For the first time since we have been operating, I felt like the discussions on the blog were getting away from my editorial control.  I take this to be a good sign.  While there were interesting posts on the economy and economic theory, and on media and media theory, as well as on revolutionary hopes in Egypt, the focus of our discussion this week was on the issues surrounding the events in Madison, Wisconsin, moving in interesting and somewhat unexpected directions.

Anna Paretskaya opened our deliberations, with her “Cairo on the Isthmus.” She presented a bird’s eye view, including some telling photos.  I actually found some of the details of her post more interesting than the elements that stimulated heated discussion.  Particularly fascinating was how she understood the beginning of the movement as she reported in the opening of her piece:

“What started as a stunt by a group of University of Wisconsin-Madison students to deliver a few hundred “Valentine’s Day” cards from students, staff, and faculty to Governor Scott Walker asking him not to slash the university budget has now become national news: close to 100,000 Wisconsinites have come to the State Capitol in Madison over the past four days to protest the so-called “budget repair” bill…”

This made clear to me Madison, Wisconsin’s connection to Cairo, and Cairo’s connection to the movement I observed around the old bloc, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and to the Obama campaign and the Tea Party movement.  People meet with each other, speak to each other, develop a capacity to act together, create a power that hitherto did not exist.  They may or may not reach their political goal, but they change the political landscape as they act.  This is what I see as being the most significant consequence of “the politics of small things.”  Not only has there been regime change in Egypt and Tunisia, but the Arab world will never be the same after the wave of protests we have observed.  And the Republicans may or may not succeed in their battle against public employee unions and the union movement in general, but the resistance to these changes that have appeared in Wisconsin and beyond, suggests to me that the Tea Party may have met its match.

The debate has changed, and the changed debate has appeared at DC. Michael Corey was quite critical of Paretskaya’s post.  What she takes for granted, he questions.  He wonders whether she is too close to the protestors to present an accurate description of the events and issues involved.  She is on the side of the protestors.  He sees the merits in both sides, clearly suggesting that she overlooks the necessity for State fiscal constraint, the democratic legitimacy of Governor Walker’s actions, and the illegitimacy of the Wisconsin Democrats withdrawing from legislative deliberations.  He also questions the very idea of unions in the public sector.  In a balanced fashion, Michael Corey engaged the fundamental issues of the debate, subtly, but clearly, taking a position.  This then opened the DC deliberations.

Iris and Chad Alan Goldberg objected strongly.  Iris expressed the strong conviction that Governor Walker was following Rahm Emanuel’s advice and wasn’t letting a crisis go to waste, using the need for fiscal discipline to promote a right wing agenda.  Chad Goldberg, a sociologist and union official in Madison, agreed and added a great deal of specific Wisconsin details.   I decided to publish his reply to Michael Corey’s comment as an independent post because of its length and detail.  Its tendentious quality made me uncertain, but we have had a serious debate about what is at stake in the standoff in Wisconsin, so I think I made the right decision.

Only Michael Corey expressed sympathy for Walker’s position.  But more than partisan debate occurred.   Scott in the exchanges about Goldberg’s post maintained: “Obviously, the proposed cuts don’t balance the budget. Furthermore, the state worker’s have actually agreed to the cuts. Therefore, by examining what facts I could gather, I can’t conclude that the main issue is really balancing the budget. As far as that’s concerned, the numbers just don’t add up. It appears that the issue really being contested is collective bargaining rights for workers.”

In my analysis of a post by Jonah Goldberg at the National Review, I came to the same conclusion.  And this was highlighted by Iris as she brought into our discussion the hoax telephone conversation between “David Koch” and Governor Walker, in which the Governor makes clear his broader anti-union ideological commitments, closing remarkably by comparing himself to Ronald Reagan, invoking a highly creative notion that the fall of Communism began with Reagan’s firing of the air traffic controllers in 1981.  He concedes that his stand may not have as broad international significance, but its importance on the ideological battle lines is comparable to his mind.

I believe with the DC consensus that the conflict in Madison is about fundamental positions and not just about how to divide the spoils and the pain in our present economic circumstance.  I agree with Chad Goldberg’s conclusion “maybe we all need to ask ourselves a fundamental question: Which side are you on?”  But I need to add, that I think that this is a political question and not one where truth is on one side or the other, which Chad sometimes seems to suggest.

And exactly what the fundamental question is, as Michael indicated in his reply to me, is open to question.

For Michael, the key issue is about public versus private unions, citing FDR’s warning against the establishment of public unions to substantiate his claim. This point has been made by numerous pundits on the right, but I feel it is highly unlikely that this would have been Roosevelt’s position given the present state of labor relations.

I think, rather, the issue is one that was dear to Roosevelt’s heart, the right of workers to collectively bargain.  Unions in the private and public sectors are in the same boat struggling against a long term trend of government policies and corporate strategies that undermine labor organization.  I think the conflict is about workers’ rights to collectively bargain versus those who are committed to more libertarian principles.

I also know that each of these sides have very concrete economic consequences, as Scott and Eric Friedman highlight in response to my post.  Michael knows that deficits and high taxes negatively affect economic growth.    We have a political disagreement, which can be worked on through democratic debate – a debate that is being facilitated by the events in Wisconsin.

A note on next week: in upcoming posts Daniel Dayan will reflect on the odd fact that until very recently the Libya of Colonel Gaddafi played a prominent role within the two highest United Nations human rights organizations, and Benoit Challand, a scholar intensively studying the Middle East, will offer a comparative reading of the upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya, and also about the little covered protests in the Palestinian territories, as we continue our consideration of the great changes of 2011 in the Arab world, following up on Hazem Kandli’s post this week.

Yesterday Anna Paretskaya presented a report on the political standoff in Madison Wisconsin.  This stimulated comments by Michael Corey and Iris, the first generally critical of Paretskaya’s presentation and analysis, the second supportive.  This evening, Chad Alan Goldberg, Vice President, United Faculty & Academic Staff (UFAS), AFT 223 and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison offered his analysis in a reply to that discussion, which I think requires deliberate consideration as a post of its own.  -Jeff

1. Dr. Corey suggests that Anna Paretskaya’s account of events here in Wisconsin is insufficiently objective and lacks a “suspension of belief.” To be sure, knowledge of the social world is always socially situated. Those of us with backgrounds in the labor movement–those of us who are public employees, like Anna and myself, whose collective bargaining rights are now threatened in Wisconsin–are indeed likely to see things differently than someone, like Dr. Corey, with a background in corporate management. However, the tradition of critical theory suggests the possibility of another kind of relationship between the observer and the events she observes. As Max Horkheimer put it, “If … the theoretician and his specific object are seen as forming a dynamic unity with the oppressed class, so that his presentation of societal contradictions is not merely an expression of the concrete historical situation but also a force within it to stimulate change, then his real function emerges…. His profession is the struggle of which his own thinking is a part.”

2. Much of Dr. Corey’s comment lays out the differing claims of the social and political actors in Wisconsin in a “he said, she said” manner without making any real attempt to investigate the substance of those claims. As social scientists, we are interested in facts. And the facts are on the side of the tens of thousands of protesters gathering day after day at the Wisconsin state capitol.

a. Corporate-funded right-wing propagandists insist that public employees are a new privileged class which taxpayers can’t afford. However, as the Wisconsin State Journal reported, a new study by the Economic Policy Institute shows that public employees make less than private workers, when one controls for education and examines total compensation.

b. The fiscal crisis which Governor Walker and Wisconsin Republicans are using as a pretext to eliminate collective bargaining rights and destroy public-sector unions is largely manufactured. The Capitol Times (a Wisconsin newspaper) recently reported: “To the extent that there is an imbalance — Walker claims there is a $137 million deficit — it is not because of a drop in revenues or increases in the cost of state employee contracts, benefits or pensions. It is because Walker and his allies pushed through $140 million in new spending for special-interest groups in January.”

c. Walker’s push for more tax breaks for corporations is further evidence that he’s not interested in balancing the budget. At a time when Wisconsin has a budget shortfall of $137 million, Governor Walker signed a law lavishing $117 million in tax breaks on corporations. As the Wisconsin State Journal reported, these corporate tax breaks will “only deepen the state’s fiscal woes.” Apparently, Wisconsin can afford big tax giveaways to corporations which add to the state’s budget deficit, but not social spending for education, health care, etc. Or, to put it differently, Wisconsin’s current Republican leadership wants to pay for corporate tax breaks with draconian cuts to education (tuition at my university would need to rise by 26% over two years to compensate), health care, and so. This is income redistribution in the wrong direction.

d. On Friday, Feb. 18, Wisconsin’s state and local public employees offered to accept all economic concessions called for in Governor Walker’s budget bill – including Governor Walker’s pension and health care concessions that he says are needed to solve the state budget challenge. With economic issues off the table, it is clear that the only rationale for Republicans continuing to push the governor’s budget bill is to cripple public-sector unions and eliminate public employees’ collective bargaining rights.

In sum, this conflict is not primarily about money, as Dr. Corey and much of the media suggest. It is about the right of teachers, nurses, and other public employees to have a voice in the workplace.

3. Dr. Corey says that “a fundamental question by many supporters of private sector unions is whether or not public sector unions are a good idea.” I was struck by the resounding answer given to this question by the large numbers of private-sector trade unionists who came to the Wisconsin state capitol this week to show their solidarity with public-sector employees. I saw them and met them first-hand. They understand that the anti-labor and pro-corporate right wing, having decimated unions in the private sector (where only 6.9% of workers belong to unions), is now going after public-sector unions (where 36% of workers belong to unions). The right-wing agenda is clearly to destroy what remains of the labor movement in this country.

4. Regarding democracy:

a. Dr. Corey has a narrow and anemic conception of democracy. He is concerned about public employees calling in sick to demonstrate (a “sick out”) and Wisconsin Senate Democrats leaving the state to force Republicans to negotiate. A far more robust conception of democracy can be found in the chapters in Cohen and Arato’s Civil Society and Political Theory on social movements and civil disobedience.

b. The principle threat to democracy in Wisconsin does not come from union members or Democrats. It comes from the governor’s radical and extremist assault on the civil rights of public workers–rights which some public workers have exercised for half a century–to collectively bargain. I quote from a statement signed by hundreds of University of Wisconsin faculty, including myself:

“As scholars, teachers and citizens, we recognize that the right to form unions and bargain collectively has been essential to the establishment and enrichment of democracy in Wisconsin, in the United States and around the world. The International Labor Organization, which the United States joined in 1934, states that ‘the right of workers and employers to form and join organizations of their own choosing is an integral part of a free and open society’ and includes collective bargaining rights among the four ‘fundamental principles and rights at work.’ The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the United States endorsed in 1948, states that all workers have the ‘right to form and to join trade unions for the protection’ of their interests. Since 1935, it has been federal policy in the United States to ‘encourage collective bargaining’ as a tool for avoiding labor conflict and improving wages and working conditions in private industry. The state of Wisconsin led the way in extending those principles to the public sector, adopting a 1959 law stating that public employees, elected officials and the public itself all have an interest in ‘industrial peace, regular and adequate income for the employee, and uninterrupted production of goods and services.’ Toward that end, the law affirmed that ‘an employee has the right, if the employee desires, to associate with others in organizing and bargaining collectively through representatives of the employee’s own choosing, without intimidation or coercion from any source.’ We are concerned, therefore, about the Governor’s proposal to deprive public employees of the right to bargain collectively in Wisconsin.”

c. The assault on public-sector unions in Wisconsin and other states is an attack on democracy for another reason too. As Rachel Maddow reported:

“In 2010, post Citizens United, 7 of the 10 top spending groups [groups that spent the most money on elections] were all right wing…. The only non-conservative groups that cracked the top ten were the public employees union, the SEIU, and the teachers union. That’s it. Unions are the only competition Republicans have in electoral politics…. Without unions, essentially all of the big money in politics would be right-wing money.”

Perhaps a veteran at one of the mass rallies in the Wisconsin state capitol this week put it best: he said he had not fought for democratic rights overseas to have Governor Scott Walker take away his rights at home.

Friends and colleagues, at a time of crisis in Wisconsin and other states, maybe we all need to ask ourselves a fundamental question: Which side are you on?

Anna Paretskaya is a PhD candidate in sociology at the New School for Social Research and lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her primary academic focus is on the study of political and economic liberalizations and the relationship between democracy and capitalism.  She has a front row seat observing the developing events in Madison. This is the first of a series of reports.  Jeff

What started as a stunt by a group of University of Wisconsin-Madison students to deliver a few hundred “Valentine’s Day” cards from students, staff, and faculty to Governor Scott Walker asking him not to slash the university budget has now become national news: close to 100,000 Wisconsinites have come to the State Capitol in Madison over the past four days to protest the so-called “budget repair” bill, effectively occupying the building since Tuesday, diverting traffic from the streets around the Capitol, and hindering Madison’s recent, but beloved tradition, the Winter Festival, that was to take place in downtown’s isthmus area this weekend despite unusually warm temperatures.

On Tuesday, when state legislature’s finance committee was to take up the discussion of the governor’s bill, thousands of people from all over the state descended on the Capitol to lobby against it. At the 17-hour-long committee hearing—a “citizen filibuster,” as one speaker dubbed it—hundreds of Wisconsin residents spoke, nearly all against the bill, and scores expressed dismay at the governor’s attempt to take away the right of 175,000 Wisconsin’s public sector employees to collectively bargain. It wasn’t only union activists, Madison’s aging hippies, and liberal university professors, who waited for up to seven hours to make their two-minute statement before the committee. Amid nurses and teamsters and teacher aides were several self-described Reaganites, fiscal conservatives, and Republicans (or newly ex-Republicans) who were just as distraught by the governor’s heavy-handedness. The UW-Madison’s teaching assistants’ union (TAA), which has been representing graduate employees for the past 40 years, expressed the prevailing sentiment best: “This bill is an affront to democracy on two important levels. First, it proposes to completely eliminate the fundamental human right of fair representation and voice in determining workplace conditions. Second, the process for the passage of this bill has been shamefully undemocratic.” The governor of the state that prides itself on transparency and integrity of the political process, referred to here as “The Wisconsin Idea,” wanted the legislature to pass the bill within a week of its introduction, not giving the pubic much time to weigh in, nor for the elected representatives a chance to debate amendments.

Most of the rally chants and handmade posters that now adorn the hallways of the Capitol are about democracy, solidarity, government accountability, and unions, not so much about pay cuts or benefit reductions (although no doubt all working families in Wisconsin are concerned about those too). In the 1930s, Wisconsin was a birthplace of one of the largest public-employee unions in the country, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and the first state to pass a comprehensive collective bargaining law some twenty-five years later. Today, protesters of the bill undoubtedly sense that they are again on the front lines of the battle for the fate of the labor movement. But it seems that for many of them it is just as much about democracy and exercising their rights more generally: there are constant references to the recent democratic uprising in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. A recent army veteran said at one of the rallies that he had not fought for the democratic rights overseas to have them taken away from him at home. Daily rallies outside of the Capitol begin with the singing of “The Star Spangled Banner.” The crowd inside the building recited the “Pledge of Allegiance” along with the lawmakers at the opening of Wednesday’s legislative session that was broadcast on closed-circuit TV.

The bill is still up for a vote: the governor hasn’t backed away from  any of its draconian stipulations, and Republican legislators have vowed not to amend it in any significant way. Supporters of the bill are expected in Madison on Saturday. It is unclear how many will arrive and how many of them will actually be from Wisconsin. According to a recent poll, two thirds of Wisconsinites believe the bill goes too far and strongly oppose it (including the provision to remove collective bargaining rights). Even though the legislative committee stopped taking testimony early Wednesday morning, people keep signing up to speak before an on-going listening session by the state assembly’s Democrats.

At the very least, the governor’s stance has clearly galvanized the labor and progressive movements. A running joke among local labor activists has been: “Who hired Scott Walker as a lead organizer?” Although they also wish this wasn’t gallows humor.