Music and Speech

We got our piano tuned the other week.  Rose has been making great strides with her piano lessons, making the instrument sing each morning with her practicing -- so we wanted to be sure it was singing in key!  (Didja hear the one about how people keep having to break into song because they can't find the key?  Heh.)

Anyway, the guy who did the turning also plays a variety of instruments but is particularly skilled with the marimba.  He's won numerous awards, plays from a repertoire of over 250 songs, and has performed in Wisconsin's Capitol Rotunda.

He also has autism, and didn't speak until he was eleven.  Now, in his mid-thirties, his list of accomplishments is long.  In his work as a piano tuner, he is accompanied by his mentor, a retired piano tech who supervises his work and helps him stay focused.  His mom, who manages his scheduling, also taught him at home.  By the time we'd completed the whole transaction, I wound up with two of their CDs -- one of his performances, one of her compositions.

Mom's songs, as it turned out, were integral to his education.  Twenty-some years ago, public schools were open to students with disabilities thanks to the 1975 "Education for All Handicapped Children Act" (predecessor to IDEA) -- but in his case at least, they weren't very successful at figuring out how to serve him.  His mother was a kindergarten teacher, and she discovered that what he best responded to was music; that if you sang his lessons to him, the material would actually stick.  So her CD features the songs of his education, created as she put together a music-laced curriculum for him.

Joy, meanwhile, has gotten off to a fine start this school year.  I was concerned that the transition back into school, with a mostly new-to-her team and coming off a late-summer riddled with behavioral challenges, was going to be rocky at best.  But her new special-educator and teacher and student-teacher met with us repeatedly in August, processed the mounds of input we had for them, and felt like partners in the education of Joy before classes even started.

On top of that, Joy has been blessed with musical SEAs (special education assistants).  The past two years, she was met first thing every morning by an SEA who plays drums and teaches piano.  We were sorry to leave that aide behind as Joy moved up to 2nd grade, but simply delighted to hear her new morning-greeter SEA announce, "I'm a singer!"  Joy's affinity for melody and tempo was quickly evident to this new SEA.  We've been hearing updates about Joy echoing little tunes and tapping rhythms.

Then on Friday, she sent home this piece of artwork.

"Song Spots"

Joy, who had never made it all the way through art class before as far as I knew, hung in for a full 45 minutes with her singer-SEA on Friday and dotted this sheet in one marker-color after another -- in time to music.  It sounds like her art teacher got into the act with the music as well.  I know he plays the bass, and the note said "Teacher plays quiet jazz too!"

Teachers have been badly scapegoated lately in Wisconsin and nationwide, and SEAs are even further down the totem pole.  As a Madison teacher-blogger posted just yesterday:

SEAs choose to stay in a career where they are often sworn at, kicked and challenged. They do this, because they care about our children and they understand the importance of their role in our students’ lives. We need to start rewarding SEAs both financially and by treating them with the professionalism they deserve.  Most importantly, we must create school conditions that foster success for the students they serve.

Indeed.

In tandem with the new music delights, we've had a burst of words these past weeks as well.  The speech-settings on Joy's mixer-board are hitting new highs.  I now regularly hear at snack-time, when Joy finishes the first serving of goldfish -- "moh... CACK-uh!"  Not too long ago, when Joy was angling for her iPad (which was busy charging up on the other side of the bedroom door), we got a three-word prompted utterance out of her: "I... want... iPad"!  Heck, just yesterday JoyDad was watching football with her, and was teaching her to raise her arms and say "Touchdown"!  (Next on the list of sports-speak to teach her will be "Go Bears!")

Music to our ears.

And yet, while all this wonderful music and speech and overlap between the two is happening on the home front, down at Wisconsin's Capitol, a new Chief of Capitol Police has been tasked with squelching musical free speech in the Capitol Rotunda.

I've blogged about the Solidarity Sing Along before: red heart balloons, and holiday defiance in the face of an attempted December crackdown last year.  Since March of 2011, the Sing Along has gathered daily to continue expressing opposition to the ongoing depredations of the Walker administration.  This remarkable resistance-movement has been a thorn in the side of the Republican regime since the singing first began.  They tried to squelch us last December with a ridiculous, unconstitutional re-interpretation of Capitol permitting rules, flying in the face of the Rotunda's rich history of being a public square, intentionally designed with acoustics suitable for free political expression.  We showed up by the hundreds in December, daring them to arrest us all -- and, in large part due to the thoughtful leadership of the previous Capitol police chief, no arrests were made and the Sing Along continued.

Now, however, the arrests have begun.  Chief David Erwin, a former Scott Walker bodyguard, has led the Capitol Police in an anti-singer campaign.  The arrests and citations have targeted the people who attend the Sing Along most frequently.  While Erwin gives interviews complaining about disruptive protesters who go around "terrorizing" tourists and Capitol staff, the arrests are for holding signs.  Or banners (like the one held by JoyMama the rabble-rouser in the red coat below).  Or for attending an unpermitted event, or for sections of the Administrative Code that have never been interpreted in this way before. Despite repeated requests for clarification, the Capitol Police are declining to specify what activities might be deemed citation-worthy on any particular day.  They've taken to showing up at people's homes and workplaces to deliver citations, without having approached the individuals at the Capitol at the time of the supposed infraction.  It's intimidation, and they're pairing it with a cynical propaganda campaign that Rebecca Kemble wrote about compellingly in The Progressive the other week: The Two-Pronged Assault on Dissent in Wisconsin's Capitol.

The citizen-lobbyists of the Solidarity Sing Along believe that our permit to lift our voices in musical dissent is contained in the following words of Wisconsin's Constitution (Article 1, Section 4):

The right of the people peaceably to assemble, to consult for the common good, and to petition the government, or any department thereof, shall never be abridged.

"What part of SHALL NEVER BE ABRIDGED don't you understand?"

And if we poke a little bit of fun at Chief Erwin with masks and signs, that too is free speech, a bit of political theatre to bring home our message.  We gather and sing in peace, but we are determined.  We intend to keep singing until Wisconsin is back on the right track.  Even then, we will continue to be involved on a new level.

There's too much at stake -- and my Joy, who delights in rhythm and song, is at the heart of the future I'm fighting for.

See you at the Capitol.

Songs of the Season, Part 2

JoyDad and I had a remarkable time at Monday's Solidarity Singalong! Hundreds of protesters filled the Capitol rotunda on the ground floor and balconies, singing recall-themed versions of Christmas tunes, in cheerful defiance of our governor's latest attempt to quash dissent. A resounding win for free-speech!

Photo credit madtowntj of Daily Kos

The re-purposed tunes of the Solidarity Singalong are at least somewhat analogous to a little ditty to the tune "The Farmer in the Dell" that we've
been experiencing a lot lately:

The A says "aaa", the A says "aaa"
Every letter makes a sound,
The A says "aaa!"

The song is from a series of products by a company called Leapfrog. (Link goes to a YouTube video -- I'd've embedded it, but it looks like they've disabled that option for this one.)

The "A says 'aaa'" phonics-washing of Joy began around the time of her birthday at the start of the summer, when she got a Leapfrog Fridge-Phonics toy from Auntie S as a present. The toy has a magnetic back, so you can stick it on the fridge -- or in our case, the fireplace.

You choose a letter to put in the slot, and then the toy sings the song for that letter. Or, push the little orange notes above the letter and it sings the familiar ABC song.

Some months after we got the toy, we discovered that the Leapfrog Talking Letter Factory DVD, which we'd gotten for Rose when she was just beginning her love affair with letters and words, had become acceptable to Joy as well. The cartoon story on the DVD involves a tour of a factory that makes letters, and sings through their "every letter makes a sound" songs one by one, with funny little additional mnemonics (for example, the E cups its hand to one ear and says "eh?" as if it couldn't hear you!) Joy particularly loves the opening menu-sequence, something she apparently shares with quite a few kids on the spectrum.

Then still more recently, just at Thanksgiving, we pulled out yet another saved Leapfrog artifact from Rose's toddlerhood -- her "My First LeapPad." Kids interact with this clever toy by touching a series of printed pictures with an attached electronic pen. You can buy a variety of spiral-bound books, each coming with its own game-cartridge. To tell the toy what page you're on in any given book, you have to touch the green "GO" circle on that page with the pen in order to get the correct noises that go with that page. It's definitely a couple of steps beyond the baby-toys that have been the staple of Joy's repertoire.

And guess what? We already had the "I Know My ABCs" book and cartridge, built around the "A says aaa!" song!

I was amazed how fast Joy figured out the sequence of turning on the toy, turning the pages of the book, and tapping the "GO" cicle. The latter is a particular accomplishment because the "GO" circle is at a different location on the perimeter of each page, in order for the toy to differentiate which page's fun to serve up. I love to watch Joy scan all the way around the edge to find the "GO"!

After all this musical phonics-washing, Joy now can fill in the blanks when we sing her a letter:

JoyMama: "The B says..."
Joy: "buh!"

And look what else she's been doing lately, another Rose hand-me-down:

One more Songs of the Season post yet to come... stay tuned!

Songs of the Season, Part 1

As the introduction to our annual Christmas newsletter this year pointed out, "the local oldies station has switched to 'all Christmas music, all the time.'" Christmas, more than any other holiday, comes with its own musical soundtrack.

The JoyFamily appreciates the holiday soundtrack -- JoyMama in particular was simply delighted with the Messiah singalong at church on Sunday! (Rose, in contrast, left the sanctuary at the first chorus, claiming that the singing and instruments were painfully loud.)

We have our own songs going on this season too.

I've written before about Joy's bedtime routine, that involves filling in the blanks for Rock-A-Bye Joy and Twinkle, Twinkle, with Joy filling in the words. In recent weeks, these songs have gone to a whole new level. They've become an interactive people-play, where Joy decides what will be rocked or twinkled and when it will happen.

It looks something like this: she'll bring me her stuffed penguin and cuddle up to me with penguin in her arms. Then she'll rock slightly back and forth, saying something like "WOH-woh." Which is my cue to sing:

Rock-a-bye PENGUIN, on the tree top,
When the wind blows...

... and Joy fills in some "peh-peh" word so I can continue

PENGUIN will rock!

The funnier the item, the better the Joy-giggles. One of my favorites has been the plastic tomato slice:

Twinkle, twinkle, little TOMATO!!

But wait, there's more! JoyDad and Joy then added a variation where Joy points to her own body-parts, with a one-finger point even, to direct him into verses such as:

Rock-a-bye KNEE, on the tree top,
When the wind blows, BELLY-BUTTON will rock!

The most recent variation has to do with a home-made board book dating back to Joy's days in daycare and early-childhood ed. The book has photos of people close to Joy, plus useful shots representing daycare, home, mealtime booster-chair, potty, etc. When Joy brings this book with a cuddle and a "WOH-woh," and starts flipping to the desired pages, we get something like:

Rock-a-bye GRANDMA, on the tree top,
When the wind blows, POTTY will rock!

I've got a few more musical offerings to share before Christmas rolls around next week. Meanwhile, though, I'm off to the Solidarity Sing-Along at the Capitol, something I've written about here and elsewhere. Today's singalong of holiday-themed protest songs will end up being a test of a set of new restrictive rules designed to quash protest, this regular protest in particular. Might be something of a showdown today, though it sounds as if the administration isn't going to try any mass arrests. I'm all dressed up respectable-like just on the off chance, though!

Keep singing, and I'll report more Joy-family song-related goodies in days to come...

Recall Walker!

You won't hear about it in the national news, because they didn't care to cover it. Not a single national news truck was there; the only national news figure was Ed Schultz, and he was there to march with the firefighters (though I'm sure he'll report on it in his Monday show.)

Besides, there was no riot. In fact, there wasn't a single arrest.

Somewhere between 25,000 and 40,000 protesters converged on downtown Madison Saturday to fill the Capitol Square -- and the Capitol Building -- with a determined reprise of our gatherings this past February.

The occasion was this week's launch of the signature-gathering drive to recall Governor Scott Walker, who bulldozed into office this past January with a secret agenda, heavily-funded by ultra-wealthy out-of-state corporate string-pullers.

That secret agenda has since marched forward in lock step with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), that secretive organization where corporate representatives and Republican state legislators get together to write legislation to the benefit of the corporations. Then the legislators take the agreed-upon texts back to their states and we get waves of cookie-cutter efforts at:

• privatization of activities funded by tax dollars, such as education and health care -- corporate profiteers want those lovely other-people's-tax-dollars to redound to their own benefit, while paying as little as possible in taxes themselves
• consolidation of political power -- union-busting is a two-fer, as they get workers disempowered both on the job and in the political sphere. But power-grab is also at the heart of the Voter ID laws, which seek to disenfranchise groups that tend to vote Democratic: African-Americans, the poor, people with disabilities.
• rolling back environmental protections -- after all, what corporation wants to pay for that sort of stuff?
• tax cuts for the wealthy and -- of course -- corporations.

ALEC's secret database of agreed-upon cookie-cutter legislation was laid bare this summer by the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy, at the ALEC Exposed web site. The legislation templates are no longer secret -- it's no use to deny the extent to which this legislative assault on the average American (the 99%, if you well) is coming directly from the corporate string-pullers via ALEC.

I've had rather a dry spell of political writing since the summer senatorial recalls here in Wisconsin. That long, exhausting effort did not manage to change the majority in the Wisconsin State Senate, though we flipped two seats such that the Republican majority is a single vote, 17-16. The slightly-swingy nature of that single vote majority has at least curbed a few of the worst proposed excesses, but isn't enough protection against the overall Walker juggernaut.

Since the summer recalls, the Medicaid slashing that I wrote so much about in February has rolled forward toward predictable devastation. The Wisconsin budget bill set the terms -- over $500 million in cuts, to be specified later, and the the full legislature wouldn't vote on the specifics of the cuts even if they went against current law. Those cuts have now been specified and voted in by the Joint Finance Committee, along party lines of course. The proposal agreed to by the JFC is projected to result in nearly 65,000 people losing Medicaid coverage, due to things like changed eligibility or income limits, or higher premiums, or if their employer offers insurance (even if it's expensive and crappy and they can't afford it -- I'm looking at YOU, WalMart.) To go into effect, though, the plan needs to get approved for an exemption/waiver by the feds, because it falls afoul of some current federal requirements. If that approval is not forthcoming by December 31 -- an entirely arbitrary, self-imposed deadline -- they'll implement instead a plan that kicks off a different 53,000 people.

It didn't have to be this way. There was an alternate state budget proposal, called the Wisconsin Values Budget, that called for a much narrower Medicaid cut. And as an alternative to the proposal passed by the JFC, a Madison organization called ABC for Health proposed an alternative called the Pathway Plan for 2012, seeking a sustainable solution that actually expands the health-care safety net instead of devastating it.

Contrary to my initial personal fears, Joy's current services have remained largely unscathed. Her funding through the Children's Long-Term Support waiver has been frozen at current spending levels but not reduced; her Katie Beckett MA funds that cover diapers and co-pays were not cut either. The two-year freeze on enrolling new participants in the Family Care long-term care program may have an impact on her future, but whatever is up with that reality when she needs it is a long ways down the road for her.

But that doesn't mean that I had no reason to take Joy and testify at a Medicaid hearing at the Capitol the other Thursday. (The Joint Finance Committee declined to hold a public hearing, so the only option was to testify before sympathetic Democrats who aren't "in power" right now.) On the one hand, I didn't have personal testimony of impending healthcare disaster. On the other, "then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me..." In addition, I could bear witness as a member of my congregation, who have signed on as members of the Save BadgerCare Coalition (yes, we can do that -- it's issue-based, not party- or candidate-affiliated.) So I spoke my opposition, with my daughter on my lap.

And on Saturday, our whole family took to the streets with tens of thousands of our closest friends!

This was Joy's biggest rally so far. It wasn't until after the largest of the protests in February that we figured out a routine to get Joy downtown with her jogging stroller to protest and lobby. Now we're old pros, and so was she. We drove from our house right up to the edge of the rally within minutes, finding free parking just a couple of blocks off the Square! Then into the jogging stroller with Joy, and off we went, well prepared with stimmy-toys and snacks and Kleenex, along with food-drive donations ("Can" Walker!) and protest signs and camera. And warm clothes, of course. Would it be a Wisconsin protest without coat and mittens?

I had already signed the recall papers on November 15 (Day 1) for both Walker and Lt. Gov. Kleefisch -- if we don't recall them both, there's the possibility that Walker could resign before the election and Kleefisch would move up. Can't let that happen! However, JoyDad hadn't signed yet, and was looking forward to the opportunity. Lo and behold, there were signature gatherers right at the corner of the Square, so we could take care of that crucial business immediately.

Then it was off to circle the Square with the marchers, and revel in the energy and creativity. For example, we made sure to be on the State Street corner at 12:30 to catch the flashmob dance to "Forget You" (I see you causin' lots of trouble in the state I love, and I'm like, FORGET YOU!)



Then there were the signs, from the familiar...

to the artistic ...

... to the potty-humor!

My sign had two sides. I've gotten so experienced at hand-lettering, I don't even need to draft in pencil anymore!

And then there was Rose's sign:

Joy didn't carry a sign, but she did carry the whole event off with class. The entire hour and a half we were out there, she rode uncomplainingly, playing with Mardi Gras beads or pine needles and observing all the ruckus. The few times she tried to reach for someone's long hair or beaded fringe, folks were gracious.

The highlight of the event for Joy was encountering one of her favorite school staffers, along with two of last year's staff. You should have seen her face light up! And then she wanted to go right into playing some of their favorite games. Just a delight to see Joy welcome someone out of context and bring the context right along for the ride.

Overall, it was a remarkably satisfying event. And when we got home, we learned there'd been an announcement at the rally: from Tuesday to Friday, 105,000 recall signatures had been turned in, out of the 540-some thousand needed (though we'll be collecting 700,000 or more to have a cushion.) That's in just four days of the 60-day window, and that's without a weekend!

I think we're going to make this recall happen, and I can hardly wait. Recall Walker!

Ninety-nine Red Balloons

I'm dating myself with this memory, but the 1982 song "99 Red Balloons (99 Luftballons)" by Nena was part of the soundtrack of my high-school years.

Ninety-nine red balloons
Floating in the summer sky
Panic bells, it's red alert
There's something here from somewhere else...

This was at about the time as the movie "War Games," when the thought of accidental global thermonuclear war was in the public imagination. The song protested the war machine with a fable of two children who release a bevy of toy balloons. Some country's surveillance software takes the balloons for a security threat and: "This is what we've waited for -- this is it, boys, this is war!"

I hadn't thought of that song for years, even when my daughters began to show great delight in helium balloons. A red birthday-balloon tradition became especially strong with Rose, whose February birthday falls at just the right season for discount Valentine balloons!

For Joy, mylar balloons have always been a stimmy delight, from their dangly ribbons to their delightful crackly feel. Once Joy came along, Rose had to learn to share the heart balloons -- though there were always plenty to go around.

Now in Wisconsin, mylar heart-balloons have taken on a whole new meaning.

It started in February, when the protests against Governor Walker's appalling budget proposals broke out. At some point during the initial protests, someone released a heart balloon in the Rotunda. It floated up to the dome... and stayed there. And stayed, and stayed. As the protests morphed into work on the recall elections, and the major remaining protest presence in the Capitol was the daily Solidarity Singalong, the heart balloon became a symbol of the endurance of the protests. A Capitol Balloon Facebook page sprang up, and a Twitter account. When eventually the balloon did come down toward the end of June, it was taken to the Wisconsin Historical Society to be preserved for posterity.

With the original balloon gone, replacements began trickling in. More balloons floated up to take its place, and protesters began delivering balloons to legislators. The Department of Administration and the Capitol police began to take notice. Soon there were reports of an arrest for a balloon release, and of police officers tailing a protester as she delivered balloons to legislative offices.

Then on Tuesday, a bizarre act of violence. The protester who had delivered the balloons was singing toward the end of that day's Solidarity Singalong, bearing a balloon ready for delivery to yet another office, when the facilities manager accosted her and began stabbing her balloon with a knife, repeatedly! By the time the balloon was good and dead, there was blood on the protester and on the floor, though she had not been injured (it seems the knife-wielder had managed to cut himself in the process.) He then took off, leaving spatters of blood in front of the stairs that lead to the Wisconsin Supreme Court -- and she followed to demand his identification. Instead of providing it, the protester & witnesses relate, he grabbed her and threw her into the door of the women's restroom.

The mainstream media coverage has been misleading, sadly at odds with the witness accounts, painting the incident as a little ol' argument that ended in a state employee popping a protester's balloon. The Department of Administration says that their employee hurt his hand in a tumble on the stairs before the confrontation (why he'd go accost a protester rather than attend to the dripping blood, nobody can say.)

Fortunately, between Facebook and Twitter and blogs, we needn't rely the mainstream press for the whole story. By the next day, the eyewitness accounts had made the rounds -- and the response at Wednesday's Solidarity Singalong at the Capitol was incredible.

Our little family was there.

We didn't bring any balloons ourselves, but there were plenty to go around. The Rotunda was alive with heart balloons, and clever signs ("You've already broken my heart -- you didn't need to STAB it too!"), and children running and playing. The crowd was close to 200!



Instead of ruffling the Capitol authorities with a big balloon-release, the organizers attached their balloon-clusters to large spools of ribbon, reeling them up to the dome for the singalong hour, and then back down afterwards. Of course, with so many individual balloons handed out to folks like Rose & Joy, some were bound to escape. We almost lost Joy's, but I caught it just in time and re-attached the string!

Joy isn't entirely thrilled with these singalong events, but she tolerates them if we provide enough food and enough distraction. The balloon was a great help, and has been fun at home too. Meanwhile, the noon protests do provide a small way for me to contribute while still on childcare duty, and lift my spirits as well.

Our struggle in Wisconsin isn't quite the apocalyptic vision from Nena's song, but the metaphor isn't unrelated. Gov. Walker himself referred to his first budget-attack as "dropping the bomb" when he thought he was talking to billionnaire David Koch on the phone -- but was actually getting pranked by a blogger. And this legislative session has surely left a swath of destruction and rubble in its wake. (Examples abound at a clever new website called WTF has Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker done so far?)

Recall elections in under two weeks. On August 9 the recalled Republicans face their Democratic challengers, on the 16th the recalled Democrats try to hold their seats as well. Polling shows most of the races close -- Republicans have no insurmountable leads -- we've got a real chance to flip the Senate here!

But meanwhile...

...Ninety-nine dreams I have had
And every one a red balloon
It's all over, I'm standing pretty
In the dust that was a city

I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
Here it is, a red balloon
I think of you and let it go

Perception Creates Reality

I note that my posts of late have been very upbeat. There is plenty in Joy's life, in our lives, to feel upbeat about! Joy has continued to do some amazing things as spring transitions into summer. Here's a sequence from just yesterday morning that I snapped while she was playing independently with her musical gears-toy, experimenting all-on-her-own with placing things on the central gear to see them spin.

A stack of gears that she built herself:

The bouncy-ball she got at the drugstore the other day:

Her echo-ey microphone:

These are true stories that we tell, that encourage us to keep going -- despite the fact that she's pulled enough hair out of another patch on her head to make us consider going with the buzz-cut again. And the fact that she's been apparently-randomly refusing food, and making those protests by suddenly spit-spraying large mouthfuls right into our faces.

Here are some more lovely true stories from yesterday morning, as we went to the Capitol Square once more to protest the impending disastrous budget bill:

I found myself being interviewed by a reporter for our local paper, who was intrigued by my "Budgets are Moral Documents" sign. Here's the interview as it was happening...

I got a chance to put in a plug for community long-term-care:

[JoyMama] pushed her daughter in a stroller and carried a “Budgets Are Moral Documents” sign. She said her family would be harmed by proposed cuts to state funding for the long-term care of people with disabilities.

“We keep hoping folks who have acted as moderate Republicans in the past will listen to their consciences,” she said.

Then Rose found, to her delight, a group of protesters hula-hooping for justice! An intern from a local paper filmed her and Twittered the video out into cyberspace -- Rose is the one on the left doing the stand-on-one-foot tricks. (Sorry 'bout the ads.)



Then around the corner came a stream of educators marching against the education cuts in the budget -- and who should be leading the march but Joy's special education team! So Joy and I left Rose with the hula-hoopers
while we made a circuit of the Square in the company of Joy's beloved teachers.

It was a beautiful day. It was good to be with sincere, creative people, determinedly protesting the trainwreck of a budget and other legislation that is being crammed through double-time, in a little-used procedure called "extraordinary session" that has NEVER been used to passed a budget before.

And then we learned that, late in the day, amazingly-coincidentally in the nick of time, the Wisconsin Supreme Court (along partisan lines) had overturned a lower court's ruling that the so-called "budget repair bill" violated the state's open-meetings law. The conservative members of the supposedly-non-partisan Supreme Court, bought and paid for by floods of corporate campaign cash, argued that the courts could not make the legislature abide by laws governing its own procedures unless those laws were part of the Constitution. And the open-meetings law is just a statute, not part of the Constitution. [I think I'm understanding this right. It's very tangled.]

How did we come to this?

Well, perception creates reality. And the wealthiest corporate interests of this country have bought the perceptions of anyone who gets their information from Fox News, or right-wing radio, or conservative campaign commercials. They've ridden those perceptions to electoral victories that then allow them to pass rapid-fire, coordinated, cookie-cutter corporate-written legislation via the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

And they've effectively spread the lie that the coordinated propaganda and fear-mongering over at Fox News is somehow equivalent to how the rest of the news networks run...

I am still hopeful about the recall elections in Wisconsin, that we can flip the state senate this summer and temporarily stop the bleeding. If you are at all inclined to contribute to this effort, you can do so via the Act Blue fundraising page.

But I am feeling very low right now about the powerful, incredibly wealthy forces that brought us to this point, and the alternate propaganda-reality that they have created.

Mother's Day 2011

What a lovely Mother's Day!

Rose painted me a watercolor card. Talent, the girl's got talent!
(I Photoshopped out her signature & JoyDad's for anonymity's sake, but Joy's signature manages to be pretty anonymous with no help from me.)

JoyDad got me a box of chocolates. The good stuff. I tried to share a piece with Joy, who nibbled a corner but then pushed it away. (Aw, shucks, had to eat it myself.) She was thrilled to be given the chocolate-brown ribbon from around the box to paly with, though.

Then we had home-made waffle-breakfast with Rose's friend Elizabeth and family, complete with maple-syrup and the last of the frozen strawberries from 2010. Spring came late this year, but the first strawberry blossoms did open this weekend.

Then we got out the bouncy castle for the first time this season. Joy was delighted. She bounced and bounced, both on her own and in the middle of a boisterous ball game between Rose & Elizabeth. I had to remember how tentative Joy was about her new castle when we first bought it almost three years ago. Some gifts she just has to get used to, maybe grow into. (Maybe if I plied her with high-end chocolates at regular intervals, she'd learn to appreciate them? The world may never know...)

And if all that weren't enough, the whole family went downtown to the Capitol Square for an activist Mother's Day picnic event and Solidarity Singalong. I made a new ALEC sign:

This one is protesting yet another piece of ALEC legislation that is fast-tracking its way through the Wisconsin legislature: AB110, the "Special Needs Scholarship Program Act." (They say "scholarship," I say "voucher.") Parents whose child has a public-school IEP would be able to take that child's share of public-ed tax dollars and spend it to send him or her to private school -- losing all their IDEA rights in the process, with no guarantee of any special-ed services at the private school. Though some families would surely benefit (most likely middle-to-upper income families, because the family pays the difference between the voucher & private school tuition), the big winners are those with corporate and religious interests in pushing private schools, and our public schools would be the big losers. (Here's a document of myths and facts about the bill.) So many things to protest, happening so fast!

But that's mother-commitment in Wisconsin, these days.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day! I'll close with a salute in the form of a Facebook status-post that was making the rounds on Sunday:

For all the moms out there who had to wait longer (or still wait) to hear a first word, who spent more time in doctor's offices with their child than on playdates, who find joy in the uniqueness of their child even when others don't get it....For the moms who promote the ABILITIES and gifts of their child everyday, we salute you.

Denials and Affirmations

The amazing story in Wisconsin continues apace.

You would think that complying with a direct temporary-restraining-order (TRO) from a circuit court judge would be a no-brainer for the governor and legislators. Accept the judge's temporary order, play the case out, then appeal if you think the outcome was unjust.

But in Wisconsin, we've apparently got no-brainers in charge of both the executive and legislative branches.

At issue is Act 10, THE BILL, the supposedly non-fiscal version of the so-called Budget Repair bill (!!). This is the legislation that essentially kills collective bargaining for public employees in Wisconsin, gives the Medicaid-hostile Secretary of DHS unprecedented new powers, eliminates the organization that does payroll and beyond for Joy's respite-care provider, whacks the JoyParents' paychecks, and more.

I'm not even going to try to recap the torturous route that Act 10 has taken over these past weeks, but we've gone rollercoasting from celebration to mouths-hanging-open at the lawlessness of the Walker administration, and that cycle has been repeating. Temporary injunctions! Defying the courts! Slapdowns in court proceedings! More defiance! More slapdown!

As of this writing, we're on a celebration cycle: right now, Act 10 is NOT law and NOT to be implemented. The judge ruled yesterday that the TRO remains in effect until late May, when the legislative session is over and the Walker cabal can no longer declare immunity and have to haul their sorry selves into her courtroom so she can actually finish the case and make a real ruling. (Of course, if they waive immunity like their Democratic counterparts did, they could get this all over much more quickly. Likewise, they could just go back and pass the bill over again, but they're afraid they don't have the votes and they're worried about the protestors!) Expect shenanigans, expect appeals. And vote JoAnne Kloppenburg for Wisconsin Supreme Court April 5, because the state supreme court is where all this is going to wind up.

One thing it's hard to deny is that we're winning on the recall front. Less than halfway through the 60-day signature collecting window, the recall campaign has filed sufficient signatures to recall Sen. Dan Kapanke (R - LaCrosse). His recall election will be the first to happen -- more will reach their signature goals after a flood of signatures is collected adjacent to polling places on April 5. The recall organizers have announced that they're confident that there will be elections in six of the eight efforts to recall Republican state senators in Wisconsin -- which they wouldn't be saying publicly if they weren't very sure. SIX! And we only need to flip three of those districts to regain control of the state senate!

There's an inspirational recall-campaign ad that I'd like to share with you, that captures some of the passion and determination driving this movement. Well worth a minute of your time to watch:



Whether you're in Wisconsin or not, if you would like to affirm your support for workers' rights and beyond, you might be interested to know that there are events all over the country on April 4 and the week to come. Why April 4?

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn., where he was standing with sanitation workers demanding their dream of a better life.

There are over 600 events scheduled across the country in the upcoming week in conjunction with this commemoration. Find one near you.

In the midst of all this, the JoyFamily received some powerful affirmations this week.

It dates back to the church retreat in February, the one at which I coordinated a craft-project to make Medicaid-related protest signs.

We had to leave early before the Sunday morning worship so we could take the signs to a Medicaid-related press conference. So we missed the conclusion of an activity that had been going on all weekend, in which every retreat attendee's name was written on a brightly-colored slip of paper and people could drop by the table to write anonymous affirmations.

The JoyFamily's affirmation slips made their way into our hands just this past Sunday.

Rose squirreled hers away to be a private source of delight. I'm going to share from the other three, though.

A snippet from JoyDad's:

"I really appreciate your thinking -- your knowing
that what happens to one affects all."
A snippet from JoyMama's:

"You have such perspective on anything you're passionate about & you draw me into your passion. Love it!"
And the affirmations from Joy's sheet, in their entirety:

We are so glad you could be at Retreat!

I value all you teach us.

I love to see your smiling face.

You explore, connect, and explore some more. Thank you for your spirit.

Thank you for everything you teach us, and for being your unique self.

The tears are welling again as I type Joy's affirmations, as the tears came down when I read the sheet to her out loud. We are blessed, so wonderfully blessed, to be part of such an affirming and caring church community.

ALEC is Hazardous to Our Health Care

I carried a new sign to the Capitol Square yesterday:

It says:

ALEC is hazardous to our health care - protect Medicaid & insurance mandates!

So what is ALEC? I actually had an oblique reference to it in my last post -- it's the organization that distinguished professor William Cronon wrote about so convincingly in the blogpost that caused the Wisconsin GOP to start a witch-hunt into his university e-mails two days later. One small excerpt from Cronon's writing to set up the explanation:

If it has seemed to you while watching recent debates in the legislature that many Republican members of the Senate and Assembly have already made up their minds about the bills on which they're voting, and don't have much interest in listening to arguments being made by anyone else in the room, it's probably because they did in fact make up their minds about these bills long before they entered the Capitol chambers.

ALEC is the organization that provides the text of those bills on which they have already made up their minds, marching in lock step with no room for debate. ALEC stands for the American Legislative Exchange Council (their site has been up and down since Cronon's post was published, but it is up as I type now). It's a membership organization with a secret membership list of Republican legislators and business interests. Not just anyone can join: Republican legislators can join after being vetted, paying $50 per year in dues. Businesses pay thousands of dollars for a seat at the table. Then those conservative legislators and the deep-pocket business partners sit down together and draft legislation that then shows up, with minor modifications, in state-houses across the country.

This is how, when they get majorities like they have in Wisconsin, they can move so fast and so ruthlessly. The legislation is all ready-made from out of state!

Now, as Cronon pointed out in his piece, there's nothing wrong with like-minded folks getting together and strategizing about legislative goals. On the other hand, what makes ALEC different and frightening, as Shawn Doherty of Madison's Capital Times sums up the objections, is

the corporate and wealthy interests behind ALEC (which others note include the billionaire Koch brothers) are far more organized, coordinated, and stealthy than anything we've seen before in this country.

Doherty has been doing amazing investigative work on a fast-shifting landscape on the health beat here in Wisconsin, and I hope she wins awards for it. She's the one who broke the story on the impending GOP bills I wrote about earlier this month, the ones that would smash not only the autism-insurance requirement we worked so hard so win, but also every other insurance mandate in Wisconsin as well.

Guess what? The mandate-busting bills are ALEC bills.

Doherty makes this connection via an ALEC publication called The State Legislator's Guide to Repealing Obamacare (.pdf) [alternate Google-space copy here in case the ALEC original goes down.] From Doherty's post:

Also included in ALEC's list of model legislation are proposals aiming to undo the power of health mandates, which the guide complains are "often steamrolled into existence by politically active interest groups."

That's us, friends, a politically active interest group. You better believe it. Except that we don't have the deep pockets and conservative credentials that it takes to buy a seat at the table where the legislation is being templated.

Hence the ALEC bills that are waiting to be introduced in Wisconsin, LRB0373 and LRB1529. From Doherty's post again:

This legislation, dubbed "Health Choices and Opportunities" by authors Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Wauwatosa, and Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, Sen. is similar to what the ALEC guide calls the "Health Care Choice Act for States," which allows people to purchase health insurance across state lines. In 2010, according to the guide, 19 states introduced such legislation, and Wyoming enacted it.

That's what my new sign is all about. I want to see "ALEC" pop up on as many signs at the Capitol, and in as many bitter jokes, as quickly as the name "Koch" did when the funding connection and the prank call between a fake billionaire brother and Gov. Scott Walker made the news. This needs to be a well-known part of the conversation, on everyone's lips, part of the argument as to why we need to vote JoAnne Kloppenburg into the Wisconsin Supreme Court April 5, and recall the 8 eligible Republican State Senators who are forcing this ALEC legislation down our throats, and then recall Scott Walker when the time comes.

There's an interesting tension here when it comes to talking about ALEC. On the one hand, Bill Cronon did it and got a huge heavy-handed response just two days later. As a university employee myself, it makes me at least a smidge-bit nervous about blogging too, though I'm doing so early in the morning on a personal computer on my day off! But the more of us who spread the word, the harder it will be to come after us all... I am Spartacus! (There are folks at the university who are now including all the open-records-demand keywords in their sig files on every message: "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, Mary Bell." Just in case someone asks, y'know.)

On the other hand, I've got friends in legislative-related jobs who have known about ALEC for years. It's not as if the organization's existence and its mission are secret, or else they wouldn't have a web site, etc! Plus, again in Doherty's article, she interviewed WI Sen. Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, who took an almost nonchalant approach:

But so what, asks Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, when I call him about my discovery. Fitzgerald says he has been a proud member of ALEC since he first became a legislator in 1994, and is currently the Wisconsin State Chairman. State lawmakers have always turned to such national organizations for help brainstorming ideas and crafting legislation, Fitzgerald says. "These groups are about exchanging ideas between different state legislators from around the country to be sure we're not isolating ourselves in Wisconsin," he tells me.

Which is it, guys? Harmless collaboration or sinister plot? Until the open-records intimidation-demand on Prof. Cronon is withdrawn, I'm going to have to go with the latter. Especially since the legislation resulting from ALEC templates is so radically hazardous.

Which takes me back to our trip to the Capitol yesterday. This time it wasn't just me -- it was me and both daughters, Joy's first protest participation. There wasn't any formal protest planned, but these days there is a constant ongoing protest during daylight hours, a small but determined trickle of people circling the Capitol Square, carrying signs and encouraging one another in our resolve.

The following photo (a little freaky-looking with blurred faces but it was too good not to post!) was taken by a fellow protester we met on the Square, a stranger who turned out to have Mennonite connections back in my hometown Kansas community.

Keep an eye on ALEC. This story is still being written.

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.