Uprising : how Wisconsin renewed the politics of protest, from Madison to Wall Street

In Uprising The Nation's Washington correspondent John Nichols shows how the controversy over Governor Scott Walker's efforts to strip collective bargaining rights from public sector workers spurred a popular uprising that has had national consequences. On February 11, 2011, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker announced he would strip collective bargaining rights from public employees and teachers. In response, people rose up in mass protest, and Wisconsin became a reference point for a renewal of labor militancy and radical politics. These protests elicited extensive national media coverage, and drew more attention from the general public than any American labor struggle in decades. John Nichols's Uprising traces the roots of this struggle -- which has faced legislative disappointments, legal challenges, and dramatic electoral twists and turns -- and in the process reveals how Scott Walker rose to national prominence and went on to become a frontrunner in the Republican race for the nomination in 2016. At a time when public services are under assault from corporate privatizers and billionaire political donors, the public repudiation of Walker's efforts (and the shadowy interests like the Koch Brothers behind them) has translated into a broader challenge to corporate America, Wall Street, the far Right, and its media echo chamber. The protest movement that captivated the nation and paved the path for Occupy Wall Street. More than 100,000 public employees, teachers, students, and their allies descended on the capital in Madison, Wisconsin after Governor Scott Walker announced his plan to eliminate the right of public sector employees to unionize. The struggle (and the Democratic caucus escape to Indiana in order to prevent a quorum from being reached) elicited extensive national media coverage and debateas well as enormous grassroots support for protestors. Uprising provides an anatomy of the event and its implications for the political future of the nation. As state legislatures across the US (in Ohio and New Hampshire, to name a few) take up union busting measures, Nichols shows how the Wisconsin case is a blueprint for progressives around America whove had enough. He also explores how Wisconsin protesters organized and inspired the Occupy Wall Street movement. "Madison, Wisconsin, let's get rowdy!" : on the cold first night of a golden age -- First Amendment remedies: a reclaiming of the Constitution's rules for radicals -- The arc of history bends toward solidarity: how a sense of place shapes a struggle, and a future -- "Wisconsin is not broke, American is not broke" : an economics lesson from Michael Moore -- The next media system : beyond "old" and "new," a journalistic and democratic media for the Twenty-First century -- The rise of the house of labor : street heat, politics as unusual, and the evolution of the mastodon -- Afterword: the remedy is to begin anew.