictions loom within a movement that can be described as painfully moderate. Wisconsin citizens have arisen and protested in massive numbers. The sleeping giant that is the labor movement + working class solidarity has awoken. But the outlook is not entirely optimistic.

The Wisconsin Uprising has reflected the strengths and weaknesses of the organized labor movement. It has organized huge numbers of people and demonstrated the collective power of public and private unions to combat Walker, the GOP, and corporate greed. But it has also become sadly reflective of the labor movement’s leaders—cautious, allergic to direct action and civil disobedience, and most of all, adverse to calling a strike. Labor leadership has instead curtailed a movement that had real potential to defeat Walker and real potential to demand and create a more just and equal society, and transformed it into a movement that has become all about protest marches, recall efforts, and votes for Democrats. But before one screams, “These tactics were necessary! Labor could ill afford turning public opinion against them with a strike!” ask yourself, when has labor won a significant victory without calling a strike? And when has a social justice movement won significant demands without the one-two punch of electoral politics combined with civil disobedience and actions that led to mass arrests? And lastly, for those still not convinced, if voting for Democrats is the panacea to all our problems, why were so many of us living in economic stress in Wisconsin already long before the uprising with little to no hope that our situation would improve?

To critique a movement that started with such promise and then rapidly devolved, we offer this brief appraisal of what we’ve seen thus far and what we hope to see develop. For the purposes of this analysis, we can talk about four key moments/storylines, in the overlapping order that they happened.

 The first week.

The flight of the 14 senate Democrats.

The events and non-events of March 9/10.

The April 5 election and aftermath.

1. In terms of outrage and energy turning into the mass mobilization that persists two months later, the narrative of the first week remains of primary importance. Recall the rapidly developing chain of linked events. The active opposition to Governor Scott Walker and the GOP agenda went from a small, mostly student-led protest on Monday, February 14, to sustained demonstrations of 12k and 30k only days later, capped in its first phase by a day long rally of 70k people on the first Saturday.

In that short time there were sizable public school student walk-outs, firefighters and police marching in solidarity with workers, a three-day teacher sick-out (essentially a non-picket strike) in Madison, and a successful effort to clog the public hearings that in turn triggered a spontaneous occupation of the Capitol lasting nearly two weeks. In the first week, each act of unexpected militancy on the part of one constituency pushed all other constituencies toward taking their own risks. This was the moment of a collective, leaderless, and organic constitution of a social movement, its evolution measured in hours, not days. For those who were in Madison at any point in those first seven days or so, it was exhilarating.

The collectively hailed movement changed participants, especially through the occupation, which over those days became one of the most intensely moving political social spaces seen or experienced outside of Tahrir Square. The newly uninhibited desire to communicate—expressed in countless clever and entertaining protest signs and performances—combined with the shared sense that Walker’s assault targeted whole groups, helped to create novel socialities in which political expression and shared feeling with strangers became a new norm. The new socialities, the rising class consciousness, the unleashed creativity in expression, the immanent power of self-organized action, and the snowballing impacts of tactical escalation—all products of the earliest stage—remain the most vital achievements of the movement, and bode well for the months and years of struggle ahead.

2. On the morning of the first Thursday (February 17) the rumor and then the confirmed news of the 14 senate Democrats fleeing to Illinois sent waves of excitement through the occupied Capital and the throngs on the square. It was exactly the action we needed and fit the string of escalations over those early days perfectly. The flight of the 14 and consequent denial of a quorum took control away from the Republicans. It was an act of aggression, a true counterattack that served as an escalation. Every escalation risks a loss of support, a desertion of the nervous, the unsure, and the moderate. But in each of the earlier escalations—the walk-outs, sick-outs, the occupation, etc—resolve stiffened and excitement grew massively. Thus, in escalating the standoff in that moment, the 14 joined the movement and pushed it along. In exercising a comparatively direct power over the Republicans, we don’t mind saying that the 14 took the momentary lead in the movement. They saw the opportunity, made their move, reaped positive attention, and put Walker and Fitzgerald on the defensive, making them worry about desertions from those wavering on the Republican side.

But precisely because the 14 are elected officials, the move opened up a whole front of legalisitic minutiae, opaque and inaccessible to the vast majority of the citizenry. At the same time, as a media storyline, the 14 drowned out the other risk-taking constituencies. As movement voices, the senate Dems presented solutions in terms of legislative compromise and electoral strategy. While we credit them for there timely move, for all the above reasons the flight of the 14—ie, the insertion of themselves into the movement—in hindsight represents a structural moderation from within the movement.

This was confirmed when some of the returning 14 spoke to 150,000-plus who gathered around the Capital for a huge rally on Saturday, March 12. They spoke almost exclusively of the movement as an electoral effort, and neglected to credit the chain of escalations that made their own move possible. This was true, too, for Rev. Jesse Jackson on that day, and at rallies in Madison and Milwaukee. Leaders of the largest unions, WEAC President Mary Bell and AFSCME Council 24's Marty Beil, also called for the ballot box, never once mentioning that organized labor has the ultimate weapon: work stoppage. The majority of the crowd, effectively administered a dose of moderation, headed down State Street after the celebrities of the movement, the Wisconsin 14, spoke. For us, the lesson of the day was, the movement grassroots would do well by refraining from over-valorizing the 14. And we would do better by reflecting on the actions of fellow workers and global citizens in Egypt who inspired us during the first week—the ones who peacefully toppled a thirty-year autocrat partly thanks to a general strike. The questions of the day, for all but especially for the union rank-and-file were, does labor leadership actually represent the best interest of the working class? And why are we only organizing against Walker and the Republicans? Why not pressure the Democrats and labor leaders just as hard?

3. March 9 and 10 stand as the dates that a strike would have made most sense but did not happen; the fact is, the strategy of escalation was abandoned when it most mattered. Walker’s strategy of waiting out the movement had failed; after two and a half weeks of senate stalemate and daily demonstrations, it was clear that the movement wasn’t going anywhere. Rather than compromise, and being worried about cracks in Republican lawmaker unity, he and senate majority leader Fitzgerald rammed through his union-busting bill on the evening of March 9. This was accomplished by splitting “fiscal” from “non-fiscal” issues from the bill, circumventing the 14 Democrats who had blocked quorum, and by advancing a hastily called vote in a deceitful move of still unsettled legality.  

In other words, on March 9, rather than back down Walker raised the ante yet again, and to a level for which there could only have been one kind of escalation in response: a strike across sectors and occupations. Talk of a general strike, both fanciful and serious, existed during the first three weeks of the struggle. It was visible in flyers and signs, the conversations happening around the square, and most particularly from the IWW and the South Central Federation of Labor (a Wisconsin federation of nearly one hundred labor organizations representing 45,000 workers.) By February 21, the beginning of the second week, the SCFL had endorsed a one-day general strike but did not have the authority to call one. From the point of view of the raging non-unionized grassroots, and much of the rank and file, a one-day strike should have been called on the day that Walker signed the anti-union bill at the very least. The hot potato then would have been thrown back in Walker’s hands, confronting him with the queasiness of having to carry out his stated threats to fire public workers. But it did not happen. The union leadership responded with words, not actions, thereby severing the chain of escalations, and accepted a defeat. By this time the movement had for all practical purposes become identified, including from within, as union-led, leaving the non-union grassroots with nowhere to channel their outrage, energy, and willingness to share risk. A precious historic opportunity was lost.

Here the lessons for the grassroots are at least two. First, that union leadership is, like the Democrats, wedded to a narrow and ultimately conservative set of interests. Their primary considerations include the short-term job security of their members, the viability of their organizations apart from the greater public good, and, above all, the easiest ways to ensure the flow of member dues, above all. Secondly, and at a deeper level, that both trade and labor unions are in essence defensive formations, there to protect a standard of living often originally won under comparatively favorable labor market conditions. Moving into uncharted political territory, much less contributing to the movement a visionary element, is not the natural tendency of the modern union. Even more so for a labor movement that has been steadily declining since Reagan fired the air-traffic controllers in 1981, and before that, the Taft-Hartley Act (1947) curtailed the legality of strikes, making massive concessions under the smokescreen of collective bargaining the standard course of action for organized labor. Yet, 2011 has witnessed Republican governors attack even this last recourse—collective bargaining—across the Midwest. Win now and defeat the GOP’s onslaught against the last stronghold of middle class economic security, and all things public. Or lose and send the demoralizing message to the nation and the world that hundreds of thousands of protestors, a two-week occupation of the Capital, and public opinion on the side of labor still could not produce a victory in Wisconsin. In times like this, when public unions are fighting for their very existence, and a panoply of constituencies face serious threat, all tactics are needed to win, including strikes and direct action. No action can be ruled out.

4. Even before the March 9/10 episode, the April 5 election for Wisconsin Supreme Court was recognized widely as a statewide referendum on Scott Walker, given incumbent justice David Prosser’s avowed support for the Walker agenda. After the non-response of March 9/10, the election was left as the next opportunity for the movement to land a substantive blow against Walker in the foreseeable future. Furthermore, the dispersion of the weeks-long movement into a myriad of fronts (recalls, boycotts, etc) made the April 5 election that much more important as a way to refocus the movement on a single, shared, unifying goal, a way to recapture the power of mass mobilization.

On April 5 more than 1.5 million Wisconsin voters went to the polls and elected Kloppenburg by a mere 204 votes, or so it seemed. A day later 14,300 previously uncounted votes suddenly appeared in Waukesha County under suspicious circumstances involving Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, a former employee of Prosser. She reported enough missing votes to place the results just barely past the percentage needed to trigger a state-financed recount. Amid the calls for investigation from liberal groups, the lesson in electoral strategy from Gore v Bush 2000 and the ’08 Obama campaigns was totally lost, ie close results will always be vulnerable to right wing electoral theft, and that therefore, an electoral victory must be beyond doubt. That means mobilizing a massive coalition on the left, including the traditionally under-polled groups of African American and youth voters. At the time of this writing it does appear that Kloppenburg may have lost fairly, yet what is arguably worse than her defeat is a movement that hedges its bets solely on the polls as the way to defeat one of the most extreme and well-coordinated right wing attacks on working people in modern history, and even then, fails to implement a known winning electoral strategy.

On a larger level, let’s imagine, what would have transpired had citizens occupied the senate assembly chambers instead of just the rotunda, especially on the day of the assembly vote? What would have happened had Walker ordered the National Guard (as he threatened to do from the beginning) to quell protests and strikes and the Guard refused? The fact is nobody knows, and that is precisely the point. Once the movement energy and hopes are re-channeled into electoral efforts nearly exclusively, the outcome—no matter who wins, really—is already predetermined and circumscribed by the structure of conventional politics, a structure that favors wealth and has allowed ever increasing inequality to become the norm.

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 We have now reached the fourth or fifth act of the Wisconsin Uprising. The fundamental contradictions that have shaped the sequence of events—including the key failures of the left that have helped Walker achieve his present position of strength—cannot be resolved without a strategic reorientation. Above all, we need to be courageously visionary.

As with any historical advance toward an egalitarian society, our achievements will take time, energy, and commitment for the long haul. But we already knew that. What we’ve been reminded of in Wisconsin over the last two months, is that once started, following through on the chain of escalations gives us a better chance of winning specific battles and puts our opposition on the defensive, as long as we have the courage, vision, and creativity to increase the pressure when the opportunities present. Strategically speaking, the events in the chain of escalation itself are what generate the spaces of new socialities, the beginnings of the democracy we want, and the ground on which new leaders and new ideas emerge from the grassroots.

Now that the chain has been broken and the conservatives have prevailed for the moment, the question is how to restart a series of meaningfully oppositional actions. Furthermore, let us always remember how these such actions can communicate solidarities across sectors and constituencies beyond the union-dominated constitution of the movement, as did the near-spontaneous actions of the first week. In other words, if this movement is to be sustained, it can no longer be exclusively or even primarily about unions, collective bargaining, or the GOP’s greed and lies, as egregious as they are. In order to win, we need to imagine and articulate the society that we want to live in, not simply fight defensively against the latest round of GOP/corporate attacks. The Wisconsin Uprising must evolve into a movement that speaks to the priorities of immigrants and the inner-city poor, the unorganized private sector workers, the unemployed, and the incarcerated, as loudly as it speaks to the concerns of the unionized. We need to ask what it would take to make this movement truly popular. We have the power of numbers but we remain separated by walls of division. The white progressive voices in a relatively privileged place like Madison have a responsibility to use their privilege and power creatively and generously. The Wisconsin Uprising will gain strength by moving towards a long-term coalition of urban and rural constituencies, one that activates and embraces leadership from the peoples who have been hardest hit by the economic crisis—rural farm communities, Native communities, African-American communities, Hispanic communities, the unemployed, and youth from all classes. A first step towards a movement that attracts and keeps all constituencies will demand systemic change on the state, national, and world levels:

1. A visionary safety net founded on a universal basic income for all, rich and poor alike, young and old, employed and unemployed.

2. True immigrant justice, i.e. full amnesty for undocumented adults and citizenship for undocumented youth.

3. Full democratic rights for the incarcerated, and an end to the Drug War. Voting eligibility cannot be stripped.

4. The end of corporate tax giveaways and the privatization programs that have destroyed the public sector.

5. Increased public funding for public education, public health care, public transportation, and the arts.

6. Environmental sustainability and water conservation as the foundation for urban and rural planning. Shift towards renewable energy and food justice.  

7. A real end to the unnecessary, wasteful, and brutal multi-trillion-dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, drastically reduced military spending, and funding full care for our veterans.

8. The ousting of Gov. Walker and his administration, either through resignation or recall.

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We all know that the budget repair bill is only the beginning of a calculated attack on the middle and lower class. In preparation, we would do well to revisit the movements and campaigns from both the recent and distant past that mixed lobbying, protest, and media work with strikes, occupations, and civil disobedience. These include struggles like the 2008 Republic Windows and Doors factory and the 2010 Whittier Elementary School field house occupations in Chicago, and the Ojibwe fishing rights movement and the campaign that killed the proposed Crandon Mine, both from Wisconsin in the 1990s. Any number of past struggles, such as the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike of 1968, or the San Francisco General Strike in 1934, or the Flint Sit-Down Strike in 1936-37, still inspire and instruct. As we move forward we need to examine why overly cautious labor leaders and unimaginative Democrats took the reins of a movement that held such promise, and how we let them. In closing, we urge our fellow citizens and activists in the grassroots to reserve our power separately from the “leadership” and prepare for the next uprising, the one that will erupt in a day, a week, a month, or years down the road—the one in which we do not let the opportunity slip away.