Here’s how labor activists plan to celebrate Super Bowl week

January 26, 2018 by

Today marks the kickoff of Super Bowl events in the Twin Cities, and organizers plan a 10-day run of concerts, parties, conventions and other events leading up to the big game Feb. 4 at U.S. Bank Stadium.

What you won’t find listed on the Super Bowl Host Committee’s online calendar are several opportunities to support working people organizing for dignity, respect on the job and quality public services.

“Minnesota’s Super Bowl shouldn’t just be about entertaining the rich and the powerful,” said bakery worker Travis Reinhart, whose union-busting employer will host a star-studded celebrity fundraiser in St. Paul next Saturday.

Already, the St. Paul Federation of Teachers is promoting a social media campaign targeting two of the Super Bowl committee’s biggest corporate sponsors: Ecolab and U.S. Bank. Teachers are in a difficult round of contract negotiations with the St. Paul school district, which is facing a multi-million dollar budget shortfall.

“Money has been stolen from our schools over the last 20 years … and that money has been going into tax breaks for corporations,” SPFT President Nick Faber said.

Kirinda Anderson, a parent active in union-led efforts to address the district’s racial disparities, called on Ecolab and U.S. bank to “step up and be better partners with the schools and the students … and to support public education in the same way they’ve supported this game.”

Here’s a rundown of events you won’t find on the Super Bowl committee’s website:

• The Pre-Game: Our lives over their game. Monday, Jan. 29, 6 to 8:30 p.m. Hamm Plaza, St. Paul.

Unions and worker groups are teaming up with racial-justice, climate-defense and immigrant-rights organizations to plan a march and rally outside the NFL’s Super Bowl Opening Night party in St. Paul.

Activists like Antonia Sanchez, a member of the Twin Cities low-wage worker center CTUL, are calling on the corporations sponsoring Super Bowl week to do more in their community than hold a round-the-clock party for ultra-rich.

“The millionaires are just going to get richer, and we’re not going to get anything out of it,” Sanchez said at a press conference announcing the groups’ Super Bowl plans. “These corporations are grinding us all down.

“We want to demand that these corporations … support raising the minimum wage in St. Paul to $15 an hour. We want them to support ending wage theft in Minneapolis and St. Paul.”

• Super Bowl Protest: Tackle Corporate Greed! Friday, Feb. 2, 4:30 p.m. Home Depot, 1520 New Brighton Blvd, Minneapolis.

Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank owns the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons, making Super Bowl week the perfect time for janitors who clean Home Depot stores in the Twin Cities to renew their demand that the retailer adopt a responsible contractor policy.

CTUL, which is organizing janitors who clean Home Depot, has negotiated policies with Best Buy, Target and other retailers, paving the way for 500 retail cleaning workers to form a union last year.

Most people working in retail cleaning are immigrants, and CTUL is teaming up with immigrant-rights group Navigate MN to demand Home Depot use its lobbying clout to support so-called Dreamers’ protected status, pass a clean immigration reform bill and end immigration raids dividing families across the country.

• Super Bowl Breakfast: Support $15 and Workers’ Rights! Saturday, Feb. 3, 7 a.m. Hilton Minneapolis, 1001 Marquette Ave.

As the Super Bowl Committee and its corporate sponsors hold a breakfast inside the hotel to honor the NFL’s “positive legacy” of community service, worker groups will gather outside for a “people’s breakfast to honor the worker leaders and community members in Minneapolis and St. Paul who fight for living wages rights on the job for themselves, their families and their communities.”

The event will call attention to the need to fund enforcement of Minneapolis’ new minimum-wage ordinance, and lift up the campaign for a $15 minimum wage – without a tip penalty – in St. Paul.

• A Taste of Justice. Saturday, Feb. 3, 5 p.m. St. Paul Labor Center, 353 W. 7th St.

Workers at Franklin Street Bakery have been trying to organize a union for over two years, looking to improve wages and working conditions in the Minneapolis facility. Their campaign has drawn a stifling – and sometimes illegal – response from management, which recently sent a labor lawyer to intimidate one worker in his own home, according to a report from Bakery Workers Local 22.

Bakery owner Wayne Kostroski holds a hunger-relief event – “Taste of the NFL” – with celebrity chefs, NFL players and wealthy executives each year during Super Bowl week. Last year, bakery workers countered with a fundraiser of their own, and this year they plan to do it again, only blocks away.

“While helping food shelves is a good thing, Wayne pays many workers as little as $11 an hour, forcing us to use food shelves,” Reinhart said. “I know I’ve been there. The Taste of the NFL’s slogan is ‘kick hunger.’ We have a simple answer for Wayne: Kicking hunger starts at home.”

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Minnesota union members marched against Trump in droves. Here’s why

January 27, 2017 by
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D Rojas, a member of Carpenters Local 322, attended the Women’s March in Minnesota a day after Donald Trump’s inauguration with several other Minnesota union tradeswomen.

 

Dressed in hard hats and union colors, union members were among the estimated 100,000 people who joined the Women’s March in Minnesota one day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, capping three days of protests – locally and nationally – that put the new administration on notice of popular opposition to his policy objectives and governing approach.

Stretched from the cathedral to the Capitol in St. Paul, the historic crowd represented, for union members who participated, a stirring display of the solidarity it will take to fend off attacks on working people’s rights, women’s rights, immigrant families and others feeling vulnerable as the former reality-TV boss – with a track record of not paying his employees and joking about sexual assault – assumes the highest office in the land.

“We’re in the majority,” Sprinklerfitters Local 417 member Kimberly Brinkman said from the steps of the Capitol, overlooking a sea of anti-Trump demonstrators. “We want common decency to prevail.”

Home Depot janitors staged a strike on Trump’s first day in office.

Home Depot janitors staged a strike on Trump’s first day in office.

Trump’s inauguration inspired a flurry of events locally planned by unions and progressive groups, who offered hopeful counterprogramming to offset the president’s message of “American carnage.” Union teachers in St. Paul rallied around the district’s immigrant students. Janitors from 12 area Home Depot stores went on strike. And U of M students and workers led a massive march into downtown Minneapolis.

Working people who joined the protests spoke of a need to find strength in numbers at the dawn of uncertain times.

“There’s an immediate need to be together with people, to link arms and to have it be about love and inclusiveness,” Mona Meyer, president of the Communications Workers of America’s statewide council, said. “Right now all of that feels like it’s being threatened.”

For Samantha Kaneaukua, a member of Carpenters Local 322, the threat posed by Trump and congressional Republicans feels uniquely personal. “As a union carpenter, as a person of color and as a lesbian, it’s pretty much everything I stand for, everything I am, that he is opposed to,” she said. “There’s no reason not to be here fighting.”

Why don’t working people get over it and give Trump a chance? After all, he did win fair and square (albeit with an assist from some Russian friends).

“I respect the office,” Meyer said. “I don’t respect the policies and ideas of division and hatred. I don’t like personal attacks on union leaders, civil rights leaders – all of this childish, outlandish behavior. It isn’t becoming of a president.”

If there were any doubts about Trump’s anti-labor intentions, other union members said, his cabinet picks removed them.

Trump’s nominee for Education secretary, Betsy DeVos, has donated millions to political campaigns aimed at defunding public schools. His nominee for Labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, is a fast-food executive who opposes raising the minimum wage.

“This is going to be an all-out assault on working families,” St. Paul Federation of Teachers Vice President Nick Faber said.

Eliot Seide, executive director of AFSCME Council 5, called it a “cruel” bait and switch: “A campaign that promised to lift up working people is transitioning into an administration designed to tear all of us down.”

Marching against Trump’s agenda were (L to R) Debra DeBruzzi, Operating Engineers 49; Casey Hudek and Karlan Bean, Teamsters 120; Megan Bean, Christina Nelson and Kiya Caturia of Gustavus Adolphus College; and Rod Olson of Local 120.

Marching against Trump’s agenda were (L to R) Debra DeBruzzi, Operating Engineers 49; Casey Hudek and Karlan Bean, Teamsters 120; Megan Bean, Christina Nelson and Kiya Caturia of Gustavus Adolphus College; and Rod Olson of Local 120.

It’s true that many working people supported Trump, and he did better among union members than recent Republican presidential nominees. Karlan Bean, who drove Teamsters Local 120’s semi-truck to the Jan. 21 march, said he knows “too many union members” who backed Trump.

“I’m hopeful that it doesn’t turn out as bad as in the back of my head I fear it will, especially for unions,” Bean added.

“We already know he’s been sued so many times for not paying his labor, and we know he supports Right to Work,” Brinkman said. “A lot of union guys were talking about Trump. It’s going to be one eye-opener for them to see what he does to working families.”

Maybe it was the intoxicating hopefulness of a mass march. Or maybe living in hope is an easier choice than wallowing in despair. But many union members insisted that, by standing together and remaining vigilant, they could fight Trump’s agenda and hold onto their rights.

“The union is kind of reflective of how we need to be,” Carpenters Local 322 apprentice Michelle Rousseau said. “If we stand together and stay united, we’ll be OK.”

Faber said his union would increase its efforts to connect “with other groups and other causes in town” that share teachers’ values. Hager and Brinkman said women in the Trades plan to push locally and nationally to increase hiring goals within the industry for women. Meyer said CWA members have been “thinking not just defensively, but how to move forward based on what workers need, what people need, what families, women, immigrants and LGBT people need.”

Union tradeswomen stood together at the Women’s March, saying they will push for increased hiring goals to bring women into the industry both locally and nationally.

Union tradeswomen stood together at the Women’s March, saying they will push for increased hiring goals to bring women into the industry both locally and nationally.

Kaneaukua, meanwhile, plans to fight for her rights one person at a time by engaging people with different perspectives than her own. And opportunities abound on the job site.

“We need to speak up against discrimination in all of its forms,” she said. “We don’t know each other well enough. I feel like being able to have those conversations and talk about things that maybe my co-workers aren’t used to, that makes a big difference.

“That’s going to be my day-to-day approach.”

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Dreading Trump? Turn your anger into action at four Twin Cities inauguration protests

January 13, 2017 by

occupybanks-cwaWe’re a week away from seeing former reality-TV boss Donald Trump – a megalomaniac with a track record of not paying his employees, fanning the flames of bigotry and making “locker-room talk” about sexual assault – assume the highest office in the land.

Whether the impending Trump presidency scares the hell out of you or makes your blood boil, one thing is certain. You are not alone.

Trump’s approval ratings are historically low for an incoming president, and his inauguration will spark protests, marches and collective action from coast to coast.

In the Twin Cities, labor unions have endorsed several planned events, including a show of solidarity with students at an all-immigrant school in St. Paul and a one-day strike by Minneapolis janitors who work at Home Depot. (The retailer’s founder is a major Trump donor.)

Here’s a rundown of inauguration events on our radar. Our comments section is a great place to share anything else Trump-related that’s in the works locally.

Thursday, Jan. 19

• Members of St. Paul Federation of Teachers Local 28 will lead a rally outside LEAP High School, which serves students new to the U.S. Parents, students and community members will join teachers in calling for public schools to serve as “sanctuaries” that protect students from bullying, racism and deportation.

The “Rally to Protect Our Students and Our Public Schools” will start at 3:45 pm. outside LEAP High School, 631 Albert St. N.

Friday, Jan. 20

• In the early-morning hours of Inauguration Day, janitors who clean Home Depot stores in the Twin Cities will go on strike, protesting not only the poverty wages paid by their cleaning-contractor employer, but Trump’s anti-worker agenda as well.

Striking workers are members of the Twin Cities worker center CTUL. Join them on the picket line beginning at 5:30 a.m. at the Quarry store, 1520 New Brighton Blvd., Minneapolis.

• Friday afternoon, organizers plan to march in opposition to Trump’s “racisit agenda,” from the intersection of Lake Street and Nicollet Avenue to Minneapolis City Hall. The “Resist from Day 1” march will begin at 2 p.m., with plans to reach City Hall by 5 p.m.

Several unions and labor organizations have endorsed the action, including AFSCME Council 5, SEIU Local 26 and the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation.

Saturday, Jan. 21

• In solidarity with the Women’s March on Washington happening the same day, activists will stage the “Women’s March Minnesota” in St. Paul, culminating with a rally on the Capitol grounds. The Minnesota Association of Professional Employees and IATSE Local 13 are co-sponsors of the march, set to launch at 11 a.m. from St. Paul College.

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Minnesota AFL-CIO calls on Bloomington to drop charges against MOA protesters

March 10, 2015 by

mnaflcioMinnesota’s largest labor federation today added its voice to the chorus of community, faith and progressive groups calling on Bloomington City Attorney Sandra Johnson to drop criminal charges against 11 Black Lives Matter members arrested at the Mall of America in December.

The Minnesota AFL-CIO, which represents more than 1,000 local unions with 300,000 members statewide, made the stance official after members of its executive board voted to pass a resolution against prosecution.

Two of the defendants, Todd Dahlstrom and Kandace Montgomery, are members of the Communications Workers of America, an AFL-CIO affiliate. Dahlstrom is organizing director at the Minnesota AFL-CIO, and Montgomery is an organizer for the progressive group TakeAction Minnesota.

Both are members of the Minnesota Newspaper and Communications Guild, TNG-CWA Local 37002.

Meanwhile, in Hennepin County Court this morning, the 11 defendants pleaded not guilty to unlawful assembly, trespassing and other crimes that, Bloomington authorities allege, occurred during a peaceful demonstration against police brutality and racism that drew thousands to the mall Dec. 20.

As the activists appeared inside the courtroom, a vigil and rally outside drew supporters from the labor movement:

https://twitter.com/danmcgrath1/status/575300569331433472

Although Johnson, the city attorney responsible for prosecuting the MOA protesters, is an appointed official, Bloomington Mayor Gene Winstead and several members of the City Council, including Cynthia Bemis Abrams, Tim Busse and Dwayne Lowman, have sought and received labor endorsement in their most recent campaigns, according to the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation website.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Shar Knutson released the following statement regarding the executive board’s resolution:

“Peaceful protest is a cornerstone of social change in our democracy. From the Labor movement, to the Women’s movement, and the Civil Rights movement; major change in this country has always included peaceful demonstrations.

The #BlackLivesMatter movement is pointing out the structural racial inequalities that persist in our society. Much like other social movements, #BlackLivesMatter is engaging in non-violent protest to help point out these inequalities.

By prosecuting protest organizers, local authorities are sending a message that a minor inconvenience trumps the right to peacefully assemble. Minnesota’s Labor movement is urging Sandra Johnson to correct this wrong by choosing not to prosecute these peaceful activists.”

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CWA rallies support for members charged in Black Lives Matter protest at MOA

February 6, 2015 by

MN Guild new logo 3-4-13The Communications Workers of America is rallying support for two members of the union who face criminal charges resulting from their participation in the massive protest against police brutality and racism at Mall of America in December.

Todd Dahlstrom and Kandace Montgomery, members of the Minnesota Newspaper and Communications Guild, TNG-CWA Local 37002, are among 10 activists charged with unlawful assembly, trespassing and other crimes that, Bloomington authorities allege, occurred during the peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstration that drew thousands to the mall Dec. 20.

Guild President Janet Moore and CWA State Council President Mona Meyer have made appeals to union members in recent weeks, seeking support for a defense fund established for the accused activists, who face thousands in legal fees and potential fines. [Click here to contribute.]

“It’s another twist on the corporate dominance in our country,” Meyer said in an e-mail appeal. “The Supreme Court in Citizens United gave corporations the right to steamroll our democracy by lifting all limits on spending corporate profits to silent our voices in the name of corporate free speech. Now those same profits are being used in the court system against our members to silence them for having actually exercised free speech.”

Dahlstrom is organizing director of the state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO. Montgomery is an organizer with the progressive advocacy group TakeAction Minnesota.

TakeAction workers voted to form the Guild’s newest unit last fall.

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Strike supporters say fast food’s poverty wages bad for workers, communities

December 5, 2013 by
Demonstrators in Minneapolis show their support for striking fast-food workers across the U.S.

Demonstrators in Minneapolis show their support for striking fast-food workers across the U.S.

As fast-food workers in an estimated 100 U.S. cities walked off the job today to protest the industry’s poverty-level wages, union members and faith leaders in Minnesota showed their solidarity – and their support for raising the state’s minimum wage – outside a block of fast-food restaurants in Northeast Minneapolis.

The demonstration took place over the lunch hour outside McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell restaurants on Stinson Boulevard. Solidarity demonstrations also took place today in St. Paul and Cambridge, 45 miles north of the Twin Cities.

Isaiah Campbell (L) and Anytrea Baker talk about the effects of poverty wages on workers, families and communities.

Isaiah Campbell (L) and Anytrea Baker talk about the effects of poverty wages on workers, families and communities.

Isaiah Campbell, a member of Local 284 of the Service Employees International Union, joined the Minneapolis demonstration, he said, because as a former fast-food worker, he knows “what it’s like to have to work 80 hours per week just to pay my bills.”

“McDonald’s makes billions in profits each year,” Campbell said. “Their employees have a significant hand in making that happen. Instead of helping them sign up for government subsidies, they should pay them a decent wage.”

The median wage among front-line workers in the fast-food industry is $8.69, according to a study released in October by researchers from two universities. The median number of hours worked per week is 30, and only 13 percent of front-line workers receive health benefits through their employers.

The report, “Fast Food, Poverty Wages,” also debunked common stereotypes of fast-food workers. Most, in fact, are adults for whom “fast-food wages are an essential component of family income.”

Wages that keep workers in poverty “not only hurt the employee, they hurt the community as a whole,” Rev. Grant Stevensen of Spirit of the Truth Church in St. Paul said. He noted that more than half of front-line workers in the industry rely on public assistance to support themselves or members of their families, costing taxpayers $7 billion per year.

“When you ask someone to work for you, you’re asking for a sacred thing. You are asking for their life,” Stevensen said. “When you ask someone for their life, they should be able to live.”

Fast-food strikers’ demands include starting wages of $15 per hour and the freedom to organize for a voice on the job without the threat of retaliation from their employers.

Campbell remembered approaching management at one of his fast-food jobs in an effort to improve working conditions, and the reaction he drew “was kind of harsh.”

“They raised my responsibilities for a couple days, but I didn’t see a wage raise,” he said.

The fast-food strikes come a week after activists in Minnesota staged a week of action calling out poverty-wage employers like Walmart and Target – and calling for an increase in the state’s minimum wage. Activists outside McDonald’s today cited the fast-food strikes as more evidence momentum is on their side.

“I am here to support any and everybody who works for minimum wage,” said Anytrea Baker, a member of SEIU Local 284. “We need to raise it.”

Striking fast-food workers also received a showing of support from 53 members of Congress, including Minnesota DFL Reps. Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison. They signed onto a letter urging McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson to heed the call to end poverty wages in his restaurants.

“Paying fair wages and putting more spending money in the hands of consumers will strengthen our economy and put our nation on the path to greater prosperity for all,” the letter says, urging Thompson to work with striking workers to “find solutions to this moral and economic issue.”

[Click here to tell your legislator you support raising Minnesota’s minimum wage to $9.50 by 2015.]

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Study finds taxpayers subsidize big-box stores at cost of $150 million per year in Minnesota

November 22, 2013 by
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Black Friday protests last year drew more than 200 people to the Midway Walmart in St. Paul.

Retail workers and activists who join the protest outside Walmart in St. Paul on Black Friday will be armed with a scathing new report shedding light on the public cost of poverty-level wages paid by Walmart, Target and other big-box department stores.

“At What Cost,” released Nov. 12 by the union-backed Minnesotans for a Fair Economy, reveals how Minnesota taxpayers, by picking up the cost of basic necessities thousands of retail workers can’t afford, are subsidizing big-box stores’ low wages.

“We estimate that over 20,000 big-box department store workers in Minnesota are enrolled in some form of public assistance program, either for themselves or family members, at a cost of over $150 million a year to taxpayers,” the report says.

[Click here to RSVP for Black Friday protests in the Twin Cities on Facebook!]

Not surprisingly, the majority of retail workers accessing safety-net programs for themselves or their families come from Walmart and Target. The report estimates 5,850 Target workers in Minnesota access public assistance at an annual cost to taxpayers of $44.7 million, while 5,311 Walmart employees statewide seek about $40.6 million in public assistance annually.

That these two retailers are the worst offenders is hardly surprising, considering the wages paid in their stores.

The average hourly wage of a Walmart sales associate, according to the report, is $8.81, while the average pay for Target’s frontline staff ranges from $8.10 per hour for cashiers to $8.34 per hour for “team members” on the sales floor.

A full-time worker earning those wages wouldn’t sniff the federal poverty line, which explains why so many turn to food stamps and other safety-net programs to support themselves and their families. What’s worse, over half of retail workers are “involuntarily part-time,” making it even harder to make ends meet without public assistance.

The public cost of health care for big-box store workers, meanwhile, is particularly taxing. Roughly half of Walmart associates and a third of Target “team members” are enrolled in the companies’ health insurance plans. Workers “say that the health plans are too expensive or inaccessible,” according to the report.

The report provides the first local look at findings introduced by Democrats on the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce in May.

Analyzing Medicaid data, the committee report found that a single 300-employee Walmart Supercenter in Wisconsin cost taxpayers between $900,000 and $1.75 million per year – or roughly $5,815 per employee.

At the conclusion of “At What Cost,” the authors offer three suggestions for reducing the strain on public assistance created by big-box retailers, particularly Target and Walmart.

Big-box retailers should pay a living wage of $14.41 per hour, state lawmakers in Minnesota should raise the minimum wage to $9.50 per hour and, the report says, retailers should “stop interfering with their employees’ rights to speak out for better jobs.”

“Big-box retail employers could listen to their employees’ calls for change, rather than retaliate against them for speaking out.”

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On Black Friday, hundreds protest outside Walmart in St. Paul

November 23, 2012 by

Protesters line the streets outside Walmart on University Avenue in St. Paul.

Big-box retailers like Walmart pushed their Black Friday sales to new extremes this year, but retail workers and their supporters are pushing back.

More than 200 protesters lined the sidewalk outside Walmart’s University Avenue location in St. Paul today. They pledged to stand with Walmart associates like Gabriel Teneyuque, who protested the company’s low wages and unfair working conditions by walking off the job on Black Friday.

Teneyuque, who works at the Walmart in Apple Valley, is among a growing number of courageous associates nationwide who are speaking out despite Walmart’s record of retaliating against workers who try to organize in the workplace.

“When Walmart associates speak out, Walmart retaliates,” Teneyuque told supporters. “I’m here today to say I will not be silenced.”

Teneyuque and other striking associates have formed a grassroots campaign, OUR Walmart, to pressure the company into raising its wages, providing greater access to health care benefits and ending its campaign of intimidation and retaliation against workers who look to organize.

Don Seaquist, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1189, said his union is committed to fighting for any Walmart associate who stands up for better working conditions.

If turnout at the Black Friday protest is any indication, the community is committed to that fight as well. The St. Paul Walmart has been a frequent target of UFCW protests over the last decade. None drew as large a crowd as the Black Friday event, which brought together union activists, families and members of the faith community.

Gabriel Teneyuque walked off his job at Walmart on Black Friday.

“Workers deserve dignity, and our faith traditions call us to speak out for justice at work and rights of workers to organize,” said Doug Mork, a pastor at Cross of Glory Lutheran Church in Brooklyn Center, who said the Twin Cities faith community would stand behind striking Walmart associates. “We’re with you.”

Teneyuque said associates will need all the community support they can get.

“Our fight doesn’t end today,” he said. “This is just the beginning.”

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Author sees reason for hope in Wisconsin recall campaign

May 8, 2012 by

John Nichols’ book “Uprising” provides an insider account of the union protests that swept across Wisconsin last year.

Progressive writer John Nichols energized and entertained during a May 2 lecture at the Carpenters Union Hall in St. Paul, providing a first-hand, insider’s account of union protests that swept across Wisconsin last year, sparking a renewed interest in grassroots democracy and progressive activism nationwide.

Nichols, a Wisconsin-based writer for The Nation magazine and author of the new book “Uprising,” appeared in St. Paul as part of The Friends of the St. Paul Public Library’s annual labor-history series, “Untold Stories.”

(That series continues tonight at 7 p.m. with “Czechs & Paychecks: Working-class History of West 7th,” a panel discussion at the CSPS Hall, 383 Michigan Street; and tomorrow with a post-show discussion following the Guthrie Theater’s presentation of “Are You Now or Have You Ever Been,” a play about Langston Hughes’ appearance at the McCarthy hearings. Click here for more information.)

Nichols brought a roomful of about 30 people back to the winter of 2011, when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Republican majorities in the State Legislature outraged union members across the state with plans to strip teachers, nurses and other public employees of most of their collective-bargaining rights.

The governor’s plan was mean to address a budget “crisis” the Republicans created by handing out $140 million in tax breaks to corporations after sweeping into power during the 2010 elections. The so-called “budget-repair bill” eliminated public employees’ ability to deduct dues out of their paychecks, forced them to hold elections every year to “reconstitute” their unions and stripped them of their ability to negotiate for health insurance and pension benefits.

According to Nichols, Democratic lawmakers and many union leaders responded by throwing up their hands and warning union members to brace themselves for bad news.

But one local union of graduate-level teaching assistants from the University of Wisconsin decided to fight back. The union’s decision to protest inside the State Capitol, crowding the hallway outside Walker’s office, was a “light-bulb moment” for angry public employees across the state, Nichols said.

“Suddenly, everybody watching the TV news saw people protesting,” Nichols said. “And if you have an ongoing protest, it’s something people can join.”

And join they did. Emboldened by the demonstrators, Democratic state senators fled the state, preventing a vote on the union bill and forcing Walker and Republican lawmakers to face the public backlash and outrage it had created. Students and workers occupied the Capitol for 18 consecutive days, “assembling and petitioning for the redress of grievances, as they had been taught to do in school,” Nichols said.

“People weren’t waiting for politicians to solve their problems. They were demanding their basic rights, demanding their basic freedoms. That’s what Wisconsinites did.”

Although Walker’s attacks on public workers and their unions eventually passed into law, protests outside the Capitol drew hundreds of thousands of people, sowing the seeds of grassroots democracy that have now grown into a political effort to recall Walker, his lieutenant governor and four of his closest allies in the Legislature.

More than 1 million Wisconsinites signed onto the Walker recall, the highest percentage of a state’s population ever to petition for removal of a leader. The state is holding a primary election today to determine Walker’s opponent in the June 5 recall election.

Nichols said he remains hopeful the recall will succeed, pointing to Walker’s sliding poll numbers. “We will be told again and again that we’ve been defeated, that we have to accept what we are told, that we can’t win this fight,” he said. Then Nichols offered the advice of Wisconsin’s former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold: “This fight isn’t over until we win it.”

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