Screw Us And We Multiply

Not quite 15 years ago Wisconsinites rose up and shouted “this is what democracy looks like,” packed our kids into snowsuits and strollers, put cute signs on our dogs, drove our manure spreaders in from the countryside and marched around the capitol to demand our right of public participation.

People will tell you the argument was about 2011 Act 10’s impact on collective bargaining, health care, and revenue caps on school districts, among other things.

But it was really about public participation.

After newly-elected governor Scott Walker in 2011 dropped his “bomb” bill restricting collective bargaining for public employees, and forcing changes to other benefits, and after his GOP Legislature called for a vote only a few days after it had been introduced — before most of the lawmakers, much less the public, had a chance to read it – protests erupted.*

The Legislature and governor continued to limit public participation by calling snap votes in the dead of night despite claims of meetings violations, closed the capitol to the public, tried to coerce a vote with layoff threats, refused to negotiate with the unions, and even talked of seeding the crowd with provocateurs.

All were attempts to shut the public up.

Act 10 and the “Wisconsin Uprising” led to successful recall campaigns against the governor and several legislators that collected close to a million signatures from rural and urban areas alike.

(*Download and see footnote 27 and pages 7-9 for a detailed discussion of events.)

Let’s Leave the Public Out of It

This time of incredible public activism in generally staid Wisconsin led me to focus my academic research on the question of what triggers people to get off the couch and take to the streets.

Here’s a hint: it’s about public participation.

People may not always avail themselves of their opportunities to participate. But they do not want that option taken away, curtailed, or made meaningless for those times when they do want to raise their voice.

That same governor and Legislature over his eight years in office forced through several other measures that limited public involvement on multiple issues and, key to my research, a mining bill intended to enable a mine that would have had a devastating impact on a tribal nation and Lake Superior (the bill, 2013 Act 1, passed but the company backed out). The bill not only reclassified a sulfide mineral as a non-sulfide mineral to allow weaker regulations to apply, it limited the public participation process by only allowing the public to express an opinion after the projects were essentially a done deal.

The Legislature held public hearings hundreds of miles from the affected communities and reservations, where the leaders of tribal nations were given three minutes to state their case, their treaty right of consultation ignored. One of the bill’s advocates, now-Congressman Tom Tiffany, admitted they structured the bill with the assumption that the mine would pollute local surface and groundwater. They wanted to ensure that future courts hearing citizen suits would know that’s what the Legislature intended.

In the end, hundreds of thousands raised their voices in dissent to Act 10 … and were ignored.

Thousands wrote letters and showed up at public hearings against the mining bill … and were ignored.

So, protest was a failure? Let’s come back to that …

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

Every few decades we seem to witness some sort of profound global political sea change, a course correction that lurches us, not always forward, but certainly to some other point on a political gauge. Not just a national shift from left to right and back, based on something like presidential scandals or national economics but a zeitgeist that may be worldwide, or at least encompass a good chunk of it.  We often talk about it in terms of the swing of a pendulum when it really feels more like a rubber band: it stretches and snaps back. Or it breaks.

What that change means may be globally uneven. And the Internet has certainly altered that dynamic. But the thing that drives the change is almost never from the top. It arises from the grassroots when people have had enough and those in power have failed to listen.

For example, it was a shift in public opinion accompanied by an overwhelming number of individual letters to Congress that finally put Civil Rights on politicians’ agenda, leading to the Civil Rights Act. It took the public, from the grassroots, to force the policy change.

The same year as the Wisconsin uprising, something caught fire elsewhere in the world.

• Arab Spring rolled from Middle Eastern country to country in rejection of corruption and economic hardship, often triggered by attempts to silence dissent.
• Occupy Wall Street also took on economic justice and the corruption of money in politics, one key trigger being the US Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision that claimed money was a form of speech.
• As Wisconsin police, teachers, and service unions marched together against Act 10, which was influenced in part by ALEC’s model policies, protests erupted as similar ALEC boilerplates rolled out in Ohio, Michigan and other states.

The feeling in the air was a sense that those in power catered only to the wealthy and major corporations. People felt forced to raise their voices.

Screw us and we multiply

Like the quirkiness of Wisconsin’s protests with kids and dogs in tow (who wouldn’t feel safe protesting, when the police and firefighters were protesting with them?), the protests generated their own musical traditions with legislators complaining that they couldn’t work due to the racket raised by protesters. Arresting people in the capital for joining the Solidarity Singers just encouraged more people to come out and sing louder. It’s really hard to see the threat in a catchy tune. The government over-reaction to the civil disobedience of refusing to request a permit to sing, and the creation of a new law that required a permit for more than 20 people to gather, sparked ridicule … of the government.

As much as the governor’s office claimed that “outside agitators” led the protests, a typical narrative from those facing organized dissent, the “agitation” seemed to fizzle.

Not everyone liked that Wisconsin didn’t move further into direct action. And both Democrat and Union leadership kept trying to co-opt the protest.

But this was never really about Democrats vs. Republicans as much as it was about democracy.

In a true nod to the grassroots, conservatives and liberals alike protested side by side because they had been denied a voice. Rural teachers and police and firefighters marched alongside college students and urbanites. I’m not convinced additional direct action (more than simply occupying the space and refusing to get a permit) would have held the coalition together, especially with the involvement of the public safety unions. But official over-reaction by detaining and handcuffing singers, some of whom were octogenarians, veterans and clergy, doesn’t play well to the general public and only heightened protest.

Yet, the shift to a recall, and the failed narrative surrounding it did take the steam out of the uprising and those grassroots folks slowly disappeared. Walker and his supporters amplified claims that the recall was illegal, painted public employee protesters as the “haves,” and successfully de-legitimized the movement for having gone too far.

If nothing happens, what’s the point?

The point of protest is to be visible, to express opinion, to raise awareness, to counter the narrative. It shows participants and observers that they are not alone and by doing so perhaps amplifying the level of dissent to force those in power to back down.

Coverage of such events by traditional media tend to reinforce the “protest paradigm,” a media effects theory that suggests that media tend to favor the status quo from official sources and de-legitimize the disruptive parties disturbing the peace, often focusing on drama, bad actors or the unusual, vs. the key points of the protest.

When kids, dogs, Raging Grannies and balloons are part of the protest, it makes that paradigm a little harder to follow. But as protests grow, officials will claim that outside agitators lead the dissent, or that people have better ways of making their voices heard.

Except, there are not.

The reason people protest tends to be government overreach. I argue the concept of a civil taking triggers grassroots movements with the most staying power, especially when a social justice is involved. A civil taking is kind of like a property taking where a property loses value due to some act of government. A civil taking involves people who have worked for some process, policy or right, but lose it to some act of government despite following the rules, filing the paperwork, attending the meetings, doing all the things required. It often occurs without warning or consultation and with no means to participate in a process that affects them.

Escalation

There are outside agitators who try to accelerate tensions to force direct action, perhaps to push an agenda, justify police intervention, or de-legitimize the protest. Then there’s the overreaction of government responding in force to stop a non-violent expression of opinion, rather than listening in the first place.

Civic leaders often claim there is an appropriate place, time, and way to express one’s free speech: as long as it doesn’t occur here, in my face, on my capitol grounds, outside my residence, nor anywhere that I might hear and see you – and you better have a permit. To be heard, leaders not only have to be listening, but be willing to meaningfully engage, even (gulp) compromise.

Failing that may move people toward the kind of direct action that can drive home a point, but often drives away the more peace-minded in a movement. For those advocating direct action, property damage and violence are seen as a “last resort.” The idea is to interrupt and offer an alternative narrative.

Here’s the narrative: Those in power know the issue. They know that listening isn’t just providing a “free speech space” and telling people to go talk there. They know it isn’t about presenting a done deal to inform you of the new policy. They know it involves a dialogue and a good faith attempt at understanding and empathizing.

But that takes time, costs money, can be fraught, and increasingly in this world certain powers would rather force an agenda, see compromise as weakness, or just don’t care.

Why would government come in heavy-handed and uncompromising, knowing how it looks and the expensive disruption likely to result? Because they can make the narrative about law and order and those lawless agitators to de-legitimize the issue that brought people out in the first place, and scare away their tentative supporters.

This has always been the way. Wisconsin is still litigating Act 10.

Then, what’s my point?

The No Kings protests remind me of Wisconsin from 2011-2013. There’s a government that’s not listening and actively tries to silence dissent. Leadership engages in blatant lies told with the intent of dividing people, and issues threats intended to coerce. Major policy shifts are enacted as a fait accompli, while ignoring dissenting voices and those affected by the changes, attempting to de-legitimize them and provoke confrontation. There are efforts to eliminate the public’s voice through everything from voting restrictions to heavy-handed and violent responses to mostly peaceful protests.

The rubber band is stretching taut. The makeup of protests again mixes the rural and the urban, the conservative and liberal, the old and the young. People showed up with their kids, their dogs, their grandparents and their signs. There are even protest songs. People are raising their voices in greater proportions than ever before with estimates higher than five million across the nation. The protests were large enough to draw national attention – for a few days, at least.

When screwed, we multiply.

But how can we get a different result from the Wisconsin Uprising?

Maybe this time take a lesson from those letter writers of the past and let the grassroots lead. And maybe find leaders who know how to listen.  And just maybe get the money out of politics so that leaders have to listen.

Yeah, a girl can dream.

 

Cover photo: Red-winged black bird sings to welcome spring. Photo by Meg Turville-Heitz

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