The Wisconsin Renaissance

In his attempts to force through a budget bull full of questionably Constitutional measures, and controversial and unthinkable setbacks to education, workers' rights, women's reproductive rights, environmental measures, Medicaid and BadgerCare, and public services, Governor Scott Walker, it's been said, has woken a sleeping giant, and people are stumbling out of a long stupor and taking inventory of the many ways they've been duped.  It's an awakening of the middle class, the working class - the people who do the work and don't reap the benefits of it.  It's an awakening of the people who have been told, for so long, that they were part of a "moral majority" that they didn't notice when the people telling them that were not moral, or a majority. It's an awakening of public consciousness to the blank fact of the global disparity of wealth and what it means to our children.  As one writer put it, it's "an awakening of the idea that dignity matters."

The people, it turns out, may not be as powerless against the corporate machinery of the capitalist enterprise as we all assumed we were. Our voices might matter after all. This realization has led to the longest sustained protests in Wisconsin history, demonstrations, day after day, at which one can clearly see the civility, the honor, the dignity and the anger of people who have heard that the time has come to stand, and are standing.  The Wisconsin revolution has been entirely peaceful - almost celebratory - as more and more people begin to realize that they do, in fact, have power to change the system, when they come together in the conviction that right is on their side.

Solidarity means we stand together. Democracy means our voices matter. Justice means we don't stop until this is set right. So we are standing, and we are shouting, and we are winning.

Such an awakening is nothing short of a rebirth - a revival - of the people as agents of their own destiny.  I think of it as the Wisconsin Renaissance.

I am proud to be a part of this renaissance, and am doing my part here by sharing actual letters I've written and sent to the rookie governor of Wisconsin and others in the hopes that they inspire citizen action, informed outrage, and angry letters of your own. You can send those to Scott Walker. And if you feel like having someone actually read them, you can send them to Monologues of Dissent...because if we all give monologues together, sooner or later we'll have to get to dialogue.

- Heather DuBois Bourenane, Wisconsin dissident