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Sep 10, 2011
Two recent events reminded us that Wisconsin has moved from the forefront of the nation’s progress to the vanguard of its decline.
The celebration of Women’s Equality Day on Aug. 26 was a bittersweet occasion for Wisconsin. U.S. Rep. Bella Abzug of New York established the observance in 1971 to commemorate the date in 1920 when the nation adopted the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote.
Wisconsin figured prominently in the women’s suffrage movement, becoming the first state to ratify the amendment on June 10, 1919. But shortly after his election, Gov. Scott Walker and his Republican cronies unwound the clock on Wisconsin’s tradition of support for women. They launched an immediate attack on women’s health and reproductive freedom, including passage of a law defunding Planned Parenthood, a primary healthcare provider for thousands of poor women in the state. That move put Wisconsin at the vanguard in the oppression of women – in league with such states as Texas, Kansas and North Carolina.
Now women’s health advocates in Wisconsin are bracing for the introduction of the Orwellian-named “Woman’s Protection Act,” which will become one of the most stringent anti-choice laws in the nation. Among other things, it will force a woman seeking to terminate her pregnancy to watch an ultrasound of her fetus. It will also impose onerous inspections on abortion clinics – inspections so difficult and/or costly to pass that they could effectively shut them down.
Labor Day, celebrated on Sept. 5, was the other event that struck a poignant chord this year. As with women’s rights, Wisconsin figured prominently in the labor movement.
Labor unions in the state date back to 1847. Wisconsin was the first state to enact groundbreaking legislation such as workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance, which served as models for similar protections in other states.
Today, however, Wisconsin stands at the forefront of efforts by corporate robber barons to reverse progress for workers. Realizing the historic position that Wisconsin holds in the labor movement, wealthy industrialists from outside the state packed our Legislature with their henchmen last November and railroaded through a law that set workers’ rights back at least half a century.
As the first state to fall in an orchestrated campaign against the nation’s workers, Wisconsin provided a victory rich in symbolism for the corporate oligarchy that controls Washington. By spending tens of millions of dollars on third-party propaganda demonizing school teachers and other public servants, corporate interests falsely claimed the state was “bankrupt” and turned the working poor and middle class against each other so the oligarchs could seize control of the state’s jobs and resources.
Now wealthy industrialists stand poised to take over government jobs in Wisconsin that once paid middle-class wages and turn them into minimum-wage positions. Of course, they will make a great profit on our needs and then take it out of the state, leaving us with a declining standard of living.
Like the leaders who cut down the last trees on Easter Island and collapsed their civilization, these industrialists will ultimately pay the price when there is no one left to buy their goods and services.
But by then it will be too late for all of us.
