Paul Beckett : Letter from Wisconsin

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett concedes defeat in Milwaukee, June 5, 2012. Photo by John Gress / Reuters.
After the apocalypse:
Letter from Wisconsin

Frankly, putting it all together, I am very worried about our future, in Wisconsin and in the nation.

By Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog / June 11, 2012

Dear Friends,

Well, we got your attention, didn’t we? Colbert put it best: the Tuesday, June 5, recall election was the most significant event for Wisconsin since discovery of elastic jeans. (Oh, thank you very much, Stephen!)

The race was called by 9 p.m. (some polling stations were not yet even closed). Governor Scott Walker had won the recall election over Democrat Tom Barrett by 7 percent. Worse, county by county, Wisconsin was a sea of GOP red. Sixty of Wisconsin’s 72 counties were carried by Walker! Only small islands of blue mainly clustered around Madison and Milwaukee, and along the Lake Superior shore (traditionally progressive) showed blue above the red tide.

For the many tens of thousands who had been participants in Madison’s version of the Arab Spring, in February and March (2011), and who had, as unpaid volunteers, collected more than one million signatures for the recall petition, it was a like a hard kick to the gut.

You can’t understand, friends, without knowing what those February and March events were like. Never, in my now pretty-long life, have I experienced the exhilarating sense of the people -- the real people, the whole people -- rising and making democracy real, and direct.

Up to 70,000 at a time packed the Capitol Rotunda, and circled the square. Turnout was largely spontaneous: hierarchy and formal organization largely absent. Anger with the multiple violations of democratic tradition was underlain by a kind of joy which reveled in the sense of commonness, and in the incredible wit of common folks which was displayed on hand-made signs and in slogans.

Inside the rotunda was the beauty of “functioning anarchy” as areas were set aside for families with small children, for eating, for resting. In the enormous and densely packed crowds, neither crime nor violence raised its head.

There was, over all, a sense of irresistibility to this truly popular uprising. Stopping the people so mobilized would be like stopping the flow of the Mississippi on our western border. We thought.

How, on June 5, a little more than a year later, could this defeat have happened?

Friends, if Stephen is right and you all have been watching us, you know a lot of the answer. You know that funding for the Walker side was almost ten times (yes, 10X!) that for the Barrett side. And Walker’s money had come pouring in, mainly from out of state, for months. Totals are almost too obscene for a decent blog to publish (the tracking organization Wisconsin Democracy Campaign estimates that the final total will push $80 million!).

The infamous Koch Brothers, along with the whole shadowy neo-con/corporate national leadership, knew that a successful recall would hurt rather seriously their movement to consolidate control over U.S. society, culture and, of course, politics. Money poured in to support the Walker campaign, sometimes in half-million dollar amounts. A sophisticated campaign of TV advertising was launched long before the Democrats even had a candidate.

Meanwhile, there was no real “owner” of the recall effort. If the uprising was largely spontaneous and unfunded, so was the subsequent recall petition drive. Once the million signatures were gathered, we stood and looked at each other. What’s next?

The Democratic Party (state and national) was unenthusiastic at the beginning, and gave tepid support after. There was no obvious candidate besides the one who ran against Walker and lost (by a respectable margin) in 2010. And he –-- Tom Barrett -- could not declare for the race until he had weathered the Milwaukee mayoral election (April 3).

Meanwhile, former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk aggressively threw her hat in the ring. She had negotiated her endorsement from the trade union leadership by pledging that if elected she would veto any budget bill that did not restore collective bargaining rights. The unions not only heavily funded her campaign to get the nomination, but actually aired attack ads against Tom Barrett, her most important opponent.

Falk’s “deal” with union leadership was a gift to the Walker side, which had constantly characterized the uprising as only about union rights and as “run by union bosses.”

In the primary, on May 8, Barrett easily defeated Falk. But he then had less than a month to counter what was already a steamroller of cash that for months had saturation bombed the brain of every TV watcher in Wisconsin.

Now let me assure you, friends: Barrett is a good man -- tall, good-looking, intelligent, well-spoken, polite, and gracious. His qualifications for the Governorship are excellent. He would surely have been a great candidate some time in the past. (In 2009 Barrett had even displayed old-fashioned personal heroism: he had intervened at the state fair to defend a woman who had called for help and received a lead pipe across the face and a broken hand. In the past, would that have won you a subsequent election or not?)

But Barrett was not the man for 2012. Barrett has a now-unfortunate habit of not talking down to the voters, compounded by a tendency to tell the truth, a political defect made even worse by a predilection toward real discussion of real issues.

Meanwhile, Walker was the perfect neo-con candidate, saying little, generating perfect video image material in the “aw-shucks” mode, while looking like a bashful choir boy (does he have a portrait of himself hidden away in an attic?). Never did Walker stray from the familiar jingles authored by his advertising companies.

Meanwhile national support from the Democratic Party remained minimal, and President Obama made it a point not even to come into the state.

All these facts notwithstanding, the surprise, Tuesday evening, made most of us sick to our stomachs.

There are, of course, different ways to view the events, and they tend to replace each other as time goes on. There is the way you feel the day after (that the sky has fallen). There is the day after the day after. Then, again, there is the day after that. Let’s take them in order.


1. First day after: 'The Apocalypse Is Here'

The election lent itself to apocalyptic thinking on the liberal-progressive side, and triumphalist thinking on the right. Perhaps, we thought, Wisconsin has now completed a gradual transition from marginally blue state to solidly red state. An open Senate seat will be contested in November. It now seems even more likely than before to go to a right-wing Republican (is there anything else these days?) , who will join the right-wing Republican (Ron Johnson) who defeated Senator Feingold in 2010. Barack Obama, who carried Wisconsin in 2008 by an amazing 14%, is now expected to have a hard fight (at best) in the state this fall.

Worse, and more fraught with consequences, the deluge of money from billionaires which funded incessant and ultimately unavoidable “30-second drive-by attack ads” (as candidate Barrett called them) seemed to work. Those of us who hoped there might be some eventual tipping point of excess, some point of overkill, after which the public would react against the perpetrators, came away disappointed. Is the lesson of the Wisconsin recall that you cannot, ever, have too much money, and that NO level of saturation bombing with the ads the money buys is too much? It may be.

If so, in light of the number of right-wing billionaires now at large in America, and the Citizens United decision, American democracy is less imperiled than already destroyed. Political advertising, devised by subtle and well-informed minds, is aimed at dumbing down political culture within a wider American culture already dumbed down remarkably by television.

The problem with where we are now is less with Citizens United and the nearly unbelievable accumulation of wealth available to contribute painlessly to political campaigns. It is more with what the money buys: TV advertising. It punishes depth, it punishes honesty, it punishes creativity and imagination on the part of politicians. It is un-speech which drives out and suppresses real speech.

Political cartoon by Mike Keefe / inToon.com

2. Second day after: 'Hey,Things Could be a Whole Lot Worse'

This, the central philosophy of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, comes forward on the day after the day after. Maybe the defeat was not so crushing, and maybe it doesn’t mean as much as we at first thought.

First of all, we look again at the numbers. It remains true that Walker took 60 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties. But guess what? His margin in the vast majority of those counties was thin; in many, razor thin. The counties where his majorities were large to huge were those counties (led by the infamous Waukesha County) which are safe Republican counties in all elections. Walker “flipped” four counties that had gone for Barrett in their first contest (the gubernatorial election in 2010) -- but the “flips” were by modest margins.

Meanwhile Barrett, while losing by about 7 percent overall, managed to “flip” three counties that were taken by Walker in 2010. Turnout was massive on both sides, and Walker received 205,900 more votes overall than he did in 2010. But: Barrett received 158,482 votes more than he had in 2010. Not bad for the victim of a drubbing!

There is another important factor. A significant portion of the pro-Walker vote was motivated by distaste for the recall procedure itself.

It should be acknowledged that this position is not an unreasonable one. All of the elected figures who were subjected to recall elections will be up for regular election in 2014. None of them are (as yet) charged with personal corruption or other illegal activity (although Walker is part of a very slow-moving investigation of illegal activity in his office before his accession to the governorship, and this could result in an indictment later).

Thus, many voters voted against the recall procedure more than for the Walker policy package (or the Walker persona).

It is impossible to say how many voters were so motivated. But it is safe to say that it could represent a substantial portion of Walker’s seven-percent margin.

And as far as the November election goes, exit polls reported by the Washington Post and others showed surprising support for Obama over Romney, even among those who voted for Walker!

So, maybe not so much has changed. As my friend Harry Targ, a frequent contributor to The Rag Blog, has put it:

Wisconsin has [long] been a deeply divided political state. In fact, two important political figures in the state’s history personify the political divisions that shaped competition in the state and the United States at large for at least one hundred years. Senator Joseph McCarthy represented the outlook shared by many that government is the enemy of humankind. . . . And . . . to the contrary, Senators Robert La Follette Senior and Junior represented that strand of political discourse that sees the possibility of creating governmental institutions that can protect the innocent from the criminal, provide for the less fortunate, and use public resources to advance human possibility. Descendants of both political traditions have fought it out over the years . . . (-- Personal communication of unpublished paper, June 7, 2012)

Wisconsin remains divided. This time, it was 1,334,450 for the right, and 1,162,785 for the left. The next time around it could be the other way. The division is probably sharper than any time before. But, hey, things could be a lot worse!

This second-day view leaves us with the idea that given all his advantages, Walker should have won much bigger. Along with that comes the idea that maybe overwhelming monetary advantage is not so decisive, after all.

Students form peace symbol on the floor of rotunda at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison in March 2011. Photo by John Hart / AP / Missourian.

3. Third Day After: 'Actually, Things Could NOT Be a Whole Lot Worse'

Friends, let’s face it. The situation in Wisconsin and the nation is very bad. Electoral analysis (as above) may make us feel a little bit better. But it largely misses the point. The right has been enormously -- and, to my mind -- tragically, successful.

The right has nearly absolute mass media dominance, a financial blank check with no evident limit, unity around central doctrines combined with complete party discipline, control of the Supreme Court, and a noisy and highly active popular movement (the Tea Party) to provide media excitement, and to act as enforcers of party discipline.

The Democratic Party, with none of these, has become a timid shadow of the party of Franklin Roosevelt. All discussion has been skewed far to the right. Legislative party discipline is non-existent. We are engaged only in rear-guard battles, and only in trying to reduce (usually slightly) our losses. Our maximal promises are, well, minimalist.

Some aspects of this have been touched on already. But there is another, deeply disturbing, aspect of the situation. Let me quote a former Madison neighbor, the author Dean Bakopoulos:

As Wisconsin’s new political landscape so clearly indicates, conservatives have now managed to vilify plain old working people as elitist fat cats. Librarians, teachers, public employees, and union laborers: Basically, people who earn health insurance and decent wages have suddenly become the things that stagnate an economy and raise taxes, when in truth they, and those wages they enjoy, have been the lifeblood of a struggling post-industrial economy.

But by declaring war on teachers, union laborers, and public sector employees, the well-heeled spinners behind the rise of Scott Walker have managed to make struggling Americans vote against their own best interests out of a sense of fear and envy. Struggling workers -- and most comfortable middle-class workers -- often to need an identifiable villain, someone who is holding them back from success, in order to vote Republican. If Republicans can present themselves as an enemy of that villain, they win. That’s what happened last night in Wisconsin. (Salon, June 8, 2012)

Frankly, putting it all together, I am very worried about our future, in Wisconsin and in the nation. And the Democratic Party is certainly not going to get us out of this, whatever happens in November.

In fact, dear friends, I can only say we’re in a bad patch, and I think we must look beyond it, beyond November, beyond the Democratic Party, way, way beyond the present. We need to remember that things really don’t need to be this way, that, as the World Social Forum series insists, “Another [and much better!] world is possible.”

Howard Zinn has told us how to think about it:

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

― Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, 1994

OK, dear friends, that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, I mean, Lake Wingra. Stay well, and come visit. The brats and brews are on Kathie and me! And elastic jeans can be found if you need them.

Your friend always,

Paul

[Dr. Paul Beckett lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He can be reached at beckettpa@gmail.com. Read more articles by Paul Beckett on The Rag Blog.]

Go here for Paul Beckett's earlier coverage of the movement in Wisconsin on The Rag Blog.

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Paul Beckett : Naked ALEC and the Right Wing Conspiracy

Graphics from the Center for Media and Democracy.
ALEC Naked:
More news from the 'vast
right wing conspiracy'

By Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog / November 10, 2011

MADISON, Wisconsin -- It’s all we needed! Another dimension of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” comes to light, like a horror movie monster emerging from primeval slime.

What’s its name? ALEC. But if you’re thinking of the irritating but ultimately cuddly boss in 30 Rock you’re way off. This ALEC is an acronym standing for American Legislative Exchange Council.

ALEC brings together state legislators (overwhelmingly, conservative Republicans) and corporate leaders in annual meetings to propose, review, and approve the legislation that they would LIKE to see passed at the state level.

Corporations’ business interests (profits, reduction of taxes, regulation, environmental protections, etc.) are melded with the ideological content of the right-wing politicians (guns, privatizing schools, anti-abortion, Voter ID, etc.). Sitting together in task forces, corporate representatives (often very high-level) work together with legislators to produce model legislation that is approved to be taken home and introduced in state legislatures.

ALEC staff assist adaptations in language and strategy to the circumstances of different states. Authorship of introduced legislation (about 1,000 bills a year in the country as a whole) is claimed by the local legislator: ALEC does not sign its work!

Is ALEC new? Not at all. It was created in 1973, and was closely associated with the Heritage Foundation, created at about the same time. Little noticed outside of conservative circles, ALEC grew and grew. Now its influence touches every state, and some of America’s top corporate leaders attend ALEC’s annual meetings.

But we in Wisconsin were largely blindsided, even though an earlier generation of Wisconsin conservative leaders such as former Governor Tommy Thompson and former Senator Robert Kasten were ground-floor ALEC participants.

For most of us, ALEC remained unknown, as obscure for us as, say, a pair of billionaire brothers named Koch.

Then came January 2011 and the inauguration of Governor Scott Walker. Virtually instantly, as snowflakes flew outside the Capitol, a blizzard of legislation was introduced inside touching on almost everything in Wisconsin’s public life and traditions: education (“choice” charter schools, teachers’ rights to organize, education funding, even the organization and governance of state universities), taxes, rights of labor, health care (Wisconsin’s successful “Badger Care” adaptation of Medicaid), funding for Medicare, concealed gun carry, voter ID, the state civil service. There was little that was not in there. And most of it was bundled together in a “Budget Repair Bill," to be passed as “emergency legislation” by monolithic GOP majorities.

The Budget Repair Bill contained 9,355 sections, mostly packed with dense legalese. How had Walker and his lieutenants, who had never claimed to be intellectual giants, put together such an immense construction by the early part of February?

You guessed it: ALEC. ALEC indeed had not signed its work. But we were beginning to wake up. It emerged that there were few things in Walker’s legislative package that were NOT underlain by legislative “models” developed within ALEC.

Two thirds of a year after the events of February-March, the ALEC legislation is still wreaking havoc to Wisconsin’s proud political traditions. Most recently, we have Voter ID (read, voter suppression), and concealed carry on the books, with lots more to come.

Now, Wisconsin progressives are beginning to push back and make themselves a headache for ALEC.

This dimension of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” (for that is exactly what it is) has flourished in obscurity. But in a stunt reminiscent of a Hollywood spy flick, Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Assembly Democrat (and one of the Assembly’s most progressive members) infiltrated the 2010 ALEC national conference in New Orleans.

His method was simple. As a state legislator, he simply paid the dues and attended. He attended the assemblies and the cocktail parties (he was excluded from the task force meetings) and obtained the password to the ALEC collection of more than 800 “model” bills ready and waiting for introduction in state legislatures.

Pocan’s experience and the access he gained was an important asset as the Center for Media and Democracy, based in Madison, did a thorough and fascinating research job on ALEC, resulting in “ALEC Exposed.”

Good, muck-raking investigative journalism lives! There is little you will not find in “ALEC Exposed.” Included here are lists of ALEC member corporations, politicians, the ALEC state Chairs, ALEC “scholars,” and ALEC Boards and Task Forces. It would have been unfair to omit the role of the infamous Koch Brothers, and they are given the credit they deserve. Finally, “ALEC Exposed” provides a vast compendium of the more than 800 ALEC “model” bills, organized by subject matter.

“ALEC Exposed” really IS a “model”: a model of hard-hitting, fact-filled reporting on a subject of huge national significance.


But, how does a web-based, The Nation-connected media report like “ALEC Exposed” make its way out through the filters of a tired, timid, and conservative-leaning mainstream media and a hyper-energetic and deliberately slanted right-wing infotainment complex led by Fox News?

Well, that’s the big problem, alright. It is not that we don’t have investigative reporting and writing of Lincoln Steffens quality these days. There is a lot of it: perhaps unprecedented quantities. The problem is that most of this is confined within the left in a politically segregated America, and it effectively reaches only a small proportion of American brains.

A step in doing something about this was taken recently by another Wisconsin group. On October 22 a day-long program entitled “All About ALEC” drew some 300 participants, this on one of the last sunny and warm Saturdays of the year.

Organized by the Oregon (WI) Area Progressives or OAP, the conference included a stellar set of nearly 20 presenters covering ALEC’s history, financing, organization, and its connection to current crises in healthcare, education, tax policy, and state government finance, the Voter ID legislation, labor rights, education, and campaign finance.

State Assembly member Mark Pocan presented an entertaining account of his “undercover” work at the New Orleans ALEC national conference. A significant point was his perception, as he watched the interactions of state legislators with corporate leadership (often very high level), of the dominance of the corporate side.

Joanne Ricca of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO laid out the historical roots of ALEC in the early 1970s, showing its connection to the Heritage Foundation and to Grover Norquist and the other founders of neoconservatism. Almost 40 years later, ALEC literally has a legislative answer prepared on almost every issue. A comparison of this position of strength to that of the American left is frightening. We really need an ALEC of the left she noted, with a wistful tone.

Mike McCabe of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign put ALEC in the larger context as he laid out a four-part net of political hegemony developed by conservative forces. First is ideological hegemony through media control and “message development.” Second is electioneering (in a competition that is increasingly rigged). Third comes the legislative offensive, using majorities to legislate the conservative goals. Fourth is to ensure judicial confirmation of legislation as high courts are packed with conservative judges.

ALEC’s primary significance is in the third area: using a legislative majority to quickly embed a comprehensive conservative agenda in the legal code, state by state, especially in the 21 states that elected Republican majorities in 2010.

That liveliest of the U.S. House of Representatives progressives, Jan Schakowsky, came up from Illinois to speak. (Fending off references to Wisconsin’s traditional joking antagonism toward its neighbor on the south, she informed us that Illinois, where Wisconsin’s 14 progressive state Senators took refuge in February, should now be called the Sanctuary State.)

Speaking as a political professional, Jan Schakowsky had a simple message: we should not give up. The popular uprising in Wisconsin (for one description go here) demonstrated the power of an aroused public. Wisconsin “lifted a cloud of paralysis and despair,” she said.

The politically fortified positions of the right are formidable (for instance, she said, the National Rifle Association [NRA] simply “owns” the U.S. Congress in its area of interest). But it is extremely important to remember that the left’s positions ARE majority positions on all the crucial issues, as poll after poll confirms.

The right’s money is important; but remember, she said, that it takes less money to convince people of their TRUE interests than it does to convince them of false ones. What we on the left have to do is make legislators fear us more than they fear them.

Wisconsin’s ALEC story is no more important than that of any other state. ALEC is organized and active in every one of the 50 states. (To get started with your state, go here.) Exposure is a powerful weapon. ALEC has flourished in the shadows, never “signing its work.” In each state, we need to pull aside the curtain. In the Wizard of Oz, the little dog Toto pulls aside a curtain and we see that an apparently omnipotent force really consists of a portly little man pulling levers and speaking through loudspeakers.

Shining a strong light, state by state, on ALEC, its legislators (and its connection to their legislation), and to the corporate benefits provided to ALEC’s corporate funders, is a start to taking back our democracy at the state level.

ALEC also makes an important point about us, the progressive left. Suppose we came to power, all over the country. How much of a progressive agenda do we have, one that we all agree on, one that comprehensively moves America toward the progressive society that we could be? As Joanne Ricca said, maybe we need something like an ALEC on our side of the political divide!

[Dr. Paul Beckett lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He can be reached at beckettpa@gmail.com. Read more articles by Paul Beckett on The Rag Blog.]

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Paul Beckett : Slouching Towards Democracy in Nigeria

Goodluck Jonathan was elected President of Nigeria on April 16.
The Elections in Nigeria:
Slouching towards democracy

By Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog / April 29, 2011


The perils of democracy

To title (and set) his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, Nigeria’s great novelist, Chinua Achebe, drew on lines from the poem by William Butler Yeats which begins:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...

And ends:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-- “The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats, 1920

Nigeria is among the world’s most dangerous countries. Nigeria has the seventh-largest population in the world (nearly 160 million), and that population is a potentially explosive mixture of peoples, regions, and religions -- a mixture of almost infinite complexity.

The center’s holding (to paraphrase Yeats) has indeed been challenged throughout Nigeria’s 51 years of independence. At various times, Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s longest-serving head of state (sometimes military, sometimes elected) has compared his country’s potential for violence to cases like Bosnia, Rwanda or Burundi -- but on a much larger scale.

Nigeria came to independence two years after Achebe’s book was published with a British-style parliamentary electoral democracy in place. Unsurprisingly, the country’s experience with democracy since has been rocky. “Mere anarchy” (Yeats uses “mere” in the obsolete meaning of “pure” or “unmixed”) has frequently seemed close by.

As Nigeria celebrated the 50th anniversary of its independence from Britain last year, the country had had elected governments for only about 20 years. The other 30 were accounted for by a succession of military governments, each a bit more dictatorial (and corrupt) than the one before. In its democratic interludes, it took Nigeria only about 40 years to get into its “Fourth Republic” (the present one); reputedly volatile France required about a century and a half to achieve the same.

Nigeria has spent enormous sums of money trying to create fair and transparent electoral systems. Yet rare is the election that has not been condemned as false by the loser (often, by everyone except the winner!). Over the 20-some years of democracy, vote-buying, thuggery, bribery, and ballot box-stuffing have been developed into high art forms. Sometimes the ballot boxes are simply stolen. Or, perhaps, stolen and stuffed. Voter registration, a vast process usually commenced too late, has often verged on chaos (if not “mere anarchy”).

Polling station administration has usually seemed imperfect and sometimes much worse than that. Nigeria’s last round of general elections, in 2007, was condemned universally by observers as almost hopelessly flawed by violence, rigging, and mismanagement. (For one of the reports, go here.)

As we recommend democracy for all countries, we should be conscious that democracy can be dangerous in a country like Nigeria: very dangerous. Democracy has been a significant factor in Nigeria’s horrific communal clashes (stretching from the pogroms against the Igbos in the middle 1960s to the bloody clashes in the Jos area that are on-going now). Scores and sometimes hundreds have been killed in violence in each national election.

By its nature, then, Nigeria does not seem a natural case for Western-style competitive electoral democracy. When I lived in Nigeria in the early 1970s, the number of separate ethnic groups was put at 250; the figure used now is 389. (Imagine for a moment the French, German, British, or American democracies functioning with 389 different national traditions and identities in play.)

Overlaying the ethnic mosaic are traditions of regional hostility (both great and small). Since the 1980s, religion (Muslim or Christian) has become vastly more important as a basis for often violent conflict. Access to education, and therefore literacy, varies widely through the country. Finally, poverty, the national oil wealth not withstanding, is endemic, and wealth differentials are, well, worse than in the U.S.

Just as a reminder, Western-style democracy has generally flourished in -- you guessed it! -- Western countries characterized by a large middle class, high literacy, and a much higher degree of national integration.

In a sense, the puzzle is that Nigeria has tried so hard and persisted so long in the effort to make democracy work.


The effort to create democracy

But try they certainly have, in a creative, participatory, and deeply serious way which will surprise those who know Nigeria mainly for corruption and “419” email scams.

In the latter 1970s, after a failed First Republic and a decade of military rule, Nigerian military leaders and civil society intellectuals (academics, administrators, doctors, lawyers, journalists) put their heads together to try to figure out how Nigeria could be a democracy. A kind of “great debate” occurred in a constitutional convention and through the media (it reminded yours truly of the Federalist Papers episode in our own history).

A constitution was designed in which electoral success went to the leaders and the parties who best reached across the old divides of region and ethnicity, while punishing those who waged ethnic or regional political warfare. A principle of “federal character,” which essentially means fair representation of Nigeria’s constituent regions and peoples, ran through the constitution. (In some applications, it resembles American affirmative action practices.)

Thus, to illustrate with the presidential election (the one Nigerians care most about), to win a candidate must win by a majority of votes cast (so run-offs are likely), but also must receive at least 25% of the votes cast in two-thirds (24) of the 36 states in the Nigerian federation.

Other features were requirements placed on the political parties to be truly national in scope, a powerful independent, non-partisan electoral commission to prepare and run the elections, and judicial review of challenges.

What is interesting is that, while Nigeria has had three constitutional revisions since the totally disastrous First Republic, the basic elements have carried through each one.

As a distant and somewhat desultory observer, I have felt for some time, and feel more certain all the time, that Nigeria has been subject to a kind of creeping constitutionalism and a growing habit of democracy over more than three decades.


The 2011 general elections

This month Nigeria has completed a mammoth round of elections: for the federal bicameral legislature (April 9), the federal presidency (April 16), and governors of the 36 states (April 26). The scale of the exercise was enormous in every way (very much including cost which has been estimated at more than half a billion dollars).

Some 325,000 poll workers manned many thousands of polling stations scattered throughout a vast country where communications and transportation infrastructure remain limited. Sixty-three political parties were registered; at the presidential level, 21 had fielded candidates. (For more details, go here.)

How did it go?

The ominous precursors were there. The elections, originally scheduled for December 2010, had to be pushed back twice. As usual, registration was a last-minute achievement. There were many problems with ballots, both their preparation and printing (they were complicated with many minor parties that had to be correctly listed) and ballot security.

There were many efforts to rig or otherwise falsify or even to derail the elections completely. Just before the presidential election a vehicle traveling north was found to contain 100,000 ballots marked “tendered ballot papers.” Serious bombings occurred before and during the elections.

Also very ominous was a spike in violence (or arbitrary arrest) directed against reporters. This was reported by the international organization Reporters Sans Frontieres, which noted:

Nigeria has one of the poorest media freedom ratings in Africa and is 145th out of 178 countries in the 2010 Reporters Without Borders worldwide Press Freedom Index.

One could go on and on with such ominous reports. But: surprise!

The Economist (London) almost gushed: “Nigeria’s Successful Elections: Democracy 1, vote-rigging, 0.” They went on, “Gambling on the world’s most expensive voting system has paid off.”

The leader of an international team of observers, Robin Carnahan of the (U.S.) National Democratic Institute, said the vote was “largely free and fair.”

“There were a number of people in our delegation that observed the elections in 2007,” Carnahan said,

and they said they felt like there was a marked difference this year. That there was a determination on the part of the Independent National Electoral Commission to run a real election, [and] a free and fair election. There was determination on the part of the Nigerian people to participate in an election that really reflected their voice.

European Union and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) teams’ reports were similar, as was the verdict of the U.S. State Department.

Sweet music!

But then the music ended.

Serious rioting broke out in most of the far northern states, with hundreds killed. There were renewed bombings on the eve of the last set of elections for governor on April 26 (and they could not be held on schedule in at least two of the states). Meanwhile, the major opposition candidate for President (Muhammadu Buhari of the Congress for Progressive Change party) and many others are charging (what else?) “massive rigging” that falsified the election.


The balance sheet

As the dust clears (and, as the bodies are buried), we see that the damage has been great: more than 500 killed, many more wounded, much property loss, much personal displacement, much loss of personal sense of security. The election and its aftermath have further exacerbated the dangerous combination of anger and fear at the Muslim/Christian interface, especially in the northern states.

If the presidential election of Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party was generally peaceful and fair, as observers tell us, the results may still prove dangerous for the future.

Jonathan (Christian, from a southeast minority ethnic group) represented the dominant party (PDP) and his victory was expected by most. He handily met the constitutional requirements for election taking nearly 60% of the popular vote, and winning 24 states outright.

Meanwhile, his principal opponent, Muhammadu Buhari (Muslim, Hausa-Fulani, from Katsina) swept the 12 most northern states, but failed to carry any states outside that group (including those that in past elections have tended to associate with the “far north”).

Thus, while Jonathon’s election complied easily with the constitutional requirements for national reach, paradoxically this presidential election seemed to result in a situation of stark regional, ethnic, and religious separation that we have not seen before.



Slouching towards democracy?

There were a number of special circumstances in the candidacy of Goodluck Jonathan and the opposition led by Muhammadu Buhari that are too complex to deal with here. Yet, even with allowance being made for these, the 2011 elections are likely to be seen as a watershed in Nigerian politics.

Viewed in national political terms, the far north finds itself (temporarily, at least) in unprecedented isolation. Over most of the previous half century, the Muslim (in ethnic terms, mainly Hausa-Fulani and Kanuri) far north (it was sometimes referred to as the Holy North in the old days) has generally provided the core political leadership for the rest of the huge area of the original Northern Region. During the first political decade, their dominance was absolute.

And throughout the independence period the influence of the far north has been disproportionate at the national level, too. Of the 13 men who have headed the Nigerian government (military or civilian) since 1960 (see list here), eight have been northern Muslims (one other was a northern Christian).

Six of the northern Muslims have been from the core Hausa-Fulani or Kanuri states of the far north. All four of the southern Christian leaders owed their original accession to accidental factors (Jonathan, the latest, became President unexpectedly in May last year after Umaru Yar’Adua (Hausa-Fulani, Katsina) developed a serious illness and finally died in office).

Thus, the landslide election of Jonathan may mark a watershed event in the evolution of Nigerian politics. The historic pattern of at least mild hegemony exerted from the far north may have largely run its course.

This assumes that Nigeria continues its “slouching” progress (borrowing again from Yeats) toward institutionalizing electoral democracy.

Which in turn returns us to the question: Why does Nigeria work so hard and so persistently to create a functioning, stable, permanent democracy?

The costs and dangers, after all, are great. With the country’s complex ethnic makeup, and the now bitter relations between many Christian and Muslim communities, Nigerians know that they live over a political sea of magma that could, at almost any time, erupt.

Yet Nigeria persists in the effort, and, I believe, will continue to persist. At the time that Nigerians were emerging from more than a decade of military rule in the latter 1970s, intellectuals advanced many ideas for a constitutional system that would work for Nigeria, not as one might want Nigeria to be, but as it is. A number advocated indirect, or “guided democracy,” or a benign single-party system.

Ultimately, such compromises were rejected in favor of straight, unadulterated winner-take-all electoral democracy with competitive parties. The preponderance of opinion was that Nigeria was too complex a country to function as a single party system, and their experience with military rule had convinced them that benign dictatorship never remains benign.

One could say that Nigeria needs to be a democracy not in spite of its staggering complexity, but because of it.

[Paul Beckett taught political science at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria, from 1969 to 1976. He is co-author of Education and Power in Nigeria and co-editor of Dilemmas of Democracy in Nigeria.]

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Paul Beckett : A Perfect Day in Madison

A few of the 100,000 that hit the streets of Madison, Wisc., Saturday, March 12, 2011. Photo by Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog.
Just ask 100,000 people!
A Perfect Day in Madison, Wisconsin

By Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog / March 13, 2011

[This is the third of Paul Beckett's reports from Madison for The Rag Blog.]

MADISON, Wisconsin -- Saturday, March 12, 2011. The wind off the frozen lakes was often 20 miles an hour (or more) and from the north. Windchills were in the 20s. It was mainly cloudy. Here and there, old snow and ice remained, and where there was no ice, the Wisconsin Capitol grounds had been trampled into a slippery, muddy morass. And it was beautiful!

Absolutely unprecedented crowds gathered for a whole day of protest events. Police estimates were 100,000 (but exact estimates are impossible). The crowd filled the Capitol square streets, sidewalks and what once were lawns, and then flowed down State Street and Wisconsin Avenue.

This time, a powerful sound system was in place and you could hear the speeches from far out in the crowd. In fact, you could hear them twice as the sound reflected off the taller buildings.

The breadth of social groups protesting Governor Scott Walker’s “union-busting” and public service-cutting Budget Repair Bill was truly awesome. The private sector unions were there (often with major leadership figures). The public service unions (AFSCME and the teachers unions) were there. The firemen, policemen and prison staff were there. Teachers and workers had come from Michigan, where things are also bad.

Farmers staged a tractor parade during the massive Madison protest. Photo by Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog.
Farmers came in, protesting the planned cutbacks in the Medicaid-based programs on which so many of them depend. Late in the morning a tractor parade pushed through the already-dense crowds, festooned with anti-Walker signs (many of them referring to the animal waste that is so familiar to farmers).

But the dominant impression one got was just of PEOPLE: all kinds of people, from all over Wisconsin, unaffiliated, unorganized. Just people. A feeling of complete like-mindedness and shared values and interests linked 100,000 people together.

Thank you, Scott Walker.

By 3 p.m., when the main program began, no one could move. The 14 Democratic senators who had decamped to Illinois to thwart passage of Walker’s bill were welcomed back. Each gave a speech to tumultuous applause and chants of “Thank you! Thank you!” They had not, in fact, stopped the bill. But they had provided almost three weeks for understanding -- and protest -- to develop

Photo by Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog.
Also, the holdout of the “Fab 14” ultimately forced the Walker camp to “pass” their bill in an abrupt night-time procedure that was full of parliamentary improprieties, and perhaps downright illegal.

The speakers (besides the 14, they included Jesse Jackson, Tony Shalhoub, and Susan Sarandon) noted that now the battle continues, but the battlefield changes.

Suits are already being brought to challenge the legality of the law in the courts.

More important in the longer run are the recall campaigns . While “Recall Walker” was a constant theme in signs and chants, under Wisconsin law that effort can not begin until next year. But petitions against eight Republican Senators have been filed, with May 2 deadlines for completion. There was an enormous sense of energy for these yesterday.

Meanwhile, a Utah-based anti-immigration group has already invaded Wisconsin (it is perfectly legal, it seems) to organize recalls against members of the Democratic “Fab 14” who got so much thanks and appreciation yesterday.

Control of the Wisconsin Senate will be determined during the coming summer by the outcome of these efforts.

Those who participated Saturday went home elated and politically energized in a way that few of us have been for some time. But all understood, as well, that Saturday did not mark the end of a battle, but its beginning. It will be a long battle for the future of Wisconsin, and no one can be sure of the outcome. And Wisconsin, in turn, clearly is just one battleground in the broader struggle for the country’s future.

[Dr. Paul Beckett lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He can be reached at beckettpa@gmail.com.]

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Paul Beckett : The Wisconsin Revolution and Gov. Walker's 'Putsch'

Photo by Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog.
Dispatch from Madison:
Governor Walker’s putsch

By Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog / March 11, 2011

[This is the second of Paul Beckett's reports from Madison for The Rag Blog.]

MADISON, Wisconson -- In less than 24 hours, in a series of shocking and unprecedented developments, public sector union and collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin have been eviscerated by a Republican legislative majority controlled by Governor Scott Walker.

What seemed to Democratic legislative members and to neutral observers (but there are few of those in Wisconsin now) a putsch, began about 6 p.m. on the evening of Wednesday, March 9. As coups go, this one clearly was carefully -- even brilliantly -- prepared. The surprise was absolute.

Governor Walker spoke to a news conference on Monday, March 7. He referred to meetings at the Illinois border his staff had had with some of the 14 Democratic state senators who had left Wisconsin on February 17 in order to prevent passage of the “union busting” legislation, SB11. (See my article, “Madison and the Revolution at Home," on The Rag Blog, March 8, 2010.)

A compromise was brewing, Walker implied. “The problem,” Walker said, “is Senator [Mark] Miller.” (Miller is the titular leader of the Senate Democrats.) Maybe it is time, Walker went on, for the Democratic caucus to elect a new leader.

All eyes turned to the Group of 14 Democratic senators: were they divided? Would one or more accept some form of compromise and enable the Republicans to complete their passage of SB11? (The presence of only ONE Democratic senator in the chamber would legitimate the vote passing SB11.] (Read the full text of SB11 here.)

Meanwhile, unperceived, Republicans prepared a trap that would snap shut on Wednesday. The complicated, 144-page “Budget Repair Bill” (SB11) was being taken apart by staff and reformulated, ostensibly to strip out everything BUT the collective bargaining provisions.

The result was labeled a conference amendment to SB11, and was only six pages shorter than the original. But the point was that this new version could be labeled as non-fiscal and would not carry the quorum requirement of the original.

A bizarre reversal of positions was now apparent. Incorporation of the collective bargaining provisions within the Budget Repair Bill, very definitely a “fiscal” measure, had been stoutly justified by Governor Walker on the grounds that they were inseparable from the fiscal repair provisions. (Opponents had argued that the provisions had nothing to do with fiscal “repair” and should be taken out of the Budget Repair Bill and debated separately.)

Now, the Republican position was the opposite. The new version was NOT fiscal. With the quorum requirement changed, whether the Group of 14 were in the Chamber or in Illinois was immaterial. The bill could be passed with Republican votes alone.

The ambush worked perfectly. Democrats and protesters remained focused on the hold-out by the 14 Senators and on the possibility of compromise. Word of Walker’s plan leaked out only at the last minute, late on Wednesday afternoon. Beginning about 5:30 p.m. a cluster of emails, most of them billed “emergency,” appeared in my email inbox. The following, from the Dane County Democrats, is typical:

Breaking Update: Tonight at 6:00 pm in the Senate Parlor we are hearing that Senate GOP is going to split the budget repair bill, fiscal from non-fiscal, and ram it through in the dark of night. Given that they're attempting to ram through the bill without any media attention we wanted to let you know that very important developments are likely to occur tonight at 6:00 pm in the Senate Parlor.

Please be at the capital by 6:00PM TONIGHT!

Actually, I did not receive any of the emails until the next day. I was having a quick dinner a block away from the Capitol at Ian’s Pizza (an enterprise that has become known internationally for its role in keeping the protesters in the Capitol Rotunda sustained). I was on the way to a 7 p.m. debate between Madison’s two mayoral candidates.

Suddenly people were shouting, “To the Capitol. They’re going to pass the bill! Tonight!” People in groups of two, four, six, were hurrying up State Street toward the Capitol. I followed. At the top of State Street was a volcano-shaped mountain of snow (some five inches had fallen the night before). On its peak a tall young man stood shouting in an amazing voice: “Everyone to the Capitol! Everyone to the Capitol!” He waved us onward.

The word spread amazingly. By 6 p.m. hundreds were there; very soon thousands. It was dark. Everyone wanted to enter the Capitol. A long line formed at the only entrance that was (in a limited way) open. The line moved glacially. Inside, on the other side of the revolving door, protesters were packed, waiting, apparently, to be taken one-by-one through the security wanding procedure. Noise was deafening: “Whose house? Our house!”

Soon, however, any pretense of an open Capitol was abandoned; the police closed the doors absolutely, leaving some inside and thousands outside. People were angry.

Photo by Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog.
In the meantime, inside the Senate chamber, the deed was already done. In less than half an hour, a “conference committee” had reported out the revised bill. The committee Chair gaveled the meeting closed as the Democratic minority leader, Peter Barca, was shouting out the many ways in which the meeting was improper under the rules of the Legislature or illegal under state law.

The bill was then instantaneously passed (or “passed”) by the Senate Republicans.

By about 6:25 p.m. it was all done. The session was immediately adjourned, and the Republican Members were reportedly smuggled out of the Capitol building and beyond the crowds through a tunnel. (Their escape and removal by a special Madison Metro bus was not as secret as they would have liked.)

The word spread among the protesters and, more than any other time in the three weeks of protest, the mood was one of deep anger and frustration. Later in the evening some of the inside protesters opened an unguarded outside door. Crowds outside pushed in, brushing aside the police, who had raced to stop them. Thousands ended up inside, chanting, commiserating, venting. Most left by 2 or 3 a.m.

The expectation was that the building would open at 8 a.m. Thursday morning and that the Assembly would begin passage of the “conference amendment” by 9 a.m. In fact, the building did not reopen in the morning. The Department of Administration announced that an “assessment of building security requirements” was in progress. By 11 a trickle of protesters was permitted in as the Assembly slowly began to organize itself for the crucial session to pass the Senate version.

The session, billed a “Special Session” to allow more flexibility with rules and the traditions of the “Body” as it is always called, was brought to order at 12:34 p.m. Incongruously (considering he had been refused entry to the Capitol an hour or so earlier), the Reverend Jesse Jackson was allowed to deliver an opening prayer. He took no sides on the issues, and insisted that the legislators join hands (literally) across the aisle. They did, and then a bitter partisan verbal battle began.

A little over three hours of speeches were allowed. Most of these were from Democratic representatives clad in the bright orange T shirts proclaiming workers’ rights that they had adopted three weeks before. The session was broadcast by WisconsinEye and is available for viewing here.

The Democrats argued the illegality of procedures. They asserted that the bill before the Assembly was not the same one that had been before the Senate, and that senators (they were all Republican) had not been informed, had not been given copies of the new legislation, and could not have understood what they were voting for. They cited the shame brought on “this Body,” and on Wisconsin by all that had been done over the recent days and weeks.

More than that, they condemned the loss of workers’ rights and human rights, and the great harm that would be done to Wisconsin families and communities by the bill. Representative Tamara Grigsby, Democrat from the 18th District, delivered a particularly powerful and moving speech. (Had this reporter been a member of the Republican caucus he would have instantly moved across the aisle, sobbing with shame.)

To no avail. At 3:40 in the afternoon, abruptly, with some 20 representatives still to speak, the chair called for the vote (it is electronic and almost instantaneous), announced that the bill was passed, and adjourned the meeting.

The Republicans once again dematerialized mysteriously from the Capitol building.

It was over. Or, perhaps, just begun. The Democratic Party and labor unions are filing complaints and suits challenging the legality of the bill’s passage. The Governor’s use of the State Patrol (now under the direction of the father of Scott Fitzgerald, leader of the Senate Republicans, and his brother Jeff Fitzgerald, leader of the Assembly Republicans) to enforce the Capitol closures is being challenged.

But it has been understood from the beginning that this is less a legislative battle than a long-term political one that will touch every community and involve every important issue. It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of Wisconsin is at stake. And as Michael Moore has been saying so eloquently, the implications for the nation are huge.

Already planned for Saturday, March 12, is a major protest, bringing together farmers (who will mount a “tractorcade” around the Capitol square), labor, educators, students, liberal-progressives from all over the state, and many members of smaller communities that are becoming aware of the hit their schools and local governments are about to take from the Walker budget. Major speakers are invited, and it is reported that the 14 Democratic Senators will return to thank the public for their support.

Recall campaigns are planned on both sides. Under Wisconsin’s recall law almost a year must go by before a campaign to recall Scott Walker can begin. The same is true of Assembly members. So effectively, only senators are presently subject to recall. A bevy of progressive organizations are organizing campaigns directed against at least four of the Republican senators and, so far, there seems to be enormous energy behind these. Success would shift the Senate back to Democratic hands. The Republican recall campaigns, if they are pursued, would be directed against members of the “Group of 14” representing swing districts.

The political fallout of this tempestuous three weeks events will soon begin to be known. It is interesting, already, that one Republican senator and four Republican representatives voted against the “conference amendment.” And there is speculation that one reason that Scott Walker opted for this radical and legally risky legislative maneuver was that he sensed weakening on the part of other of the Republican senators.

[Dr. Paul Beckett lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He can be reached at beckettpa@gmail.com.]

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Paul Beckett : Madison and the Revolution at Home

Photo by Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog.
The revolution at home:
Dispatch from the Madison front

By Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog / March 8, 2011

MADISON, Wisconsin -- My wife Kathie and I have been to the Capitol square in Madison, sometimes inside, sometimes outside the Capitol building, most days since February 13 when the demonstrations began. It’s been cold, often snowy, usually with a wind chill of 20 degrees or less. Pretty uncomfortable. And they’ve been some of the best days of our lives.

We are proud of Wisconsin. We have new hope (dare we hope so much?) for America. According to Michael Moore , everyone is a Wisconsinite now. Welcome! Badgers of the world, unite!


Background to protest

Scott Walker provoked the demonstrations Friday, February 11, when he tabled his 144-page “Budget Repair Bill” and insisted it be passed the following week without significant alteration. The first thing that leapt out of the bill was its frontal assault on Wisconsin’s public service unions: the bill would eviscerate the unions and effectively eliminate the collective bargaining process.

Quickly it became apparent that there were many other right-wing dreams buried in the bill that would be instantly made law.

SB11 attacked public-sector pensions and health care (resulting in public service pay reductions of 8-10%); provided authority for the Walker administration (without further legislative consideration) to sell off public owned power plants on no-bid contracts; and it separated the University of Wisconsin-Madison from the State of Wisconsin University System.

There were many other far-reaching provisions as well, together with ominous undertones foretelling drastic cuts that would be included in the biennial budget still to come: cuts to local schools and services, and to Wisconsin’s very successful Medicare initiative (Badger Care). Many suspected that Wisconsin’s huge and fully-funded public service pension fund would soon have crosshairs on it.

Understanding spread that, first, most of the provisions had little or nothing to do with “repairing” the present-year budget; and, second, all were part of a national right-wing agenda best articulated by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and funded by billionaires such as the Koch brothers. (The latter, Charles and David, were heavy funders of Walker’s election campaign, and they had just opened a lobbying firm a block away from the Wisconsin Capitol.)

As all of this came out, the Budget Repair Bill seemed radical to the core in turning back Wisconsin’s progressive traditions and in transferring important legislative powers to the Governor’s administration.

Walker threw a match into this pail of gasoline by preemptively remarking that if there were worker trouble he would call out the state’s National Guard.

In the state Assembly, the Republican majority was strong enough to pass the bill without a single Democratic vote, or even the presence of a single Democrat. But in the Senate, while Republicans held a 19 to 14 advantage, at least one Democrat had to be in the chamber to count toward quorum to legally pass the bill.

The Democrats made themselves scarce. The Republican leader of the Senate instructed his father (since Walker’s election, the head of the State Patrol) to bring them in. Suddenly, on Thursday, February 17, all heard the news: the 14 Democratic Senators were safely out-of-state, in Illinois. The bill could not be passed.

Meanwhile, demonstrations had begun. They started small with a few of Madison’s “usual suspects” (people like myself) and members of the UW-Madison’s Teaching Assistants’ Association. But in a day or so protesters numbered in the thousands: unprecedented in recent history.

The numbers grew exponentially as understanding of the bill’s implications sank in. Teachers caught a collective cold; the schools had to close; high school students marched down in phalanxes to join the crowds. University students were there en masse, and parents brought their children. The Capitol’s marble rotunda became a gigantic resonator for the opposition: packed on three levels, festooned with signs, reverberating with drums and chants: “Walker is a weasel, not a badger!” “What’s disgusting? Union busting!” “Kill the Bill!”

And among the teachers, the parents, the school children, the university students, the retirees and other townspeople were: the unions! The unions really got it from day one: they knew that this battle had the significance of the 1981 air controller’s strike: a last ditch struggle to hold on to the remnants of our trade union movement (and with it, much of the progressive achievement of the twentieth century).

The unions knew this was not a local issue, not a Wisconsin-only issue, and not a budget issue. (Early on, the public service unions indicated they would agree to the salary cuts -- for health and pension payments -- that the Budget Repair bill demanded; they thus took the genuine deficit-reduction issues off the table.)

Walker had cunningly tried to separate the police and fire fighter unions from the rest by exempting them from the bill’s provisions. What a great moment it was (we were there, and up front) when a long line of fire fighters, many in uniform, carrying solidarity placards, marched in a file through the crowd which cheered them ecstatically. And this happened over and over again: fire fighters, police, prison workers condemned the anti-union provisions.

Taken in by a prankster, Walker said to a caller he thought to be David Koch that the demonstrations were dying down and consisted mainly of out-of-staters. (See the complete transcript of the call.)

He wished! The demonstrations were only getting going!


The joy of protest

What does it look and feel like? First, really huge crowds. Thursday, the 17th, when the 14 Senators fled, the crowd is 25,000. The next day, 40,000. On Saturday, 68,000. The following Saturday, more than 70,000. (This despite the constantly below-freezing temperatures). The wide streets that make the square around the Capitol are packed all the way around. The crowd moves slowly, drumming, chanting, waving signs. The procession moves (wouldn’t you know it!) in a leftward direction.

There are some pre-printed signs, mainly from the many (more than 60) unions that are participating. They predominated on the first day or so, but quickly were swamped by thousands of wonderful, whimsical hand-made signs. Each communicates its maker’s own sense of the essence of the problem or the solution.

Humor is adopted as a weapon by many. Plays are made on the name of Scott Walker’s corporate backers, the Koch brothers (the funders of Americans For Prosperity, which already is taking out ads and organizing bus tours to support Walker).

“Scottie, kick your Koch habit.” Or, referring to the infamous 20 minute phone conversation with “David Koch:” “Scott: Koch dealer on 2.”

Many, a little ribald for these pages, play on the Koch brothers’ name mispronounced. Many other signs, always greatly appreciated by the crowd, proclaim: “I voted for Walker. And am I sorry.” You see the figure “14” everywhere: “14 Heroes!” Or just “14.” We all know who they are.

By the time of Saturday’s big demonstration on March 5 (when Michael Moore spoke) the variety of hand-made signs has come to seem infinite. Even dogs are displaying signs, on the order of “I smell a weasel!” or “Bad Scottie! Bad! Bad!”

Inside and out, music and drumming has a spontaneous character. Many of the drums are plastic drywall tubs, sometimes with a tin can inside to impart a ring. We also saw pans, cow bells, snare drums, African drums, even a ukulele. South African vuvuzelas blare discordantly.

Here and there, inside and out, speeches are being given. Most loudspeaker systems are minimalist, hand-held. Some speakers (or, shouters) use only old-fashioned unamplified megaphones (probably made at the kitchen table an hour ago).

Amid the drumming and the chanting in the Capitol, most speeches can’t be heard by most people. But that doesn’t stop us from cheering and applauding. We feel sure the speech was right on, saying just what we think!


Getting warm In Madison (I don’t mean the weather)

Monday, February 28, a new stage was reached. The Capitol reverberated throughout with the people’s voices. Governor Walker would present his budget on Tuesday evening. How could the television-watching public be allowed to see and hear the tens of thousands of citizens that would be outside the chamber?

Solution: close the Capitol to the public. He did. That added more fuel to the fire. The Dane County sheriff withdrew his men and women from the job of closing the entrances, making the unhelpful statement: “My deputies are not a palace guard.”

The Capitol police, assigned the job of clearing the rotunda of the tens, sometimes hundreds, of protesters who had camped there for two weeks, declined to do so, saying the protest had been remarkably peaceful, safe and respectful, and they saw no necessity of arresting and dragging out the campers.

A Dane County judge decided it was not legal to close the building to the public. He issued an injunction against the closure. This was overruled (not legally, of course) as Walker’s Department of Administration simply announced they were in compliance, but then did not open the building.

Some remarkable scenes ensued. Senator Glenn Grothman, a Tea Party Republican, left the Capitol for some reason and for some time could not get back in. He knocked on a window to attract the attention of his staff inside, and they assumed he was a demonstrator and ignored him. Meanwhile the crowd walked with him, wherever he went, and shouted “Shame! Shame! Shame!” (This was the refrain of the Democrats in the Assembly after the Budget Repair Bill there was passed -- or “passed” -- in a surprise vote at 1 a.m.

Finally, Grothman was rescued by a Democratic Assembly member who came out, calmed the crowd, and brought him back into the building. Afterwards, somewhat strangely, Grothman referred to the “slobs” who had “attacked” him, even though the crowd is dressed in pure Wisconsin and is almost embarrassingly middle class in character.

A Democratic Assembly member meanwhile was denied entrance to the Capitol completely; she had her official ID card but insisted it should not be required for her, as a Wisconsin citizen, to enter. Another Democratic Assembly member was tackled and taken to the floor by police (on video), even though he WAS showing his state ID card.

By the end of the week the Department of Administration had to retreat from their manifestly not-legal closure of the building. They then imposed a “security” system so elaborate as to make entrance an onerous, hour-long job. By Saturday March 5, this too was backed away from as a much more reasonable security check was administered by friendly police officers.

The Republican Senate then passed a resolution defining the absent 14 as in contempt, and ordering their arrest. But police spokesmen indicated they would not attempt to arrest them.

Still one more Walker initiative did not work out well. Probably feeding into Tea Party stereotypes involving long-haired, bad-smelling “radicals,” his administration announced that it would cost $7.5 million dollars to remove tape and repair other damage done to the beautiful Capitol building interior during the occupation.

Alas for Walker, both the painters union and an expert in landmark building preservation surveyed the building and reported that damages were slight to non-existent.

Finally, a Fox TV interview show about Madison by Bill O’Reilly cut in footage showing “unruly” (read dangerous Communist?) protesters. Unfortunately, in the scenes shown there was no snow, trees were leafed out, and palm trees could be seen. Oops: not Madison! (Ever since this report, some protesters have carried plastic palm trees.)


Beginning of a movement (or not?)

Where are we now? On Saturday, March 6, it is clear from speeches and conversations that most people feel that we are winning. Whistling in the graveyard? We can’t know for sure. But things seem to be swinging our way.

Walker was forced to present his biennial budget before getting the special powers provided in the Budget Repair Bill. Now, throughout Wisconsin communities are realizing the extent of the hit they are about to take, especially to their schools. Teachers all over Wisconsin are already getting layoff notices.

“Luxuries” like school athletic programs may have to go. Ambulance service may be cut. Smaller towns’ personnel budgets typically are about half police and firefighters and they are exempt from the anti-collective bargaining provisions (even if Walker gets them). Most communities already have multi-year contracts with their public workers anyway.

Demonstrations are beginning in the small towns. The polls make very bad reading for Republicans. Stay tuned.

My wife and I are old enough to remember the anti-Vietnam protests of the 60s. How does this compare? Larger, we would say, and happier. The participants are passionate about the issues: the attack on workers' rights to collective bargaining and on their pensions and health care; cutting Medicaid eligibility and funding; pushing a state deficit down to the local level; and pushing the deficits born mainly of tax concessions to the rich and the corporations onto the schools and the young.

But also, humor seems to bubble through it all, and there is an enormous sense of fellowship. The police have mainly been wonderful (that’s a contrast!). The crowds are a complete cross-section of Wisconsin’s working (or studying) population, and all ages are participating.

Everyone admits that, while they are campaigning seriously for the old Wisconsin (good schools, good government, clean government, union rights, democracy), they are also having the best time that they’ve had in a long time. Emma Goldman would have loved it.

Is this the beginning of a nationwide mobilization of the center and the left against right-wing extremism? All here in Madison hope so. We’ll have to wait to see. In the meantime, we feel that our protest here is, indeed, exactly “what democracy looks like!”

[Dr. Paul Beckett lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He can be reached at beckettpa@gmail.com.]

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Paul Beckett : Reprising Ford's 'Radical' Tune

Fiddlin' Henry Ford doubled workers' wages. Image from FiddlingAround.
Henry Ford on why there
isn’t going to be a recovery

By Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog / November 22, 2010

Nicholas Kristof is concerned. The United States, he says, “now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.” Kristof speaks for many of us. Even Alan Greenspan (who helped so mightily to make it so) is concerned about America’s rampant level of income and wealth inequality.

But Wall Street and most of the Republicans don’t care. No doubt -- for them -- it’s good the U.S. is still Number One in something! They place no value on equality itself. There seems to be no concern for fairness. And they have convinced themselves that inequality -- even extreme, exaggerated inequality -- is good for the economy.

Wrong! What they are not seeing is that rampant, out-of-control growth in inequality is bad for the economy. What they have forgotten is something Henry Ford (another unlikely preacher against extreme inequality) told us.

In 1914 Ford astonished most of his American fellow capitalists by abruptly doubling the wage level of his workers. He announced a $5.00 a day wage policy, when going market wages (what he COULD have got workers for) were about half as much. Applying the Consumer Price Index, that $5 would be more than $100 a day now.

In his famous memoir, on the subject of wages, Ford wrote:

No manufacturer in his right mind would contend that buying only the cheapest materials is the way to make certain of manufacturing the best article. Then why do we hear so much talk about the “liquidation of labour” and the benefits that will flow to the country from cutting wages -- market? What good is industry if it be so unskillfully managed as to not to return a living to everyone concerned? No question is more important than that of wages -- most of the people of the country live on wages. The scale of their living – the rate of their wages -- determines the prosperity of the country. [Emphasis added.] -- Henry Ford, My Life and Work, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1923, p. 116]

This was “Fordism.” Workers should not only be worker-producers, but simultaneously be consumers of the goods produced (very much including Henry Ford’s automobiles).

It was a powerful idea. Marx’s progressive impoverishment of the working classes leading to the end of capitalism didn’t occur. Capitalism got new wind instead.

Aldous Huxley, publishing Brave New World in 1932, jokingly located his vision of the World State in the year 632 A.F.: “After Ford.” (1 A.F. is the year 1908 when the Model T first appeared.) In 632 A.F. people swear oaths “By Ford,” and the Christian cross has been converted to a T.

Good fun. But Ford and Fordism were almost that important. American post-World War II prosperity, and the enormous advances of Western Europe, were based on always-growing consumption by the masses whose incomes and standards of living also grew constantly. The Consumer Economy had been invented, and it flourished.

How amazing that the political-economic managers of our society seem to have completely forgotten this basis of the American prosperity they love to celebrate! First, our industrialists have been permitted -- in many ways encouraged -- to seek the absolutely lowest market wages elsewhere in the world to build their products.

American workers suffer and, in the longer run, the country suffers; but owners and managers greatly benefit since their profits are easier than ever. They pay labor there; they sell the product here. Good business. (And, let us admit that in the short run, as consumers, we all benefit and are all, in a measure, complicit.)

The real level of wages has been stagnant, not improving, for several decades. Virtually all the income (and wealth) growth since 1965 has been within the top 20%. In fact, per Kristof, “from 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.”

Timothy Noah has presented a wonderfully comprehensive review of inequality data in Slate. (Don’t miss the excellent set of slides accompanying the first article!)

But wait. This process has been going on since Reagan, yet our consumption has continued to grow in the face of stagnation in income for two-thirds of the population. Was Henry Ford wrong? Is “Fordism” contradicted?

No. There was a huge boost in family income and consumption as more women joined the work force. But that’s a one-time thing. After that, we’ve been living on borrowed time. Literally borrowed: the development of credit cards put deficit finance at the disposal of us all. And easy mortgages and home equity loans fueled a housing price bubble, and gave us more to spend with. It seemed too good to be true. It was.

So these bullets are now fired; the gun is pretty well empty.

Everyone agrees that recovery from the Great Recession depends on returning to (if possible, surpassing) the consumption rates of the 1980s and 1990s. But where is that supposed to come from?

We still find our Captains of Industry crowing (and adding to their personal fortunes) every time they can further “liquidate” their labor forces. (Maybe they should read My Life and Work!)

We keep our minimum wage set to absurdly low rates, far too low to support a family’s consumption.

I spend a lot of time in Denmark where I have close family, and find that our U.S. median wage falls about where their lowest new-worker entry wages are set. Our conservative economists would tell us that such high wages must produce high unemployment and economic stagnation. Sorry: not so. Denmark is weathering the Great Recession better than we are. And their unemployment is put at under 5%!

The U.S., meanwhile, tolerates an unemployment rate of almost 10%. But surveys put under-employment at 20%.

Finally, thanks to decades of hard work by corporate forces and their political allies trade union membership within the private sector labor force is under 8%. We are back to 1901 levels. (We always knew the right is out to abolish the 20th Century!)

America’s economic future clearly is at a tipping point. Our economy is not going to expand again unless we remember Henry Ford’s lesson: the prosperity of the country depends not on the how well the few at the top are doing, but how well most of the people are doing. The “scale of their living... determines the prosperity of the country.”

For those of us on the left, it’s a matter of fairness, of equality, of equal rights, of humanity. The right doesn’t see that. OK. But they had better see that it’s a matter of preserving the economic vitality and shared prosperity that we once were famous for.

Here are three ideas that could get our country moving again. First, a national minimum wage of at least $12 (indexed for inflation!). Second, let’s reverse the tax and other incentives that have encouraged our industrialists to export our productive capacity. Let’s bring good jobs home.

Third, we must push back hard on the levels of inequality that give even conservatives pause. We must restore tax progressivity in general and, in particular, distinguish more intelligently between the large numbers who are wealthy and the small numbers who make super incomes (the ones most of us call “obscene”).

We are fortunate: the U.S., among developed countries, is not at all an over-taxed country. Relatively modest tax increases can rebalance government revenues and expenditures, while beginning a return to a more “American” balance between economic equality and inequality.

If these obvious and common sense ideas sound “radical” -- well, it shows how much we have lost as a nation in recent decades, and how successful the extreme right has been.

But -- by Ford! -- there is time, in this year 102 A.F., time to make the American dream real again!

[Dr. Paul Beckett lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He can be reached at beckettpa@gmail.com.]

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