The University of Wisconsin Teaching Assistants’ Association held a brief gathering atop Bascom Hill Monday featuring two campus unions and Rev. Jesse Jackson before marching down State Street to the Capitol building where a rally commemorated Martin Luther King Jr.’s death and his fight for workers’ rights.
A group of roughly 50 protesters consisting of undergraduates, graduate students, professors and workers met in front of Bascom Hall to listen to presentations from Jackson, AFSCME Local 171 and 2412 leaders who represent UW cooks, janitors and other workers, the Student Labor Action Coalition and a performance by two First Wave program participants.
Jackson laid out his vision for a better society, which he said would be based on union values, including access to higher education. He said Gov. Scott Walker is playing “wolf in a sheep’s clothing politics” through his controversial budget repair bill which would effectively eliminate collective bargaining.
“Every maid and every cook, everyone who cuts grass at this school should be locked in a plan to see their children graduate from this school,” Jackson said. “That’s what decency looks like, what dignity looks like, what being progressive looks like, that’s what character looks like and we fight for that America.”
Jackson would later address a much larger crowd protesting at the Capitol.
UW sophomore and SLAC member Scott McCollough also addressed the Bascom crowd about issues affecting higher education. He said raising tuition costs would decrease the diversity on campus.
McCollough said “Biddy’s Bucky Beheading,” his preferred title for the New Badger Partnership, would deregulate and allow Chancellor Biddy Martin to privatize more employee positions as evidenced by the private workers employed in the new Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
He also touched on the attitude he said conservatives have been espousing over teacher benefits.
“People would always tell me ‘You want to be a teacher? You’re going to be dirt poor your entire life,” McCollough said. “In the last two months, teachers have become this bourgeousie elite. I don’t know how that happened, but somehow teachers have become the richest of the rich.”
After a performance from First Wave, the group marched down State Street to join other rally-goers already dancing to local disco-groove band VO5 in front of the Capitol building for a workers’ rights protest to commemorate the anniversary of King’s assassination.
Pamela Bosben, a public library director from Cross Plains, Wis., stood on the Capitol steps holding a framed portrait of King that normally hangs in her office.
“King died while in Memphis supporting the sanitation workers’ strike,” Bosben said. “He died fighting for workers’ rights.”
Among those who came to show solidarity were five members of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 10 from San Francisco, Calif. ILWU members were involved in a 1934 strike that saw two men shot by police and led to the unionization of all the West Coast ports in America.
“The union paid for us to come and show support because all workers support one another in this struggle,” ILWU member Sabrina Giles said. “It’s important to show support, especially with Jesse Jackson speaking on this day that Martin Luther King was murdered.”
