Wisconsin subterfuge violates American democratic values

They violated the state’s
open meetings law, breached the right
of Wisconsin residents to rally in their own state capitol building, and
contravened conventional standards of fairness by voting to deny workers their
rights without
assembling a quorum of senators.

Free speech and free access to government protect America’s
democracy. Walker & Crew disregarded First Amendment rights repeatedly.

Just this week, Walker & Crew locked
protesters out of their own capitol building in Madison. They
locked the few protesters already in the building out of the meeting rooms
where senate and house members voted. They
denied access even to progressive Wisconsin Assembly members, one of whom
climbed through a colleague’s window to gain access to his workplace.

In the weeks since Wisconsin’s 14 progressive senators fled
to Illinois to prevent the chamber from achieving the quorum needed to vote on
a measure spending the people’s money, Walker & Crew also shut
down access from the capitol to a web site posted by protesters. And they severely
restricted protesters’ access to the capitol where a sit-in and sleep-in
began in mid-February.

Protesters, who peacefully gathered in Madison in the tens
of thousands, began chanting, “Whose
house is it?” referring to the capitol. “It’s our house,” they responded. 

That’s not the way Walker & Crew saw it. They said
voters gave them control of the people’s house in last fall’s elections. That,
apparently, means to them that they don’t have to listen to the will of the
people anymore. Polls show a large majority – more than 60 percent –
of Wisconsinites oppose stripping workers of collective bargaining rights.

Walker & Crew didn’t listen to the people. And they
repeatedly attempted to shut the people up. The First Amendment was written and
adopted to protect the people from that kind of oppression by political
leaders.

In addition to shutting the people up, Walker & Crew
attempted to shut them out. On Wednesday, without
providing proper notice, the state’s conservative senators conducted a
meeting to consider a newly-written measure to strip workers of their
collective bargaining rights. Notice is required by states’ open meetings laws,
sometimes called sunshine acts. These guarantee citizens access to government
meetings and documents. They’re intended to prevent governments from conducting
the people’s business in secret. These laws also require notice of meetings so
that citizens can exercise their access rights.

Walker & Crew ignored the notice requirements so that
they could ram through their legislation terminating workers’ rights before
citizens could comment on or protest the new measure. The conservatives deliberately
disregarded citizens’ right in a democracy to participate in the political
process that directly affects their lives.

In addition, by clandestinely arranging the vote to be
conducted without a quorum of senators, Walker & Crew asserted that
although state law prohibits spending the people’s money without a quorum, they
feel it is fine to strip citizens of their rights without a quorum. This is the
stuff of oligarchy.

Throughout the first two years of the Obama administration,
conservatives in the U.S. Senate repeatedly
used the filibuster maneuver to prevent votes on legislation that would
otherwise have been approved by a majority. The progressives in Wisconsin essentially
performed a filibuster with their feet – by going to another state to prevent a
vote. What Walker & Co. did this week was exploit a loophole to circumvent
the filibuster-by-foot. They damaged the democratic process in a way the
progressives in the U.S. Senate never even considered when thwarted repeatedly
by filibusters.

Walker & Crew got what they wanted. They commandeered from
workers the right to collectively bargain for a better life. They did it with
nefarious methods that disrespect the Constitution, disrespect democracy and
disrespect workers. They did it in a way that heaps dishonor on them.   

Leo W. Gerard is the international president of the United Steelworkers union.