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News Release Archive | Wisconsin | Accuracy.Org

Wisconsin Struggle: Now Come the Tractors

March 10, 2011

The Wisconsin State Journal reports: “‘General Strike!’ Thousands Storm, Reoccupy Wisconsin Capitol in Response to Legislative Votes.”

ROBERT KRAIG
Kraig is executive director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin. He has been at the Capitol in Madison and is closely following developments. He said today: “[Gov. Scott] Walker has been claiming that this is about the budget, but he’s trying to ram this union-busting legislation through by removing the budget portions of it.”
Kraig wrote the piece “Walker’s National Guard comments a thinly veiled threat against workers.”

BEN MANSKI
Manski is executive director of the Liberty Tree Foundation and a spokesperson for the new umbrella group Wisconsin Wave. He is a lifelong Wisconsinite and a public interest attorney. Manski said today: “Some who are claiming that the vote means things are over — like the New York Times today — could not be more out of touch. The resistance to what Walker is doing is broadening.”

JOHN PECK
Peck is with Family Farm Defenders, which has announced that on Saturday: “Farmers from across the dairyland will bring tractors and solidarity to the [Wisconsin] capitol to fight for labor rights and a just state budget. Rural communities will be disproportionately hurt by the cuts to education and BadgerCare, as well as Gov. Walker’s decision to eliminate funding for other sustainable agriculture initiatives such as the Buy Local Buy Wisconsin program.”

KABZUAG VAJ
Vaj is a co-founder and current co-executive director of the group Freedom Inc. She is a long-time advocate for women of color and a Hmong refugee. Vaj and her family have been active community members in Madison for more than 25 years. She said today: “In the past few weeks we have been fighting for more than just workers rights. For Wisconsin’s most vulnerable communities, i.e (communities of color, immigrants, children, and poor people), Walker’s agenda eliminates services and creates laws that will destroy our quality of life in Wisconsin. Overturning current racial profiling laws, mascot laws and creating an Arizona-like [immigration] law in Wisconsin, Walker is indeed waging war on all of us.”

Resource page, which includes a video feed: commondreams.org/wisconsin_rising

Community radio in Madison: http://www.wort-fm.org

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Filed Under: , Tagged With: Wisconsin,

Wisconsin and Egypt: Waves of Protests and Solidarity

February 22, 2011

KAMAL ABBAS, TAMER FATHY
Abbas is general coordinator for the Center for Trade Union and Workers Services in Egypt. Fathy is international relations coordinator for the group, which is an umbrella advocacy organization for independent unions in Egypt. It has been awarded the French Republic’s Human Rights Prize, suffered repeated harassment and attacks by the Mubarak regime and critically joined the protests against Mubarak in early February. Labor mobilization has been a driving force against the Mubarak regime for several years; the April 6 movement gets its name from labor support actions among Egyptian youth. Abbas has recorded a video statement in solidarity with the protesters in Wisconsin.

ROBERT KRAIG
Kraig is executive director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin. He is at the Capitol in Madison and is closely following developments. He recently wrote the piece “Walker’s National Guard comments a thinly veiled threat against workers.”

BEN MANSKI
Manski is executive director of the Liberty Tree Foundation and a spokesperson for the new umbrella group Wisconsin Wave. He is a lifelong Wisconsinite and a public interest attorney. Manski said today: “This is what Wisconsinites face: the loss of our unions, the selling off of our universities, the elimination of our health services, the end of our middle class. No wonder Wisconsinites are rising in a wave of protest.”

KABZUAG VAJ
Vaj is a co-founder and current co-executive director of the group Freedom Inc. She is a long-time advocate for women of color and a Hmong refugee. Vaj and her family have been active community members in Madison for more than 25 years. She said today: “This anti-union bill includes serious threats to Medicaid — it would give broad authority to the Department of Health Services and supersede statutory provisions, which is expected to limit eligibility. On its heels, we expect further cuts to life-saving services, discriminatory voter ID legislation and Arizona-type anti-immigrant proposals.That’s why we are part of a wave of resistance with union workers, low-income families and communities of color across this state.”

STANLEY KUTLER
Kutler just wrote the piece “What Gov. Walker Won’t Tell You,” which states: “There is a kernel of truth in Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s claim of a ‘budget shortfall’ of $137 million. But Walker, a Republican, failed to tell the state that less than two weeks into his term as governor, he, with his swollen Republican majorities in the Wisconsin Legislature, pushed through $117 million in tax breaks for business allies of the GOP. There is your crisis.”
Kutler is the author of The Wars of Watergate and other writings. He taught constitutional and legal history for 35 years at the University of Wisconsin.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Filed Under: , Tagged With: Egypt, labor, protest, unions, Wisconsin,

Wisconsin: “Closest Thing to a General Strike”

February 17, 2011

Reuters is reporting: “Amid increasingly vocal protests, Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature was poised to vote on Thursday on a budget measure that would strip away most collective bargaining rights for public employees.

“Many schools throughout the state closed Thursday — Madison’s for the second day in a row — after the state’s largest teachers’ union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, urged members to come to Madison and join thousands of others protesting around and inside the state capitol.”

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD
Editor of The Progressive magazine, based in Madison, Wisconsin, Rothschild said today: “The people of Wisconsin have risen up against Governor Scott ‘Hosni Walker,’ as some of the signs say. He and his Republican henchmen in the legislature want to destroy public sector workers and in the process they intend to inflict maximum pain on teachers, nurses, child care workers, secretaries. I talked with a secretary at the University of Wisconsin who has worked there for 30 years and is still making less than $40,000. With Walker’s cuts, she’d lose $5,500 a year in salary. We are witnessing in Wisconsin the closest thing to a general strike that this country has seen since the 1930s.”

Rothschild just wrote the piece “Glorious Rallies in Madison, Ground Zero of the Fight Back.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Filed Under: Tagged With: labor, unions, Wisconsin,