Five Tweets From Michael Moore About the Madison Movement -plus other headline articles
Michael Moore
(Abbreviations are authentic to Moore's tweets.)
Living here in the Midwest I can tell u this: People HAVE HAD IT. They've been pushed 2 the limit & they've got nothing 2 lose at this pt.
The pundits should understand this: the 10s of 1000s u've seen this week in JUST ONE STATE is bigger than anything the "tea party" has done.
This movement - we'll call it the "Madison Movement" (after both the town where it was born & the president who wrote our BillofRights)...
...Is exploding across the Midwest. It will be unlike anything you've seen in recent U.S. history. It is built on this 1 truth:
Corporations have taken over our country & we know this is our LAST chance 2 wrestle America away from the grubby hands of the greedy rich.
U know us as Midwest. We r fightingback. We will risk everything we have if that's what it takes. We-will-shut-the-machine-down. Pls b w/us
Follow Michael Moore on Twitter at @mmflint.
Koch Brothers Quietly Open Lobbying Office in Downtown Madison
The billionaire brothers whose political action committee gave Gov. Scott Walker $43,000 and helped fund a multi-million dollar attack ad campaign against his opponent during the 2010 gubernatorial election have quietly opened a lobbying office in Madison just off the Capitol Square.
Charles and David Koch, who co-own Koch Industries Inc. and whose combined worth is estimated at $43 billion, have been recently tied with Walker's push to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public workers. The two have long backed conservative causes and groups including Americans for Prosperity, which organized the Tea Party rally Saturday in support of Walker's plan to strip public workers of collective bargaining rights and recently launched the Stand with Scott Walker website.
Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, acknowledged in a New York Times story Tuesday that he had encouraged Walker even before the election to mount a showdown with labor groups.READ MORE
Labor Group Calls for General Strike If Budget Bill Is Approved
The 97-union South Central Federation of Labor of Wisconsin is laying groundwork for a general strike if Gov. Scott Walker succeeds in enacting legislation that would strip most bargaining rights from most public employee unions.
Federation president Jim Cavanaugh said Tuesday that he couldn't predict how many unions might take part in a strike, but opposition to Walker has grown rapidly.
"Two weeks ago who would have thought there would have been 70,000 people on the Capitol Square demonstrating on behalf of worker rights?" Cavanaugh said. "We have had an awful lot of statements of support from around the country." READ MORE
Fighting the Five Fascisms in Wisconsin and Ohio
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman begin: "The escalating confrontations in Wisconsin and Ohio are ultimately about preventing the United States from becoming a full-on fascist state.
The stakes could not be higher - or more clear."
As defined by its inventor, Benito Mussolini, fascism is "corporate control of the state." There are ways to beat around the Bush - Paul Krugman has recently written about "oligarchy" - but it's time to end all illusions and call what we now confront by its true name. READ MORE
Cairo to Madison: Hope and Solidarity
Here in Madison, Wisconsin, where protesters have occupied the State Capitol Building to stop the pending bill that would eliminate workers' right to collective bargaining, echoes of Cairo are everywhere. Protesters here were elated by the photo of an Egyptian engineer named Muhammad Saladin Nusair holding a sign in Tahrir Square saying 'Egypt Supports Wisconsin Workers - One World, One Pain.'
My travels from Cairo to Madison seem like one seamless web. After camping out with the students and workers in the Capitol Building, I gave an early morning seminar on what it was like to be an eyewitness to the Egyptian revolution, and the struggles that are taking place right now in places like Libya, Bahrain and Yemen. Folks told me all day how inspiring it was to hear about the uprisings in the Arab world. READ MORE
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