THE NEW YORK CITY RALLY TO SUPPORT WISCONSIN UNIONS AND TEACHERS

So far my blog posts have not taken any political direction. I have political views, though, as of yet, I have not expressed them on the internet. But last weekend I went to a rally that I would like to tell you about. It was in support of the unions and teachers in Madison, Wisconsin who are faced with the possibility of losing the right to collective bargaining.

There have been quite a few rallies throughout the country in support of the Wisconsin working families and the New York City rally last weekend had a pretty good turn out. More than 10,000 people showed up. It was an orderly group with deep convictions and strong voices with some folks showing support for the Wisconsin issue by wearing the traditional ‘cheese head’ hats.

The rally was situated just outside of City Hall and on the edge of the Financial District. The demonstrators were herded onto a three-block long sidewalk space outside of City Hall Park. Metal barricades were placed on the outer edge of the sidewalk to keep the crowd from stepping out onto the street and into oncoming traffic.

I decided not to stay in the rally proper and wiggled my way out from the crowd to roam the outskirts of the gathering to take photographs and get a longer view of what was going on.

I met a one legged man handing out fliers. He was a jolly guy and said that there were a lot of people at the rally from the organization, MoveOn. There was a contingency from the New York Gray Panthers. Representatives from local unions stood in the crowd proudly displaying union patches on their jackets and waving placards. Nurses and teachers called attention to themselves with their signs.

As late comers arrived the rally spilled out into the City Hall Park. So, I headed into the park to see what was going on in there and found that people had more room to move about and they were just as eager to display their signs, make a statement and chant along with everyone else.

There were many photographers out that day documenting the rally. TV news cameras from the local and national stations were everywhere interviewing the attendees.

One father brought his twin sons to the rally. He had made them each a sign to carry that said, WALKER WORKS FOR KOCH. Charles G. and David H. Koch, two extremely conservative brothers who strongly support the end of union bargaining rights, were the largest contributors to Governor Walker’s campaign for Wisconsin governorship. When I first spotted the twins they were chasing each other in a quiet section of the park. I asked the father’s permission to photograph his sons and I watched the boys tirelessly run from one section of the park to another waving their posters and laughing. By the end of the rally one of the boys had calmed down and stood quietly by his father’s side.


It was a lovely, warm, bright sunny day with hardly a breeze. I could have almost forgotten about the bitter cold and the tons of snow that we’d had in New York only a few weeks earlier. If one believed in that kind of thing, the pleasant weather would seem a good omen for a positive outcome for this rally. But we are in tricky times and the working families in Madison, Wisconsin are not alone in their fight. Under the pretext of balancing the state budget the fundamental right for collective bargaining is threatened to be taken away from workers in Wisconsin, while at the same time corporations are being handed hundreds of millions of dollars in tax cuts and benefits. Budget deficits are problems that many states are facing, not just Wisconsin. In New York and New Jersey, as well as elsewhere, there is the real threat of letting go of thousands of teachers in order to balance the states budgets. I don’t get it. Why should the people who make the least pay the most?