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In 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring, thousands of union members occupied the Wisconsin state capitol - shutting down the legislature in an effort to stop anti-union legislation. Months later, the Occupy movement exploded. A thread on how this relates to #DC + why it matters.
Mass demonstrations of upwards of 100,000 union members, community groups, and their supporters broke out in early 2011 against the Wisconsin Act 10, which attacked collective bargaining, health care and pensions. By February 20th, a physical occupation of the capitol began.
"In Wisconsin, public sector workers, students, and others more generally occupied the Capitol building to stop it from functioning. They prevented the legislative process, the transition from paper, to voting quorum, to the laws taking effect, and thus manifested a force..."
In early March, after being locked out of the capitol, union protesters re-occupied the building while chanting "general strike!"
Inside the occupied capitol, assemblies were held and food was shared communally. On the outside, strikes were called and solidarity occupations broke out at universities. Talk of a general strike filled the air.
Funded by billionaires like the Koch Brothers, anti-union and conservative groups also mobilized to oppose the protests, with the Tea Party playing a key role in organizing the Right. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/wisconsin-tea-partiers-breitbart-fight-unions/
Democrats in a limited role, simply stopped reporting to work at the capitol, thus blocking the amount needed for the legislature to meet quorum in order to vote.
In the end, the Democratic party and union leadership was able to muzzle the self-organized aspects of the struggle and pacified a growing push for a general strike into a campaign for what became an unsuccessful recall attempt. https://libcom.org/library/early-spring-badger
Fast forward to today, and the entire political class is attempting to paint the failed fascist coup by Trump supporters in terms of a "few extremists." Recent polls show nearly half of Trump supporters approve of the coup. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/republicans-congress-capitol-support-trump-b1783807.html
For Democrats attempting to create a new ruling majority around the Center, their goal is to lay the ground work for broad + sweeping repression against popular social movements across the board, especially those from below addressing systematic racism + wealth inequality.
In short, we need to be clear that we oppose the attempted fascist coup because we oppose fascism itself. Our lives would not be made better if a growing fascist current installed Donald Trump a dictator for life. Such an act would make our lives worse - not better.
But we should also be clear that up until this point, Trump has marshaled the entire American state to further entrench class + racial apartheid - from the exploding COVID-19 death toll to forced sterilizations of migrant detention detainees - to which the DNC has done nothing.
The point being, if we allow ourselves to let politicians define what forms of protest and resistance are legitimate, then we quickly will be finding ourselves with less and less tools to better our lives and conditions.
Remember: it was the Democratic Party which clamped down and smashed the Occupy encampments, flooded the streets of Ferguson with tanks, and sent in the military to Standing Rock.
And since the last time Biden was in office, the Security State as only grown and focused itself more and more of its energy against movements like Black Lives Matter. https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-leak-black-identity-extremist-threat-1453362
Centrists + liberals will ask: how could the coup in DC happen. In part, it was the build up of state repression that was created during the Obama years that focused on anarchists, Black Lives Matter and Occupy - while ignoring the far-Right. https://theintercept.com/2019/10/29/fbi-surveillance-black-activists/
As we enter the post-Trump world, let's work to oppose fascism + white supremacists, but also recognize that state repression - even carried out under the guise of 'anti-fascism' - will always come down harder against anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements from below.
