The
June 5th recall election is one of the most important
electoral moments I can remember. This is not due to its
potential impact on the Presidential elections. The impact,
one way or another, will be difficult to determine. The
significance of the recall election is found in the willingness
of thousands of Wisconsin-ites to fight back against the
odds.
Recall
elections are difficult to win. There are many people
who simply do not believe in them. Even if they hate the
incumbent they believe that the incumbent should finish
their term. This is a major challenge. The second factor,
very specific to Wisconsin, is the amazing amount of money
that conservative, pro-Governor Walker forces from all
over the country are putting into the election. It dwarfs
anything that the anti-Walker forces can mount.
Progressive
forces have to accept that there will be a fundamental
resource imbalance between us and the other side. Actually,
that is normally the way that it is when you are fighting
a ruling elite. They hold most of the financial cards.
As a result, many people are cowed into silence and fatalism,
e.g., ��there is no point in fighting city hall��
Something
different took place in Wisconsin
and that is what is amazing. In the aftermath - and inspired
by - the courage displayed in the opening rounds of the
Arab democratic uprisings, thousands of Wisconsin-ites
took the streets in an active protest against the draconian,
anti-worker policies of the infamous Governor Scott Walker.
They did not have to do that. They could have had one
big demonstration; expressed their outrage; and then gone
home in despair. Instead, they built a resistance movement,
one that influenced people around the country including
in Ohio, and ultimately the Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Together movement.
The
recall movement was the logical next step after the initial
protests failed to stop the Governor. There are many people
who called for a �general strike� [stopping all work in
a given geographic location] in order to resist the Governor.
While that was not a bad idea at all, to do a general
strike you have to engage in a lot of preparatory work.
One does not simply call a general strike. You see, if
you make that call and no one shows up you cannot say
��oops�sorry�let�s try that one more time�� No, it is
more like showing your cards and being trumped by the
other side.
The
US union movement has not
engaged in a real general strike since the Oakland General
Strike of 1946, after which general strikes were made
illegal by the Taft-Hartley Act. As a result, we have
a movement that is, to say the least, out of practice.
As repression against workers gets worse, we will need
to get back in practice but there is no point to counter-posing
a general strike to a recall movement. The recall movement
in Wisconsin
has become a mass affair and progressive forces have been
faced with the real challenge of organizing differently
if they hope to win.
I
do not want to predict the outcome of June 5th. What is
important is that the fight is taking place and that representatives
of the �99%� are resisting injustice. There are moments
when you simply have to stand against evil even if it
not under the most ideal circumstances. As my favorite
starship captain said in Star Trek: First Contact,
��We�ve made too many compromises already, too many
retreats�The line must be drawn here! This far, no farther.�
Victory
on June 5th against Governor Walker and the 1%!
[Contributions
can be made to support this fight by contacting the Wisconsin
AFL-CIO through: http://www.standwisconsin.org/]
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with
the Institute for
Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfricaForum and co-author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path
toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines
the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.
