Republican State Senator Alberta Darling loves all things Walker. She serves on the powerful Joint Finance Committee, and is foisting deep cuts on social services and education while giving million dollar Happy Meals to her corporate sponsors. She has avoided all meaningful contact with the predominantly African American wards in the southern part of her senatorial district, and has generally been MIA for all but the tasselated loafers on the country club brunch circuit.
If she won't come to the city, the city will come to her...
Yesterday, Wisconsin Jobs Now organized a bus tour in order to deliver hundreds of petition signatures that had been collected over the past week. My own group, The Playground Legends, was well-represented with nine people on board. Our demands were simple: please listen to us, as you also represent us. The big yellow school bus was filled to capacity, and at 11:00 left for Darling's office in Menomonee Falls. Our spirits were high as we chanted "The Rich Get Bailed Out The People Get Sold Out" and other chestnuts in our cantillate lexicon.
Reverend Brisco of Milwaukee Inner-city Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH) offered some inspiring words about our need for sustained collective action, putting the "we" in our Wisconsin movement. As far as I know, this intervention is unprecedented: a mix of black and white constituents traveling miles to request representation. I find great inspiration in the commingling of black and white communities, voices together with our existential cry to Walker and his lapdog legislators: we exist, you need to acknowledge us!
I'd also like to believe that our recall actions will prove that The Lapdogs need us more than we need them!
Fully amped up with the sincere power of solidarity, we exited the bus, signs in hand. Another 20 people arrived in cars and joined us on the sidewalk. We marched and chanted, waving to the honking and gestures - both positive and negative - from passing cars. Before a chosen delegation entered the building, Reverend Brisco gathered us for benediction. I'm personally not formally religious but it was a powerful moment.
As the Reverend Brisco was wrapping up, a man stormed by, interrupting the prayer by yelling "Alberta Darling for President!" "Yeah, Alberta!" "We Love Her!" and generally stomped around our gathering. Reverend Brisco brushed it off with a wry "Satan is among us!" and ended with "This is what democracy looks like, Amen!" The cops contained the man, as he was getting pretty agitated. Nobody wanted any trouble: we only want to be acknowledged as constituents with legitimate needs and concerns.
The petitions were delivered, though neither Darling nor any staffer were in the office. This seems an apt metaphor. The circuit of "send and receive" is profoundly ruptured. The signals are out there, are being sent, and we are desperate to be included in Darling's political and professional concerns. But no one is receiving. No one is listening. No one is home.
We left our petitions on a box outside her door, boarded the bus, and went back south to north Milwaukee.