After four weeks of unprecedented legislative maneuvers, protesters sleeping inside and outside the Capitol building and thousands of donated pizza slices from around the world, the bill that would limit collective bargaining rights for public employees was signed by the governor March 11, causing protests to gain momentum.
Although Gov. Scott Walker signed the bill behind closed doors, the protests in opposition to the bill continued throughout the weekend. The very next Saturday the Capitol hosted a crowd estimated by the Department of Administration to be around 66,000, although the Madison Police Department tallied the crowd to be between 85,000 to 100,000. No arrests were made.
Greeting the protesters was a parade of farmers driving tractors around the Capitol square. Organized by the Wisconsin Farmers Union and Family Farm Defenders, the Farmer Labor “Tractorcade” featured 30 farmers driving their tractors once around the Capitol before joining the crowds of protesters.
“The number of people who gathered Saturday in Madison showed the dissatisfaction rural residents have with Gov. Walker’s budget proposals,” WFU President Darin Von Ruden said in a statement. “The damage it will do to our schools, health care and rural municipal budgets will be devastating. Farmers will be making the ugly choices of cutting many services or raising their property taxes and many will end up with no health insurance.”
Farmer and union member Tony Schultz addressed the motivation for family farmers to join the rally Saturday. He said rural schools would be decimated by the budget, and they are the centers of small towns and rural communities.
He added up to 11,000 Wisconsin family farmers risk losing their health insurance through BadgerCare.
Tod Pulvermacher, 33, of Bear Valley, drove a tractor towing a manure spreader carrying a sign that read, “Walker’s bill belongs here.”
“Farmers are working-class Americans,” he said as the crowd around him started to cheer. “We work for a living as hard as anybody, and this is about all of us.”
Judy Gump, 45, who teaches English at a Madison high school, also said the fight wasn’t over.
“It was illegal,” she said, talking about the vote on the bill. “This is so not the end. This is what makes people more determined and makes them dig in.”
Another protest took place Saturday, though crowd estimates were significantly lower than the “tractorcade” rallies. More than 1,000 protesters showed up to voice their opposition to Walker’s newly proposed biennium budget and the recently passed bill limiting public employee collective bargaining.
The event took place on the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, and the group Iraq Veterans Against the War took a prominent role in the rallies. Members from IVAW led marches and gave speeches throughout the afternoon criticizing Walker for stating he would consider using the National Guard in response to labor unrest, as per historical precedent.
“However, recent events in Egypt and numerous examples from U.S. history have shown that service members have the power to side with the people and refuse to use violence against their fellow citizens,” IVAW Executive Director Jose Vasquez said in a statement. “Troops activated for duty in Madison, Wisconsin, will have to decide if public sector workers are really the enemy.”
– The Associated Press contributed to this report.
