Announcer: Welcome back to The David Pakman Show.
David: All right, we've been talking about the situation in Wisconsin, and I want to
welcome in Frank Emspak, executive producer of WIN, Workers Independent News. Hey, Frank.
Frank Emspak: Hi, how are you? It's a beautiful day, sleeting.
David: Yeah, same here in Massachusetts. Give me a sense of what's happening there. We're
now getting into, you know, we're getting an extended period of time that we've been
having this situation with Scott Walker in Wisconsin. We've been doing a lot of reporting
on the money trail. I'm interested to hear from you, one of the narratives in conservative
media has been that the anti-Scott Walker protests are astroturf, while the pro-Scott
Walker protests are just people happening to show up on their own. I don't believe that's
the truth. Give me your sense of it.
Emspak: There's no pro-Scott Walker people here. The Tea Party people organized from
out of state on Saturday, and there were 300 or 400 of them and 50,000 real people from
the state of Wisconsin all over the place, students, teachers, people who are not in
unions, at the square. There are several thousand people there now, most from in-state. We have
not seen any pro-Walker people at all, so... and anybody can come and go when they want.
What we do know, however, is that yesterday, the Chamber of Commerce of Madison came out
with a position saying they don't support Walker. The police have said they don't support
Walker. There's all kinds of people who are part of the Republican coalition who have
said they don't support this, so I don't know what the conservative newspeople are talking
about, their narrative has been flawed from the word go.
David: Well, you know, we've been talking about the money trail, and it's incredible,
because you're right, this supposed grassroots support for Scott Walker is essentially nonexistent.
It's people coming in from out of state, it's people from PACs funded by the Koch brothers
and a number of other organizations, and what's amazing to me is that, and you and I both
know that this is to be expected, when we turn on some conservative media outlets, all
you see is people with pro-Scott Walker signs, and they have-- they're clearly reciting the
talking points that have been delivered via email before they were bused in. So when you
look at people in and from Wisconsin, it's really people against Scott Walker.
Emspak: It's against Scott Walker, but for rights. I think it's much more energized because
people really have this belief that people should have rights. When we talk to people,
and we'll send you later today some recordings we did of high school students, we have several
minutes, and they really spoke from the heart, and this wasn't scripted. They said worker
rights are human rights. One of them said no, I don't want to go to college in this
state. I would've, but I don't want to anymore. And it's a much more visceral sense here...
I mean, look, the Chamber of Commerce, my god, they're not exactly a pro-union organization,
coming out and saying well, this is too much, we think there should be something done on
the budget, but this is too far, too much, not enough time, we don't want to disrupt
years and years of positive efforts. I mean, that's the Chamber.
David: How long do you think this can last? In other words, I'm guessing people eventually
need to get back to work. We've heard some thoughts that Scott Walker is just going to
wait this out as long as he can. What do you see as the end game here?
Emspak: Well, I think that's probably true, that Scott Walker will wait this out as long
as possible. I also think that legislatively, there may not be an answer right away. There's
a motion before the South Central Federation of Labor later this evening by a number of
locals to propose a statewide day of action. Similar legislations are going forward in
Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Maine. There were demonstrations today in, actually, every state
about this stuff, there was demonstrations in Ohio.
So this is a nationwide effort, and it's for 2012, it's to disenfranchise people. So this
has nothing to do with the budget, and I can't state that often enough. And what workers
are talking about and students and teachers and the Chamber of Commerce is collective
bargaining, working together to achieve something. And that the governor's throwing out the window,
has nothing to do with the budget.
David: Well, real quick here, Frank, have you seen, and I haven't seen this, so I'm
not implying anything, has there been any mistreatment or violence issues at all in
any of this that you've seen or heard about?
Emspak: Well, neither seen nor heard, and we interviewed a large number of police on
Saturday and Sunday, and their position is that the demonstrations have been sort of
mellow and peaceful and people are singing, and they are quite pleased, I guess is the
way to say it, with the comportment of the demonstrators. We are talking about 40,000
or 50,000 people, you know, on Saturday, that's a lot of people. And the Capitol building,
which is this big three-story thing, looks just like the U.S. Capitol, has been full
of people, full of thousands of people, for a week, and there's no damage, there's no
vandalism, people are, they are, you know, the legislature's in session, so the Republicans
aren't being harassed. It's noisy, but still, it's peaceful and it's quiet and I think people
are very, very focused on the notion of having rights and that the right thing to do in this
country on this side of history is to maintain and, you know, have collective bargaining
work.
David: All right, Frank Emspak, executive producer of WIN, Workers Independent News.
Thank you so much for joining us on short notice, Frank.
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