Editor’s note: This commentary is by Ashley Smith, of Burlington, who is a socialist writer and activist. He writes for various publications including Truthout, Jacobin, and New Politics.
[G]ov. Phil Scott has invited Wisconsin’s former governor Scott Walker to a private fundraiser for the Republican Party on May 30 at the Burlington Hilton. Vermont’s unions and progressive organizations have called for a picket outside to oppose Walker’s extremist corporate agenda and stop our governor from importing it into Vermont. Here’s why you should join the picket and bring all your co-workers, family and friends.
Walker is a paid agent of the 1%
Billionaires Charles and David Koch and their pro-business front groups poured millions of dollars into Scott Walker’s gubernatorial campaigns in Wisconsin and his failed bid for the Republican nomination for president in 2016. As governor, Walker pursued a scorched-earth campaign against workers and the most vulnerable among us. The Huffington Post reported that he introduced “anti-consumer bills, union busting legislation, voter ID, enormous tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy along with requirements for ‘super majority votes to raise revenue.’”
Walker is a union buster
In 2011, Walker signed Act 10 into law. It deprived public sector unions of their right to collective bargaining and blocked private sector unions from collecting agency fees from workers they represent. He rammed the act through despite walkouts by teachers, mass protests of over 100,000 unionists, an occupation of the state capitol building by thousands of workers, and the flight of 14 Democrats from the state in a desperate attempt to stop passage of the bill. Act 10 cut the percentage of the state’s unionized workforce from 14.2% in 2010 to 8.3 in 2015.
Walker attacks programs for workers, people with disabilities, and the poor
As governor, he prevented any increase in the minimum wage, rolled back enforcement of equal pay protections, and purged thousands of Wisconsinites from the state’s Badgercare health insurance program. He cut programs that provide care to the elderly and people with disabilities, made it harder for workers to qualify for unemployment compensation, imposed onerous requirements on applicants for public aid, and proposed drug testing for all recipients in his last budget. He opposed President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, blocked the expansion of Medicaid in Wisconsin, and of course stands against Bernie Sanders’ proposal for “Medicare for All.”
Walker wants to privatize education
He carried out the largest per student K-12 education cuts in the nation and redirected public funds towards private charter schools. Walker slashed hundreds of millions of dollars from public universities, increased tuition by 5.5% per year, but blocked any expansion of financial aid. Thus, he forced students to borrow more money for lower quality higher education. This drove The Washington Post to ask, “Is Gov. Scott Walker putting the University of Wisconsin system in jeopardy?”
Walker opposes women’s rights
He has consistently fought against legislation to advance women’s equality. In 2012, he repealed a law that enabled women to challenge wage discrimination in court. As a result wage inequality between men and women has only increased; women in the state earn 75 cents for every dollar a man makes, two cents less than the national average. Walker also opposes women’s reproductive freedom. He supports the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the denial of women’s right to choose even in the case of rape or incest.
Walker attacks LGBTQ rights
He opposes gay marriage and even supported a constitutional amendment to ban it. He denounced the Boy Scouts when they ended their ban on gay troop leaders. During his failed run for the GOP presidential nomination, he promised he would uphold the ban on transgender troops in the U.S. military.
Walker is an enemy of racial justice
During his terms as governor, Wisconsin was ranked as the worst state to live in for black Americans. Walker removed artwork depicting African Americans from public buildings, including one piece featuring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and another portraying a multiracial group of children playing together in a Milwaukee neighborhood. He signed a series of laws designed to suppress voter turnout among people of color. In striking down one of these, a judge ruled that Walker intended to discriminate “on the basis of race. I reach this conclusion because I am persuaded that this law was specifically targeted to curtail voting in Milwaukee without any other legitimate purpose.”
Walker supports Trump’s war on immigrants
He opposes progressive immigration reform and even questions legal immigration. He has expressed support for Trump’s boondoggle plan to build a border wall across the U.S. border with Mexico and backed Trump’s Islamophobic and anti-immigrant travel ban.
Walker wrecks the environment for profit
During the Republican primary race, Mother Jones magazine labeled him the “worst candidate for the environment.” As governor, he stopped efforts to develop renewable energy, challenged regulations on carbon emissions, supported the Keystone XL pipeline and dramatically expanded the state’s mining industry, much of it tied to fracking. Native American activists denounced his plans for an iron mine in a watershed near Chippewa tribal lands. They feared that it would poison their people. A member of the Chippewa council declared, “This is our land. This is where we live. We can’t just pack up and move.”
Walker is a reckless militarist
Foreign Policy described him as making “the dumbest foreign policy statement” in the last Republican presidential primary. He declared that “the most significant foreign policy decision of my lifetime” was President Ronald Reagan’s busting of the 1981 air traffic controllers strike because it sent a message to the world that “we weren’t to be messed with.” He claimed he had read documents from the Soviet Union showing this to be the case. But Reagan’s own ambassador to the country, Jack Matlock, declared this to be “utter nonsense. There is no evidence of that whatever.”
Walker opposed Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, supports Trump’s New Cold War against China, backs autocratic regimes in the Middle East from Saudi Arabia to Egypt, and even considered calling for a full scale re-invasion of Iraq with ground troops to defeat ISIS. In threatening this new war, Walker bizarrely compared ISIS to the trade unions he smashed in Wisconsin. At the Conservative Political Action Conference, he boasted, “If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world.”
He disregards the needs of veterans
While he’s supports wars, he holds the veterans who fought them in contempt. His budget cuts put working veterans in jeopardy. The American Legion protested his proposal to eliminate the prevailing wage on state projects, warning that it would cost hundreds of veterans their jobs in the construction industry. He treated those needing hospital care just as callously. He overruled the recommendation of a state veteran task force and canceled plans for the construction of 72-bed skilled nursing facility in Madison for veterans.
Unite to fight the Republican right
We must not let Gov. Scott use Walker’s visit to impose this reactionary agenda on our state. It wrecked Wisconsin for the 99%; we must not let the Republicans do the same in Vermont. All out to picket Scott Walker on May 30 and advance progressive solutions that put people and the environment before profit!