Getting Organized

• This is what organizing looks like

  2/26/2011 7:00:50 AM

  By Dustin Beilke

  It's funny, but because I have been engaged in so much organizing these days it has been impossible for me to the find the time to sit down and blog about organizing.

  Fortunately, no one needs me to write about it because the whole world is watching the massive democratic response to Governor Scott Walker's attempts to take away Wisconsin workers' collective bargaining rights through his phony budget repair bill.

  No longer am I jealous of the organizing opportunities and results in far-off lands, by the way. Wisconsin has shown that we know how to do this stuff.

  The call went out and people responded by the tens of thousands; showing up at the Capitol, phonebanking and doing other volunteering in UniServ offices, making their voices heard on their legislators' phone lines and radio call-in shows, and in online news comments and letters to the editor pages....

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• Where to go

  2/12/2011 9:22:33 AM

  By Dustin Beilke

  The Capital Times has a great editorial about Governor Scott Walker's so-called budget repair bill and its true motivations: to kill unions.

  We know that Walker's bill would substantially reduce the standard of living for every public education employee in the state, making it ever less likely that great educators will be able to afford to do the work they were born to do. That hurts kids, limits economic development, and reduces the possibilities for everyone who lives and works in Wisconsin.

  Most people do not want to see this happen. Our job is to communicate with them and get them to raise their voices loud enough for their elected officials to hear. That is what organizing is.

  There are rallies, pickets, candle light vigils, phone banks and letter campaigns taking place in every part of our great state. WEAC.org has background on Walker's bill and has many suggestions ...

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• Egging Walker on

  2/3/2011 4:17:31 PM

  By Rick Moore

  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist and right-wing blowhard Patrick McIlheran always gets under my skin with his nonsense. But today's column moves from irritating and/or offensive to something more ominous.

   

  In it McIlheran writes, "State public-sector unions already are complaining mightily, and Democrats in the Legislature have said they expect Walker to force the issue by trying to revoke collective bargaining rights granted in the 1960's.

   

  "Walker should oblige. If he means it about transforming government, he must change the factor that is central in raising public-sector labor costs well above the private sector - unions. Handily enough, unions are also central to lobbying for the unceasing expansion of government. It was established Democratic Party orthodoxy until the 1960s, voiced by stalwarts such as President Franklin Roosevelt and Milwaukee Mayor Frank Zeidler, that government employees ought not to unionize. We now see why: It makes government ...

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• Illinois envy

  1/14/2011 9:32:10 AM

  By Dustin Beilke

  I've written often in this space about how I envy the organizing cultures in other parts of the world, where official transgressions against workers and other organized groups are not taken lying down. Add another foreign country to the list: Illinois.

  In this case, it is the rationality and personal responsibility of the state's elected officials I envy. Illinois has a big deficit, like Wisconsin does, and it has made all the cuts to public services that can be made without rendering them insolvent (for the most part) like Wisconsin has. So the legislature and the governor in Illinois are going to do the only rational, honest, adult thing that there is to do: raise taxes.

  I suppose we shouldn't heap praise on people just for doing the only thing that makes any sense, but still, such things are rare when it comes to elected officials ...

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• Testing writers

  12/29/2010 11:20:56 AM

  By Dustin Beilke

  A blogger on the website of The Atlantic magazine presents a very unpopular perspective on the meaning of international standardized test score comparisons in a recent post: the U.S.'s scores are quite good compared to the rest of the developed world. The blogger's rationale is that when you control for things like immigration and language barriers the U.S. actually out-performs almost all advanced, industrialized nations even on the one measure that public education critics have singled out as most important.

  But the rationale almost doesn't matter. What the blogger is suggesting is almost tantamount to blasphemy in this country. That the U.S. is far behind most industrialized nations, including and especially China, is the first crucial supposition in the argument the phony school reform "movement" presents, and which the mainstream press swallows whole without even asking the most basic questions.

  These arguments are presented as research but what ...

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• The battle has been joined

  12/2/2010 9:20:00 AM

  By Dustin Beilke

  Diane Ravitch was one of the architects of the No Child Left Behind law. Then she realized she was wrong, admitted it, and explained why in a great book that was published earlier this year, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education. That's three things that very rarely happen in public life: 1.) She realized she was wrong 2.) She admitted it. 3.) And then she wrote a great book about why.

  Her essential arguments are that most of what passes for "school reform" these days not only fails to address the needs of K-12 education but makes all problems much worse. And Ravitch has a lot of insight into how this make-believe neoconservate crusade established itself as the lone voice of school reform.

  The most prominent voice in the phony school reform movement these days ...

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• Shared what?

  11/30/2010 1:52:07 PM

  By Dustin Beilke

  President Obama has declared a two-year pay freeze for federal employees. His spokespeople say this decision was very difficult for him, but that the difficult financial times call for "shared sacrifice."

  Meanwhile, bonuses on Wall Street are up big, and demand for tables at fancy restaurants and appointments for plastic surgery is increasing faster than suppliers can accommodate.

  At the same time, President Obama--who has been called a socialist at least once in every major print and broadcast media outlet in the United States--has appointed a commission to address the deficit. On November 10 that commission recommended a bunch of things, including reducing social security benefits and raising the age of eligibility, that neo-conservatives have wanted for a long time. But the neo-con members of the panel are unlikely to vote for the recommendations because there is not an unequivocal rejection of tax increases.

  Tax increases are ...

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• Millionaires Organized for Tax Fairness

  11/22/2010 1:40:52 PM

  By Dustin Beilke

  Forty-five wealthy people have joined together to call upon the federal government to start down the road of tax fairness and put an end the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. They call themselves the Patriotic Millionaires.

  They are not alone. Warren Buffet and many other wealthy people have come forward through the years to declare that they are undertaxed and benefit disproportionately from public expenditures. They also make the case that the tax system is the fairest way to pay it forward; a much better alternative to voluntary tax payments or charity.

  A former hedgefund manager who is one of the 45 Patriotic Millionaires says "nobody wants to feel like a chump." In other words, he thinks he should have to pay his share toward maintaining public services and paying down the deficit, but he thinks other millionaires should, too.

  The neoconservative argument against tax fairness is that ...

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• Tenth of a deck

  10/27/2010 11:32:35 AM

  By Dustin Beilke

  We've gotten used to birthers and tea partiers. Heck, I sometimes even enjoy them.

  But now the time has come to gird our loins for the "tenthers." These are the men and women among us who believe that the Constitution's 10th Amendment deems that things like Social Security, Medicare and the federal Department of Education are unconstitutional because they are not mentioned by name in the Constitution. Adherents to this particular faith include GOP U.S. Senate candidates Ken Buck and Sharron Angle, and it is not impossible to imagine that there are incumbent senators who hold this view but have been advised against expressing it out loud.

  As we continue to hear more and more about the enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans, it is helpful to remember that tenthers, birthers and tea partiers are enthusiastic about voting and having their voices heard. A recent poll found ...

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• Some updates

  10/21/2010 12:30:58 PM

  By Dustin Beilke

  So yeah, the riots have continued in France. Indeed, it seems that virtually all activity except rioting has come to a halt in Paris. And France's president has resolved to arrest the "troublemakers." I think the French people have a higher tolerance for trouble than we do here.

  This reminds me, do you already subscribe to the Labor Notes' "Troublemakers Blog"? If you don't you should.

  Here in Wisconsin, the Moving Wisconsin Forward rally was a big success, with more than 1,000 people gathering to demonstrate on behalf of public services and against nihilism. All those who spoke also pledged to carry the enthusiasm with them as they go. That is what organizing is for: sustained engagement and commitment.

  And the Washington Post has a new poll about federal workers that has a majority of people expressing a low opinion of them. This poll got a ...

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