For the first time since we have been operating, I felt like the discussions on the blog were getting away from my editorial control. I take this to be a good sign. While there were interesting posts on the economy and economic theory, and on media and media theory, as well as on revolutionary hopes in Egypt, the focus of our discussion this week was on the issues surrounding the events in Madison, Wisconsin, moving in interesting and somewhat unexpected directions.
Anna Paretskaya opened our deliberations, with her “Cairo on the Isthmus.” She presented a bird’s eye view, including some telling photos. I actually found some of the details of her post more interesting than the elements that stimulated heated discussion. Particularly fascinating was how she understood the beginning of the movement as she reported in the opening of her piece:
“What started as a stunt by a group of University of Wisconsin-Madison students to deliver a few hundred “Valentine’s Day” cards from students, staff, and faculty to Governor Scott Walker asking him not to slash the university budget has now become national news: close to 100,000 Wisconsinites have come to the State Capitol in Madison over the past four days to protest the so-called “budget repair” bill…”
This made clear to me Madison, Wisconsin’s connection to Cairo, and Cairo’s connection to the movement I observed around the old bloc, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and to the Obama campaign and the Tea Party movement. People meet with each other, speak to each other, develop a capacity to act together, create a power that hitherto did not exist. They may or may not reach their political goal, but they change the political landscape as they act. This is what I see as being the most significant consequence of “the politics of small things.” Not only has there been regime change in Egypt and Tunisia, but the Arab world will never be the same after the wave of protests we have observed. And the Republicans may or may not succeed in their battle against public employee unions and the union movement in general, but the resistance to these changes that have appeared in Wisconsin and beyond, suggests to me that the Tea Party may have met its match.
The debate has changed, and the changed debate has appeared at DC. Michael Corey was quite critical of Paretskaya’s post. What she takes for granted, he questions. He wonders whether she is too close to the protestors to present an accurate description of the events and issues involved. She is on the side of the protestors. He sees the merits in both sides, clearly suggesting that she overlooks the necessity for State fiscal constraint, the democratic legitimacy of Governor Walker’s actions, and the illegitimacy of the Wisconsin Democrats withdrawing from legislative deliberations. He also questions the very idea of unions in the public sector. In a balanced fashion, Michael Corey engaged the fundamental issues of the debate, subtly, but clearly, taking a position. This then opened the DC deliberations.
Iris and Chad Alan Goldberg objected strongly. Iris expressed the strong conviction that Governor Walker was following Rahm Emanuel’s advice and wasn’t letting a crisis go to waste, using the need for fiscal discipline to promote a right wing agenda. Chad Goldberg, a sociologist and union official in Madison, agreed and added a great deal of specific Wisconsin details. I decided to publish his reply to Michael Corey’s comment as an independent post because of its length and detail. Its tendentious quality made me uncertain, but we have had a serious debate about what is at stake in the standoff in Wisconsin, so I think I made the right decision.
Only Michael Corey expressed sympathy for Walker’s position. But more than partisan debate occurred. Scott in the exchanges about Goldberg’s post maintained: “Obviously, the proposed cuts don’t balance the budget. Furthermore, the state worker’s have actually agreed to the cuts. Therefore, by examining what facts I could gather, I can’t conclude that the main issue is really balancing the budget. As far as that’s concerned, the numbers just don’t add up. It appears that the issue really being contested is collective bargaining rights for workers.”
In my analysis of a post by Jonah Goldberg at the National Review, I came to the same conclusion. And this was highlighted by Iris as she brought into our discussion the hoax telephone conversation between “David Koch” and Governor Walker, in which the Governor makes clear his broader anti-union ideological commitments, closing remarkably by comparing himself to Ronald Reagan, invoking a highly creative notion that the fall of Communism began with Reagan’s firing of the air traffic controllers in 1981. He concedes that his stand may not have as broad international significance, but its importance on the ideological battle lines is comparable to his mind.
I believe with the DC consensus that the conflict in Madison is about fundamental positions and not just about how to divide the spoils and the pain in our present economic circumstance. I agree with Chad Goldberg’s conclusion “maybe we all need to ask ourselves a fundamental question: Which side are you on?” But I need to add, that I think that this is a political question and not one where truth is on one side or the other, which Chad sometimes seems to suggest.
And exactly what the fundamental question is, as Michael indicated in his reply to me, is open to question.
For Michael, the key issue is about public versus private unions, citing FDR’s warning against the establishment of public unions to substantiate his claim. This point has been made by numerous pundits on the right, but I feel it is highly unlikely that this would have been Roosevelt’s position given the present state of labor relations.
I think, rather, the issue is one that was dear to Roosevelt’s heart, the right of workers to collectively bargain. Unions in the private and public sectors are in the same boat struggling against a long term trend of government policies and corporate strategies that undermine labor organization. I think the conflict is about workers’ rights to collectively bargain versus those who are committed to more libertarian principles.
I also know that each of these sides have very concrete economic consequences, as Scott and Eric Friedman highlight in response to my post. Michael knows that deficits and high taxes negatively affect economic growth. We have a political disagreement, which can be worked on through democratic debate – a debate that is being facilitated by the events in Wisconsin.
A note on next week: in upcoming posts Daniel Dayan will reflect on the odd fact that until very recently the Libya of Colonel Gaddafi played a prominent role within the two highest United Nations human rights organizations, and Benoit Challand, a scholar intensively studying the Middle East, will offer a comparative reading of the upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya, and also about the little covered protests in the Palestinian territories, as we continue our consideration of the great changes of 2011 in the Arab world, following up on Hazem Kandli’s post this week.
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