Wisconsin is about tearing America apart

An open letter to the protesters in Wisconsin and those joining around the country.

I have no dog in this fight other than my firm belief in the people’s right to have a voice at the table where decision are being made.  My mother is not a teacher like many of you.  My father is not a municipal employee.  There is nothing here for me to personally lose.  But each of us share common bonds – they connect us on a deeper level than we are able to fathom.  Thus when you lose one of your rights or your voice a piece of our connection is severed and lost forever.

Our interconnectedness is being torn apart by those who would benefit from us going our own separate ways.

More than 45 years ago President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty with a vision of a greater society – the ultimate fulfillment of the American Dream.  Martin Luther King Jr. sought to unite leaders across ethnic, racial, geographic and religious boundaries around the struggle for economic equality. The greatest injustice of their time.  Sadly, the powers that be demonized the poor as purely lazy and out to collect a welfare check.   It has taken them time to win that battle.  They were able to silence the poor and take away their voice altogether.

Now they are on to their next conquest.  You.  Organized workers who only seek what is fair and just.  If they push you away from the table – take away your voice as well – one has to ask what is left?

The only people left at the decision making table are the politicians listening to the corporations sitting across from them.  Elected officials merely listening to the profit hungry desires of businesses is no longer a democracy.  It is no longer a properly functioning society.  It is no longer a place to chase the American Dream let alone a place that Jefferson wrote about – for the pursuit of happiness.  We will have become a society that merely serves the bottom line of Wall Street while hoping to have some pocket change at the end of the month to take the family out to dinner.  That’s not the America I was taught in class.  That’s not the America I want to leave for my future children.  That is only an America that has gone to hell and needs redeeming.  Only the every day citizens of this country can redeem our beloved country by ensuring citizens have a prominent and loud and clearly spoken voice at the table.