I would have written this a week ago, but my computer just got out of the shop. I am a graduate student at UW-Madison, and my union was the first to picket the capitol last Monday. I was there. We were a few hundred that day, a few thousand the next, and I'm sure you've heard the rest.
I keep going back every day. My professors (most of them) have been allowing us to rearrange our educational commitments around the bigger rallies. Last Friday, I rallied at noon, aced an exam at 2, and rallied again at 5. The mood has been fantastic. I hope this has awoken the giant that was asleep in November. The crowds have been overwhelmingly positive, and every day I find myself choked up and humbled at the people I find standing next to me. As I told my family - I don't think I've done anything I've been prouder of or been prouder of the people with whom I'm doing it. I stand with the brave women and men of law enforcement; I stand with nurses; I stand with teachers, corrections officers, skilled tradesmen, and now union members from other states and regions. I stand with the people in some 45 states and 15 countries that have called an ordered pizza for us. I stand with them because this governor has radicalized common sense. I stand with them because we are the ones who want dissent and discussion. We don't want money. We don't even want victory. We want to serve Wisconsin in the Capitol just as we do on the job.
It's important we don't think of ourselves as wanting a victory that glorifies us, or justifies us. We want to help Wisconsin (and our country) to be what it is capable of. I think this is best illustrated by a personal story, and a pledge.
I'd like to tell you all about the best Republican I've ever met: Lauren Earl Harman, my father. He was a (small c) conservative man, who stood ready to be called for Vietnam, and worked for a national retail chain of small stores for some 35 years. He was a company man through and through, and would brave snowstorms that kept most others at home just because it was time to go to work. He continued to punish his body for years after his doctors told him that rheumatoid arthritis should have caused his retirement because he didn't want to not work. Just a few weeks before he lost his battle with cancer, he was still asking his doctor when he could go back to work.
I'm fairly certain my father never voted for a democrat. I on the other hand haven't voted for a Republican since 1984, when my first grade class "voted" on the presidential election. (Someone told me that Reagan would blow us up with nukes, but Mondale wanted us to go to school on Saturday. I chose Reagan.) My father and I disagreed and we knew it. When we discussed politics, it always started with, "I know you disagree, but..." Our voices were always quiet. Our manner was always calm; we never lost our senses of humor. We recognized each others' points of view, and respected them. We recognized that neither of us knew everything, and that the world was a better place because people like both of us were in it and making decisions. We argued. We disagreed. And then we sat down at the dinner table and held hands during the prayer that he devoutly believed in and that I tolerated because I respected him.
The world was better with him in it. We lost him just a few days after Sarah Palin's selection as Sen. McCain's running mate. I can best remember him in the words of another son who lost his father: "He was a man. Take him for all and all, I shall not look upon his like again."
And therein lies the Wisconsin problem. I look around for the Republican party that my father would have been loyal to. I look around for the leaders that I know he would naturally have gravitated to. I look around for the "loyal opposition" that I would proudly and happily spend my entire life arguing with. I can't find them. I only see extremists who want me destroyed, or those who are so afraid of those extremists that they dare not show any leadership. I can't find the GOP that was worthy of my father.
I believe that GOP exists, but is in hiding. If we can find just a few "Lauren Harman" republicans, we can see Wisconsin through these troubled financial times while uniting ourselves as a state. My father raised me to believe that a career in public service as a firefighter, police officer, health care worker, or teacher was an honorable thing. His party seems to no longer think so. My father thought that my idea to pursue a Ph.D. in my field would be "a major accomplishment for [our] family." (His was the first generation to graduate high school, and mine the first to even contemplate college.)
In honor of my father, and out of a blind belief that his GOP exists, I make this pledge: any WI legislator who joins us to protect worker rights shall have my loyalty. When the well-funded attacks from extremists come, I will stand up with that legislator. I will canvass his (or her) district and explain to each and every constituent I can why I value that person's voice in Madison. I may disagree on every other issue, but I will fight with all I have for a Republican brave enough to stand with us for the very idea of discussion and dissent. Any Republican brave enough to publicly believe that we do our best work through argument and compromise is someone I want to have in my state house. I want my state to have a voice like my father's in it.