It's getting pretty wild here in Madison, where the guv is going to take away collective bargaining rights for state workers. Thursday will be day 2 of teachers taking to the streets in anger.

The Statehouse filled with as many as 10,000 demonstrators who chanted, sang the national anthem and beat drums for hours in demonstrations unlike any seen in Madison in decades. The noise in the rotunda rose to the level of a chainsaw, and many Madison teachers joined the protest by calling in sick in such numbers that the district — the state's second-largest — had to cancel classes.

The new Republican governor, Scott Walker, is seeking passage of the nation's most aggressive anti-union proposal, which was moving swiftly through the GOP-led Legislature. Legislative leaders said they would make minor changes to the bill, but would keep the provision to remove collective bargaining rights.

"It is momentous and I think people around the state are going to welcome it," said Sen. Alberta Darling, the co-chair of the budget committee that planned to pass the bill Wednesday night. Leaders of the Republican-controlled Senate and Assembly said it would pass there starting Thursday.

The move would mark a dramatic shift for Wisconsin, which passed a comprehensive collective bargaining law in 1959 and was the birthplace of the national union representing all non-federal public employees.

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110217/ap_on_re_us...

Feb 17, 2011 -- 2:15AM, Mostyn32 wrote:

Who would have thought that the unrest in North Africa and the Middle East would spread to the green and pleasant land of Wisconsin? 

When I saw the title of this thread, I thought maybe you were referring to leftover reveller Cheeseheads celebrating the Packers' victory at the Superbowl, but this demonstration is not only more serious, it could be a warning to the Wisconsin governor and the legislature not to mess with people's rights.

Keep us posted.

In 1966, during the Vietnam war, one of the biggest anti war anti draft   demonstrations took at the  University of Wisconsin .   Some administration buildings were taken over by protestors.  The  Protest end with the University agreeing to  review  policy involving the draft.

This should be done in every state in the union. Unions are killing the taxpayers. If the governor wants to make sure the people support this bill, he should point out this fact:

Under the bill, public employees in the Wisconsin Retirement System would pay about 5.8% of their salaries toward pensions, up significantly from 0.2%, Werwie said. And state workers would pay for 12.6% of their monthly health care premiums, up from between 4% and 6% percent.

To actually make members pay for a respectable portion of their pension and health care, what a novel concept!

On, Wisconsin, On, Wisconsin!

Does anyone really want these people teaching their children? 

www.theblaze.com/stories/rhetoric-vs-rea...

This needs to grow. Other people in Wisconsin besides teachers need to get in on it, such as the members of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

There are ways to bring down a dictatorship, even a dispersed and anonymous dictatorship such as the one that rules this country, the dictatorship of plutocracy, whose public face and grinding tool is now the Republican Party.

I hope some of those teachers have been reading Gene Sharp.