UPDATE: Sun 27 Feb 5:19 pm CST: video of my talk. Thanks to Peter Sutherland for the videography!
UPDATE: Sun 27 Feb 9:42 am CST: MoveOn photo show. Solidarity from sea to shining sea.
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We’re here today to stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Wisconsin.
Now that sounds crazy, “brothers and sisters.” None of us are related to them, we probably don’t even know any of them. But we know their cause, and it’s our cause too. The cause of public service and the cause of union rights. It’s one cause; you can’t have one without the other.
Why do I say that? Because if we don’t have union rights, pretty soon we won’t have public service either. Because the enemies of union rights are also enemies of public service!
They don’t want public service; they want to cash in on privatizing the institutions that provide public service. Which means they really don’t want a public at all. They want isolated individuals, afraid for their jobs, working at the whim of bosses who funnel the profits into the bank accounts of investors.
They want isolation and fear, and to them we oppose solidarity and joy. Because there’s nothing better than working together! We’re made to work together. It’s our heritage from the brave men and women of the labor movement, and it’s even our nature as human beings. It’s when we feel the best, when we feel alive and happy and productive, working together to serve the public good.
For the enemies of public service and union rights, there’s no such thing as a common good, as the public good. They outright deny it. It’s their philosophy, they say it out loud.
So we need to say it out loud: they’re wrong. They’re wrong to want to divide us. They’re wrong to want to manipulate our fears. They’re wrong when they deny public service. They’re wrong when they deny union rights.
But we’re not here to be negative. We’re here to be positive. So we should say what our vision is: we’re here today to show what free people coming together to work for the common good looks like.
Freedom doesn’t come when you’re cut off from your brothers and sisters, when you’re alone and afraid and resentful in front of your TV. Freedom comes when we work together to provide the roads, the health care, the education, all the things that let us be free from fear and poverty and ignorance.
That’s what we do with our lives, that’s what gives them meaning, that’s what gives us strength and joy. And that’s what brings us here today to stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Wisconsin.
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