Earlier this week, Ohio Republican House Representative Steve Chabot had cameras removed from constituents at a town hall meeting. This particular story hit me personally, as I have been fighting this very same battle here in the state of Wisconsin for several months now.
As many of you know, myself and many others have been very involved in the ground game at the Capitol. Today marked the day when the cuts to public employees began. As such, we had a rally at the Capitol, which I was told was supposed to be followed by some sort of strike, although that part never came.
Rarely does it occur that I miss word of a giant rally in town but August 21, 2011, or Sunday, was an exception. I was riding my Segway downtown and all of a sudden stumbled upon a gay pride parade.
It has been a long struggle here in Wisconsin, and it has been on so many fronts. The front in which I have perhaps been most involved has been the First Amendment Rights civil disobedience front.
Alright folks, here is the next attack from the Wisconsin GOP. They’ve attacked our elections. They’ve attacked our schools and our jobs. And now, there is Robin Vos, State Chair of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, for short.
While the nation was fixated on Washington D.C. today, and rightfully so, Wisconsin saw its fair share of GOP induced abuse of working families. At a time when thousands are without work, often times due to no fault of their own, they voted to add a one week waiting period to unemployment. But it goes beyond that,
This week has been quite interesting. It started with Leslie getting attacked by a state employee who was arrested yesterday for charges involving the assault and use of a deadly weapon. That started an entire wave of action involving heart shaped balloons and topped off with the Department of Administration hanging a net on the top of the dome so that if the balloons do hurt the painting (it’s speculation), they will not touch it.
After months of mostly peaceful protests this last month or so has seemed to escalate here in Wisconsin. It started with former Republican State Senator David Zien and his band of thugs coming to the Capitol and starting a fight in which the Tea Partiers draped flags over protesters faces and without being struck, put the Pizza Box Guy, Mike Dickman, in a neckhold and punching him several times in the face.
I was hoping to get this message up sooner, but was in operation on Thursday and am now recovering. Perfect time for a blog post if I shall say so myself. First things first, on Wednesday I went to the…
Anyone who’s been following the work I have been doing has seen the First Amendment of the US Constitution literally trampled on by the GOP in power here in Wisconsin. It started with them saying you cannot hold signs on any floor but the ground floor of the Capitol.
Let’s start with the Walker recall. Last week the Democratic Party of Wisconsin issued a statement that they would prefer to see Scott Walker recalled November of 2012 vs what will probably be March 2012.
In this meeting several issues were raised. The Democrats argued that if they can pass redistricting and several other bills in extraordinary session, they might as well pass some old bills that had bipartisan support and had the sole purpose of creating more jobs. Of course, the GOP said they did not want to work on the jobs creation bills they would rather work on quickly pushing through bills that hurt people rather than help.
So, I got out of the hospital earlier this week and back off to work. On one of my first days at the Capitol I got a rare interview with Assembly Representative Jeff Stone, who introduced AB7 or the Wisconsin Voter Disenfranchisement Act. One aspect of this bill that was not very widely covered was the disenfranchisement of students.
This is about selectively targeting and enforcing policies they never care about on solely me. And it all started just because I want to live a normal life and not let my cardiac condition hinder my life so therefore use a Segway for mobility. An injustice to one is an injustice to all.
The funny thing about Wisconsin Legislative Committee meetings is that the GOP is trying so hard to sneak as much as they can without publicity that you barely ever know what is actually going on. Today was another one of those days and tomorrow I will post video of the committee meeting, but please do share this blog post so that everyone know’s what is going on.
