Jesse LaGreca (Ministry of Truth) came to Madison today and gave a short presentation at the Occupy Madison general assembly.
Madison area Kossacks used the occasion to meet up and have a couple drinks. My wife and I had the pleasure of picking up Jesse at the Dane County Regional Airport and delivering him to downtown Madison.
We stopped along the way to let Jesse catch his breath, change his shirt, finish a diary and have a frosty glass of Spotted Cow.
After our pit stop, we headed toward the capitol, parked, and walked to Cooper's Tavern on the capitol square to meet up with a half-dozen or so Kossacks. Jesse got a very warm greeting (I told Jesse that Wisconsin has the most polite radicals anywhere and my fellow Kossacks proved me right.) Thanks to ruleoflaw for making all the arrangements!
From there we walked the half-block to Occupy Madison. Occupy Madison maintains a small footprint at the top of State Street in Madison. The crowd rarely gets larger than a few dozen, but part of the reason it hasn't grown quickly is because we're already in phase 2 of occupying Wisconsin. The protests in February and March, then our Walkerville encampment, were the beginnings of our occupation. Because of what happened then, people are busy now with recall petition training, voter registration drives, badgering Scott Walker wherever he goes, and a thousand other political acts large and small. There are literally hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites actively engaged in political activity designed to defeat Scott Walker and stop his radical, ALEC-inspired, Koch-funded attack on working people.
Occupy movements have sprung up in other Wisconsin cities, including Milwaukee where I believe Jesse is headed tonight.
For those of us who can't occupy on a full time basis, it's comforting to know someone is there, and that people like Jesse are spreading the right message, which is simply for all of us to tell our own stories. Here he is addressing Occupy Madison. Enjoy.
UPDATE: If you want to see the kind of bullshit we are dealing with in Wisconsin, watch this...