but masses of students, considered now for twenty years to be hopelessly apathetic, in very large numbers have been supportive.




An Interview with Paul Buhle

Paul Buhle is a distinguished historian of the American Left and has been active in social movements since participating in Civil Rights and Anti-War campaigns in the 1960s. His graphic histories such as A People’s History of American Empire, Wobblies! A Graphic History of the IWW and his recently published FDR and the New Deal for Beginners have brought the liberating messages of the Left to a new generation of readers. Buhle is also a long-time resident of Madison, Wisconsin and he took part in the recent demonstrations against Republican Governor Scott Walker who is trying to strip public employees union. The Socialist Editor Billy Wharton spoke with Paul Buhle the day after a pro-Walker Tea Party rally failed and the mass demonstrations continued.

Billy Wharton: I understand you have been at the demonstrations, heady days in Madison lately. Can you tell us a little about what you’ve seen the last few days.

Paul Buhle: On the one hand I’ve been amidst the largest, most comprehensive outpouring of labor solidarity that I’ve experienced in my life time, not having lived through the 30’s or 40’s in the US or events abroad in so many places. And that it’s staggering to see such a wonderful public feeling, public turn out, thousands of school children holding up signs that they support their teachers. Plenty of social workers and hospital workers and so forth of various kinds, but also the skilled trades, eager to show their solidarity with state workers. Likewise you might say the idealist contingent from the campus area and the broader community. Which brings me to the other thing that’s most remarkable, Madison has not seen this level of demonstration since 1970 and Kent State. But of course the great contrast would be that in 1970, and before, the powers that be were able to marginalize and demonize the opposition to the war, which was so very very widespread on campus and considerable in the community but capable of being demonized as well as being assaulted by the police. In contrast to that, the outpouring this time is so large and covers so many demographic areas of the population that the attempts by Republicans and conservative Democrats to marginalize this effort and categorize it as some narrow group and themselves as some silent majority, this kind of stuff falls as flat as the 500 Teapartiers surrounded by 70,000 strike supporters

BW: and that was yesterday?

PB: That was indeed yesterday and a great deal of publicity had gone out about how Joe the Plumber was going to show up and how there would be a massive demonstration and how there would be loads of buses coming from a far and so on and so forth but some people estimated 3,000 I wouldn’t say there were more than 500 and their rally was supposed to continue until 3:00 but they called it quits at 1:30, there was no violence, everyone was actually quite wonderful about maintaining their respectfulness and so forth, but on the other hand those types were subject to ridicule.

BW: Ok, so there’s a categorization that this is labor’s last stand, but from the left we hope that it’s some kind of renewal of a new labor movement. I wonder what you think. Are the protests merely defensive or is it something else going on here?

PB: It’s very difficult to say what lies a week or a month ahead and those of us who passed through the 1960’s and 1970’s know that the Right was able to turn the tide through a great deal of money and demonizing and so forth, but in the past, the Democrats were always able to say “oh well this is too bad, but wait until the next election and we’ll be elected and everything will be hunky dory” and it’s possible that this could happen again, that the Democrats will return from Illinois and say “we did our best and now lump it until next election when you should vote for us again.” That would be shocking but not surprising given the history of the Democratic Party. But I think there’s some other elements here. Wisconsin is famous for the Robert LaFollette tradition of opposition to WWI and during the Vietnam era and beyond, the traditional isolationism or resentment against foreign involvement and the militarization of the economy joined in with the student movement, which had been against the war and the draft and between those two there was a deep popular sentiment against war certainly by 1970 and it was able to play quite a role in the national anti-war movement as being from the Heartland, and one suspects the same thing may happen here, that the voices from Madison and also the very funny signs, which occurred in great and greater numbers from Tuesday to Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, to yesterday. Hilarious signs. They send a message, not only of determination. but good cheer, that it’s fun to be involved in this level of rebellious activity and that people from all social classes, except of course business men, big business men bankers and that sort of social scum, can enjoy thoroughly, including a lot of small business men and women in Wisconsin who resent the power that the banks have over them.

BW: That’s another question I wanted to ask you, this Mubarak-Walker comparison. It’s interesting in the sense that people can identify with the movement in Egypt, but I thought that it also might represent Walker and his ideas as something foreign to Wisconsin…

PB: I think that’s a good thought. Incidentally, there was a tweet this morning that someone in Cairo was holding up a sign in solidarity with Madison. It makes perfect sense because University of Wisconsin graduates are all over the world and presumably involved in social movements all over the world.

BW: I just wanted to finish that point, I wonder where does Walker come from and where does the support for him, sufficient enough to get him elected, where does that fit?

PB: There are two or three things that are very interesting about that. Perhaps I should start with the very lukewarm support of strikers from the White House, that they have to be prepared to accept concessions, but, on the other hand, they probably should have the right to remain in unions. It was the weakest possible support and it reflects since 2008, when enthusiasm for Obama was massive here, but also it must be said, historically Republican sympathies faded and tens of thousands of Republicans didn’t go to the polls in 2008 because they were sick of the Bushies and didn’t really like McCain very much and those thousands include military veterans and their families. What happened between 2008 and 2010 was bitter disillusionment with Obama and the Democrats and with Wall Street and so on and the war. The war is very unpopular in Wisconsin, as was everyone except the Second World War. It remains unpopular and probably the worst moment for Russ Feingold, a really great senator who was defeated, was probably the posters around the state of Russ Feingold posed next to Obama. I think that cost him many thousands of votes. So the story on Walker, a perfectly middle of the road, not especially intelligent, but never especially right wing Republican until election time, and then with very great quantities of cash from the much overrated in popular support Tea Party movement. Somebody said that in the same week in September there was a US Labor Against the War meeting of 100 in Milwaukee to which no reporter showed up and a Tea Party event somewhere in the state, which every reporter in the state showed up for, so that the orchestration of the importance of the Tea Party certainly played a role in this. But in my view, it was a moment of massive disillusionment with the Democrats, not all of them, but with the national leadership and a fair number of the state people who had gone along with the Wall Street bailouts. And in terms of Walker being seen as a foreign person, the greatest complaint in Madison going back to the 1970’s, if not before, was that out of town banks were seizing Wisconsin businesses and Wisconsinites of any social class were no longer in charge of their fate. That was a familiar theme in Robert LaFollete’s days and is important and of course the money for the Tea Partiers came from the Koch brothers. The connection’s a very real one.

BW: I mean Foreign in the sense of the overall political culture of the state.

PB: Yes, I mean of course there are ample conservatives in Wisconsin and we don’t need anymore. But on the other hand the sense that the state has become hostage to Republicans, but also to conservative Democrats nationally is a painful thing and if there is one other thing that I’d like to stress about the demonstrations in the past 5 days is that they contain a tremendous amount of pride in Wisconsin and an identification with the Rose Bowl winners, the Super Bowl winners and a whole lot of cheering every time the word Wisconsin was heard. And pride in perhaps, leading this national movement, or setting in motion this national movement and if it happens, people in Wisconsin will say “by God, we did it.”

BW: Can you tell us a little bit about what the role of the University of Wisconsin Madison is in the protests, in the sense of the students and also the faculty union, but also the administration.

PB: Well, the administration has played a bad role, as the administration characteristically plays a bad role. It’s never really supported the existence of the Teaching Assistants Association and fought it bitterly when I was in it, around 1970 and punished us in all kinds of ways by reducing a number of us and threatening firing and so forth, and then backed off for a while. In the current situation, the Chancellor Biddy Martin, wants to make this an opportunity to separate the well funded, but largely privatized UW from the struggling university system as a whole. So that our UW at Madison won’t suffer the deficits of the places with lower prestige. And the Chancellor, Biddy Martin would be better if the Legislature would hold off and discuss, but is offering no support what so ever. As expected. On the other hand, the Teaching Assistants Association, which has had a contract since the strike in 1970, was very strong in its support of the movement and in the streets from the campus to the capitol historically an Avenue of protest was packed with supporters from UW and other people from the community, so its the familiar story, the administrators aren’t friendly, but masses of students, considered now for twenty years to be hopelessly apathetic, in very large numbers have been supportive.

BW: Let’s talk a little bit about culture and politics. From the outside, I saw a lot of references to pop culture from the 1980’s including Star Wars, Twisted Sister, are there any kind of countercultural influences that you see?

PB: Oh yeah, for those who are interested, Madison.com has a gallery of protest signs, a very considerable number of them humorous and they were not so countercultural, or it may be that counterculture is now so old and so deeply embedded that people who are 65 years old can go on considering themselves part of the counterculture even through they dress professionally and happen to have been school teachers for 30 years. I think the Twisted Sister thing was fascinating because it’s the perfect song, but it has all these reverberations that is trans-decade that represents something that’s bigger then anything in particular. I guess the real Madison counter culture may be the old duffers with the beards.

BW: I wonder if it’s inherent to, or if it’s a symptom of the positioning of the union movement right now.

PB: Well that’s interesting because among the most colorful scenes along with the signs were the jackets of union members. Especially Pipefitters and so forth, people who had really colorful jackets and have worn them for decades and hardly anyone has every noticed, but are beautifully made and the colors on them are fabulous and people were happy to have them there and perhaps deferred to them and congratulated them, as I did, because we have seen them too rarely, but these people were 100% in support from all over the state. Road workers, and here’s one of the better signs, Fire Us- We Won’t Plow your Streets Tomorrow and the lowest levels of city workers of all kinds, road crews and so forth they are as happy and as proud to be here, even if they drove four hours to be here as anyone was.

BW: Great, is there anything else you want to add?


PB: Yes, only to underline that when the sun comes out in February in Wisconsin, everybody’s happy when the sun comes out and it’s warm. In April, everybody’s ready to go on strike, at least that’s my experience with the University of Wisconsin in the 1960’s. People save up their grievances and then when there’s a good day, people would be going out anyway. This is the final thing I’d like to say. The opportunity to be surrounded by 40 or 50,000 people sharing a purpose, a very good purpose, this is a very rare experience in life. Other then going to Washington to a demonstration where people come from all over the country, I haven’t experienced it in a bit over 40 years and it’s an awfully heady and fulfilling experience and I hope that your readers and listeners have that experience for themselves.

BW: Maybe we’re headed for a Madison Spring.



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