laceblade

My vacation was longer than I'd expected, due to the blizzard that shut down the bus system for two days.

My city has done a great job clearing the main roads, but a lot of the side streets are complete shitshows of rutted ice and snow, with ice platforms two inches thick making things bumpy to drive on & treacherous to walk on. I still see cars getting stuck on ice patches when trying to go uphill.

The sidewalks are worse. In some places, they are bone dry and clear, but in others, people have not shoveled at all since the blizzard (now two weeks ago), and the snow's been packed down. Lots only have narrow pass-throughs, and lots of people haven't tended to their sidewalk corners at all. For example, the sidewalk corner I enter just after a busy street on my way to the bus stop every morning is a small mountain of snow.
Last night when returning from spending New Year's Eve with two of our friends, a drunk guy with no coat on said to me and my boyfriend, "Catch me if I fall!" as he scrambled up while we were scrambling down, lol.


I'm actually looking forward to returning to work tomorrow.
I've consumed a fair amount of media these last two weeks, and seen family and friends, and those parts have been lovely.
I like structure & routines, though, so I'll be glad to go back to work, at least for the first day!

Because bibliofile is evil knows me well, she forwarded me DPW's survey about the gubernatorial recall election in Wisconsin.

The top of the survey claims that they will "put Tammy Baldwin in the Senate," which I kind of doubt.

Regardless, here's the answer I gave to their most important question:

What do you think the Democratic Party of Wisconsin could have done differently to change the outcome of the election?
Find and cultivate better candidates; run more effective/put-together campaigns.

Barrett might have been our best option out of what was available in the debates, but he pretty much sucked as hard as he could have, to convince people who hadn't already made up their minds. When asked about his economic plans for WI, he gave some anti-Walker bullshit, and Walker basically cake-walked through to election day. The plan to convince undecideds/conservatives obviously failed abysmally.
Even in a recall election, you can't campaign solely on, "The other guy sucks."
Couldn't he have at least dug up what his economic plan was from 2010? It was cringe-worthy. Walker didn't even have to try.

There was an opportunity here, and people were fired up. It's a shame that the opportunity was wasted.

The gubernatorial recall election is tomorrow.
Most people I know are liberal, and most people are very much in an "I don't want to talk about it!" state, with the knowledge that Walker will probably win & not wanting to think about it.
If Walker loses, I will be surprised and elated. Public Policy Polling just released its latest poll last evening, putting Walker at 50 and Barrett at 47.


I received a really creepy mailer this weekend, as did a number of other people who live in my neighborhood. The mailer proclaimed, Who votes is public record! This is true! But then the mailer had my name and the names of various neighbors who all live in my apartment building, plus whether or not they voted in 2008 and in 2010. On June 5, 2012, it said, "???"
The mailer said something like, "We will know if you vote or not, and we need everyone to vote!"
I find this really creepy, and vaguely threatening! Like, it is none of my business whether or not my neighbors voted. I wish everyone would vote, but people make choices and it is none of my business.
The mailer was put about by some union.

For the most part, Republicans don't bother with Madison residents, except for TV ads (because the Madison media market covers a lot of rural areas in S/SW Wisconsin). The only thing I got from them was a weird mass text message about how Barrett is a puppet of the unions (apparently they missed the primary, in which all of the unions endorse Kathleen Falk....)


This election definitely has people talking about politics more than they ever have, even in this city. It comes in the bookstore pretty regularly, people talk about stuff at work. I still really <3 the conversations overheard on the bus during the union protests at the Capitol. Instead of commuting together in silence like every other morning, everyone was talking to one another. It was awesome.


My boyfriend and some of his work friends are going to a bar tomorrow night, mostly to drink, also to watch election returns. I'm not sure if I want to go.

I've watched election returns at home with my boyfriend and with friends, just sitting around, in the past. It's really appealing to me to read my entire Twitter feed and the entire Internet as it happens. I'm not sure if I'm up for making a social event out of it.


Am still actually concerned for people like my cousin, who were politicized by the union protests. I'm confident that the activism of a lot of the newly!politicized will not end with this election, but it's going to be really heartbreaking, for sure.
My solace is that the Democrats will take back the Senate and that heinous bullshit will stop passing.
I am unafraid of things like a "right to work" law because even if the Democrats don't take the Senate....it will never pass the Senate.

Wisconsin's gubernatorial primary is on Tuesday AND IDK WHO I'M VOTING FOR.

Well. Definitely not Vinehout (OMG) or LaFollette (whew?!).

Falk was involved in the protests and collecting recall signatures for Walker & has various unions backing her and is all like GO ME!
I actually view Falk's various union endorsements as a detriment to her candidacy. People in unions are already going to vote against Walker. The state is split almost 50-50 on Walker, so people who are undecided & suspicious of unions aren't exactly going to vote for someone who will be a union tool, right?

Barrett kind of swooped in at the end, which is a little understandable because he needed to reelection as Mayor of Milwaukee first. It's kind of like he's coming in "after the work has been done." BUT. This distance makes him look better to the undecideds, in my opinion.

Barrett lost against Walker the first time around. But Falk has lost a statewide election too, & Barrett's polling better against Walker than Falk is. I worry about Falk's statewide electability, too. She's a Madison liberal, which, yes guys, is looked down on everywhere outside of Dane County.

Barrett seems like the vote if you want someone to beat Walker.
But I'm willing to be convinced. COMMENT.

You can vote in the poll even if you can't vote in the election, :)

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(I know one of the tags says "locked" but I intend for this post to be unlocked. I just need to rename the tag some day, ^_^)

Panel Description
Madison, Wisconsin, home of WisCon, became the center of national attention this spring when newly elected Republican Governor Scott Walker introduced a "Budget Repair" Bill that eviscerated the collective bargaining rights of most state workers' unions. This sparked daily demonstrations of up to 150,000 at the Capitol and around Wisconsin as protestors peacefully stood up for teachers, police, firefighters and other state workers. The drama has included kids getting a living civics lesson on participatory democracy by coming with their parents to march in solidarity with their teachers; the pranking of Governor Walker, who inadvertently disclosed his anti-democratic plans via a phone call he thought was from a billionaire donor; the 14 Democratic senators fleeing the state in order to prevent a voting quorum and to buy some time for citizens to learn what was really in the bill; and Egyptians calling from overseas to purchase and donate pizzas to protestors. Come listen to those who of us who have been a part of it and learn what we're doing as the struggle goes on.

Panelists: L. Timmel Duchamp (moderator), Cabell Gathman, Cat Hanna, Victor Raymond, Fred Schepartz

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I was pretty disappointed with this panel. My impressions are not intended to be a transcript, nor a complete representation of what was discussed.

I came to the panel a few minutes late, as the last panelist (Schepartz) was introducing himself. He seemed to be discussing how he posted about the protests/etc. on Facebook multiple times every day during the protests.

People in the audience periodically stood up to explain how they also posted news to Facebook, to offer how many nights they had slept at the Capitol, to show their own protest posters to the rest of the audience.

I had a glimmer of hope when Timmi commented that in democracies, public spaces are necessary, and that during the Wisconsin's protests, the concept of the "people's house" was taken very seriously (the space being the Capitol itself). Protestors occupied this space, retook the building after having been kicked out, etc.

Cabell also chimed in, stating that in addition to physical public spaces, virtual public space was vital in these protests, with people sharing news on Twitter, protestors stuck inside the Capitol communicating with those outside of it, etc.

But other panelists, and more importantly, the audience, didn't really pick up on this thread, and the conversation drifted back to what I found to be self-congratulatory discussions, people giving their personal stories.


I'm not trying to belittle other people's activism, nor their pride in it. I guess I just expected there to be some deeper analysis on this panel, it being WisCon.

The subject of the police was broached a few times, but mostly people just remarked on the fact that in these protests, the police agreed with the protestors, and it was an oddity as compared to other protests.

I think this would have been a perfect opportunity to discuss the fact that police cooperation/endorsement was (in my opinion) a key reason why the protests were successful. However, I think that reinforces the power of the police, in deeming which social groups are worthy/etc. This is especially concerning when one considers the mostly-white, self-identified "middle class" makeup of the crowd. How would the protests have turned out if the topic were different, if the protesters were primarily people of color?

I opted not to say anything, partly because I was low on spoons but also because a person sitting behind us made a few comments like, "The police are NEVER on your side," etc. and I didn't want to get more angry/start a fight (I have multiple close relatives who are cops).

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This panel had some similar issues to the one on Class that came before it, and I think bcholmes hits it on the nose when discussing the attitudes of those who took part in the protests:

I feel like we have an interesting influx of people who've become politicized by the protests in February/March. And I don't want to sound as if I'm saying, "oh noes we're totally being invaded by people who are not us", but I do feel like the content of their contributions has been much more "worker power rah rah rah" and not quite in the geeky analytic way that I'm accustomed to.

So. Feel free to talk about the protests or class (or both) in the comments; feel free to also discuss the intersectionality with race, etc.
I might not respond to all comments right away because I've been low on spoons lately, but I will eventually.