Last week I asked a state worker if he had plans to join the protests. His reply was, "I would if I thought it would do any good." A different state employee was asked by a another co-worker to join the protests for a short time during their lunch hour. "I told him no. Some of us have lives. Besides, the bill is going to pass anyway."
Since they wouldn't help their own cause, this non-union worker went to the protests yesterday.
The bus filled up quickly after I got aboard which meant that we got packed in like sardines and I was unable to continue reading my Doctor Who book. With the bus completely full, a guy spoke up and asked, "Does anyone know what democracy looks like?" This got a big laugh and people started chanting the now-familiar refrain "This is what democracy looks like!"
Madison Metro's ridership numbers will look really good for February. Plus I have to say that the drivers of the buses I've taken the past couple weeks or so have been cheerier than normal. They've not been surly by any means but some just are normally a bit stoic. When I've said "Good morning" or "Good evening" in the past, some drivers just kind of nod and get on with things. These days they're all returning my greeting and smiling.
I got downtown and met up with The Dulcinea, the kids, and The D's mom. Miles, the youngest, was all frumpy. He wanted something to drink besides water. A trek down State Street proved futile as all the coffee houses had lines out the door. He settled for a smoothie. On the way back we discovered that the popcorn store on the 100 block of State had hot chocolate and that there wasn't a huge line. So let that be a lesson to everyone.
My camera got left at home, unfortunately, so no photos for you. However, thousands of others brought theirs so there are snaps all over the Internet along with video. Earlier in the week I'd been thinking about making a Doctor Who related sign but never did. I was going to put Walker's face on Davros along with a picture of the Sixth Doctor and a slogan like "Gallifreyans against Walker". Luckily someone else had a really cool sign featuring our governor's face on Davros along with the Fourth Doctor. I complimented the guy heartily. Another sign that I found funny had "Keep Librarians Sexy" on one side with "What Would Joe Strummer Do?" on the other. Oh, and I can't forget the sign with a picture of Admiral Ackbar that said something like "Don't negotiate with Walker. It's a trap." Lastly I'll note that I also saw signs in Spanish for the first time.
I was also pleased to see more signs this time that blamed Wall Street for the financial mess. It's too bad there weren't protests like this when Obama gave all these Wall Street executives Get Out of Jail Free cards. Their firms got all of that money and virtually no one who caused the crisis was jailed. Back in 2009 when I read about China executing a couple people over a scandal involving tainted powdered milk, I ran into a very interesting piece which is lost to me in which someone argued that financial titans who lose billions of dollars and royally screw over millions of people ought to be treated more harshly than they are now. The argument was that we should view the villains of, say, Enron, in the same way as we do murderers. Why is the act of murder given its own most heinous category full of the harshest punishments whereas defrauding thousands of people of their money and throwing them into the poor house something that demands short jail sentences in minimum security prisons? It's a utilitarian argument, I suppose. If a drug dealer shoots and kills someone, we are all revolted and rightly so. We want that person to get their comeuppance. People generally want to see that person prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and given the harshest sentence whether it be life in jail or, depending on the state, the death penalty.
Yet when the CEO of a massive corporation or Wall Street execs cheat, lie, and fumble their way to losing billions of dollars and send thousands or millions of people much further down the food chain into all kinds of distress, it's not considered a particularly heinous crime. As the author of the piece argued, these titans of finance arguably cause more grief and inflict more damage to society than that hypothetical murderer. So why don't we treat them more harshly? Perhaps a better question is why don't we generally think that they ought to be treated more harshly?
I'm not saying that we ought to make the people who knowingly sold credit derivative mortgage swap junk bonds should be dancing at the end of a rope on national TV, though I suspect that would provide some disincentive, but being put in stocks and having tomatoes thrown at you for a bit followed by a long stint in a prison where soap on a rope is mandatory might have a similar effect.
Back at the protest I caught the rallying cries of Bradley Whitford, Gabrielle Carteris, and Robert Newman. They all gave passionate speeches, especially Whitford who reiterated a call-and-response of "this will not stand". Carteris spoke of how her union supported her after an accident and was unable to work. I also caught UW-La Crosse physics professor Eric Bar. For a guy pondering quarks all day, he didn't come across as being very nerdy.
While I was standing and listening, there was a conversation going on to my left. A guy who was, if memory serves, a pipe fitter, was chatting. He had a beard and was wearing what appeared to be a Carhartt coat. He looked nothing like your average Commie pinko. He said something like "This is the best time to be alive. You've got to find something to be passionate about and I'm passionate about this." I also saw a lot of old duffs - gentlemen of retirement age who you can easily imagine hanging out at a café in small town drinking coffee and playing Sheepshead. They were there calling bullshit on Walker along with teachers, firemen, cops, all the wonderful SEIU folks in purple, the "union thugs" handing out free candy, and everyone else.
While I saw a few folks from a Canadian union who came down in support, I didn't see a single Walker supporter. This was genuinely surprising. I've since read that there were some but not very many. From the looks of things, there were more people out yesterday than last Saturday. And this was in sub-freezing temperatures with a steady snowfall.
Ironically, the start of the protests coincided with my listening to lectures on Adam Smith by Charles Anderson that I blogged about previously. The protests and the debates going on now really throw into sharp relief the ideas that Anderson is talking about along with the ones from the previous few lectures relating to Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and the rise of Liberalism, a.k.a. - classical Liberalism. Not too much longer and I'll be on the lectures about Marx.
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