Keep Calm and Protest On

Joy has a very useful new "word."

Actually, it's a cleverly generalized new utterance of protest.

I think it started as a "don't fence me in" kind of thing. When she encountered a door she wanted to go through, but the plastic safety-knob was foiling her, she'd demand "open" with a loud "P...puh...puh!"

That "p...puh...puh" has now become her generic noise of protest, to be used whenever she isn't getting what she wants, whether the remedy requires "open" or not. Then if we can't get her re-directed, the next step is the explosive acts we're familiar with: swatting, self/others bite attempts, pulling out her own hair though I've got it chopped down to under two inches long now.

I think I spent most of yesterday saying "p...Puh..PUH!" And it got louder in the evening.

I awoke yesterday morning to news of a blog-post by a prominent professor of history at UW-Madison. William Cronon, an even-handed, mild-mannered, non-partisan scholar, had published a magnificent blog-post the other week, detailing his findings on what organizations were involved in the flood of look-alike anti-union, anti-immigrant, anti-Medicaid, pro-big-corporation legislation that's been coming down in Wisconsin and other states. His scholarly March 15 post, Who's Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere? pulled the veil back on the secretive, well-financed national collaboration on the part of the Republican party that is resulting in... that which we've been protesting here.

Two days later, the Republican Party of Wisconsin set out to shut him up.

Wisconsin Republican Party headquarters served the University with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, demanding all of Cronon's university e-mails since Gov. Scott Walker took office, containing any of the words "Republican, Scott Walker, recall, collective bargaining, AFSCME, WEAC, rally, union, Alberta Darling, Randy Hopper, Dan Kapanke, Rob Cowles, Scott Fitzgerald, Sheila Harsdorf, Luther Olsen, Glenn Grothman, Mary Lazich, Jeff Fitzgerald, Marty Beil, or Mary Bell."

First they want to catch him using university e-mail for partisan political purposes, something he's way too smart to have done. But secondly, they want to intimidate Cronon and anyone else who works at the university. And thirdly, it seems clear they want to comb through all those e-mails to find some snippet that (when taken out of context) can be used to discredit and embarrass him.

Cronon's reponse to the absurd demand, Abusing Open Records to Attack Academic Freedom, was level-headed and lengthy.

So after a day stewing about this, we get the evening news. About THE BILL that was rammed through the Wisconsin legislature via dirty tricks. THE BILL that was blocked by a temporary restraining order that had us celebrating a week ago, because now it was going to have to work its way through the courts instead of being published into law on March 25 by the WI Secretary of State.

Guess what, friends. They don't give a fig for the rule of law.

They ordered the Legislative Reference Bureau, a non-partisan agency of the Wisconsin government that analyzes legislation and keeps the archive of what's been made official... to PUBLISH THE BILL INTO LAW. Even though only the Sec. of State can do that, and he's been enjoined by the courts not to do so. And then, even though the LRB and a number of others have said that this end-run does NOT make the bill law, Sen. Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald has announced that they're going to act as if it's law anyway.

P...puh...PUH!

Once again, due to family obligations, we won't be on the Capitol Square this morning. Maybe we can take a trip there later in the day. I hope that the crowds are huge... and vocal... and continued non-violent, as we have so proudly accomplished through all these weeks despite the ratcheting up of the provocations.

Check out the lower button: Keep Calm, and Protest On.

I got these buttons on State Street the other Friday during my activist-date with JoyDad, an image that I had first seen on a portable sign at the top of Madison's State Street right near the Capitol. I loved it already without knowing its history. Now that I've looked it up, it resonates even more.

The underlying image is a poster that says Keep Calm and Carry On. The poster dates back to Britain of 1939, where (according to a well-sourced Wikipedia article) it was produced by the British government to raise morale under the threat of invasion. The poster was re-discovered eleven years ago and has been distributed widely since then.

Now, with the substitution of the word "Protest" for "Carry," it has become an iconic image of our Madison response. In many ways, it feels as if Wisconsin has been invaded by a hostile occupying force -- not through bombing but through stealth and lies and corporate financing.

Keep Calm, and Protest On. Here are the crucial upcoming voting-related priorities:

-- Vote JoAnne Kloppenburg for Wisconsin Supreme Court April 5.
-- Volunteer or donate to the recall efforts for the 8 eligible Republican state senators.

We won't bite. We won't pull hair, tempting as it is. We will keep calm, we will carry on, we will protest on. And we will win -- their very desperation is the best indication.